Calamity and Other Stories
Daphne Kalotay
Language: English
Pages: 193
ISBN: 1400078482
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Twelve luminous stories alive with friendship and secrets introduce a remarkable writer. Daphne Kalotay’s characters confront regrets and unrealized hopes in tales tinged with gentle humor. A newly independent woman finds herself in bed with an ex-husband of long ago. A little girl gets a surprising glimpse into adulthood when she catches her mother in a moment of uninhibited pleasure. A thirteen-year-old boy contends with the unwanted attentions of a younger girl. And for two older women, a tie formed in their youth sustains them through varied twists of fate. These are dazzling intertwined tales of love, failure, and the comedy of human relationships.
a trial. He had attended two school dances before, the kind where the girls asked the boys, and both times it had been an ordeal, dressing up in rented suits that made him feel like someone in a play, meeting the parents of a girl he barely knew and didn’t really want to go out with again, while his mother laughed at him and at his crooked bow tie and snapped photographs that were sure to be used in some sort of blackmail years and years from now. But none of those past dances could match the
impression on Saturday. I’m just not sure it’s appropriate to invite a piano teacher who sleeps in his clothes and ogles girls in tights—” “Not girls in tights,” my mother said. “The teacher. She has a lovely neck.” She laughed briefly. “He’s perfectly cultured, Gordon. Why, he’s more cultured than the both of us put together.” That was the last I heard of Mr. Curtin until the day of the party. “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t look into a new piano teacher,” my father said that morning as he
even though it’s true it’s not at all what she means. She tries again: “Last summer, when she and Mack were staying with me, we were going out to dinner and she’d put this tight little peach-colored dress on.” But how can she explain? Though she pictures Callie with her hair clipped back in a simple blond ponytail, glowing in her fitted peach dress, there is no way to put into words the way this girl moves, so unaware of her own body, of her physical power. They had reached the bottom of the
eyes and big, active nostrils, with her cackling laugh and her habit of sometimes talking to herself. “Careful, Annie,” she tells her. “You know how you sound when you talk like that. If you don’t watch out you’re going to end up like the old bat I saw in the drugstore today. She was returning a bottle of hand lotion that she must have had hanging around for at least ten years. The poor guy at the counter didn’t know what to do; they don’t even make that brand any more.” “I love it,” Annie says.
in about twenty minutes. So, if you’ll bear with us. We apologize for the inconvenience.” “Inconvenience?” said the standby woman. She sounded like she might be from New Jersey. “Landing without a right hydraulic system.” She shook her head. “Well, I’m sure he’ll do a fine job. Even without the right hydraulic system. I’m sure he’s a fine pilot.” Rhea said, “It doesn’t matter if he’s fine or not.” She hadn’t mean to snap. But the plane was veering a little to the right, now back to the left,