God's Gym Read Free

told myself. After Wednesday's productivity, wasn't I entitled to some down time. Just sat at my desk, pleased as punch with myself till I got bored feeling so good and started a nice novel,
Call It Sleep.
Dinner at KFC buffet. Must have balled up fifty napkins trying to keep my chin decent. Then home to call you before I snuggled up again with the little Jewish boy, his mama, and their troubles in old NYC.
    Let your phone ring and ring. Too late for you to be out unless you had a special occasion. And you always let me know well ahead of time when something special coming up. I tried calling a half-hour later and again twenty minutes after that. By then nearly nine, close to your bedtime. I was getting really worried now. Couldn't figure where you might be. Nine-fifteen and still no answer, no clue what was going on.
    Called Sis. Called Aunt Chloe. Nobody knew where you were. Chloe said she'd talked with you earlier, just like every other morning. Sis said you called her at work after she got back
from lunch. Both of them said you sounded fine. Chloe said you'd probably fallen asleep in your recliner and left the phone in the bedroom or bathroom and your hearing's to the point you can be wide awake but if the TV's on and the phone's not beside you or the ringer's not turned to high, she said sometimes she has to ring and hang up, ring and hang up two, three times before she catches you.
    Chloe promised to keep calling every few minutes till she reached you. Said, They have a prayer meeting Thursdays in your mother's building and she's been saying she wants to go and I bet she's there, honey. She's all right, honey. Don't worry yourself, okay. We're old and fuddle-headed now, but we're tough old birds. Your mother's fine. I'll tell her to call you soon's I get through to her. Your mom's okay, baby. God keeps an eye on us.
    You know Aunt Chloe. She's your sister. Five hundred miles away and I could hear her squeezing her large self through the telephone line, see her pillow arms reaching for the weight before it comes down on me.
    Why would you want to hear any of this. You know what happened. Where you were. You know how it all turned out.
    You don't need to listen to my conversation with Sis. Dialing her back after we'd been disconnected. The first time in my life I think my sister ever phoned me later than ten o'clock at night. First time a lightning bolt ever disconnected us. Ever disconnected me from anybody ever.
    Did you see Eva Wallace first, Mom, coming through your door, or was it the busybody super you've never liked since you moved in. Something about the way she speaks to her granddaughter, you said. Little girl's around the building all day because her mother's either in the street or the slam and the father takes the child so rarely he might as well live in Timbuktu so you know the super doesn't have it easy and on a couple of occasions you've offered to keep the granddaughter when the super needs both hands and her mind free for an hour. You
don't hold the way she busies up in everybody's business or the fact the child has to look out for herself too many hours in the day against the super, and you're sure she loves her granddaughter, you said, but the short way she talks sometimes to a child that young just not right.
    Who'd you see first pushing open your door. Eva said you didn't show up after you said you'd stop by for her. She waited a while, she said, then phoned you and got no answer and then a friend called her and they got to running their mouths and Eva said she didn't think again about you not showing up when you were supposed to until she hung up the phone. And not right away then. Said as soon as she missed you, soon as she remembered you-all had planned on attending the Thursday prayer meeting together, she got scared. She knows how dependable you are. Even though it was late, close to your bedtime, she called you anyway and let the phone ring and ring. Way after nine by then. Pulled her coat on