@@DESCRIPT="Bad Connection by TS" 
                         Bad Connection
                              By
                         The Stranger


     The house was just as she remembered it or atleast close to
it.  She had only been four then and now her life had changed into
a life of a school girl.  Kindergarten was almost over and her
sixth birthday was just a few weeks away.  But she knew this was
the place.  It had a feel to it that only her grandfather could
give off.  A feel of wisdom and age.  A good feeling that made her
want to come back often.
     Her grandfather was no longer living here.  He had moved to a
place called heaven or so her mother had told her.  She didn't know
where that was but she knew it had to be far because her mother
also told her that they wouldn't be visiting him any more.  But her
mother had said the same thing about her father when her parents
got something called a divorce and now they were all living
together.  So she had no reason to believe her mother now.
     They came to this place on a cold October day to pack up some
of the dead mans belongings for keepsakes.  Sharon had put this off
for two weeks but now she was here.  Jack came along as she knew he
would and Patricia came also.  Jack showed her sympathy though she
didn't trust his feelings anymore.  She would have ran away from
her problems if not for Patricia.  The girl needed her mother and
maybe she also needed her two-timing father.
     Jack opened the car door for Sharon and helped her out.  She
was so fragile now and he hated her for it.  Susan wasn't like  
this.  Susan understood Jack even if they had only known each other
for a short time.  In Sharon's eyes he saw vulnerability and in
Susan's he saw the future. 
     But his guilt came bouncing out of the back seat with her
ponytails hopping up and down.  The kid, as he could hear himself
saying in his mind.  She kept him here, stuck in a situation he
knew couldn't work.  What scared him the most was the feeling of
blame he was throwing on her.  He loved her, didn't he?  He had to,
she was his flesh and blood.  No, she was a result of a great night
in a cheap motel.  He tried to blame Sharon but if he tried hard
enough to remember it always came down to him being at fault. 
     But what about Sharon, didn't he love her?  Once he had.  In
high-school they had met and in college they had eloped after a
home pregnancy test came back positive.  Back then she meant the
world to him.  But years went by and simple boredom drove him away. 
They went the same places, had the same friends, and did the same
routine day after day.  A year ago he had grown tired of her and
started looking for compassion elsewhere. 
     He was here today though, here to help her throw away old
memories and maybe to find lost ones.  His stepfather was dead and
though he became upset when he heard, that was only for her.  In
reality he didn't care if the old man lived or died.  They were
rarely on speaking terms but Jack didn't blame him for that.  Jack
had taken the mans daughter, got her pregnant and then ran 
her off to Salt Lake City for a quickie marriage.  He didn't
understand the old man then but now with his own girl he felt he
understood.  But now it was too late to patch things up. 
     The house still had the old smell of roasted wood that always
felt warm and inviting.  Patricia walked in first while the couple
came behind, walking hand in hand.
     Memories came walking up to Sharon and welcomed her back to
her childhood home.  They said their condolences and then vanished
into the air.  She squeezed on Jacks hand and he smiled at her
trying to comfort her.  "Ready to get this over with?" he said.  
     She wiped the tears that started rolling down her cheeks. 
"Yeah, guess so."  Patricia was already starting her own search as
she ran away from her parents into familiar lonely rooms. 
     "I'll go get the boxes" Jack said to her and she nodded.  He
went out to the car and it hit her, she was alone.  Alone in a
house she had once played in as a child.  A house where her mother
and father nurtured her and her sister.  A house where memories
floated in the air waiting for the mind to relive them.
     She could almost see her family sitting on the couch watching
television and eating her mothers popcorn.  Jackie Gleason running
around in a magic box on a show called "The Honeymooners."  They
would all laugh and feel good and more importantly feel loved. 
Love was something she missed these days.
        Patricia went into a room she called the playroom because of
the fact that it was the room her grandfather kept toys for her to
play with.  Dolls sat on shelves while teddy bears waited for
someone to love.  When her mother would say "we're going over to
Gramps house" this room is what came to her mind.  They're were
more toys, more games here then at her real home.  On most visits
she would spend hours in here living in a fantasy world.
     Jack came back into the house and found Sharon sitting on the
couch crying.  He dropped the three boxes he held and went to her. 
He put his arm around her and brought hear against his chest.  She
frantically wiped the tears away and moved away from him. 
