The Voiceover Artist

by Dave Reidy

  After that, I stopped tackling Connor and, to his credit, he never started one of those fights. But my wish to be even with him didn’t stop with the fights. It kept up throughout our teenage years, throughout my silence. Knowingly or not, our mother perpetuated it. If she kissed one of us on the head, she tracked down the other in his bedroom or the side yard and kissed him, too. She would spend the same amount of time, to the minute, helping Connor with his homework that she’d spent talking me through mine. Until the year she left my father, she made the same dinner—hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese—on Connor’s birthday and mine, and once, she even showed us receipts to prove she’d spent the same amount of money on our gifts. I don’t know whether my mother created these rules or just played by them. But even after she died, I still wanted nothing more than for Connor to have the same share of what he wanted that I had of what I wanted—not one bit more, or less.

  It was July 15th. I’d been living in Chicago for six weeks, and Connor still had not returned my call. In the midst of my long wait for voiceover work, I wasn’t looking forward to measuring my success against my brother’s because I knew I’d come up short again. And it was hard for me to admit that I was totally dependent on Connor for the company I sorely needed, while he didn’t seem to need me for anything. But I knew I’d get no greater share of what I wanted in the world if I kept spending every day in my apartment, talking to myself.

  So I typed out a text message: I’d like 2 c u soon. Let me know when u r free.

  I sent the message and watched the pixilated animation of an envelope fly over the horizon line on my phone’s tiny screen, mindful that I’d fixed nothing of what ailed me. I’d only given myself something else to wait for.

  •••

  I WAS LYING awake in bed that same Thursday, a couple of hours later, when I heard what I thought was the motor of my window-unit air conditioner rattling at a different speed. Only when the sound stopped and started again did I look to my bedside table and notice my phone vibrating slowly toward my radio. I picked it up, expecting to see Connor’s name on the display. I saw Elaine’s name instead.

  The adrenaline hit was my first in days. My heart pounded and my windpipe tightened up—I took five waggles to loosen it as I hurried into the living room. I assumed she was calling to recommend changes to my demo or confirm some contractual detail. That she was calling me at all contradicted my suspicion, which had been growing over the past few days, that I’d never hear from Elaine Vasner again.

  Standing in front of my desk in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, I flipped open my phone and said, “This is Simon.”

  “How are you, Simon?”

  “I’m good, Elaine.” I took another waggle. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Did I wake you up?”

  It sounded less like a question than an accusation.

  “No,” I said.

  “You have morning voice, Simon,” Elaine said. “I can hear it. But you answered when I called. That’s all that matters to me, assuming you weren’t screaming yourself hoarse at some bar last night.”

  I waggled again. “I wasn’t.”

  “Good. You’ve been booked for a job.”

  “What?”

  Elaine pushed past my shock, which she must have been expecting.

  “A creative director I’ve worked with for years called me looking for a new voice, a young man who doesn’t sound like a kid. I think the words she used were ‘credible’ and ‘precise.’ Anyway, I sent her a copy of your demo, and she called back the next day to say that now, when she reads the part, she can only hear it in your voice.”

  I needed two waggles to say, “Wow.”

  “Wow is right,” Elaine said. “It’s a radio spot for Red Bull and it’ll run in seven markets—New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.”

  My gut tightened with pleasure. I had assumed my first job, if I ever got one, would be a local commercial. This was a national spot.

  “The agency is Burnett. They’re recording on Monday at 1 p.m. I’m assuming you can do it.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Good,” Elaine said. “You’re booked for an hour and a half, but they think it’ll only take an hour. Have you ever been in a recording studio before?”

  I hesitated, trying to decide whether or not the truth was the wrong answer. Then I told the truth. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Elaine said. “Let’s go over a few things. The moment you walk into that sound booth, put your headphones on. Without them, you can’t hear the director, and you can’t hear yourself the way you need to.”

  “Okay.”

