The Voiceover Artist

by Dave Reidy

  “The last time I remember hearing him speak was Friday night,” I said.

  Frank shrugged and brought a beer can to his lips.

  “What happened?”

  He put his beer down and pulled the wooden handle on the right side of his recliner, bringing the footrest down. “W— w— what do you m— mean w— w— what happened?”

  “What happened on Saturday? When I put him to bed Friday night, Simon was speaking. When I got home from taking Connor to the doctor, Simon wouldn’t say a word. And he’s staring daggers at you!”

  “He bet— bet— better not be,” Frank said, shifting in his chair.

  “What happened on Saturday, Francis?”

  “N— nothing!” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Nothing happened. N— now tur— turn up the v— v— volume and g— get out the way.”

  He stared past me to whatever was happening on the part of the screen I’d failed to block. I stalked off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind me and leaving the television’s volume where it was. If he was content to let Simon stay silent, Frank could turn up the TV himself.

  Clumsy with outrage, I struggled out of my clothes and caught my reflection in the mirror above my dresser. I pushed a strand of my thick, wavy hair out of my face. The bags beneath my eyes were dark, and deep wrinkles slashed across the skin of my long neck.

  A ballerina’s neck, Frank used to call it.

  To hell with Frank.

  I didn’t need anyone to give me the particulars. It was enough to know that Simon remained silent because of something his father had done or failed to do.

  •••

  SIMON'S SILENCE WENT up like a wall between us. His nods, headshakes and gestures could not create the closeness I felt when Simon had risked speaking to me, and I’d made good on his risk by listening with my eyes and ears until he had finished. Even as Connor wowed me with his knack for the speed and rhythms of adult speech, I found myself wishing for a chance to sit next to Simon on his bed and show him, just by listening patiently as he started and restarted his words, that there was nothing he couldn’t tell me. But Simon would not say anything to me or anyone else.

  Every day or two, I’d try to draw him out. Once, when he was listening to his radio in the early evening, I knocked on his door and said, “Dinner is ready.”

  Simon nodded and gave me a flat, close-mouthed smile.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  He nodded again.

  “What would you like?”

  I knew the answer was Sprite. Simon always picked Sprite if given a choice. But Simon wouldn’t say the word. So he shrugged.

  “You don’t know what you want to drink?” I asked.

  He raised his shoulders again, even higher, and let them fall.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want to drink, and I’ll pour it for you?”

  I turned toward the kitchen, trying to suggest with body language that the Sprite was as good as poured if Simon would only say what he wanted.

  Simon looked at me. He seemed to be asking me, with his eyes, to let him be. But I wouldn’t.

  “It’s no trouble,” I said.

  Simon turned off his radio. He hopped off his bed and scooted past me in his stocking feet. By the time I reached the kitchen, he was hoisting himself onto the counter to retrieve a tall, green plastic cup from the cupboard. He lowered himself to the floor, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a two-liter bottle of Sprite. Then Simon poured himself half a glass—the same limit I would have set—carried his drink to the table, and took his seat without a word.

  With his obedient refusal, Simon sent me the unspoken message that there was nothing, big or small, I could do to help him out of his silence, and that I should save myself the trouble of trying.

  But I didn’t quit trying. I couldn’t.

  I sat Simon down and told him how much we valued what he had to say, no matter how long it took him to say it, whether he stuttered or not. Driving home from the grocery store with him, I praised the strength of Simon’s will—his ability to make a decision and stick to it—in the hope that he might decide he had made his point. And when my birthday came, I asked Simon for only one gift.

  I waited all evening for him to speak to me. After my birthday dinner—burgers from Wendy’s, the best meal Frank could serve up on his own—I sent Frank and Connor into the living room to watch the ballgame so that Simon might feel safe enough, or generous enough, to say something. But when he had finished his piece of the birthday cake I had baked—yellow cake with chocolate frosting—Simon wiped the crumbs from his lips, slid off of his chair, and set his plate and fork in the sink. Then he kissed me on the cheek and disappeared into his bedroom.

  The day after my birthday, when Simon had brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas, I went into his room, closed the door, and sat down on his bed.

  “I’m worried about you, Simon,” I said, allowing myself to cry. “And I miss you.” Simon would not look at me. His radio, muffled by the leg under which he had stashed it when I came in, mumbled commercial messages.

  “I want to hear you again,” I said. “Please. Say something to me.”

  When he was certain I was finished speaking, Simon raised his glistening eyes to mine.

  At last! I thought. He’ll speak!

  Then Simon closed his eyes and shook his head. No.

  My crying kept up for the rest of the evening. Frank must have heard me sniffling from the living room. I was folding a load of whites on our bed when he walked up behind me, laid his hand on the small of my back, and asked, “W— w— what’s wrong?”

  It was Frank’s bad luck that this tender gesture—his first in months—hardened my sadness into something brittle.

  “If you don’t know,” I said, “I’m not going to tell you.”

  With that, Frank pulled his hand away and stormed out of the bedroom, stuttering and muttering his curses.

  •••

  IT WAS ONLY a few days later when, having spent the night chewing my nails down to the quick and nibbling my cuticles, I asked Frank for his help.

