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 that 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.
She was still standing over me. I stood up to shake Janice’s hand. And as I walked out of her office, I thought, That’s it. Simon will either stop stuttering on his own, or he will stutter his entire life, like his father has. And his little brother will talk circles around him at home, at school, everywhere they go together, until one or both of them decide they will not go anywhere together anymore.
This stutter will cut Simon off from the whole world.
•••
THAT SAME SUMMER, I enrolled Simon in real music lessons. My hope was that music was a kind of communication he might still master.
Frank had been right about one thing: we didn’t have a piano, and we couldn’t afford one. At the supermarket, I saw a posted ad for guitar lessons. I imagined Simon playing the guitar and smiled, but my face fell when I envisioned him trying to sing along with his playing and gagging on a song’s first word. So I ruled out guitar. I wanted music to be Simon’s refuge from any expectation he would use his voice. I wanted an instrument he would have to put in his mouth.
Mr. Shaughnessy, the band director at Leyton High, offered private clarinet lessons. For the same forty-five dollars per week I’d spent on speech lessons, I secured a rental clarinet and lunch-hour lessons twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday. Thumbing through a magazine in Mr. Shaughnessy’s living room, I’d listen while Simon played airy, squeaky notes in the studio across the foyer. Every question Mr. Shaughnessy asked Simon could be answered with a nod or a headshake, and doing as the teacher instructed required no words, only music. Simon could not yet play the clarinet, but the lessons were achieving some of what I’d hoped they would.
At the end of every lesson, Mr. Shaughnessy would emerge from his studio smiling, but looking slightly exasperated. Simon was not a natural.
“He needs to practice every day,” Mr. Shaughnessy would say.
“I’ll make sure he does,” I’d answer. “Thank you.”
Then I’d take Simon home.
With the frame of our Ford four-door rattling as the engine idled in our side yard, I would remind Simon that he needed to practice his scales for at least an hour before I returned home from work.
“O— o— Okay,” he would say.
He would practice both Saturday and Sunday—I know, because I’d sit with him in his room while he did. Weekdays were a different story. My mother’s addiction to soap operas and game shows made it easy for her to watch television-obsessed Connor, but Simon was left to his own devices.
Upon arriving home, I’d go straight to Simon’s room. Seeing me at his bedroom door, Simon would turn the volume of his radio down just slightly—not a meaningless courtesy, coming from a six-year-old.