Anti-Heroin Chic
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

​

4/11/2020 0 Comments

An Unvoiced Sound by Vincent Barry

Picture
                 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.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    March 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.