  “If the script is multiple pages, spread the first few across your stand. Don’t spoil any takes moving paper.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’ll be a circular screen in front of the mic. It’s there to keep your Ps from popping. Start with your mouth about four inches away from the screen. If they want you closer to it, or further away, they’ll tell you. And make sure you’re not leaning forward. Stand up straight and get comfortable. You’ll be on your feet for at least an hour.”

  I waggled. “Right.” I thought about reaching for a pen and paper on the desk a few feet away, but I didn’t move. I was afraid I would miss something.

  “Some newbies see a microphone and start babbling,” Elaine said. “Don’t speak until somebody tells you to. They’ll ask you to do a run-through so they can adjust the levels. And when you do the run-through, do it the way you’d do a take that counts. That’s the only way to get the levels right for the keepers. Are you following?”

  “Yes.”

  “When they have their levels,” Elaine said, “the director will ask you how your foldback is. You don’t know what foldback is.”

  “No.” By then, I was admitting my ignorance greedily. I’d never been so certain I was getting good advice.

  “Foldback is the sound of your own voice in your headphones,” Elaine said. “It might be too loud. It might not be loud enough. They’ll work with you to find a level comfortable for you. You need to hear yourself, but too loud is no good. You need to protect your hearing. Your ears are more important in this business than you might think.”

  “Okay.”

  “When your foldback is set, it’ll be time for the first take,” she said. “From there, you do what you do. And give the director what she wants, even if you think it sounds wrong, even if you think it’s a bad idea. When you’re in studio on somebody else’s dime, it isn’t your opinion that matters. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “All right,” Elaine said. “The session is at Kinzie Street Studios. That’s on Kinzie Street.”

  “Okay.”

  “That was a joke, Simon.”

  I hadn’t realized. “I know.”

  Elaine made a noise, something between a snort and a sigh. “The agency sent me the script,” she said. “I’ll e-mail it over to you. I’ll send the address of the studio, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This is a good job, Simon,” Elaine said.

  I waggled. “Yes.”

  “It’s the kind of job that can pay some bills and get you another job. Make sure you nail it.”

  Something cold in Elaine’s voice made me blink. “I will.”

  “Good. Look for my e-mail.”

  “I will.”

  “Have a nice day,” Elaine said, taking—as another joke, maybe—the falsely polite tone of a customer-service representative.

  “Thanks again, Elaine.”

  I flipped my phone shut and leapt into the air, pulling my knees up as high as I could, and pogoed up again as soon as I landed.

  My wait for work was over.

  I fell onto the couch, breathing out low moans of happiness through the broad smile on my face, exhausted by the adrenaline and by my private show of exuberance. I may have let myself enjoy the moment for a couple of minutes before my compulsion to prepar
e got the better of me. I walked to my desk, opened my laptop, and pressed the Send and Receive button above my e-mail inbox. There were no new messages.

  Then my phone, still in my hand, pulsed twice, and the display indicated the delivery of a text message. I opened the phone. The message was from Connor.

  “Free tuesday,” it read. “Meet u at the lakefront if u want.”

  In the time it had taken him to respond to my desperate request, my ambivalence about seeing Connor had evaporated. I wanted to see him. I wanted to measure myself against him. I wanted Connor to know that, in a race in which a tie was a victory for me and a devastating loss for him, I was gaining ground.

  •••

  I STILL REMEMBER the incident that convinced me—for what seemed, at the time, to be once and for all—that I would never wring from my life even a fraction of what Connor would achieve in his.

  I was sitting on a tree stump outside Leyton High on a warm, windy September afternoon, waiting for the short, pencil-yellow bus that would pick up Connor and me. Maybe ten feet away, Ken Hyde and Miro Kowalski—freshmen, like Connor—were sitting on the grass in front of my brother, giving him the audience he needed to burn off the energy and ideas he’d pent up during the school day.

  “You guys have Mr. Remacher?” Connor asked them.

  “For science,” Ken said.

  “Me, too,” Miro added.

