Telephones
Faith Shearin I passed an empty telephone booth this summer— daydreaming in an open field—and was aware, suddenly, of its resemblance to a coffin. Because I was sent away to boarding school when I was young, a decade of my life passed in telephone booths. Stepping into one was like stepping into a confessional; I shut the door and wept over failed math tests and wayward boyfriends. I told my mother about bad cafeteria food, or a nosebleed, or my part in the school play. At summer camp it was possible to wander into a forest of old growth pines and make phone calls away from the bunks in our claustrophobic cabins; sometimes, I descended to a polished basement and used a credit card number to conjure the distant, disembodied voices of my grandparents. (Each number, when pressed, created a note which—together—formed a familiar, discordant melody.) I settled myself on the shelf-like seat, rested my legs against the adjacent wall, and held the stiff silver cord like something umbilical. Phone booths are liminal spaces—both public and private—a contradiction I love. They are the translucent closets where Clark Kent became Superman. I grew up in a world where telephones were attached to walls. My grandparents owned the rotary dial model, with a finger hole in a wheel for each digit. Phones loitered in our kitchens, where they witnessed our fried eggs, bowls of cereal, overcooked pot roasts, and wizened peas. They crouched in bedrooms on bedside tables, where it was possible to have a semi-private conversation if no one else in the house picked up a receiver; they perched in offices