Possibilities:
1. Persistent hallucination.
2. Really long dream. (Or maybe normal-length dream, perceived as really long from the inside?) 3. Schizophrenic episode.
4. Unprovoked Somewhere in Time scenario.
5. Am already dead? Like on Lost?
6. Drug use. Unrecalled.
7. Miracle.
8. Interdimensional portal.
9. It’s a Wonderful Life? (Minus angel. Minus suicide. Minus quasirational explanation.) 10. Magic fucking phone.
She had to deal with this.
She sat in the car and plugged in her iPhone. No missed calls from Neal. From thirty-seven-year-old, real Neal. (Why wasn’t he calling her? Was he really this pissed? Neal, Neal, Neal!) She dialed his cell phone and didn’t even flinch when his mom answered.
“Georgie?”
“Margaret.”
“I knew it was you this time,” his mom said, “because I saw your photo on the phone. Who are you supposed to be? A robot?”
“The Tin Man. Hey, Margaret, who’s the Speaker of the House?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t it that Republican with the piercing eyes?”
“I don’t know,” Georgie said, realizing that she really didn’t. Who came after Nancy Pelosi? “It’s not Newt Gingrich, though, right?”
“Oh, no,” Margaret said. “Didn’t he just run for president? Are you doing a crossword?”
That would have been an excellent cover; she should have told the other Margaret she was doing a crossword. “Yes,” Georgie said, “hey, can I talk to Neal?”
“He just stepped out.”
Of course he did.
“Didn’t he call you yesterday?” Margaret asked. “I told him you called.”
“I must have missed him,” Georgie said.
“Here’s Alice, do you want to talk to Alice? Alice, come say hi to your mom. . . .”
“Hello?” Alice sounded far away.
“Alice?”
“Talk louder, Mommy, I can’t hear you.” She sounded like she was sitting across the room from the phone.
“Alice!” Georgie tipped her own phone away from her ear and shouted. “Pick up the phone!”
“I am!” Alice shouted. “But Dawn says you shouldn’t put cell phones on your head, or you’ll get cancer!”
“That’s not true.”
“What?”
“That’s not true!” Georgie yelled.
“Dawn said! Dawn’s a nurse!”
“Meow!”
“Is that Noomi? Let me talk to Noomi!”
“I don’t want Noomi to get cancer.”
“Put me on speaker phone, Alice.”
“I don’t know how.”
“It’s the button that says ‘speaker’!”
“Oh . . . like this?”
Georgie put the phone back to her ear. “Can you hear me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Alice, you’re not going to get cancer from the cell phone. Especially not from a few minutes on the cell phone.”
“Meow.”
Alice sighed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Mommy, but you’re not a nurse. Or a doctor. Or a scientist.”
“A scientist!” Noomi said, giggling. “Scientists make potions.”
“How are you guys?” Georgie asked.
“Fine,” they both said. Why did Georgie even ask that question? It always made them clam right up. She’d be better off arguing with them about brain cancer.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s at the grocery store,” Alice said. “We’re gonna make all Grandma’s famous Christmas cookies. Even the ones with Hershey’s Kisses that look like mice.”
“They have cherries for bottoms,” Noomi said.
Alice was still talking: “And we’re gonna make peanut butter balls and green Christmas trees, and Grandma already said I could use the mixer. Noomi’s gonna help, but she has to stand on the chair, and Dawn says that sounds dangerous, but it won’t be, because Daddy will hold her.”
Nurse Dawn. “That sounds wonderful,” Georgie said. “Will you save me some cookies?”
“Meow!”
“Sure,” Alice said. “I’ll have to get a box.”
“Meow, Mommy!”
“Meow, Noomi.”
“We have to go now because we’re getting the kitchen ready.”
“Alice, wait—will you give Daddy a message?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Will you tell him that I called to say I love you?”
“I love you, too,” Alice said.
“I love you, honey. But tell Daddy that I love him. Tell him that’s why I called.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, Alice. I love you, Noomi.”
“Noomi’s in the kitchen with Grandma now.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, Mommy.”
Georgie started to say good-bye, but Alice had already hung up.