The Voiceover Artist (37 page)

“We're even.”

And with those two words, my brother gave me all the apology, forgiveness, and validation I'd ever wanted from him.

 

•••

 

IT WAS A
 little before one in the morning when I steered my father's truck into Leyton's town square. The restaurant where I had worked as a busboy was closed for the night, its windows dark and the parking spaces in front of it empty. At the center of the square, a limestone obelisk, monument to the war dead who'd attended Leyton High, reflected feebly the light of a single flood lamp.

I parked across the street from a vacant storefront that had been a candy store when I was a kid and stepped out of the truck. The wind blew unbridled across the surrounding farmland. I hunched my shoulders up toward my ears.

I passed the unlit window displays of the stationery store and hardware store. The stationer's featured an array of hardback journals, scrapbooking kits, and letterpress greeting cards on a three-tiered landscape of red and green satin, each item carefully arranged on a dusting of artificial snow. The hardware-store owners had pinned their hopes for foot traffic on a narrow plot of matted artificial grass and the merchandise—two rakes, three spades, and a snow shovel—hanging from brackets on whitewashed pegboard.

Two trucks and a car were parked in front of the Four Corners. The hood of the nearer truck reflected the red light of the neon sign in one of the bar's high windows. My mind raced through fantasies I'd nursed since I was a kid—that I'd walk into the bar with the baseball bat we kept in our shed and club the man who had taunted my father and me; that I'd throw an angry cottonmouth into the man's lap as payback for his asking if I were part snake; that I'd stand between the tables and bar, staring in brave, stony silence at anyone who dared to speak to me until one or more of the patrons picked me up by the shirt collar and threw me into the street. Even as I neared thirty years of age, these unlived reprisals were still immediate enough to make me sweat. I took three waggles and reminded myself that things were different than they'd been when I was seven. Now, I could speak for myself.

I pulled open the door and walked in. A couple of guys sat near the back with their arms crossed on the table and their heads over their cocktail glasses. They couldn't have been the men my father and I had encountered the last time I was here. They looked closer to my age than my father's. A woman stared down into the fluorescent glow of the jukebox while a tall young man leaned unsteadily to whisper in her ear, repeatedly bumping the side of her head with the brim of his ball cap.

My father was sitting alone. Years of evenings spent hunched on a barstool seemed to have made him squat, and the hair at the back of his head was grayer and greasier than I remembered. So thick was the air of isolation around my father that I wondered if the bartender—another man I didn't recognize—was rewashing perfectly clean pint glasses at the far end of the bar to avoid standing anywhere near him.

I took a few steps toward the bar. I wanted to see my father's face. His lips were thin, and his mouth hung open as he stared up at the television. I watched his eyelids close slowly—I thought he might be falling asleep—but they opened up again at the same sluggish pace. The man I'd fought for years in silence had been worn down by time, liquor, and a loneliness that was, at least in part, of my making.

I pulled out the stool next to my father's and sat down, fixing my gaze on the TV. He turned his head to look at me and, from the corner of my eye, I watched him try to decide if I was real. Then my father returned his attention to the television and waited for me to tell him why I'd come here and what I wanted from him. But I didn't say anything. I kept my seat on the stool next to his, and we watched two football teams from universities out west play to an outcome that didn't matter to either of us. That we did these things at the Four Corners made them a reconciliation of the only kind my father and I could have achieved: the kind that didn't require either of us to say a word.

Acknowledgments

 

The Queensboro Realty Company did, in fact, pay for airtime on New York City's WEAF to advertise the Hawthorne Court development. Brief excerpts of the original radio broadcast appear in this book. Matthew Lasar's article, published at arstechnica.com in April
2010
under the title “AT&T's forgotten plot to hijack the US airwaves,” and Elizabeth McLeod's piece, published in
1998
under the title “From Hawthorne to Hard-Sell,” gave me valuable insight into the Hawthorne Court broadcast and its impact on radio.

Thomas H. White's scholarly paper, published in January
2000
and titled “‘Battle of the Century:' The WJY Story,” increased the breadth and depth of my understanding of Jack Dempsey's fight with Georges Carpentier. White's quotation of the broadcast's climactic call is paraphrased in this book. I also reviewed one of White's sources, an article titled “Voice-Broadcasting the Stirring Progress of ‘The Battle of the Century,'” originally published in a June
1921
issue of a magazine called
The Wireless Age
. Both White's piece and the
Wireless Age
story have been republished at earlyradiohistory.us.

My appreciation for long-form improvisational comedy crystallized the night I saw T.J. Jagodowski and David Pasquesi invent credible (and hilarious) characters and scenes in front of an audience. Since that night, I have had the privilege and pleasure of taking in dozens of wildly funny characters and scenes created onstage by my brother, Pat Reidy, who made crucial contributions to the brief renderings of improvisation in this book, all of which were drafted and revised without a live audience. T.J., David, and Pat do instantly and in front of thousands what I can scarcely manage to achieve on the page with privacy and endless opportunities to edit. My hat is off to them.

Writers don't turn blank pages into novels and manuscripts into books without a lot of help. Thanks to: Jac Jemc and Beau Golwitzer, who kindly read and commented on early drafts; Gretchen Kalwinski, whose thoughtful editing proved the springiest of springboards for the novel's improvement; Jacob Knabb, Naomi Huffman, Catherine Eves, Alban Fischer, Ben Tanzer, Victor David Giron, and everyone at Curbside Splendor; my friends and colleagues at closerlook; my teachers and mentors, who know who they are; Robert Duffer, Mike Sacks, Ryan Bartelmay, Rene Ryan, Kevin Leahy, Patricia McNair, Nami Mun, Claire Zulkey, Steve Delahoyde, Mark Bazer, Liz Mason, Ryan Mason, the Trap Door Theatre Company, and Constance A. Dunn.

Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family and friends; to my parents, brothers and sister for their love and support; to Donovan and Dawson for loving one another as brothers; and to Tiffany, who gave me much of the time I took to write this novel and enriched my art with her own.

Dave Reidy
's fiction has appeared in
Granta
and other journals. His first book, a collection of short stories about performers called
Captive Audience
, was named an Indie Next Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association. Reidy works at closerlook, inc., where he is the VP of Creative. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM CURBSIDE SPLENDOR
 

 

ON THE WAY

STORIES BY CYN VARGAS

 

“
In these fresh, sensual stories, Vargas bravely explores family, friendship and irreconcilable loss, and she will break your heart nicely.
”
—
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

 

Cyn Vargas's debut collection explores the whims and follies of the human heart. When an American woman disappears in Guatemala, her daughter refuses to accept she's gone; a divorced DMV employee falls in love during a driving lesson; a young woman shares a well-kept family secret with the one person who it might hurt the most; a bad haircut is the last straw in a crumbling marriage. In these stories, characters grasp at love and beg to belong—often at the expense of their own happiness.

 

 

 

ONCE I WAS COOL

ESSAYS BY MEGAN STIELSTRA

 

“
Stielstra is a masterful essayist. From the first page to the last, she demonstrates a graceful understanding of the power of storytelling.
”
—
ROXANE GAY

 

In these insightful, compassionate, gutsy, and heartbreaking personal essays, Stielstra explores the messy, maddening beauty of adulthood with wit, intelligence, and biting humor. The essays in
Once I Was Cool
tackle topics ranging from beating postpartum depression by stalking her neighbor, to a surprise run-in with an old lover while on ecstasy, to blowing her mortgage on a condo she bought because of Jane's Addiction. Or, said another way, they tackle life in all of its quotidian richness.