Forty-Five Minutes

My wife needed one number. I was on a call.

All my wife needed was her social security number. She’d driven to the DMV to get her license changed over after the move, my daughter riding along because there was nothing better to do, and the clerk wanted the number.

I was on a call.

Her text arrived while somebody talked in my ear about the week, and then the question marks started, one after another in the corner of the screen. I typed hold the fuck on, and went back to the call.

It was Friday and I was focused on finishing the work week. Somewhere in there the phone stopped making noise, which I registered as the problem solving itself.

The phone vibrated again. She passed. Then it dawned on me. My daughter had taken her learner’s permit test and passed it. Without studying. I didn’t even know she was going to try.

My wife got her license. My daughter got her permit. The all hands on deck conference call ended, and I couldn’t tell you now what was said on it. I was forty feet from the door they came back through, and I congratulated her.

But I told my family to hold on so I could stay on that call, and then, for forty-five minutes, I never thought about them again.

The question marks stopped, and I took that to mean it was handled. Somebody quits asking and you conclude they didn’t need it that badly.

I know better than this with a buyer. A man who goes quiet on me hasn’t gone away. He’s somewhere, working something out, and whatever he’s working out is the thing I need to know.

I’ll sit with a stranger in his kitchen for an hour while he decides on windows, and I’ll watch his face when the number lands, and I’ll know exactly what moved in him.

Then I’ll come home and tell the people I love to hold on, and read their silence as permission.