  Connor hiked up the waist of his jeans to his bottom ribs, curved into a slouch, and took long, loping steps across the grass, recreating with high fidelity Mr. Remacher’s strange carriage.

  Ken and Miro laughed hard.

  “That’s perfect,” Ken said.

  “What about Ms. Gorski?” Connor asked.

  “The gym teacher?” Miro asked Ken.

  Ken nodded without taking his eyes off of Connor.

  Connor pressed his palms flat against his lower back, over his kidneys, with his fingers spread wide and their tips pointing straight down his legs. Then he hung his head forward and flattened his lips. “Ladies,” Connor said, voicing the “l” from the back of his mouth, “if you do not get moving, you will have no time to shower and the boys will smell your stinky feets.” He clapped twice. “Let’s go!”

  As Ken and Miro laughed, I smiled to myself. Just a couple of weeks into the school year, Connor had Ms. Gorski’s Polish accent, in all its thickness, down pat.

  “Do Mr. Lucas!”

  Connor shot Ken a look. In a decision that coincided roughly with his starting high school, my brother had begun denying all requests, at home and in public, for routines and impressions he had once done the moment he was asked.

  “I’m not a trained monkey,” he’d say. And when he was feeling particularly justified in his refusal, he’d add, “I’m not doing any of this for you, anyway. I do it for me.”

  Ken and Miro knew Connor’s stance on command performances—Connor had turned them down before. But, perhaps having already decided to imitate Mr. Lucas, Connor glanced in all directions for any sign of the loud, little man who taught my history class, and then became him.

  “We’re running out of time,” Connor’s Mr. Lucas said, “so I’m going to go Pentangelo here. Mr. Pentangelo, which president made the call to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan?”

  “Roosevelt,” said Connor’s Pentangelo.

  “No!” answered Connor’s Mr. Lucas. “No! No! Pentangelo! I went to you because we were short on time! We needed the right answer, Pentangelo! Now the period is almost over and your classmates are under the impression that Franklin Delano Roosevelt green-lit the first atomic bomb! The man was rotting in his grave, Pentangelo! Truman, Pentangelo! Truman dropped the bomb!”

  Midway through the routine, Ken and Miro had fallen onto their backs, laughing with the abandon of much younger boys, but Connor saw it through to the finish, showing no mercy as his still new friends gasped for air between paroxysms of delight.

  I was more awed than amused. I had witnessed Mr. Lucas’ memorable dressing down of Giuseppe Pentangelo, one of the best students in my junior class, and knew for a fact that Connor hadn’t been there to see it. I guessed he had heard it through the open door of his own history class, which met in the classroom across from Mr. Lucas’ during the same period, but that didn’t explain how Connor had so completely captured the physical reality of the exchange. He had even stood over Ken and Miro in the same way Mr. Lucas had loomed over the sheepish Pentangelo. Somehow, my television-obsessed little brother had mastered a radio listener’s trick: He had seen Mr. Lucas with his ears.

  Ken and Miro lay on their backs for a minute or so after Connor relented. As they caught their breath, the boys spouted laughs that deteriorated into sighs of exhaustion. Miro was the first to sit up again.

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  Ken propped himself up on his locked arms, and each one of us followed the path of Miro’s gaze with his own.

  “That’s Candace Andersen,” Ken said.

  That a freshman such as Ken Hyde knew the name and face of a junior after only a few weeks at school would have been surprising if the junior had been anyone other than Candace Andersen.

  Candace was an academic star who didn’t flaunt her intelligence—she did her homework at home and rarely discussed grades. She was kind and well liked. And beautiful. That afternoon, she was sitting on the concrete base of the school’s flagpole with an open paperback in hand, her brown hair moussed into a thick bouquet of curls flecked with golden blond.

