The Voiceover Artist (6 page)

Afraid that his father would somehow read his thoughts, Simon turned away from the men at the back table and followed Frank's eyes to the small television. Two gray-haired men holding microphones and wearing jackets and ties stared out from the screen, a wide expanse of green spread out behind and beneath them. The bartender stepped over and stood in front of Frank. “What can I get you?”

“W— whiskey. Double.”

The bartender looked at Simon. “How about you, little guy? Want a pop or something?”

Simon locked his lips around his sucker and shook his head.

“No? Okay.”

The bartender poured Simon's father a double whiskey and served it neat in a cloudy glass.

“Thanks,” Frank said.

“No problem.”

Frank drank down the whiskey and stared up at the television while Simon worked the sucker. When it was roughly half its original size, Simon stashed the head of the candy scepter between his molars and his cheek, hoping to make it last a little longer.

The bartender moved toward Simon's father, smiling. “Another whiskey?”

“Y— Y— Y—Yeah. And a p— pack of p—Pall Malls.”

Simon stared at his father.
Whatever whiskey is,
Simon thought,
it's worse for his stutter than beer is.

One of the three men, the one sitting with his back to the wall, spoke to Simon's father.

“So how you been, Frank?”

Frank turned a few degrees to the left and looked at the men over his shoulder. “N—n— not bad.”

“No?” the man said. “Everything's good?”

Frank shrugged. “C— c— c— can't c— c— complain.”

“Sure you can,” the man said. “It just takes you a little longer.”

One of the other men laughed.

Simon felt his father summon all the eloquence he could with a deep, quiet inhalation.

“W— we're good. Th— thanks.”

The bartender poured another whiskey into Frank's glass and laid a pack of cigarettes and a green Four Corners matchbook in front of him. Keeping his eyes on the television, Frank unwrapped the cellophane on the pack, flipped open its cardboard lid, and fished out a cigarette. He held the cigarette between his lips, struck a match, and bowed his head to the licking orange flame. His hand was shaking as he waved out the match with more vigor than was necessary, nearly catching Simon's ear with his elbow.

The men at the table laughed again as one of them poured liquid from a brown bottle into their glasses. Then one of the men, the first one to speak, stared hard at Simon. That's when Simon realized he had been eyeballing the men again. He looked away as quickly as he could.

“Is that your son, Frank?”

Too late.

Frank exhaled the smoke in his lungs. “Y— y— yes.”

“What's his name?”

Frank threw his hand up toward the television and yelled, “Oh, c— come on!” at someone or something on the screen.

“What's your boy's name, Frank?”

Simon's father smiled and took another drag from his cigarette. Though the words themselves weren't mean, Simon heard something unkind in the man's questions, and neither the football nor the whiskey nor the cigarette had stopped the man from asking them. Frank was finally trying what Simon would have tried first: silence.

“I don't think his mother would like him being in a bar, would she, Frank?”

Listening to the men laugh, Simon wished that Connor were there. Connor would know what to say. He would answer all the questions and make the men laugh with him, not at him.

With a start, Simon remembered the second sucker—maybe the sucker would stop the questions. Simon pulled the sucker out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and held it in front of his father's face.

Frank took the Dum Dum and dipped it, bulb first, into his whiskey glass. He stirred the whiskey twice before pinning the paper stick to the side of the glass with his finger and taking another deep sip.

“What's your name, son?”

Frank stared at the television. Simon tried to read his father's face for some direction—
Answer the question,
or
Don't answer the question,
or
Get up, we're getting out of here
—but he couldn't tell what his father wanted him to do.

Maybe it's up to me,
Simon thought.
Maybe my answering will make them stop.

So Simon pulled the sucker stick out of his mouth and, throwing unhelpful force behind it, started his answer.

“S— S— S—”

“Whaddya know, Frank! He's part snake!”

The men laughed. Simon's father didn't move.

“—S— S— Simon.”

As soon as he had said his name, Simon put the saliva-soaked sucker stick back into his mouth.

