Phone Call (Changes)

 The chiming of my phone woke me up. That must be Darin, I thought. We were going to the club in a few hours, so I had lain down for a quick nap. Eyes still closed, I tapped my earpiece.

“A little early, dude.”

“Hello, honeychild.”

My eyes snapped open and I bolted upright. Both the voice and the term of endearment were familiar, but I hadn’t heard either in eight years and never expected to again.

“Mom??”

“Of course!”

“Look, it’s not that I’m not happy to hear from you, but I have your ashes in an urn that I’m looking at right now. This is a little unexpected, is all.” 

“’That is not dead which can eternal lie.’ Lovecraft. The Necronomicon. Death is more of a transition than an end. I’ve been watching you since I left my body behind.”

“What, all the time?” I was a little alarmed by this. Was my mom watching me...constantly? What had she seen me do?

“Not all the time; I respect your privacy. But I’m worried about you, Tatum. You spend too much time clubbing with that Darin and not enough time focused on your future. You try to have unprotected sex with everyone you meet, so you could wind up with syphilis or something worse. You’re drinking too much, too.”

“I’m only twenty-five. Why not have fun while I’m still young?”

“Twenty-five is close enough to thirty that you should have grown up by now. You can’t even keep a job for more than a year. How are you supposed to develop a career if you do that?”

“Did you call me just to chew me out? Seems a waste of communication with the deceased.”

“Oh, honeychild! I’m not chewing you out; I’m just expressing my concern. You do not and never will truly disappoint me. I am proud of how smart you are and how capable you can be when you put in the Effort. 

“I know you can do better, and I want to see you try. I want to see you happy and content, not just going out and ‘having fun’ and then feeling like death warmed over the next day, if you’ll pardon my little pun.”

I thought about this. I was living alone in a studio apartment, working off and on and collecting unemployment in between jobs. I had a string of nameless hook-ups, which were becoming boring and formulaic. 

If I wanted to be brutally honest with myself, going to the club meant I was still lonely in a huge room full of strangers. Darin was the closest I had to a real friend. 

She was right about how I felt the morning after a night of clubbing: like I’d been eaten alive by jackals and shit off a cliff.

Mom also had a point about my career, or lack thereof; I didn’t have any plans or even any idea what I was going to do next. I was drifting through life, with no anchor and no oars, completely without any kind of direction.

“You’re right. About everything,” I admitted. “What should I do?” 

“For one thing, skip the club tonight. You need to do some soul-searching and figure out what you really want out of life besides whiskey and a series of anonymous strangers in your bed. 

“Then start going to a support group for alcoholics. After that, find a therapist so you can work out whatever issues are causing this self-destructive behavior. Seeing you waste your life like this makes me feel like a bad parent.”

“You were a great mother. And Dad was a great father. I don’t think any of this is your fault,” I assured her. “Maybe I don’t want to grow up because that means I have to pass on, and that scares me. It has nothing to do with you and Dad.”

“Well, whatever it is, you need to address it or you’ll never get the chance to get old. You can’t continue down this path, Tatum. It will lead you to nothing but ruin and suffering. That is what I called to tell you.”

Ruin and suffering, I thought. Not the way I wanted to live the rest of my life. I trusted my mother; she had always given me the best advice, until a burst appendix took her away from me shortly after I turned seventeen. 

I wondered if she could have prevented my life from getting to this point if she had lived and was able to give me guidance. Probably. When she passed, it must have scared me on a deeper level than I originally thought. 

“This is your chance, hopefully your inspiration, to change your life for the better. I only want the best for you, honeychild. I always have.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, although I may not be able to answer it.”

“What’s it like? Being dead?”

“You’ll find out.”

The chiming of my phone woke me up. Without opening my eyes, I tapped my earpiece.

“Hey, Darin. I think I’ll skip the club tonight. I had a really weird dream.”