•••
WHEN CONNOR CALLED from the road and said he’d be later than expected, I was relieved that Brittany hadn’t missed her shift at the hospital just to wait around for my brother. My relief evaporated when she returned home crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
There were pouches beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were bright red. She stalked past me without a word and shut herself in the bedroom.
I walked slowly to the bedroom door and cracked it. Brittany was in bed, everything but the crown of her head buried under the covers.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Her only reply was a sniffle. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone—not without knowing why she was crying.
“What happened?”
Brittany made a guttural sound from beneath the blankets and rolled over to face the far wall.
Taking a waggle, I pushed the door and let the heavy brass handle hit the wall. “I’m trying to help!”
Brittany threw the covers down to her waist and yelled, “You can’t help!”
She waited another minute for me to leave. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I still had no idea why she was crying.
With her back to me, Brittany wiped her eyes with her palms. Then she closed a nostril with her wrist and sniffed. “I was holding a baby girl today,” she said.
I waggled again and whispered, “Yeah.”
“And she died.”
So far as I knew, this was the first time, in the hundreds of hours Brittany had spent holding doomed infants, that a child had died in her arms.
I wanted to crawl into the bed and hold her but knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I watched her, trying to come up with some comfort apart from the loving words she would not accept. I waited another moment in the hopes that she would roll toward me and wave me into the bed beside her. But Brittany’s only movements were the still irregular swelling and shrinking of her rib cage.
So I backed out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed, watching her for any last-second change of heart even as I admitted to myself that the most helpful thing I could do for Brittany was leave her alone.
•••
SHE WAS ASLEEP—or still in bed, anyway—when Connor arrived that day.
I met my brother at the back door with an index finger over my lips, led him out the French doors that opened from the living room onto my unit’s section of the wraparound porch and asked him to wait there. I returned to the kitchen to pour my brother his drink of choice, bourbon neat, and opened a bottle of light beer for myself. Drinking, like high emotion, hindered my management of my stutter, so I was determined to drink slowly that night. I wasn’t about to risk having a fit in front of Connor.
I handed the glass of bourbon to Connor and closed the French doors.
“Should I come back later?” Connor whispered.
“No, you’re fine,” I said. “Brittany is sleeping. She volunteers at the hospital in the neo-natal intensive care unit, and a baby died while she was holding it.”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Connor said. “Is she in trouble?”
“No, no. None of the babies she works with have more than a few weeks to live.”
“Oh,” Connor said, seeming baffled. “Okay.”
“She’ll be up soon,” I said. “If she isn’t, you’ll meet her in the morning.”
I unfolded an aluminum lawn chair for him, not so much hiding the little waggle I took as drawing attention away from it, like a magician showing an empty palm during a card trick.
“How was the drive?”
“Long,” Connor said. “Longer than it had to be. I got a late start.”
“Did you have an audition or something?”
Connor shook his head and swallowed a mouthful of my cheap bourbon without wincing. “I went on for a friend of mine in a late show last night. The pay was free drinks, and I was very well paid.”
I smiled and took a sip of my beer.
“Then I overslept and got caught in some rush-hour traffic south of Chicago,” he said.
“How long were you driving?”
“What is it? Ten?”
“Almost.”
“Six and a half hours.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
I waggled. “If you want to stay another night to make it worth the drive, you’re welcome to.”
Connor shook his head and sat up in his seat. “Nah. I want to be back onstage tomorrow night.”
He took a deep sip of his bourbon and swallowed, and I poured more beer between my lips.
“So you’re moving to Chicago,” Connor said.
“Yeah.”
“And your girlfriend is coming with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re living together?”
“Yes.”
Connor nodded, the edges of his lips curled downward and his eyes smiling.
“You think that’s a bad idea.”
“No, no,” Connor said. “It sounds fantastic.”
By which he meant it sounded terrible. Though Brittany’s agreeing to join me in Chicago was the signature success of my life to date, for Connor, sharing a small apartment with one woman, day after day, would have been unbearable. Onstage, he could make an audience believe he was a caring husband or an attentive boyfriend. Offstage, Connor wanted no part of intimacy. Even the questions he asked me were electrified prods he waved to keep me from getting too close.
“What’ll you do for work?” Connor asked.
I settled into the fabric straps of my folding chair and waggled. “Voiceover.”
Connor laughed.
“What.”
“What do you mean, ‘what?’ It’s at least a little funny, Simon. If I played a character who spent eighteen years in a hospital bed and decided to try out for the Olympic team after a jog in the park, I’d get laughs. Even on an off night. Fuck, that’s a good idea. I’d write it down except that improvisers don’t write anything down.”
I let a barking dog in the neighbor’s yard fill the space where Connor was expecting a laugh. You don’t go two speechless decades without learning to use silence the way Connor used humor: as a weapon.
“Look,” Connor said, “you should definitely try it. You’ve got a great voice—you’ve got my voice, actually.”
Connor wasn’t wrong. He and I had both been surprised to find, after my eighteen-year silence, that my voice sounded just like his.
“But, so you know, it’s tough