An Unvoiced Sound by Vincent Barry

                 Nicolas Henderson CC



An Unvoiced Sound 


I haven’t been back east in donkey’s years. The last time was for a wedding. My younger sister’s. Now this.

“George
Sorry to pass on bad news.  Carol passed away this morning. She had been ill with stomach cancer and the last few weeks things turned for the worst.  Here are particulars of funeral. . . .” 

You can tell at least two things from the brother’s email. Oh sorry, I mean “my,” not “the.” It’s a tiny language learning habit I now and again slip into. I picked it up as a child from my father who, I guess, caught it in the old country and passed it on like a virus. I mean using the definite article for the possessive adjective. . . . Perpetually forming words unspoken, that also. . . .  Anyway, should I hereafter slip, with the rather than my, forgive me. It’s only—what? oral herpes reactivating, linguistically speaking. . . . Of the other, the formed and unspoken, well, enough said. . . .  

But about the—my older brother.

He is terse. . . . Not only with words, but with communicating in general. I hear from him only when there’s a death in the family. Me? Touché. He never hears from. But then, I have no deaths to report. . . .

Alienated? Oh, I don’t know if— I mean, for my part, I don’t feel estranged or isolated. Which isn’t surprising, since there was nothing there to begin with. . . . 

I sometimes think: Can one feel alienated from nothing? Maybe nothing, feeling nothing, is, in fact, a state of alienation? I don’t know. But if it is, one certainly cannot be alienated from alienation. . .  . Bah! Enough of semantics. . . .  

I said there were two things. The other, besides his terseness, you can infer if you read closely. It is that I didn’t know the— my— sister had stomach cancer. You see, I never heard from her, either. Well, indirectly I did, which is what this is all about.

Years ago one of her daughters—Chloe or Kasey or Carley, I can’t remem—but definitely someone with a “k sound” name—wthout warning /K/ called. (Mind you, this was well before texting.) She was coming to L.A. Would I like to have dinner with her? Of course, of course, I said, and then I drove down the coast two hours or so in a hard rain, a raging rain you could call it, for Southern California.

We met midway, at a California Pizza Kitchen in Westlake Village.

I had The Original BBQ Chicken Pizza. I know because that’s what I always get at the Pizza Kitchen. I don’t remember what she had, or whether she was the one of the two sisters with the congenital heart defect, which I recall from way back when, when we used to exchange Christmas cards, Carol and I. Then they stopped, the yuletide greetings. . . . Who stopped first? I’m not sure. Probably me. It’s been so long. . . . It doesn’t really matter. . . .  

I didn’t ask /K/ if she was the one.

She complained, as I recall, about the freeway signs. “They have no number exits!” she kept protesting—as they do back east, she meant. I silently demurred. 

On the way back, the rain abating, I saw, sure enough, the green and white freeway signs did—have number under name. Then, of course, being as I am, I agonized over whether to call /K/. . . . I didn’t. . . . 

Why? I don’t know, other than—well, ’cept I knew the what, where, and why of the call, but not the who— 

Y’see, I subscribe to proper form, especially when addressing someone. In this case: informal, friendly, not to say avuncular, . . . but I couldn’t conjure up for the life of me her forename. Only, I shamefully admit, that it began with an unvoiced sound. . . .

​

​

After retiring from a career teaching philosophy, Vincent Barry returned to his first love, fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad, including: The Saint Ann’s Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Broken City, Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Kairos, Caveat Lector, The Fem, BlogNostics, The Writing Disorder, whimperbang, The Disappointed Housewife, The Collidescope, and The Short Humour Site. Barry lives in Santa Barbara, California.