Barry Callaghan

This afternoon I can hear big band music blaring from the band shell. My daughter is sleeping, my son is sitting on the swing, his legs stretched out in front of him. My husband, sawing cupboard doors. The excruciating noise, competing with the big band music.

I don't know why I am thinking about Barry Callaghan's novel The Way the Angel Spreads her Wings. I have a preoccupation with trying to find it among my vast collection of dusty books. I haven't picked it up since I slotted it into its narrow spot on the bookshelf before my children were born. I haven't read it since the year I called Barry Callaghan, all that time ago when I was home from university for the summer.

I was a huge fan of his father's work, Morley Callaghan. I had studied his work in my Canadian Literature class in university. When I was home from school that summer, I harvested all of his books, re-read them, dusted them, and lined them up in order of publication. I simply couldn't get enough Morley Callaghan in my life. I had read every last book, and wished somehow that he could have been spared his untimely death so he could have kept on writing.

I managed to convince myself to call his son, who was a professor at the university where I studied. I managed to tell him how much I loved his father's work and how he was the best writer who ever lived. I know that Barry was enormously surprised to have a complete stranger call him up at home but he handled it graciously and talked openly about his relationship with his father.

I was unaware that Barry was a writer and that he had authored the aforementioned book as well as others. I felt embarrassed and naive, calling him up out of the blue and talking to him about his father, since I wasn't anything more than a worshiping fan. But he was charming, and managed to even indulge me a little. It was flattering to have Morley's son, Barry, tell me that if he had met me in person he probably would have wanted to run away with me. I thought his charm was delightful, or even quite thrilling to be honest. But I knew he had a special way with words, and that was why he wrote. So the next day I ran out to buy "The Way the Angel Spreads Her Wings" in curious anticipation, of Morley's son.