title: Phone Calls from the Dead
author:  Wendy Brenner 
description: The narrator of "The Anomalist" one of the 10 stories gathered in Brenner's quirkily deadpan second collection (after Large Animals in Everyday Life) explains that he has remained in Florida because he once saw a zoo plaque that promised buffalo sightings "if you're at the right place at the right time." Unfortunately, he never seems to be where he's meant to be, and he has little left save the hope that great, galumphing beasts will lumber through the foreground of his life, changing him irrevocably. Like the short-circuited phone system in "Awareness," which unwittingly places calls to itself, Brenner's characters are protectively self-sufficient; like the operators who answer these phantom calls, they repeatedly experience the disappointment of an empty dial tone. Immunized against sentimentality by great doses of reason, characters have lover's quarrels that are "showdown[s] about beauty." Intellectual effort keeps Brenner's protagonists from falling apart entirely, but again and again they are undone by small gestures (a child's grasp, a sticky kiss) emotional depth charges that cannot be denied. The stories end with tiny, unexpected epiphanies: a girl lamenting the false promise of Snoopy, a man waiting for his dead son to pick up the phone, a man rocked in the arms of a golden-hearted hooker. Brenner's witty, empathetic voice animates a tawdry, urban Florida filled with the lost and the lonely, stale lives refreshed briefly by fleeting moments of passion. (Sept.)Forecast: Brenner, a contributing writer for the Oxford American, won the Flannery O'Connor Award for her first collection. Readers familiar with her work will snap up Phone Calls from the Dead, and strong reviews and an author tour should broaden her reach. </P><P>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</P>
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  # A Long-Distance Call From Jim
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Bess Streeter Aldrich
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
      
      
      
  
  
  A Long-Distance Call From Jim
  
  
  And how it shook up Centerville
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TO ELLA NORA ANDREWS, calm, unruffled, serenely humming a gay little tune,
  gathering her school things together — her "Teacher's Manual of Primary
  Methods," a box of water-colors, and a big bunch of scarlet-flamed sumac —
  came the sound of the telephone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ella Nora, in her crisp blue linen school suit, shifted her working
  paraphernalia and took down the receiver. Fate is a veritable chameleon for
  changing shape and color. This morning she had entered the fat, puffy person
  of asthmatic Mrs. Thomas Tuttle, and was saying:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That you, Ella? Have you heard the news? Jim Sheldon is coming here the last
  of the week. He'll be here on Number Eight, Friday afternoon. And get ready
  now for the cli