The Voiceover Artist. Dave Reidy
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