"One day I'd just hung up after a conference call when the phone rang again. It was the conference operator, inquiring as to whether my call was properly completed. She then stunned me by asking if I had talked with my daughter in L.A. that day. It seemed that she'd heard me talk about my daughter on a conference call the other day and was touched by the idea that we talked daily. And then she wondered if I would like her to get my daughter on the phone for me the next day. Thus began a four-year relationship that saw Mary--she would never reveal her last name-- become an integral member of the extended Lear clan, placing just about all of their long distance phone calls from that point on, gratis.
"Over time I teased out Mary's story. She was a girl from a poor South Boston family who'd gotten a job with the phone company. She was in her early twenties when, reporting to work, she fell on ice at the building and sustained a serious injury that confined her to a wheelchair. The settlement her family negotiated was not a payoff but lifetime employment as a conference operator. With the latitude that accompanied her special circumstance, Mary sat unsupervised with the means to connect people anywhere to people everywhere, while also allowing her to listen in on--and live vicariously through-- a lot of lives.
"She certainly seemed to revel in mine as it unfolded in front of her. Whether it was the attorney-client discussions that shaped my career, family matters and crises across the board, every aspect of my divorce, the fresh relationships, Mary was involved in all of it. It never troubled any of us that Mary was eavesdropping, or that we were using the phone company's services without paying for them."