Oh, that. Not the phone.
By the time Benny figured out what her supervisor was talking about, she was out of a job.
Benny was still dry-eyed when she walked out of the call center with the only personal items she’d kept in her shared cubicle: a coffee mug with stained, fractured insides and a fringy-looking plant. What kind of plant it was, Benny could not recall, but it had never let her down. Nothing seemed to deter it, not a lack of water, not fluorescent lighting, not the plastic-smelling office air, not her supervisor’s noxious language. Every once in a while, she would lift the plant’s tiny stems with her fingertips and wipe the dust from its fronds with a damp cloth, just so.
It was fifteen minutes before Benny realized that she had taken the wrong bus. She got off at the next stop and found herself standing in front of an old coffee shop with fake-pine garlands and fake-velvet bows on its doors. She hadn’t realized this kind of place still existed in the city. At the sight of the spray-on-imitation-frost lettering spelling out Happy Holidays across the plate-glass window, at the thought of yet another year without having a coffee shop of her own to run （though with less kitsch）， at the sight of a young father inside the café kneeling down to button his child into a puffy, lilac-colored jacket and tucking her dark hair into the lilac fur-lined hood, Benny burst into tears. Benny had never liked lilac.
The
Recording
Mr. Mitch takes the memory stick with Eleanor Bennett’s recording and inserts it into his desktop computer. Eleanor’s children lean forward in their seats when they hear her voice. Mr. Mitch wills himself to keep a placid face, breathes deep and slow. This is not personal, this is professional. Families need their attorneys to stay unruffled.
B and B, Mr. Mitch is recording this for me. My hand is not so steady anymore and I have a lot to say. I wanted to talk to you both in person but, at this point, I’m not sure I’ll get to see you two together again.
Benny and Byron both shift in their seats.
You are stubborn children, but you are good children.
Mr. Mitch keeps his eyes focused on the notepad on his desk, but he can still feel the air shifting in the room. A stiffening of backs, a squaring of shoulders.
B and B, promise me you’ll try to get along. You can’t afford to lose each other.
Benny stands up. Here we go. Mr. Mitch pauses the recording.
“I don’t need to hear this,” Benny says.
Mr. Mitch nods. Waits a moment. “It’s what your mother wanted,” he says.
“Can’t you make me a copy of the file?” Benny says. “Make me a copy. I’ll take it back to New York.”
“Your mother expressly requested that you listen to this together, all the way through, in my presence. But you know, we don’t have to stay in the office. If you prefer, we could stop now and I could bring the recording to your mother’s house at a later time. Would you like that?”
“No,” Byron says. “I want to hear this now.” Benny scowls at Byron, but he doesn’t look at her.
“Your mother was very specific,” Mr. Mitch says. “We need to listen to this together, so I’m happy to continue this when both of you can make yourselves available.” He opens an agenda on his desk. “I could come by the house late this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t see how it’s going to make a difference to Ma now, anyway,” Benny says. Still standing, she looks down at Mr. Mitch with steady eyes but her voice wobbles on the word Ma.
“I think it will make a difference to you and your brother,” Mr. Mitch says. “There are things your mother wanted you to hear right away, things you need to know.”
Benny lowers her head, stays there for a minute, huffs out a breath. “Better this afternoon,” she says. “I’ll be leaving town right after the funeral.” Benny looks at Byron one more time but he keeps his eyes fixed on the desk. She walks out of the room without saying goodbye, her blondish Afro puff quivering as she stomps across the waiting room, pulls the door open, and steps into the darkened hallway.
Mr. Mitch hears the faint chime of the elevator down the hall and Byron stands up.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you later,” Byron says. “Thank you.”
Mr. Mitch gets up to shake his hand. Byron’s phone buzzes and by the time he reaches the door, his cellphone is already clapped to his ear. There must have been a time, Mr. Mitch thinks, when Byron was just a kid, trawling the beach, more interested in putting a conch shell to his ear than anything like a phone.