“The Geometry of Changing Course” by Christine Fadden

An excerpt from a novel-in-progress by alumna Christine Fadden (fiction, ’09) appears online in The American Literary Review: 

The Geometry of Changing Course

Driving to work one day in 2009, I heard Kalas’ voice on the radio.

I heard people talking about his voice.

It was a radio tribute.

Kalas had collapsed due to heart failure, before the Phillies vs. Nationals game, in the broadcasters’ box. He was rushed to the hospital, and he died.

It took just two words, two of Kalas’ words, to throw me back to June of 1980 at the Jersey shore—to the summer my sister and I would stay with our grandmother for the entire three months without our parents.

The summer of great wins and great losses.

The summer of men–

the sort a girl can look up to,

the sort a girl should never be alone with,

and the kind that really lets a girl down.

You just have to know how it feels to have spent every summer of your girlhood under the spell of Harry Kalas’ “Outta here!” How with everything else going on, that man’s voice always did, and always will, fill you with more goodness than watermelon in July.

…

Finish reading online at The American Literary Review.