Tenderness was something she needed but not something she wanted
from him. 
     "Let's go see if we can fill those boxes" she said with a
fragiled voice and a case of the sniffles.
     "Okay" he said with just a touch of pain and hatred running
through him.  He went over and picked up the boxes he had gotten
from work and followed her into what was once her bedroom and was
now a library.
     The books of importance were boxed away along with some other
novelties that haunted the room.  Patricia's play room, which was
once Sharon's sisters room was also packed away.  Jack kept on the
move, running back and forth from the car to the house.  She wanted
a truck to carry the boxes and he had said no and only brought a
van that he had borrowed from a friend at work. 
        By one the house was packed away in the car.  The only other
room was the basement but most things down there were atleast
already in boxes.  Jack left the two of them at the house as he
drove the twenty miles to the storage place where they would keep
all this junk, as he was starting to call it.  After unloading the
van he would drive back to the house and start loading it up again
with the junk from the basement.  He was tired and his back hurt
and so Sharon was glad to see him leaving.
     The two females went through the boxes in the basement looking
for things they wouldn't need and thus they wouldn't have to take. 
The dust and cobwebs were always taking care of by the old man but
since his death they had found their way in.  The chill from the
October day could be felt with minimal resistance down here. 
     Sharon could remember her father making this basement into her
playroom where her sister and her could feel privacy from the
lurking eyes of their parental figures.  Friends would come over
and the girls would bring them down here where they could talk
about boys and school and what ever else was on their minds.
     The boxes held treasures of generations gone by.  Old clothes
that were fashionable in decades long gone lied asleep waiting for
style to find them again.  Sharon watched as her life unfolded out
of cardboard boxes and whispered memories in her ear.  
     "Look mom, a phone."  Patricia held an old telephone that
looked heavier then she did.  "Hello" she yelled into the 
receiver but they're was no reply.
     "That phone use to be hung up in the kitchen when I was just
a baby.  Put it over there in that pile."  Sharon pointed to a pile
of things she would mean to throw away.
     Patricia heaved it up into her arms and then dropped in onto
a broken chair.  Sharon stood up and said "I'm going upstairs for
a second.  Don't get into anything."
     "Okay" the dirty child who would need a long bath tonight
said.  Sharon went up the old staircase that use to be as safe as
concrete steps but now the wooden steps looked old and fragile. 
The child dug through boxes that were born before she was, looking
through memories of a girl she knew as `mom'.  Old newspapers with
words she couldn't read and trophies from sports she didn't play
were the majority of what she found. 
     She stood up from the pile of dust she sat on and wiped her
clothes off the best she could.  Then there came a sound that she
was becoming familiar with as she grew older.  Sitting in a pile of
broken toasters and molded newspapers was the old phone that once
hung in a kitchen directly above the basement.  And over and over
again the phone with no wires rang and rang waiting for its plea to
be answered. 
 
 Ch. 2
     The child, who had only seen her mother pick up the phone and
was told she was not aloud, went over to the ringing phone.  
With both tiny hands she reached down and picked up the receiver. 
She held it to her mouth and yelled "Hello." 
     "Patricia, is that you?  Oh it's good to hear your voice."
     "Grampa, where are you?"  Her heart grew warm with the sound
of the old mans voice.
     "Sweety" the tired old voice said. "I'm dead." 
     Dead.  She had heard that word before and she thought she knew
what it meant.  But it brought up a question and so she asked "How
can you talk to me if your dead?"
    The old mans laugh came through the line.  "Well honey, it's
not easy to explain."
     Sharon came back down the fragile stairs, gripping the
banister with every step.  She saw Patricia sitting in the throw
away pile holding up the receiver of the phone and talking.  "What
are you doing Patricia?"
     "Here comes mommy.  Do you want to talk to her?" the child
said into the phone.  "Okay.  Mommy it's Grampa, he wants to talk
to you."
     Sharon came down hard onto the floor.  "What are you talking
about?" she found herself almost screaming.  And then she heard the
words that would drive her crazy.
     The dead phone with no cords spoke out loudly to her with a
familiar voice and said "Sharon, it's your father.  Come to the
phone.  I've got your mother here too."
        And with that she screamed and then everything went black for
the rest of her life.  The child kept the phone but can only use it
when no ones around.  It became their secret, for a grandfather and
a granddaughter.