“Glad to meet you, Simon,” the man said. “You're a chip off the old block.”

“Jesus, Artie,” the bartender said, shaking his head but smiling.

Shame rose from Simon's neck as a kind of heat that warmed his face and ears. He knew the men were making fun of him. Worse, Simon knew that his answering had done no good. The men were not through with him yet.

Simon looked at his father and begged him with his eyes:
Say anything that will make it stop.

But Frank stayed silent, right when Simon needed him most, and Simon embraced his own silence as the punishment his father deserved.

 

•••

 

THE DAY AFTER
 Frank took Simon to the Four Corners, May led Connor and Simon into the narthex of St. Paul's Catholic Church. Two women much older than May, widows who had appointed themselves the parish's greeters and observers, were standing just inside the door.

“Oh, look, it's May,” the shorter woman said.

“Hello May!”

“Hi there, Agnes,” May said. “Hello, Bea. How are you?”

“I'm fine, thank you,” said Bea, the shorter one. “Hello, boys.”

“Hello to you!” Connor said.

He arched his back to display his smiling, squinting face to the ladies, who put their hands to their chests and opened their eyes wide.

“Oh my!” Bea said, laughing.

“And how are you today, young man?” Agnes asked.

“
This
young man,” Connor said, thrusting his thumb against his chest, “is pretty good.”

Again the ladies pressed their fingers to their bony bosoms and laughed.

Simon was used to seeing his brother hold the rapt attention of strangers. Connor's pronunciation was so exact that he sounded more like a high-voiced adult than a kid. In his head, Simon again paid his younger brother the highest compliment he knew:
Connor could be on the radio.

“And how about your brother?” Bea asked, keeping her eyes on Connor. “How is he doing?”

Simon's mother looked down at him. “How are you, Simon?” she asked, quietly offering Simon the respectful but distressing opportunity to answer the question himself.

As he stood there in silence, wishing he still had the sucker he had wasted on his father the day before, Simon felt Connor's eyes on him and met them.

“He's been better,” Connor said.

Though Simon could hear that Connor wasn't trying to be funny, the ladies laughed again, delighted.

Simon caught sight of his father pacing past one of the anteroom's windows with his head down and a lit cigarette cupped in his hand. In that moment, Simon wished that he were out on the church lawn with his father. It wasn't that Simon had forgiven Frank for what happened at the Four Corners—he had not—but Simon was disturbed that even a cloak of silence could not hide his true feelings from his little brother. He wanted a brick wall between himself and Connor's see-through powers.

“Do you want to know something, ladies?” Connor asked.

“Tell us,” Bea said.

“My mom is really strong.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. She can carry me!”

“Really!”

“Yeah!” Connor said. He turned to May. “Show them, mommy!”

And before May could answer, Connor threw himself at his mother's torso. She caught him awkwardly and gathered him up into her arms with a groan.

Bea and Agnes applauded and said, “Well done!”

Connor, now seated on his mother's left arm, faced the ladies and beamed.

Bea took a halting step toward May to say, “You must be very proud.”

May pulled Simon gently to her side with her free hand. “Oh, I am,” she said.

When she squeezed his shoulder, Simon looked up at May, worried that she expected him to say something. But May smiled without expectation or condition, and Simon understood that his mother had intended for the ladies to see her do so.

“We'll see you after mass?” May said.

“Oh, of course, dear,” Agnes said. “'Til then.”

“Goodbye, ladies!” Connor said, still beaming.

“Goodbye!” the women said.

Simon's mother turned toward the sanctuary doors and lowered Connor to the ground with another groan. “Okay,” she said. “Let's find our seats.”

“But it's not starting yet,” Connor said.

“It's starting soon.”

Connor looked back at the dozen or so people—his audience—milling about the anteroom. “I don't want to go in early.”

“Come on,” May insisted calmly. “We need to say our prayers.”

“I don't want to say my prayers.”

