After my first full year there, I was given my own cubicle and my own computer, so I could do what I wanted most of the time and no one bothered me. I could watch the egrets pluck fish from the river and the ferries of tourists head toward Saint Paul. Or, if I chose, I could look up things online while I input spreadsheets—cases of high-altitude cerebral edema on Everest or recent sales at the Treasure Chest. Though I was just a temp, I was at ManiCo Barge long enough to get a shelf for my lunch and a hook for my jacket in the break room. I was there long enough to become the go-to person for dealing with the distressed wives of deckhands. To everyone’s surprise, I was good at calming these women down when they called. I’d say things like: “Don’t worry, your husband will be home again soon.” I’d promise: “He’ll get to shore in Oquawka and call tonight.” I’d say this even when I knew he wouldn’t get to shore for another day, and when he did he’d probably hit the bar before calling anyone. Still, the wives knew me by name and asked for me every time. I kept track of the ages of all their kids, the names of their dogs, the names of their babysitters.
I was used to them calling at the end of the day, so when my phone rang at four one afternoon—one early spring my second year there—I thought at first it was just another worried wife. Right away I could hear irritation in the woman’s voice, the way her vowels squished up around her attempt to sound friendly. “I’m so sorry to bother you at work,” she said primly. “Is this a bad time for you?” So then I was pretty sure it wasn’t a wife but a regular wrong number. I was about to hang up on her. I was about to hang up and straighten my pantyhose and get my last cup of coffee, when I heard whoever it was draw in a sharp breath. “I’m very sorry to bother you,” the woman said again. Then: “Please don’t hang up.”
So even before she said she was from Loose River, even before she explained who she was, I recognized something about the way she spoke, about the way she apologized as a means to express disapproval. That was a Loose River thing to do. When I didn’t say anything and didn’t hang up either, the woman went on. She said she’d found my number by calling my old job in Duluth. She said she’d tracked down my old landlord, and that he told her the name of the temp agency where he thought I’d gone to work, but it took some doing before they gave out the name of the barge company. I’d been pretty hard to find, she said. She hadn’t wanted to meddle this way, she went on, but she wasn’t sure how else to go about this. “I’m calling on behalf of your mom,” she said—then paused. “She’s stopped coming to church. She hasn’t been to church for a few months. So I went out to visit her.”
I waited.
“The place is getting … a bit run-down?”
I cleared my throat. “The cabin?”
“Actually, the cabin roof was taken off in a storm last year. Or that’s what she said.”
“The roof came off?”
“Um. I think she wintered in the shed. She moved a stove out there.”
“To the shed? It’s not insulated.”
“She’s tried insulating the walls with leaves and clothes. Newspapers.”
I couldn’t imagine it and then I could. “Okay.”
“She nicked a finger chopping wood. I don’t think she can see too good anymore.”
“Who is this again?” I asked, feeling—not sick—but a slow pounding in my head.
“Liz Lundgren. I go to Our Lady with your mom.”
“Ms. Lundgren.” I stood up. I started pacing the length of the phone cord, chewing my lip, looking over the cubicle wall and out the window, where the brown water of the Mississippi was sliming steadily by on its way to the Gulf.
That’s when something broke loose in my mind, drifted out. “Life Science,” I said.
There was a pause. “Yes, a million years ago. Yes.” Liz Lundgren bit down on something in her mouth, and I could hear relief flooding her voice when she spoke again. “I filled in before I retired. At the high school, yes. That’s me. Listen, Linda. I’m not trying to meddle. I don’t want to cause trouble, but I think I could arrange a call. I mean, I think she’d like me to arrange a call.”