by Dave Reidy
“Y— you mean, n— no— no thank you.”
Simon turned back toward the man, but did not look up at him. “N— no th— th— tha— thank you.”
“Okay,” the man said. “See you soon.”
Simon followed his father to the door, unwrapping the butterscotch sucker as he walked. Outside, lost in the task of scraping away a piece of waxed paper from the sucker’s upper hemisphere, Simon headed for the truck.
“Th— this way,” Frank said.
Simon’s father was still standing in front of the candy store, jerking his thumb in the other direction. Simon eyed the obelisk and considered asking his father if they could have a look at the inscriptions on its base.
“C— come on, now.”
Walking slowly toward his father, Simon picked the last bit of paper from the sucker and popped the tiny yellow planet into his mouth.
Lately, Simon had been thinking about going silent permanently, whether he had a sucker or not. He recognized that, at first, when he stopped speaking, his parents and teachers and schoolmates would try, with commands and demands and unkind words, to make him talk. Simon also knew that they could not make him speak, that to speak or not was his decision. Simon felt powerful in silence, but he also felt alone. And he worried that Frank would take his silence as an insinuation that he, too, would be better off shutting up than stuttering. Silence was something fun to imagine, something to enjoy with the sweetness of a sucker, but Simon understood that he could not allow himself to go silent forever unless his father went first.
Simon kept his head down, milking the sucker for a slow, steady stream of flavor and watching the backs of his father’s boots. The boots stopped in front of a single cement step.
“Pit—pit stop,” Frank said.
He held open a green door and waved Simon through it. The sign above the door read, The Four Corners.
Simon had been to the Four Corners before. It was dark inside, he remembered, and smelled clean and dirty all at once. He didn’t like this place, but Frank’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, and they were inside before he knew it.
“Hey, Frank,” someone said.
The voice came from one of the three silhouettes at a table toward the back, to the left of the bar. As their faces became visible in the low neon light thrown around them by the beer signs, Simon did not recognize the men from church or school or anywhere. He figured that they worked with his father at the factory, as many parents of his classmates did.
Frank raised one hand to the men and pushed Simon away from them, toward the bar, with the other. “F—fellas,” he said.
Frank lifted Simon up, set him on a barstool directly in front of the television, and took the stool to his son’s left. Peering behind his father’s back, Simon spied on the men at the table. He wished that they would ask his father and him to join them. He wished that the men were his father’s friends. So far as Simon knew, his father didn’t have any friends. Simon imagined that his father felt the same way about men his own age that Simon felt about the kids at school: that they knew too much about him without understanding him at all.
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.”<
br />
“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 th
at 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.
