Madeline Makes a Phone Call

Madeline was surprised at the speed in which Penny answered the phone. She was well aware of her daughter's hatred for such devices, but there were just some things in life one had to deal with, like it or not. The telephone was one of those things and Madeline refused to feel guilty about forcing her daughter to do things she hated. Communication was important.

"Hello," Penny answered in an almost sigh-sounding way.

"Penny, what's wrong?" Her mother asked, expecting a tirade of problems. She was only slightly disappointed.

"Apparently I said the wrong thing to Joan just now. Either the phone cut off or she hung up on me. I thought you were her calling back." Madeline smiled to herself. It would be like Joan to hang up and then call back seconds later in a quick guise of apology, but in reality was to continue the fight, or the fight Joan thought they were having.

Madeline sat down on the edge of the sofa chair, "Well, it would not be hard to offend Joan. Did you tell her she was pretty but she wanted to hear that she was gorgeous?" Yes, this had happened. Sigh.

"No Mom, I really did it this time. For once I think she may deserve her anger," Penny said in an unusually humble-voice. Penny might be an eighty-year-old grump in a young woman's body, but she was honest.

"She told me she was going crazy with all the wedding business, and I asked her if she and Rog had decided to not get married."

Madeline laughed, more out of nervousness of what the rest of the story might be, "You didn't?"

"I did, Mom. And that's not all." Madeline knew it, "I just went on talking, telling her how glad we were of this choice."

"Oh no. Oh, Penny, what possessed you to say such a thing?"

There was a pause, not the kind that upset Joan so much, but the kind that screamed of self-degradation, "I don't know. It just seems like Rog is so unhappy that I had hoped something good would happen in that relationship."

"Like him dumping her?"

"No, I just wish they would take more time and really know what they are getting into." And though Madeline tried to stop herself, she heard the words escaping the prison of her mind and flowing freely into the world of the hearing. Penny probably knew this speech by heart. It was the one about how Penny should not doom everyone else's marriage just because hers did not go as well as she would have liked. Penny was just processing everyone's information with her divorcee filter and that was not fair to everyone else.

Again the pause on the other line. Had Penny hung up?

"Penny, are you there?"

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