The Voiceover Artist Read Online Free Page B

some kind of show.”
    â€œHe’s not doing a show tomorrow night?”
    I waggled. “I guess he’s taking a night off.”
    I understood that Brittany, in her way, had given me a chance to tell her something meaningful about my relationship with my brother. I could have confessed that our longstanding refusal to apologize to each other for anything made things between us difficult. I could have admitted that I hadn’t invited Connor to visit me in Carbondale until a week before, that I’d withheld the invitation until I was certain that Brittany and I were moving to Chicago and that my brother’s one-night stay would give me every occasion to unveil to him a life that was already better—and more promising—than either of us had imagined my life could ever be. I could have told Brittany I loved my brother but was plagued every day by my fear that his dazzling talent for improvisation and comedy, and the success his gifts stood to bring him, would put him beyond the reach of my ambition and my love. But I didn’t say any of these things. I answered Brittany’s question as if what she really wanted to understand were the scheduling challenges of the working comic actor, and she didn’t push me for more.
    â€œSo what’s he like?” Brittany asked, sliding her hand under the blanket and scratching her bare thigh with the crescent-moon whites of her fingernails.
    At that question, my mind generated a cloud of adjectives that described my brother: talented, charismatic, dedicated, pained, ambitious, impatient, selfish, determined, unflappable, amazing. Getting a little uncomfortable with my silence, I waggled and picked one.
    â€œHe’s amazing.”
    Brittany laughed at me. “He’s amazing ?”
    I shrugged again. “He is.”
    â€œHow is he amazing?”
    â€œWell, for one thing, he creates characters and they’re real. Like, believable.”
    â€œWhat else?”
    She was daring me to make her care about Connor’s visit.
    â€œHe can make almost anyone laugh,” I said.
    â€œAmazing!” Brittany said, mocking me with her smile, which was somehow made even sexier by her sarcasm. “What else?”
    â€œHe knows me better than anyone.”
    The wide, brown eyes Brittany had inherited from her Laotian mother narrowed and darkened.
    I waggled again and made a weak attempt to undo my mistake. “But not as well as you know me.”
    Pulling her feet away, Brittany rolled onto her side and wrapped the blanket tightly around her. I recognized a pattern it had taken me months to identify and understand: when she was hurt even a little, Brittany became furious with herself, incredulous that after all she had been through and how little she expected of anyone, she could still be negatively affected by another person’s words or actions. The pain surprised her every time. I’d stopped wondering why Brittany couldn’t see that her vulnerability, like my stutter, could be chased away but never banished. This was another lesson about personal connections that I’d learned the hard way: that my seeing Brittany as she was—and loving her—could never guarantee that she’d see and accept herself.
    I put my hand on the bump in the blanket that was her ankle.
    â€œDon’t,” she said, kicking me.
    I sat in purposeful silence, letting her anger burn off. To scatter the tension surrounding my vocal folds, I took one waggle, and another, and then a third.
    Then I said, “Connor knew me when I couldn’t talk.”
    This was where I should have started. Connor had seen me struggle and stew in my long silence. He had witnessed my constant, soundless screaming match with our father. No one, except our mother, had known the silent me—for eighteen years, the only me—better than Connor had.
    â€œHe knew me then, and you know me now ,” I continued. “Now, nobody knows me