Calamity

“What if she slices her wrists again?”

“She won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because she thinks I believe the witchcraft stuff, too.”

“You willingly got naked and … laid before me?”

Another pause. When she spoke again she was defensive. “I’m not proud of it, Tyler, but I did what I had to, to make my mother think she was helping.”

“You tricked me into coming to your house so she could throw blood on me? Does that sound like help?”

“She got the blood from a farmer. It’s not poisonous or anything.”

“You’re just going to make excuses for her?”

“She’s my mother!”

Tyler let the vibrating cords of her shout dissipate. Though he felt more awake than he had only a few minutes ago, his eyes were beginning to cash it in for the night. Beneath him, in the garage, the faint strains of music tickled at the floor like the slight vibrations bugs make on a puddle of water. What was Dad doing?

“Look,” he said, “what do you want from me?”

“To understand, to not hate me, to not be scared.”

“Scared? Your mother throws blood in my face, raises a knife over your naked body and you don’t want me to be scared?”

“It’s all for show.”

“I don’t want to be involved in any more of this show, okay?”

“My mother is not a real witch. She thinks she is and she thinks she can help, that’s all. What’s so wrong about that?”

He laughed, unable to find the words to explain why it was so wrong.

“My mother is harmless.”

“Slicing her wrists is harmless?”

“She did that to herself. It only happened once.”

“What a relief.”

“Please don’t be like this.”

“Like what, a rational fucking person?”

“I know I should have told you this sooner but I started to, I don’t know, believe what my mother was doing might actually work.”

“You’re a witch, too?”

“No, but … She believes so strongly and it started to give me hope, you know? I went along with it and … here we are.”

“Yeah, here we are—nowhere.”

“Tyler, please.”

He saw himself throwing the cellphone across the room, saw it shatter into a million pieces. If all this witchcraft stuff was for show, like make-believe, then there never was any curse, and Delaney’s death was just some freak accident. That idea only fueled his anger.

“Don’t please me, Sasha. I’m the victim here, okay. Maybe you’re mother is crazy and she’s doing all that witchcraft shit because she’s delusional but maybe there’s something to it, too. You just said you started to believe it. My sister is dead. The day after you claimed I raped you, my sister is killed. Maybe that’s coincidence and maybe it’s not. I don’t know what to think, but I’ll tell you this: if your mother put a curse on me and my family in some pathetic attempt to punish me or help you win me back, she better take it off now or there will be some really bad shit going down. You understand?”

She said nothing.

“Go ahead, play dumb. I don’t ever want to see you again. Stop spreading lies about us at school. I don’t like you. I don’t want anything to do with you. Fuck it, I hate you. You got that? Now, go tell your psycho-bitch of a mother that if she managed, somehow managed, to actually cast a spell against me, she better reverse it now.”

He expected tears and pleading but got only silence. Until, that was, she opened her mouth and ruined everything.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

8

Anthony barely paid attention to the words the priest offered or the hymns the congregation sang or the string of sobbing teenage girls who spoke fondly of Delaney and then kissed her coffin. He wasn’t in shock the way most of the mourners believed when they saw him sitting frozen in the front pew, his unconscious wife next to him sleeping against her sister’s neck. Anthony was in the middle of a vast emptiness and a million miles before him sparkled the glimmer of a sunrise. That glimmer was hope.

The flier from the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered was tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He had read it over more times than was probably healthy (though health issues ceased to matter much at all these days) and had even Mapquested the address. The church was right where he figured it would be on Broadway in Newburgh, though he still couldn’t believe it. He had not, up until last Saturday, heard of any Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered and he a found it difficult to accept that an organization open enough to knock on doors seeking parishioners could exist so surreptitiously. Still, there was the address, confirmed by the trustworthy people of wherever who ran MapQuest.

A rundown building, no doubt. Even so, he was still going to check it out. He had to. After the incident in his car (That was for you Dad), he needed to know if he was losing his mind, as likely a possibility as any, or had actually experienced a genuine otherworldly encounter. He could accept the former, but he wanted to believe the latter. Insanity might eventually bring comfort, yet only a true religious experience could offer succor for his ailing heart.

Throughout the service, Anthony reached inside his jacket and touched the flier as if it were a talisman that might ease his grief or even transport him far from this place where people cried over his dead daughter. This was not where he wanted to be—no parent would ever want to be in this place, either. He needed to be in a place that offered answers and hope, hope most of all. Without hope, what was the point of continuing? Not to put too fine a point on it, he could die this minute and everything would be fine. Tyler would look after Brendan; Stephanie, her sister. There was a Twilight Zone episode about a librarian who had become obsolete, and a futuristic ruling council declared it over and over again: Obsolete! Obsolete! That image had stuck with him perhaps for this very moment.

When it was time for him to speak, Anthony walked slowly to Delaney’s coffin, over which her friends had draped a make-shift mural of photos of her taped to a sheet with their yearbook style comments interspersed— We miss you! Goodbye and good luck. We love you. What the hell did she need with good-luck wishes now?

He caressed the only part of the wood top still showing as he might the head of a kitten. Scattered sniffles echoed in the church. Someone in the back coughed. Programs (The Final Rites of One of God’s Children) crumpled. Someone else dropped a hymnal; the vibrating thwap was like a shouted curse, and someone else, probably an old lady, gasped.

No one would care if he didn’t say anything; he knew that. This was a tender, private moment between father and dead daughter that hundreds of people could witness. They might understand his complete silence, but people always wanted a show. Some words, any words, would do. They just wanted an excuse to open another tissue.

He wouldn’t say goodbye, no; that was too much. He had read a poem in college that was, according to his professor, very popular at funerals, in which the speaker espoused that the newly departed is not gone, no, he or she is merely away. He wished he had found that poem; that would have assured not a dry eye in the house. People would have remarked about the beautiful poem afterward, even asked for copies.

He could scream Obsolete! at the top of his lungs—that would throw the crowd for a loop. This was all bullshit, just a way to distract from the horrible fact that his hand was on his daughter’s coffin. It didn’t matter what anyone crammed in the pews in their dress clothes thought. Delaney was his daughter goddammit. Fuck them if they thought he wasn’t giving the proper showmanship required for a funeral. Fuck them