Holding the interior door with her backside, May ushered Connor through the doorway with a hand between his shoulder blades, and Simon followed her.

Simon knew what praying was, but found it hard to pray at church. How could he be expected to talk to God with all of these strangers around, whispering and sneezing? Simon prayed only when he was alone in his bedroom, with the lights and the radio off. He articulated his wants, worries and thanks in his head only, putting each sentence beyond the reach of his stutter by leaving it unspoken. Kneeling beside May, his chin resting on the back of the pew in front of him, Simon decided that whenever he prayed next, he would start by thanking God for his mother. And when he heard his father coughing as he entered the church, Simon relished the thought that no one—not his father, not God himself—could make him break his silence.

3

 

May Davies

 

IN TWENTY-THREE
 years of motherhood, no moment frightened me more deeply than the moment I realized that Connor, still so young, was leaving his older brother behind.

Connor was not yet five when he began to dominate our family's dinner conversation. He dominated because he could, and because Frank and Simon were content to let the people without stutters do the talking. Connor would ask me questions about my day and try to make Frank laugh with jokes about baseball. And when Simon got stuck on a word, as he often did, Connor would finish his sentence for him, even though I told Connor, every time, not to do that. Once in a while, Simon would keep at his thought until he had spoken every syllable, but by the time Simon was finished, I would be the only one still listening to him.

The year Simon entered first grade, money was tight. Frank's hours at the plant had been cut to less than full-time, which hurt everything from our income to our deductibles. I got my mother to watch the kids and took a job at the dentist's office in Leyton, answering phones and doing bookkeeping. We needed my paycheck to make our mortgage payment. Any money left over at the end of the month was on account of my job or my Sunday afternoon coupon cutting. I kept my breadwinning in mind when I stood in front of the television on a Sunday evening in June and announced to Frank that I'd enrolled six-year-old Simon in piano lessons.

After a long moment, Frank said, “H— how muh— much does that c— cost?”

“Forty-five dollars a week.”

“Ch— Christ, May! W— we don't even h— h— have a piano.”

“He needs something structured to do this summer,” I said.

“Wh— why don't w— we
p— p— put him in tee-ball or
s— something?”

“Why don't I handle the piano lessons,” I said, “and you handle the tee-ball.”

Frank waved me out of the way—something had happened in the ballgame he was watching—and I immediately understood two things: Simon would not be playing tee-ball, and Frank would not fight my spending forty-five dollars a week on Simon's piano lessons, which weren't piano lessons at all.

That summer, three days each week, I'd leave the dental office during my lunch hour and pick up Simon from home. The speech pathologist at Simon's school had agreed to work privately with him for what little we could pay. In every session, the speech teacher—her name was Janice—would draw Simon into conversation, patiently listening with her eyes until he'd said whatever he had intended to say. Then, gently, she'd ask him to repeat any words that had caused him to stutter. She'd give him a raw almond and ask a question, but insist he finish the almond before answering. And every night, I'd wrestle Simon's clock radio out of his hands and do the same exercises with him behind his closed bedroom door. I told myself that Simon was making improvements so small that an untrained person like me could not really see them, and that these tiny improvements were building toward the breakthrough I'd been hoping for.

After a session in mid-July, with Simon waiting in her living room, Janice sat me down for what she called a “progress report.”

Sitting behind her oversized oak desk, Janice said, “I'm afraid I'm wasting your money.”

My breath caught in my throat. I had been expecting her to run down a list of improvements. “What do you mean?”

Janice winced and crossed her legs. I think she'd been hoping that I'd be grateful she'd voiced a concern I'd been too polite to mention myself.

“Simon's speech is not improving,” Janice said. “It may be getting worse.”

Her pronunciation was so flawless—fussy, even—that I thought she might be rubbing it in.

“And when we reach the point at which it may be doing more harm than good,” she continued, “we have to discontinue therapy.”

I nodded and tried to smile, pretending too late that I agreed with her and was relieved that she'd spoken up. I kept pretending until I felt the tears running down my cheeks.

