By the time that Eliza is twenty-six, she fears locks, fires, dogs, holes, chemicals, and trespassers. Eliza has stopped eating food that she doesn’t unseal herself. She sleeps with a saw beneath her bed but she fears the saw, too. These are all things that can kill her, which she repeats to herself in the shower. The tragedy of her life is that she will live.

When Eliza was seven, her mother had died in a unicycle accident. Her mother had not been riding the unicycle herself but had been fetching the mail for her neighbor. The unicycle hadn’t seen Eliza’s mother, who was small and unassuming and forgettable. Eliza’s mother hadn’t seen the unicycle, either.

It was a terrible accident.

Eliza had seen both her mother and the unicycle from the window of the attic, which is where Eliza liked to play operator. From morning until lunch, Eliza would talk to imaginary strangers on the phone, redirecting their calls to equally impatient yet equally imaginary recipients. When Eliza saw the accident, the call had disconnected. Only the dial tone carried on, shrill and familiarly steady.

By the time that Eliza was seven and three-quarters, she had decided that attics and operators were precarious amusements, both better left avoided. She placed the telephone in a box and the box in the river. She only returned for the box once she read an article on pollution. Fish and birds were particularly at peril to plastic, their tiny throats too tender for synthetic material. Neither the fish nor the birds had discovered the box, and Eliza liked to think they had lived.

On the first Tuesday of the third month, Eliza likes to write a letter to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Eliza avoids the topic of automobiles but spends considerable time speaking of pedals and seatposts, axles and saddles. These are things that must be thought through, Eliza proposes, though Eliza does not think that she is the girl for the job.

If the accident hadn’t happened, perhaps Eliza would have become a telephone operator. Eliza knows this is a dependable career in which she is competent. The telephone company assures Eliza that the position is harmless, but Eliza knows better. The telephone company is safer than the postal service, and both are safer than automobiles.

These are things that must be talked through, her therapist says.

Eliza agrees but will not schedule an interview. Eliza tends to her letters and paces the room.

On the fifth of the month, Eliza walks to the mailbox. She smiles at the neighbor but her teeth never show. The mailbox is cluttered with paper and disposable cleaning gloves. The neighbors think of this as a practical joke.

Before Eliza played operator, Eliza played train conductor. Eliza would spend lunch until supper lining the halls. Her mother would sometimes board the imaginary vessel through an imaginary door to take an imaginary seat per Eliza’s instruction. Sometimes, her mother would pick the seat of her choice.

This distressed Eliza deeply. After all, Eliza had told her mother where best she should sit.

Eliza’s voice is shrill yet familiarly steady. She is now twenty-six, and her mother is dead. Eliza has two cats and a fish, though she worries the fish can be lonely. Before bed, she thinks about the fish at the supermarket. She imagines their heads lopped off to the side.

These are things that must be talked through, her therapist counsels. Eliza knows that fish never reply.