the twelve-year-old weeping down the phone to home

Schtitt's roll-call of complaints includes the homesick twelve-year-old "with always the weeping to home on the telephone" — the phone line as the thin, insufficient thread back to a home you can only cry into, a channel that carries the grief but can't close the distance. The younger the E.T.A., the more the telephone is less a tool than a wound kept open, contact that reminds you exactly how far away you are.