It happened again last night around 8. I picked up the phone, expecting to hear the voice of my boyfriend, or my mother, or one of my friends. Instead, I heard Gloria of Citibank Visa. “Hello, Mrs. Fernandez,” she began. With a sigh, I interrupted her. “You have the wrong number,” I said. Gloria repeated my telephone number, and I said, “Yes, that is this number, but Mrs. Fernandez doesn’t have this phone number anymore. I’ve had it for over a year, and I’m not Mrs. Fernandez.” Gloria apologized, and I hung up.
Gloria isn’t the only one to call. For the past year, every week or so, I get a phone call looking for Rosaria Maria Fernandez. Surprised that I know her full name? Don’t be.
The fact is, I know quite a bit about the Mr. and Mrs. Fernandez. I know she’s an emergency room nurse, or would like to be. Her husband has kidney trouble; they have several credit cards which are unpaid; they own a computer and had an America Online account, under the screenname ButtsBetsLetsGets; and she has an old boyfriend who has called once or twice and who, I strongly suspect, Mrs. Fernandez had an affair with at one time or other. Her husband has contributed quite a bit to a local charity, who employ obnoxious telemarketers to do their fundraising.
When they called a few weeks ago, their representative insisted that I MUST be Mrs. Fernandez, and that I was lying in order to make sure my husband didn’t contribute any more money to their organization. This prompted an uncharacteristic burst of anger from me, as I screamed in his ear for some minutes before banging the phone down into the cradle.
The easy thing for me to do is to contact the phone company and get my phone number changed, but it’s become a sort of fascination for me. In my more forgiving moments, I laugh when I get a call looking for Mr. or Mrs. Fernandez. Most people are apologetic, like Citibank’s Gloria. They get caught in the lie of outdated phone lists and old job applications, and they unwittingly give me more personal information about a couple I’d just as soon never encounter. I am constantly amazed how forthcoming people are, even AFTER you’ve told them you aren’t who they are looking for. I never ask anything about Mrs. Fernandez or her husband – I’m just told about Mrs. Fernandez as if I actually become her, and the callers don’t want to deal with the fact that I’m not.
Often after one of these calls, I wonder where the Fernandezes are. I understand why they didn’t tell their creditors where they were going. I marvel at the power and audacity of employers to call someone after more than a year since they put in an application for employment, thinking that the Fernandezes would be there forever, waiting for a phone call; or the chutzpah of charitable organizations, trained not to take no for an answer.
It’s nice to think that the Fernandezes live a wholly ordinary life, with the possible affair probably being the only exception. They went to church and lived here in Hoboken; they most likely bought groceries at the A & P with one of their maxed-out credit cards; and in short, they have a fairly unremarkable life.
And I know entirely too much about it. – Mary Bernard