Phone Poles

by JH Lucas

It’s funny what you remember, what you don’t. What your mind clings to, and why. I remember we always called the telephone phone but for some reason we called the telephone poles telephone poles. We were on a first-name basis, we should have just called them phone poles. Saved those two extra syllables for something else. Something important. But we were careless in our teen years. Back when I had my first real girlfriend. Let’s call her Sofia.

We were 15 when we met at church, in the parking lot. It was fall in the Piedmont, pine needles in thin sheets on the ground, crisp and resinous, the air thick and sickly sweet. I can still kind of remember how she looked that day, her Carolina blue dress, light brown hair, dark brown eyes. Some of her teeth were brown too but I didn’t see that at church. The back ones. I would see them later, when it was too late to back out.

She lived just down the road from me. That’s how it was back then, you went to the same church with the same people you lived around. I don’t know if it’s that way anymore, I don’t got to church anymore. Maybe I should. Maybe I should learn how to pray again. But I prayed and I prayed and sometimes I forgot to pray and it didn’t seem to make any difference one way or the other, so one day I just stopped and that was that. Like a book you put down halfway through and you think: I’m tired.

Sofia’s house was about ten, twelve blocks away, I don’t remember exactly. The phone poles went along the street, connecting all the houses, and they had flyers stapled to them. You’d try not to read them as you walked past, but it was tough with their headlines screaming at you. Lost Cat! Help Wanted! For Sale, Cheap!

But eventually, after all the screaming, I got to Sofia’s house and rang the doorbell. Her mother let me in. Sofia was upstairs getting ready for dinner. She took a long time. Mayflies took to wing and those same mayflies died in the time it took her to get ready for dinner. I’d just learned about mayflies so I told this to the mother, trying to make her laugh.

She’s taking a treatment, she said.

What for, I said.

CF, she said.

Saving her syllables. I repeated it over and over in my mind, CF, CF, trying to find the key. Then Sofia came downstairs with her sister to have dinner and I said hi and went home. In my mind, maybe CF was a fancy version of asthma. I had a friend who had asthma real bad when he was little but then he outgrew it. So maybe Sofia would outgrow it.

On the way home, I passed a phone pole and there was a flyer: Live the life of your dreams! It was about selling shoes. I didn’t know how shoes and dreams were connected. So when I got home, I called the number. A woman answered. She sounded old. There was dust coming through the phone.

I want to live the life of my dreams, I said.

You have the wrong number, she said.

Now I think back on it and I almost laugh. All those feelings. That’s all you’re left with in your memories, isn’t it? Just feelings. The love, the hate, jealousy and joy, abandoning and being abandoned, your first great heartbreak. A few facts remain like the last water swirling around the drain but mostly it’s the feelings. It all gets muddled up over time and one day you will miss it. Save your syllables.

After the dogwood blossomed in the spring we broke up. I can’t remember why. Instinct tells me it was my fault. I was not good with people back then and it has been an uphill battle ever since. I can say or do stupid things, or terrible things, or even terribly stupid things. All I know is it wasn’t about CF, at least I don’t remember it being about CF, and for that I’m grateful. So I went off gratefully into the world. 

I went to college and later dropped out and moved to San Francisco – SF – after I had long lost touch with Sofia. But now I know what CF is. I know that the treatments buy you time while stealing your teeth. I know that she probably didn’t make it out of those teen years. But I hope she was happy. I hope she got something sweet out of her short life. Out of every syllable I should have saved for her.

And I can say it to you now and you will understand: phone poles.