  By coincidences of class schedule, classroom layout, and alphabetical order, my assigned seat in Mr. Lucas’ history class was next to Candace’s, and I had occupied the desk behind hers in Mrs. Vallort’s English class the year before. We didn’t know each other well—I couldn’t speak, so no one knew me well—but when we passed in the hallway or arrived at class, Candace would say hello. I’d respond with a polite, close-lipped smile intended to hide the following truths: that Candace Andersen enthralled me, that whenever I imagined speaking again, I imagined my first words would be “Hi” and “Candace,” and that once, in a moment of the hopeful delirium that was an occasional symptom of my solitude, I’d envisioned Candace inviting me on a walk after school. I imagined her telling me that she knew how I felt about her, that she felt the same way about me, and that I could hide all I wanted from everyone else but didn’t have to hide myself from her anymore. And we would kiss long enough for me to forget that I didn’t know how to kiss, long enough for me to learn how, maybe. Then Candace would pull her lips from mine, smile, and kiss me again.

  “Dude,” Miro said to Connor, keeping his vocal volume low, “you should do those impressions for her.”

  As she waited for her ride home, Candace crossed her long legs beneath her pleated skirt, keeping her eyes locked on her book. Connor squinted at Candace, seeming to contemplate Miro’s challenge. Then Connor started out across the small, green patch of lawn between himself and Candace.

  Over his shoulder, he said, “Don’t let the bus leave without me.”

  I think he was talking to me.

  Miro and Ken looked at each other, their eyes open wide with anticipation.

  “Oh shit!” Ken whispered to Miro, smiling.

  The boys were surely imagining themselves, as I was imagining myself, in Connor’s shoes. From a short but safe distance, and from the far side of a wide gulf of charm and talent, the three of us experienced the nervous thrill of recklessly approaching an uncommonly pretty girl.

  As he neared her, Connor circled in front of Candace and waved. Candace hadn’t met Connor, so far as I knew, but she smiled and said hello. The afternoon wind was gusting, and the rush of it in my ears had the effect of static in a weak radio signal, clipping some words and drowning others. But I did hear Connor say our last name.

  And I heard the gorgeous ring of Candace’s voice when she said, “Simon’s brother?”

  Connor claimed me minimally, with a nod, hedging his bet as to whether his being my brother was a g
ood or bad thing in Candace’s eyes. Then, as the wind kicked up again, Candace must have said her own name, because Connor stepped up to her and shook her hand. Something in the way he did that made her laugh.

  That Connor could make Candace laugh with a handshake threatened me so deeply that I couldn’t help but look away. For a few moments, I watched the wind thrash the slender branches of a hulking willow. Then I heard Candace laugh again, and my eyes followed the sound. Candace had closed her book, and Connor was doing Mr. Remacher’s walk. When he finished, Candace tucked her book between her thigh and the concrete, freeing her hands to applaud Connor with false formality. Connor took a profound bow. And Candace laughed again.

  Then Connor became Ms. Gorski. Over the gusts, I made out “stinky feets” and “let’s go!” Candace threw her head back, raising her smiling face to the sky.

  “She’s loving it,” Miro said.

  Connor skipped his bow and went straight into his Mr. Lucas. He paced and pointed to the invisible Pentangelo, then became him just long enough to give the damning wrong answer.

  “No!” Connor shouted. “No, Pentangelo!”

  As Connor gesticulated above the invisible Pentangelo, Candace, who’d had a ringside seat for the original Lucas-Pentangelo exchange, watched my brother with her smiling mouth agape.

  When the scene was finished, she didn’t laugh, and she didn’t applaud. Staring at Connor and shaking her head, Candace Andersen said, “Unbelievable!”

  She went on praising Connor in lilting words I couldn’t make out. Like me, Candace had found my brother’s performance even more amazing than it was amusing.

  Connor kept his eyes on Candace, guzzling from the fire hose of her admiration without spilling a drop. When she was finished speaking, he held up his index finger, as if to say, I’ve got one more. And he just stood there. He slouched, but he didn’t move a muscle and he didn’t say a word. He stared off toward the state highway that marked the eastern border of the campus. He dropped his eyes to his feet, put his hands in his pockets, and swayed back and forth, slowly.