Janice picked up a white piece of paper, stood up, and walked around to my side of her desk. Handing me the paper, she said, “I'm referring you to an expert. His entire practice is children who stutter.”

I looked at the address. “In Rockford?”

“Yes.”

Rockford was three hours north. “Does he do weekend appointments?”

Janice shook her head. “No.”

That left me with the choice of getting Simon to the speech expert or staying in the job we needed to keep a roof over our heads, which wasn't really a choice.

“I'm sorry I wasn't more help,” Janice said.

She was still standing over me. I stood up to shake Janice's hand. And as I walked out of her office, I thought,
That's it. Simon will either stop stuttering on his own, or he will stutter his entire life, like his father has. And his little brother will talk circles around him at home, at school, everywhere they go together, until one or both of them decide they will not go anywhere together anymore.

This stutter will cut Simon off from the whole world.

 

•••

 

THAT SAME SUMMER,
I enrolled Simon in real music lessons. My hope was that music was a kind of communication he might still master.

Frank had been right about one thing: we didn't have a piano, and we couldn't afford one. At the supermarket, I saw a posted ad for guitar lessons. I imagined Simon playing the guitar and smiled, but my face fell when I envisioned him trying to sing along with his playing and gagging on a song's first word. So I ruled out guitar. I wanted music to be Simon's refuge from any expectation he would use his voice. I wanted an instrument he would have to put in his mouth.

Mr. Shaughnessy, the band director at Leyton High, offered private clarinet lessons. For the same forty-five dollars per week I'd spent on speech lessons, I secured a rental clarinet and lunch-hour lessons twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday. Thumbing through a magazine in Mr. Shaughnessy's living room, I'd listen while Simon played airy, squeaky notes in the studio across the foyer. Every question Mr. Shaughnessy asked Simon could be answered with a nod or a headshake, and doing as the teacher instructed required no words, only music. Simon could not yet play the clarinet, but the lessons were achieving some of what I'd hoped they would.

At the end of every lesson, Mr. Shaughnessy would emerge from his studio smiling, but looking slightly exasperated. Simon was not a natural.

“He needs to practice every day,” Mr. Shaughnessy would say.

“I'll make sure he does,” I'd answer. “Thank you.”

Then I'd take Simon home.

With the frame of our Ford four-door rattling as the engine idled in our side yard, I would remind Simon that he needed to practice his scales for at least an hour before I returned home from work.

“O— o— Okay,” he would say.

He would practice both Saturday and Sunday—I know, because I'd sit with him in his room while he did. Weekdays were a different story. My mother's addiction to soap operas and game shows made it easy for her to watch television-obsessed Connor, but Simon was left to his own devices.

Upon arriving home, I'd go straight to Simon's room. Seeing me at his bedroom door, Simon would turn the volume of his radio down just slightly—not a meaningless courtesy, coming from a six-year-old.

“Did you do your scales?” I would ask.

Yes,
Simon would nod.

“For a full hour?”

Simon would nod again.

“Good. And how did it go?”

“F— f— fine,” he would say.

I believed him. What else could I do? Once, I asked my mother as she was leaving if Simon had practiced his clarinet.

“His what?”

“His clarinet.”

“Oh,” she said. “I'm sure he did.”

That meant she had no idea if he had or not.

There was only one weekday I knew for certain that Simon had practiced. I had gone grocery shopping and had the oil changed in our car after work. By the time I got home, Frank was sitting at the kitchen table, watching Connor spoil his appetite with a plate of cookies.

“I th— th— thought S— Simon was t— taking p— p— piano lessons,” Frank said to me.

“He didn't take to the piano,” I said.

“H— he's not t— taking to th— this, either. S— s— sounds terrible.”

Connor, chewing another cookie, laughed. “You're funny, Daddy.”

Frank smiled with the kind of pride a grown man should never take in a compliment from a four-year-old.

“He's learning,” I said. “You should be proud of him. He's trying to improve himself.”