  “Will you talk to him?” I asked.

  Looking up from the game, he said, “W— w— what about?”

  “Anything, Frank! He hasn’t said a word in almost six months! Were you ever silent for six months?”

  Connor, sitting on the couch, said, “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Please,” I said. “Just try to make him talk.”

  With his shoulders slumped forward even as he sat back in his chair, Frank looked defeated already.

  “F— fine,” he said. “Br— br— bring him in here.”

  I leapt into action before Frank could change his mind. “All right, Connor,” I said. “Let’s get you in your pajamas and you can watch the little TV in your room.”

  “Okay, Mommy!”

  With Connor settled, I knocked on Simon’s bedroom door, opened it, and asked him to come with me. I led him into the living room and stood him in front of his father.

  “Your father would like to speak to you.”

  I stepped back to a spot just outside of Simon’s peripheral vision.

  Frank sighed and shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “Wh— what’s wrong w— with you, Simon?”

  Simon said nothing.

  “Wh— why d— don’t you s— speak up?”

  Simon made no reply.

  “S— s— say s— something!”

  I leaned forward just in time to see Simon’s bottom lip slide over the top one. His eyes glowed with defiance. My heart leapt at the thought that Simon might scream.

  But it was I who screamed when Frank stood up and raised his right hand to slap the scorn from his son’s face. I put myself between the two of them and carried Simon away, cowering against a blow that didn’t come.

  When I had delivered him safely to his bedroom, Simon wriggled out of my arms. I had assumed he’d be
visibly frightened, maybe even crying, but his expression, now directed at an empty corner of his room, was the same defiant one he’d shown his father. I understood then that Simon had become a mirror for more than his father’s broken speech. In Simon’s hateful gaze, Frank had glimpsed his own self-hatred.

  I should never have left Simon unprotected in front of Frank. A man pretending he isn’t wounded can only look in a mirror for so long before he tries to break it.

  •••

  SIMON HAD BEEN silent for seven months when I got it in my head that I should try to scare a sound out of him.

  I left work an hour early and parked my car down the road, off the route of the boys’ school bus. I hid my purse in my bedroom, lay down on the far side of Simon’s bed, and waited. The hiding itself was thrilling—I hadn’t hidden from anyone since I was a little girl—but what really excited me was the idea that I could break my son’s silence. I told myself that once it was broken, Simon would have no reason to start a new string of days and weeks and months without speaking. He’d outlasted the wishes of his mother and commands of his teacher and shown his father what he thought of him. What could possibly be left for him to prove? And to whom?

  The airbrakes of the bus shrieked. The engine chugged as it idled and growled as the bus accelerated past the house. I put my feet under me and squatted in a crouch. Feeling a giggle rise, I buried my smiling face in the comforter hanging over the side of Simon’s bed.

  When the back door opened into the kitchen, the house seemed to exhale, as if it had been holding its breath until the boys returned home. Connor called for me from the kitchen, and called my name again in the living room. When he got no answer, he said, “Yippee!” and turned on the television.

  I listened to two game-show hosts—the one actually on TV and the much younger one in my living room—for what seemed like several minutes.

  Then the door to Simon’s room opened.

  Still smiling, I sprang into view. “Boo!” I screamed.

  Simon jumped back and his mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. He stood with his back to the wall, clasping his windpipe between his thumb and his fingers. My first thought was that he’d inhaled a cookie. Then I heard the air coming in and out of his nose and understood: His stutter had seized him and would not let go.

  Alarmed, I hurried around the foot of the bed. Before I could reach him, Simon ran at me and started pounding my hips with the heels of his open hands.

  “Stop it!” I yelled, grabbing at him. “Simon! Stop!”

  He hit me a few more times, and then ran out of the room.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes and let the tears come, crying not over the blows that my son had dealt me in his wordless rage, but at a possibility I hadn’t considered: Simon’s silence was not a matter of choice. His stutter, emboldened by his silence, had strangled his broken voice.

  It was only in his withholding of them, in his unwillingness to meet my eye for the next thirteen days, that I came to understand just how much love my Simon had been showing me in his glances and gestures and heavy smiles.

  •••

  KNOWING THAT SIMON was unable to speak changed everything for me. I no longer took his silence as a slight. I stopped pleading for him to speak and trying to trick him into speaking. I began to treat the silence as something I couldn’t change, as if it were any other crippling injury a boy could suffer.

  I signed us both up for a sign-language class, but Simon didn’t want to sign any more than he wanted to play an instrument. For two half-hour sessions, he refused to take his hands out of his lap. I agreed to stop taking him but believed we’d go back, eventually. In the meantime, though, I asked Simon questions that he could answer with a nod or a shake of his head, and we developed our own pidgin signs for the niceties I couldn’t let go: two open palms for please, palms together in prayer for thank you, and a fist to the breast, the same mea culpa I’d learned in church as a little girl, for I’m sorry. Simon never learned I’m hungry or I’m thirsty or anything else that would’ve helped me to meet his needs. He did things for himself. If he was hungry, he went to the kitchen and had a snack. If he was thirsty, he poured himself a Sprite. Soon, I was raising a highly independent little boy I was afraid to let out of my sight.

