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Barbara was brave, too. Or at least I thought so then. She had a red Ford convertible and drove like an enchanted witch, hair flopping like a horse’s tail, big brown eyes wide with excited fear, her lips red, hair wind-stuck to her teeth as she concentrated on the curves in the road ahead.

She taught me a lot: how to drive, how to drink whiskey, and how to suck pot deep into my soul. How to lose yourself in another’s pleasure.

My new Barbara is talking to me, so I listen. I struggle and must appear interested. But I never know if I am doing it right.

Oh God, she’s asking me about what she bought. She shows me the lace nightie. Yes, yes, I think it is very nice, but I don’t think Victoria should be selling her secrets in public. I say this, but she doesn’t hear me. I am mute.

It doesn’t seem to bother her. She puts the garment away and tells me about her boyfriend. He has a sissy name like Robert, or Ronald, or Thomas. I just know that no one used their given names in my neighborhood. He would be Bob, or Ron, or Tom, a real man’s name.

She says he doesn’t want kids. She thinks he will change. What do I think? She says he wants to leave her. Do I think he will stay if she wears these?

How can I answer that? How can anyone know what is in the future? Just look at me.

Barbara didn’t want our child. I was from family, and it was good. But she had wounds I could not see, wounds that smoldered in her womb and could not heal.

In her mind, my baby was still her uncle’s child.

She smoked more, drank more, and drove off a cliff one dark and rainy night. The police tried to blame it on me. It wasn’t my fault. Really it wasn’t.

I want to tell my new Barbara that life is danger, that life is joy and no one knows what is around that wet and slippery curve ahead.

But I am mute.

I try hard to talk and a single grunt escapes from deep in my throat, my first sound in months. Elated, I want to tell her more, but a young man with too-pale skin, red and blotchy with excitement, comes to her side and tells her what he bought. He uses big sweeping gestures and singsong words. She tries to kiss him but he turns a beef-patty cheek to her.

I want to tell her that he is as shallow as a river skiff, but I am mute.

I hear them coming to get me, to take me away in my prison chair.

“Grandpa, are you okay? Who’s your new friend?” Janny turns to talk to my new Barbara. “I hope he didn’t scare you. He drools, and his eyes water like that since his stroke.”

My new Barbara looks at me and smiles. She says that I was great company and that we had a nice chat.

They move behind to push my wheelchair away. My new Barbara leans over and kisses me on my salty cheek. I blink a fond goodbye, but she does not know.

She turns and strides away swinging her Macy’s bag. Robert or Ronald or Thomas quicksteps after her. And as they turn my chair I see she has left her secret bag next to me. Yes, you are my type, I want to yell.

Copyright © 2006 by Tom Tetzlaff

The Last Calabresi

by Jean Femling

Author of three mystery novels — Backyard, Hush Money, and Getting Mine — Californian Jean Femling is also a talented short story writer who last appeared in EQMM in December 2002. She joins us here with a country-house whodunit whose suspects are part of a house party shut in by a flood.

“Hey, you can see the Calabresi place from up here,” Jake said. Lulled by the rhythmic groan of the wipers, I sat up as Jake wheeled his big red pickup truck onto a deserted road. We splashed ahead between ranks of dormant grapevines marching away like blackened tau crosses over the brilliant green slopes.

He braked at the top of the hill. The rain had thinned to a light drizzle, and I stared.

The Calabresi mansion sat on a knoll about a mile away, a semi-fortress of dark stone against heavily wooded hills. Above it, masses of blue-black cloud bellied up the sky. Leftward, toward the coast, a rim of light edged the distant mountain ridge. A sudden bolt of sunlight slanted below the cloud cover, struck the Calabresi house, and blazed out from the center of the upper floor like a great beacon. Then it was gone.

“Wow.” I sat blinking, blinded by the dazzle. “What was that?”

“Reflection off Noni’s sunroom,” Jake said. “Old Tomase built it for his wife when he enlarged the house.”

“Maybe it’s an omen.”

“I thought we’d agreed not to mention any of that up here. Right, Cassandra?” That’s me, Cass for short. Cassandra was the Greek seer nobody ever believed. And “that” was the Calabresi Curse.

“Obviously,” I said. I hadn’t traveled six hundred miles today to offend our hosts. We were up here in California’s wine country to celebrate the fortieth birthday of Jake’s old buddy Evan Calabresi and ignore the Calabresi Curse, which Evan had told Jake about years ago. Evan’s father and his grandfather had both died violently in their forties due to some mysterious condition the doctors had never been able to diagnose. The Evan I’d met was perfectly healthy, but Jake was convinced that even though Evan had never mentioned the subject since, he expected to die the same way.

“I can’t believe a guy as sharp as Evan would pay attention to something like that.”

“What matters is, he does,” Jake said.

Jake headed downgrade. The daylight had died, night closed down, and as if on signal another curtain of rain descended and Jake turned on the headlights. “Maybe we’ll have separate rooms,” I said.

“I doubt it. Evan knows we’re living together.” Jake reached over and squeezed my knee. We’d finally decided we wanted to get married and start a family — “Our own tribe,” as Jake said. Pretty foolhardy, given the messes our parents had made of their lives. So we were keeping totally quiet about it, giving ourselves six months beforehand to see how we handled our differences.

We headed downhill and the road disappeared at the bottom into a boiling chocolate-brown torrent carrying along snags and whole branches. Jake hesitated an instant and then stepped on the gas. I clamped my mouth shut to hold in my scream: It was too late to stop. We hit the water with a splash and the front wheels sent up a wave on both sides.

It’s only hub-deep, I thought, only about ten feet across, but we were still going downhill with the water rising. Jake steered rightward against the current, the water rumbled and gurgled underfoot. Then the motor coughed, and coughed again — we were stalling.

Jake had the gas pedal all the way down as the truck slowed, but the rear wheels were losing traction and then the rear end began to float free, swinging sideways with the current. The front wheels spun and almost grabbed and spun again as the road leveled; the grade was rising and they caught. The rear end settled and we pulled ahead, out of the water. Jake locked onto the wheel and accelerated.

My heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t breathe, and an artery in Jake’s neck throbbed. We went ahead at half speed, bent forward, focused on the road. Images filled my brain of us yanked sideways, the truck rolling over and being swept away.

“All right,” he said. “No more omens, okay?”

The road ended at a wide gravel turnaround in front of the Calabresi house. The balcony of Noni’s sunroom formed an overhang above the double doors and partly sheltered a broad half-circle stone terrace. As we pulled up, Evan came out carrying a poncho and a black umbrella. I opened the truck door and stepped down into an icy ankle-high stream.