I hoped Frank heard my suggestion that
he'd
stopped trying to get better at anything a long time ago. I was thinking only about myself—what I had hoped for and stopped hoping for in married life—when I said that to Frank. If I'd been thinking about Simon, I might not have said anything. Telling a man that he doesn't stack up to his son does the son no favors.

It was after work on a Thursday in the middle of August, the day after one of Simon's lessons, when I got into my car after work and saw Simon's clarinet case sticking out from underneath the passenger seat. I pulled the case out from under the seat and opened it. Each piece of the instrument was nestled into the velveteen-lined mold that matched its shape.

When I got home, I knocked on Simon's bedroom door and opened it, keeping the clarinet case behind the wall, out of his sight.

He was sitting on the bed with his clock radio tuned to some commercial or other. He turned the volume down and stared at me.

“Hi, Simon,” I said.

He waved.

“How are you?”

He nodded, which meant,
Good
.

I nodded back and raised my chin and eyebrows, asking him to say the word.

“G— g— good.”

“I'm glad,” I said. “Did you do your scales?”

Yes
, he nodded.

“For a full hour?”

Simon nodded again.

I brought the clarinet case into the room. Simon only blinked. It seemed that lying to me about his practicing had become so routine that he had gotten used to the idea that he would be caught in the lie, eventually. And in that moment, I realized that all my suppositions about my son's diligence and willingness to better himself were wishful thinking. All I knew for certain was that I'd been wasting my Monday and Wednesday lunch hours and forty-five dollars a week, and that Simon, right then, looked very much like his father.

I pulled the radio out of his hands and turned it off. The look on Simon's face was one I might have expected to see if I strangled a rabbit before his eyes. He sat up on his knees and reached for the radio. I held it away from him, over the foot of the bed.

“You've been lying to me, Simon.”

“M— Mom—” he said.

But I wasn't finished, and this time, I decided, Simon would wait for me to finish speaking.

“I've been driving you all over town on my lunch hour for weeks! Do you know how upsetting it is to find out you're not practicing? So you can listen to commercials?”

I held up the radio in front of him. Simon eyed it. I think he thought I was going to take it away from him. I let him believe that I would.

“You could have
music
, Simon!” I said. “Music! You could make music speak
for
you if you would practice!”

Then, like a hungry cottonmouth, Simon lunged toward the radio with his entire body. I pulled the radio away from him, and Simon's momentum carried him over the foot of the bed. I dropped the radio and grabbed for him, but only changed the angle of his fall for the worse. His shoulder and head hit the floor with a thud that made the room shudder, and his thin neck bent strangely to one side as it bore his weight for an agonizing instant. When he came to rest on his back, Simon looked up at the ceiling. By the time he let out his first cry, with his mouth and eyes wide open, I was on the floor, holding him in my arms. I stroked Simon's head and rocked him back and forth while he waited for the pain and fear to go away.

“Is he okay?”

Connor's question was barely audible over Simon's moans and my softly spoken comforts. Connor stood in the doorway, nervously poking the corner of his closed mouth with his finger. The sight of his big brother crying on the ground had robbed my four-year-old boy of his bold tongue.

“Simon fell off the bed,” I said, reassuring the boys and myself. “He had a fright, but he's fine now.”

Connor said nothing.

“Go back to the living room now and watch TV,” I said. “We'll be out in a minute.”

When he had stopped crying, Simon sat up and scooted out of my arms. Sitting on the floor, he looked at me, waiting for me to hand down some punishment or leave. When I did neither thing, he picked up his radio and turned it on. The plug had been pulled out of the wall in the commotion, but the batteries I'd loaded into the black plastic underbelly months ago, at Simon's request, powered the radio's single speaker. Simon drew the tuner past music and static until he found a speaking voice, a woman's. She told me how hard it is to be the working mother of an infant, and how much easier my life would be if I'd only use her same brand of formula. I pictured a woman shaking her head with a sympathy she didn't really feel, and her face breaking into an empty smile.