by Dave Reidy
The wide, brown eyes Brittany had inherited from her Laotian mother narrowed and darkened.
I waggled again and made a weak attempt to undo my mistake. “But not as well as you know me.”
Pulling her feet away, Brittany rolled onto her side and wrapped the blanket tightly around her. I recognized a pattern it had taken me months to identify and understand: when she was hurt even a little, Brittany became furious with herself, incredulous that after all she had been through and how little she expected of anyone, she could still be negatively affected by another person’s words or actions. The pain surprised her every time. I’d stopped wondering why Brittany couldn’t see that her vulnerability, like my stutter, could be chased away but never banished. This was another lesson about personal connections that I’d learned the hard way: that my seeing Brittany as she was—and loving her—could never guarantee that she’d see and accept herself.
I put my hand on the bump in the blanket that was her ankle.
“Don’t,” she said, kicking me.
I sat in purposeful silence, letting her anger burn off. To scatter the tension surrounding my vocal folds, I took one waggle, and another, and then a third.
Then I said, “Connor knew me when I couldn’t talk.”
This was where I should have started. Connor had seen me struggle and stew in my long silence. He had witnessed my constant, soundless screaming match with our father. No one, except our mother, had known the silent me—for eighteen years, the only me—better than Connor had.
“He knew me then, and you know me now,” I continued. “Now, nobody knows me better than you do.”
It was true. Insofar as my being able to speak had changed me, Connor hardly knew me anymore.
Brittany’s body seemed to soften a little, but she said nothing. Her eyes were pointed somewhere beneath the dark television set, her lower jaw thrust out. There was no talking her out of her inward-aimed fury. She would take it to bed with her.
Because of my gaffe, the last reasonable moment I had to ask Brittany to change her plans for the following afternoon, so that we could make the most of Connor’s brief visit, was also the least favorable. But I tried anyway.
“Connor gets here around four tomorrow,” I said, softly.
“I’m at the hospital then.”
I knew this, of course. Brittany volunteered every Tuesday afternoon in the neo-natal intensive care unit of the university hospital—in the two years I had known her, she had missed one shift, on account of stomach flu. Her job was to hold and feed incompatible-with-life newborns whose parents were gone, already mourning an imminent death that simply hadn’t happened yet. It was an unlikely fit for a woman who sought daily refuge from human interaction in the windowless, climate-controlled rooms that housed the leather-bound books she studied. Brittany did not stop to coo over babies in strollers and, outside of my apartment, did not so much as stroke my head or hold my hand. I’d always wanted to watch Brittany cradling the infants, to see that soft part of her even through glass, but she would not allow it—the hospital would not allow it, she said—so I was left with imagined glimpses of her standing stiff-legged, holding other people’s dying children, loving them as she loved me: as much and as little as she could.
“As it stands, we’ll be asleep about half the time Connor is here.” Feeling my throat tighten, I waggled twice. “So could you find a substitute for your shift tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“It’s still almost a full day’s notice. I can make the calls for you.”
Brittany met my eyes. “No.”
“We can say you’re sick.”
“No, Simon!”
She stared at me, driving home her refusal with her cold gaze, then turned her face toward the television again. I said nothing more.
She had never admitted as much to me, but Brittany seemed to bear the burden of a responsibility to me that was similar to her sense of responsibility to them, as if she was certain that I—like the babies—would have no one if not for her. As I sat silently beside her, I reminded myself that even if Brittany were to leave me—and the thought of her leaving made me sick to my stomach—I would still have someone the other motherless children did not: I would have Connor.
•••
WHEN CONNOR CALLED from the road and said he’d be later than expected, I was relieved that Brittany hadn’t missed her shift at the hospital just to wait around for my brother. My relief evaporated when she returned home crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
There were pouches beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were bright red. She stalked past me without a word and shut herself in the bedroom.
I walked slowly to the bedroom door and cracked it. Brittany was in bed, everything but the crown of her head buried under the covers.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Her only reply was a sniffle. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone—not without knowing why she was crying.
“What happened?”
Brittany made a guttural sound from beneath the blankets and rolled over to face the far wall.
Taking a waggle, I pushed the door and let the heavy brass handle hit the wall. “I’m trying to help!”
Brittany threw the covers down to her waist and yelled, “You can’t help!”
She waited another minute for me to leave. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I still had no idea why she was crying.
With her back to me, Brittany wiped her eyes with her palms. Then she closed a nostril with her wrist and sniffed. “I was holding a baby girl today,” she said.
I waggled again and whispered, “Yeah.”
“And she died.”
So far as I knew, this was the first time, in the hundreds of hours Brittany had spent holding doomed infants, that a child had died in her arms.
I wanted to crawl into the bed and hold her but knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I watched her, trying to come up with some comfort apart from the loving words she would not accept. I waited another moment in the hopes that she would roll toward me and wave me into the bed beside her. But Brittany’s only movements were the still irregular swelling and shrinking of her rib cage.
