Calamity

Tyler jumped and let him go. Maybe there had been electricity in the exchange.

“You alright, son?” Dad asked. Whenever he added son or daughter to a question it meant he was genuinely concerned.

Recognition registered on Brendan’s face and he relaxed, then smiled almost convincingly. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. Sorry.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

He nodded.

“You take Pillie Billy?”

“That name is so stupid,” Delaney said.

Brendan nodded again.

An uneasy silence settled in the room. The scrape of Delaney’s fork across her plate made Tyler twitch and even the smell of the coffee, so wonderful and life-giving at first, had adopted a sour stench, which turned his stomach.

“And no,” Brendan said, to which everyone responded with sudden concern—did he mean everything wasn’t alright? Was he sick? Had he overheard Tyler on the phone last night? Was he writing out everything Tyler said in that composition book? Was he going to tell everyone right now what Tyler had done? “I don’t think Delaney’s scary enough to frighten the birds. Maybe a squirrel or two, though.”

The tension snapped with a huge laugh from Dad that was out of proportion to Brendan’s joke. Still, it felt good to laugh again and Tyler joined in. Delaney did too until she felt the laughter had gone on too long and then she got up from the table. She was wearing her comfies: gym shorts and a T-shirt with a heart on it.

“But vit that outfit,” Dad said in a Count Dracula voice, “vatch out birds, cats, dogs, maybe even small children.” He held up his hands in a mock-vampire attack gesture straight out of those old black and white horror movies. “You even make Dracula recoil vit terror.”

“Really funny,” Delaney said in her most un-amused voice. “I need to get ready and then I need the car to get to SAT prep.”

Still in the Dracula voice, Dad said, “First you can take your brother to bowling.”

“Enough with the voice, Dad.”

“Vhat? This is how I talk.”

“No wonder Mom won’t come out of her room.”

Though Dad continued to hold the vampire posture, arms up, hands arched as if to attack, his face lost the Dracula impersonation and no one laughed. Delaney glanced around, mostly at the floor, and when her eyes found Tyler’s she quickly looked away. “Anyway,” she said.

“Okay,” Dad said without the accent. Delaney left.

“I’ll take him to bowling,” Tyler said after a moment.

Guilt weighed on Dad’s face. “You don’t have to, I can do it if your sister is running late.”

“No big deal,” Tyler said. “I’ll take him.”

Dad nodded, and started washing the pan he used for the eggs.

“When does bowling start?” Tyler asked Brendan, but the kid had turned back to his composition book. What the hell was he writing?

One way or the other, Tyler was going to find out.

5

Anthony had almost forgotten about the guys in the suits and their First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, but after he cleaned the frying pan and started to load the dishwasher with the kids’ plates, which they left on the table, he found the flier the men had given him.

The cover was of a painting of Jesus on the cross with blood trickling from all his wounds and his rheumy eyes heavy with the misery man had inflicted upon him. Inside the pamphlet, which was about the size of a mass market paperback, a picture of a gathering of well-dressed men (suits) and women (modest-colored blouses and knee-length skirts) splayed across the bottom of the page. A man stood at a podium before a microphone, Bible open in his hands. A preacher, presumably. The spectators appeared rapt and every ethnicity seemed to be represented. Even an Indian woman with the red dot on her forehead. In large block letters at the top of the page it read: JESUS WANTS YOU TO BE EMPOWERED.

And beneath that: In today’s day and age when every organized religion is claiming the rightful path, it can be confusing to know which direction is correct. In fact, it can be disheartening. It can be easy to lose faith. But Jesus doesn’t care if you follow this faith or that faith; Jesus wants you to be empowered, to feel His grace and bask in His glory. He scarified Himself for all humanity as proof of heavenly empowerment. With Jesus as our teacher, we can learn how to tackle our problems and choose the right path to glory. And, most importantly, we can be empowered with God’s love. No matter the pain from which you suffer, the difficulties against which you struggle, Jesus wants to help. At The First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, we seek the fulfillment of God’s will through an honest acceptance of our faults and a faithful inquiry into the magical workings of Jesus.

Anthony smirked. Similar in tone to all those Watch Tower pamphlets the Jehovah’s handed out, this flier claimed to know Jesus’ will (while debunking other religions) and cleverly assured the reader that God’s way was the way of enlightenment and that you too could enjoy it. It was so smart how these organizations preyed on the weak. The two men had no idea if Anthony was experiencing troubles—“you will need this,” he had said—but if a depressed alcoholic happened to read this pamphlet in a particularly self-deprecating moment, he or she might experience a moment of clarity about the choices made and decide that this was God’s intervention. It must be a sign. Three months later, the alcoholic would be sober (though drunk on another kind of drug altogether), dressed well, and handing out similar pamphlets to strangers.

“The Jesus drug,” Anthony mumbled.

The facing page, onto which the well-dressed people spilled, a formal invitation welcomed him to “an important event to discuss the ten steps to Jesus’ empowerment” and a “demonstration of His wonder” on the Thursday before Easter, mere days away. The ten steps would, no doubt, be the Ten Commandments, but all bets were off for the demonstration of His wonder. Perhaps they would turn water into wine. The way the smile on the tall guy with the dark eyes never wavered suggested something a bit more ominous. A blood sacrifice, perhaps.

“Your daughter,” the stocky guy had said, “she’s very pretty.”

The back of the pamphlet read: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Listen to Jesus and let Him empower you. The image of a cross, without the suffering, bleeding Jesus, was watermarked behind the text. Anthony turned back to the vivid cover. That was another thing about these Jesus nuts—they paraded around the image of a bleeding savior because they hoped it would reduce people to tears and out of their guilt and pity, they would turn to God, however each religion chose to portray Him, and thus increase the size of that church’s congregation. A grease stain from the egg that fell off the spatula had smeared Jesus’ face. It made His eyes even more swollen.

“Hey, Dad.” It was Delaney, showered and dressed in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, hair pulled behind her head.

Though she had startled him from his reverie, he tried to hide the surprise. As a father of three (almost four but, alas, not to be), Anthony was always subject to a surprise appearance from one of the kids. With Chloe in bed more than anywhere else and the bedroom off limits to the kids, better for Chloe to get her rest and hopefully recover, Anthony was the go-to parent for everything. Sometimes the kids could sneak up on him so well that his heart would nearly explode when they spoke. Brendan was particularly good at that, though it always seemed unintentional when he did it. Not so with the others.

“Can I help you?” he asked, dishtowel draped over one forearm, waiter-style.

“Can I take Mom’s car?”

“You’d have to get gas.” This was not true, but he had his reasons.

“Then can I have some money?”

He smiled. “What is wrong with my car?”

She sighed, overemphasizing how annoying this conversation was getting for her. “The car is old and smells bad and it has all those stupid bumper stickers.”

“It’s not that old.” It was, now that he thought of it, almost ten years old. How had it gotten so old so