On the phone

“And you’ll never guess what she was wearing to the cotillion,” Mary Patton said, her voice just oozing lilies and daffodils, “A white dress with puffy sleeves and a hemline above the knees! Now can you just imagine this, Georgie? A white dress ... in April? I mean, it was simply ghastly, just ghastly, I tell you. I tried looking over at Malvina, and her eyebrows were cocked to the left and she was puckering her lips. You know how the poor dear talks and talks and talks. Now don’t you just hate that, when someone just talks and talks and never listens?”

“Yes, dear, I know –“ Georgianna edged in a word.

“But no one had the heart to go over to Betty Bixler and tell her that she ...”

Georgianna turned off Mary’s voice for the time being. She’d never know it, so long as every few minutes she uttered a few You don’t say, I don’t believe that, Tell me more snippets. Georgianna eyed the countertop. She had an apple pie to bake, a roast to go in the oven, and vegetables to chop. Dinner was in less than two hours. She had to get rid of Mary before Harold, Bob, and Allen came home from fishing on Lake Towanga.

But would the phone reach?

Georgianna walked over to the front door while Mary continued the tales of Betty Bixler’s fashion faux pas and Malvina’s gossip network plugging up the phone lines in town. But the phone line tightened to a stop six feet shy of the front door. Hmm, she thought.

Georgianna interrupted. “Mary, tell me what Martha George said about all of this.” That’d keep Mary busy for another five minutes. She put the phone down on the kitchen counter, tiptoed to the front door, opened the screen, and pressed the bell.

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong ...

“Oh, Mary,” Georgianna interrupted. “I’m so sorry ... I simply have to go. That’s Harold’s mother – I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Click.

Whew, that was a close call. Now back to the apple pie.