So I backed out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed, watching her for any last-second change of heart even as I admitted to myself that the most helpful thing I could do for Brittany was leave her alone.
•••
SHE WAS ASLEEP—or still in bed, anyway—when Connor arrived that day.
I met my brother at the back door with an index finger over my lips, led him out the French doors that opened from the living room onto my unit’s section of the wraparound porch and asked him to wait there. I returned to the kitchen to pour my brother his drink of choice, bourbon neat, and opened a bottle of light beer for myself. Drinking, like high emotion, hindered my management of my stutter, so I was determined to drink slowly that night. I wasn’t about to risk having a fit in front of Connor.
I handed the glass of bourbon to Connor and closed the French doors.
“Should I come back later?” Connor whispered.
“No, you’re fine,” I said. “Brittany is sleeping. She volunteers at the hospital in the neo-natal intensive care unit, and a baby died while she was holding it.”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Connor said. “Is she in trouble?”
“No, no. None of the babies she works with have more than a few weeks to live.”
“Oh,” Connor said, seeming baffled. “Okay.”
“She’ll be up soon,” I said. “If she isn’t, you’ll meet her in the morning.”
I unfolded an aluminum lawn chair for him, not so much hiding the little waggle I took as drawing attention away from it, like a magician showing an empty palm during a card trick.
“How was the drive?”
“Long,” Connor said. “Longer than it had t
o be. I got a late start.”
“Did you have an audition or something?”
Connor shook his head and swallowed a mouthful of my cheap bourbon without wincing. “I went on for a friend of mine in a late show last night. The pay was free drinks, and I was very well paid.”
I smiled and took a sip of my beer.
“Then I overslept and got caught in some rush-hour traffic south of Chicago,” he said.
“How long were you driving?”
“What is it? Ten?”
“Almost.”
“Six and a half hours.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
I waggled. “If you want to stay another night to make it worth the drive, you’re welcome to.”
Connor shook his head and sat up in his seat. “Nah. I want to be back onstage tomorrow night.”
He took a deep sip of his bourbon and swallowed, and I poured more beer between my lips.
“So you’re moving to Chicago,” Connor said.
“Yeah.”
“And your girlfriend is coming with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re living together?”
“Yes.”
Connor nodded, the edges of his lips curled downward and his eyes smiling.
“You think that’s a bad idea.”
“No, no,” Connor said. “It sounds fantastic.”
By which he meant it sounded terrible. Though Brittany’s agreeing to join me in Chicago was the signature success of my life to date, for Connor, sharing a small apartment with one woman, day after day, would have been unbearable. Onstage, he could make an audience believe he was a caring husband or an attentive boyfriend. Offstage, Connor wanted no part of intimacy. Even the questions he asked me were electrified prods he waved to keep me from getting too close.
“What’ll you do for work?” Connor asked.
I settled into the fabric straps of my folding chair and waggled. “Voiceover.”
Connor laughed.
“What.”
“What do you mean, ‘what?’ It’s at least a little funny, Simon. If I played a character who spent eighteen years in a hospital bed and decided to try out for the Olympic team after a jog in the park, I’d get laughs. Even on an off night. Fuck, that’s a good idea. I’d write it down except that improvisers don’t write anything down.”
I let a barking dog in the neighbor’s yard fill the space where Connor was expecting a laugh. You don’t go two speechless decades without learning to use silence the way Connor used humor: as a weapon.
“Look,” Connor said, “you should definitely try it. You’ve got a great voice—you’ve got my voice, actually.”
Connor wasn’t wrong. He and I had both been surprised to find, after my eighteen-year silence, that my voice sounded just like his.
“But, so you know, it’s tough to break into voiceover,” he said. “My agent said it’s easier to get on-camera work in a national TV spot than to get a local radio commercial in Chicago. Most of that work goes to the old guys who’ve been doing it for years.”
Part of me was warmed by the thought of the radio voices of my youth—especially my hero, Larry Sellers—holding their ground.
“Everything is harder than you think it’ll be,” Connor said.
“Breaking into voiceover can’t be much harder than rebuilding my voice,” I said.
Connor chuckled, holding his glass in front of his lips. “It might take about as long.” He took a sip of bourbon and shook his head as he swallowed. “But if anybody can do it—”
Connor drained the rest of the whiskey from his glass, leaving his halfhearted encouragement half-finished.
“And if I ever do voiceover,” Connor continued, “I won’t use my normal voice. You can have it.”
So there it was. Connor was not impressed with my life or prospects. As my determination rose on a tide of anger, I wondered if this was the reaction I had really wanted from Connor, if I’d known that his disdain would motivate me more than his encouragement ever could.
I took two more swallows of beer. “So how are things for you?”
“Good,” Connor said, playing with his empty glass.
“You’re doing shows?”
“Every night,” Connor said. “Tonight is my first night off in—” He squinted, calculating. “Three months?”