  At the beginning of each school year, I informed Simon’s teachers that he could not speak, and made them promise me that they would never, under any circumstances, demand that he do what he could not. And I gave Connor an assignment.

  “You stay close to your brother before and after school,” I told him. “And if you see anybody doing or saying anything mean to him, I want you to tell me.”

  “Okay,” Connor said. Then, after a couple of nervous ums, he asked, “Do you want me to try and stop them?”

  “No,” I said. “Just tell me. If it’s an emergency, go find a teacher and tell her.”

  I assumed that Connor talking Simon’s way out of a schoolyard fight would only move the fight to my living room. The boys were fighting all the time, it seemed. If Connor spoke for Simon once too often, or hit a little too close to home with his teasing, or, God forbid, laid a hand on Simon’s radio, Simon would tackle Connor and pound him in the shoulders. I pulled Simon off of Connor a few times a week, at least, and made him say I’m sorry with the same fist he’d been using to hit his brother.

  But if, when the fighting began, I was outside hanging the washing or deafened to Connor’s protests by my hair dryer, I would find Connor on top of Simon, giving the punches he’d been getting, and Simon under his smaller, younger brother, calmly taking blows he didn’t have to take. For months, I worried that Simon was taking pleasure in his own pain and humiliation, but I came to see the fights as something else entirely. Simon was acting out his longing to be Connor’s equal, if only in a game he rigged himself.

  There was one adjustment to his silence, though, that Simon would not allow me to make. When he handed me a permission slip to join the Boy Scouts or Little League or become an altar server, I’d ask Simon a question: “Will you let me come with you every time you go?”

  Simon would wince at me, stomp his feet and shake his head emphatically.

  “I’m sorry,” I would say. “I can’t let you go alone.”

  There would be more stomping then, until Frank had yelled for it to stop and Simon had shut himself in his room.

  I understood that no boy wanted his mother watching over him, especially if his was the only mother around. But a boy who cannot speak is too tempting a target for a predatory coach or priest or scout leader—who is more likely than a mute child to keep a pedophile’s secrets? Somehow, I managed to convince myself that Simon would be safe at school. But after school and on the weekends, I’d only leave him in the care of Frank or my mother.

  From the time they were babies, I’d tried to raise boys brave enough to be more than their mother’s sons, to be students and musicians and volunteers. To be themselves. But because of his silence, I couldn’t allow Simon to take his independence into the world. Until he was older, I wouldn’t let Simon go anywhere I couldn’t protect him.

  •••

  I KEPT OFFERING Simon music and sign-language lessons from any teacher who would let me sit outside an open door and listen, taking care not to suggest that Simon wasn’t good enough as he was, only that he might like to make music or communicate. But Simon wouldn’t take the lessons. I think they frightened him, actually, as if learning an instrument or sign language would guarantee he’d never, ever speak again. Whatever the reason, even after six years without speaking, Simon wouldn’t give up listening to the radio for a chance to make music or sign language.

  When he was thirteen years old and in eighth grade, I pulled Simon away from his radio to see Connor perform as part of the choir in the junior high’s Happy Holidays Concert. Frank was still in front of the television in his undershirt fifteen minutes before the performance was to begin, so I left without him. He arrived late and spent the concert frowning and
fidgeting uncomfortably in the folding chair I had saved for him. Simon endured the singing with his arms folded and his head down. He might have feared that I’d take his paying attention as some hint he finally wanted music lessons. But during “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Simon looked up to watch Connor get the night’s only laughs by singing “five golden rings” eight different ways, each hammier than the one before.

  After the concert, Connor rode home with Frank in his truck. Simon went with me. Whenever it was just the two of us in the car, Simon would sit in the front passenger seat and take control of the stereo, which must have had more powerful reception than his clock radio did, because Simon would bypass perfectly audible commercials to scan the AM dial for ads broadcast from far-off places. We were about a mile from home the night of the concert when a voice, calling out through a storm of static, told me to “come on down” to a restaurant in downtown Omaha for “eastern Nebraska’s finest steaks” and one-dollar draft beers. Even in the December darkness on an unlit two-lane highway, I could see the open-mouthed amazement on Simon’s face. At the beginning of a long day, I might have reminded myself that Simon didn’t feel, as I did, that the radio voices were taunting him in his silence, and I might have wondered aloud at the modern miracle of invisible waves carrying speech across the prairie to our ears. But at the end of a long day, after twenty minutes of irritating electronic hisses and squeals had paid off only in a commercial for a restaurant four-hundred miles away, I said, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Simon. You’ve found a way to make radio even more boring.”

  Two days later, on Saturday, I was at the kitchen table reading the Peoria Journal Star when I came across a profile of Larry Sellers, a voiceover artist who was born and raised in Sampere, Illinois, not far from Leyton. According to the paper, Sellers had done national television commercials for Maalox, Hertz, and Wendy’s, and for the past ten years, he’d been the radio voice of Jewel Food Stores. In the words of his long-time agent, Larry Sellers was “one of the very few voiceover artists who can take a mediocre script and make a great radio commercial without changing a word.”