"So? How are you?"

 “So? How are you?” 

Nils calls on the house phone. He wants to talk to Uncle Albert, he has a French idiom he needs help with.*

     After I don’t know how long, I hear Uncle Albert calling me. “He wants to talk to you,” he says, handing me the phone. “Afterwards, I could use some help.”

Nils with Portland cement, USB port

     “I can help now,” I say, “and call him back later.”

     “No,” Uncle Albert says. “After is soon enough. It would be better.”

“Yes,” I say into the phone after I’ve carried it back downstairs.

     “We don’t hear from you,” Nils says. “We” means “Axel and he.” The brothers have been sharing space again since . . . the end of February, I think.

     “Oh,” I say. I don’t say, “If you wanted to, you could call me.” I don’t say, “You know how much I hate the phone. I’m not likely to call you, am I?” I just say, “Oh.”

     “So, how are you doing?” Nils says.

     “How about you and Axel?” I answer.

If there’s anything I dislike more than talking on the phone, it’s answering the question, “How are you?”

05.26.20

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 * About Nils, see here. Uncle Albert, the reader will remember, taught French, for years and years, at Bretagne and Chanceux Colleges (the latter now Chanceux University, of course - since it added that night-school MBA program).