“Wow.”
“Trying to get as many reps as I can. That’s how you get better.”
I nodded coolly at what I took to be more unsolicited, condescending advice. Then I asked, “Who are you on with tomorrow?”
“Just some guys I know.”
“A group?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the name?”
My brother stared at me for a moment through slightly narrowed eyes. “You did this last time I saw you.”
“What?”
“You asked me the name of the group.”
“I like hearing the names.”
“They’re never funny.”
I waggled and said, “That’s why I like hearing them.”
Connor shook his head. “I’m not saying.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “You don’t have to.”
I watched Connor try to decide if telling me the name was victory or surrender in the face of the little trap I’d set for him.
“The point is, these guys are really good. They’ve had a show running at this bar for two years. One of them was a finalist for a correspondent slot on The Daily Show.”
“So he didn’t get it.”
“No.”
“Are you playing with them full time?”
“No,” Connor said. “One of their guys is on an audition in L.A. and they asked me to fill in for him.”
“Oh.”
“They said they might want to make me a permanent member, though.” Connor glanced down at his empty glass, and then raised his eyes to mine again. “So, yeah. Things are pretty good.”
But things were not good for Connor. Sure, he was still handsome. A mess of curly brown hair spilled over his forehead, accentuating by contrast the pale green of his eyes, and a day’s beard growth darkened his strong, cleft chin. Even so, he looked worn from the inside out in a way that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix. And in the rundown of his life in comedy, he hadn’t mentioned New York even once. That told me everything I needed to know about how things were going for my brother.
New York was the place where Connor saw himself when he’d made it in comedy. His fixation had started with Saturday Night Live but, at some point, the lights of 30 Rockefeller Plaza glowed so intensely in Connor’s mind that they illumined the entire city. For the past four years, Connor had been working in Chicago to win the attention of New York, and New York had paid him no mind. The pleasure I took in my brother’s struggles was fleeting—it meant nothing for me to catch up with Connor if our evenness was measured in unhappiness—but I was secretly pleased that he’d claimed things were going well for him when they were not. It was the first time I could remember that my brother had deemed me peer enough—or threat enough—to tell me such a lie.
“Another drink?” I asked him.
“Sure.”
Connor held up his glass by the base. I grabbed it around the middle, accidentally covering his thumb with one of my fingers for just an instant. At this glancing contact, I realized that Connor and I had not so much as shaken hands when he arrived, and it seemed too late by then to do anything of the kind.
I pitched my empty beer bottle into the plastic garbage can in the kitchen. Pouring Connor’s whiskey, I took two waggles and vowed to drink my next beer more slowly. Going drink for drink with Connor was certain to bring the evening—or my participation in it—to a stuttering, premature, and potentially mortifying end.
Carrying a full bottle of beer and a glass of bourbon, I reached the open porch doors and stopped. Brittany and Connor were standing next to one another, smiling. It looked as if they had just shaken hands.
“You’re up,” I said.
Brittany turned to me, opened her eyes wide, and let her smile fall. “You sound exactly like him,” she said. “Exactly.”
I handed Connor his whiskey, feeling hurt and a little indignant that my girlfriend had said that I sound like my brother, instead of the other way around.
She turned back to Connor. “How did that happen?”
“Well,” Connor said, “I like to think that when Simon was teaching himself to talk, he had his pick of any voice he wanted and chose mine.”
Brittany laughed.
It seemed that her nap had lifted her out of the horror of her afternoon, at least for the moment. She had ironed her hair flat, except at the ends, which curved in and brushed against her jawbone. Her small, high-set breasts stretched the vertical ribbing of her pale green tank top, the tail of which hung over the waistband of her favorite pair of short nylon shorts. An open black hoodie hung loosely over her arms. I knew her well enough to know she had applied a little makeup to her eyes and considered each piece of clothing she was wearing, but Brittany always gave the impression that her beauty was effortless, which made her all the more beautiful.
For his part, with a second whiskey in hand and an attractive, one-woman audience to win over—with someone besides me around—Connor seemed more comfortable already.
I touched Brittany’s elbow and, as she turned to face me, she pulled it out of my fingertips.
“Drink?” I asked.
She looked over the edge of Connor’s glass. “Bourbon, please.”
A waggle delayed my reply. “Bourbon it is.”
“Thank you, baby.”
I set my beer bottle on the warped wood planks of the porch, sending a warm rush to my head. Then I went inside, pulled a second glass from a cabinet, and poured another bourbon, feeling buzzed and buoyed that Brittany was awake and feeling social, and that she and Connor were hitting it off. He was even flirting a little, which I took to be a harmless expression of our brotherly rivalry. Despite his tardiness and Brittany’s grief, my brother’s visit was beginning to take the shape that I had hoped it would.
I returned to the porch to find Connor seated and Brittany standing over him. I handed Brittany her glass and picked up my beer.
