The Good Phone

We called it the good phone, the downstairs telephone mounted to the kitchen wall, to differentiate it from the only other telephone in our house: the green Trimline in our parents’ bedroom. If we were upstairs and the phone rang, we would race to the bedroom, dive across the bed and try to answer by the third ring—this, a game of our own devising, a game we sometimes expanded upon, assigning meaning to the third ring, as in, If we don’t answer the phone by the third ring, the world will explode. The Trimline had illuminated push buttons that glowed as greenly as fireflies. But the caller always sounded like they were trapped inside a tin can.
Usually the call would be for our parents. “Mom,” “Dad,” we’d announce. “Telephone!” We’d hear them rise from the living room sofa or family room sectional, and say, “I’ll take it down here on the good phone.” Then we’d listen until they’d picked up downstairs, their voices blooming in our ears. “Hello?”
The good phone had gray buttons and an ivory base. The receiver was heavier than the Trimline, perhaps one reason phone calls sounded so much better, clearer. The good phone had a long cord that twisted into complex loops and tangles; try to stretch them out and they’d only return in an instant. Later, in high school, when we had calls of our own—important calls, calls from boyfriends and girlfriends—we’d take those on the good phone. And much later, after we’d moved out of the house, after we’d become adults, whenever we called home with disappointing news, news of par- enting dilemmas, of marriages ending, of health problems and loss and sorrow and pain, our parents would always say, “Wait. Let me switch to the good phone.”