He used to make me do this voice. He’d say please baby do the voice. And at the beginning I would do it every time he asked. I’d come up with something off the top of my head and say it out loud and then he’d laugh and I’d laugh too. Once I used the voice to say “Jim and I knew the divorce would ruin her.” Neither of us knew a Jim. And there wasn’t a divorce or somebody to ruin. But when I did the voice I plucked words from the sky and what came out of my mouth after that wasn’t up to me.
◆
It started the day we met. We were at this old bar. It was daytime, but you couldn’t tell unless somebody walked in or out. Apart from the bartender and the guy doing repairs on something electrical, I forget what, we were the only two people in there. I was making him guess where I was from. He said Delaware. I said why Delaware and he said it was the most neutral place he could imagine. Then he added you don’t have a single clue in your voice. He said it like he was on his deathbed. He could’ve said it in a way that made me feel mysterious. He didn’t say it like that. He said it like I was the most disappointing person he’d ever met in his life. I didn’t know what to say back, so I finished my glass of gin with melted ice and I looked up at the corner TV that always played old movies. On the screen there were two beautiful people. A man and a woman. The woman had big curly hair. She was standing. And the man sat in an armchair with a smirk on his face, a cigar in his mouth. The sound wasn’t on the TV, but I could read the words. The woman was standing over him and said You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure me out. And then the man looked afraid.
So I turned to him. Not the man on the screen but the one next to me, and I said You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure me out. I didn’t sound like myself when I said it. I don’t know who I sounded like. I guess I sounded like what I imagined the woman on the TV sounded like. But the man next to me didn’t look afraid. Instead he just smiled odd and said what was that?
I couldn’t bring myself to repeat it so I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. What had possessed me to say something like that to a perfect stranger? Who did I think I was?
When I got back I expected him to be gone but instead he’d ordered us another round. We ended up sleeping together that night and when I tell this story to people they interrupt at this part to say “and the rest is history” but I don’t necessarily agree with that.
That night we told each other facts about ourselves: middle names. Siblings. Had we ever broken a bone. Had we ever been in love. We picked up a fifth of Jim Beam at the corner store and he bought me a keychain with my name on it. We drank almost the whole bottle in his bedroom and he put on a record that he said changed his life. I slept with one foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning.
◆
In the winter, he’d have these awful depressive episodes . Anything could cause them: a bad dream, official-looking mail. I could always tell when they happened because he’d stop speaking and instead would write things down on sticky notes around the house: “Out of bread.” “Faucet leaking again.” He’d watch whatever’s on TV all day and smoke cigarettes inside and wouldn’t eat and nothing made him laugh. I remember thinking the internet could save his life. Our lives. I’d ask it everything: depression symptoms, depression man signs, depressed out of nowhere, depressed or just sad, depressed how to help, depressed when to stop helping, depressed what to say, depression how to say what to say, depression how not to say what to say, depression real or not real, depression genetic, depression choice. I read it all. I was the perfect woman. I did everything I read. But none of it worked.
◆
And one day I was really fed up. He was sitting on the couch staring straight ahead at nothing of course. I was in the kitchen, scrubbing an oil stain out of one of his favorite shirts. I scrubbed and scrubbed until finally, it came out. I walked over to show him, hoping he’d be happy.
But instead he said Huh and made an expression I’d once seen in a dog food commercial where this dog owner looks at the ingredients on his dog food and he sees that everything is all natural or organic and his eyebrows go up just a little and he does a small nod and I remember thinking it looks like that man could really take or leave the organic dog food, like it didn’t really matter much to him either way. I remember thinking if I was the director of that commercial, I’d say let’s try it differently. This time a little more awe.
That’s how he looked at me. Take or leave it. Take or leave me. Like I said I was really fed up. And all I could hear in my head was You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure me out. You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure me out.
So I told him I was leaving for good. Never coming back. I started packing up all my things—underwear, shampoo, sleep shirts, the hairdryer, the fancy candle I’d just bought—into a ShopRite bag that still had onion skins and receipts in the bottom. Secretly I knew it wasn’t the kind of bag that was meant to hold a life. He must have known it too because when I eventually looked at him he didn’t look worried that I was leaving. He was smiling and said come here and pulled me down next to him and started kissing me everywhere and said you’re crazy you know that and for a while at least he stopped staring straight ahead at nothing.
◆
The first time he asked me to do the voice I pretended I didn’t know what he meant. We were driving through bad weather. Violent rain falling in sheets. He said he wanted to be distracted, that it would help him drive better. He always wanted the opposite of what you’d expect someone to want. When he said please baby do the voice I was embarrassed and couldn’t look him in the eye. I watched the rain and said what voice. He said you know what I mean. The radio was on and this song we both loved started playing so we turned it up and when the song was over I did the voice to make him happy. I just read out loud what I saw: Exit 64 0.8 miles ahead on the right. Exxon, Love’s, BP, Jesus: “He’s Coming,” Clemente’s Crab House, Dairy Queen, Cash 4 Gold, Proud Parents of a Hamilton Elementary Honor Roll Student, Right Lane Ends, Yield to Oncoming Traffic, Moonlite Diner, Johnson Junk Removal, Kitty’s Sculpture Garden, Free Firewood, Dog on Premises, Agua Linda Taqueria, No Left Turn, Vote YES on 19, Ira Kaufman Personal Injury Law: “Only Pay if We Win.”
He sat quiet the whole drive but he had his hand on my leg and he’d squeeze it with my every syllable. And I knew that meant I was doing something right.
◆
I once had a friend ask me if the voice was like an accent. She would tell me these long detailed stories about how her husband won’t have sex with her unless she talks like a British news reporter. I told her it wasn’t like that. But anytime I tried to explain it or put it into words it sounded wrong and not like my life. In my head it wasn’t meant to be explained. That was love to me: a private odd thing you couldn’t do or say in front of anyone else.
Until one day I heard him on the phone, saying “there’s this crazy thing she does” and he did what I think was an impression of me: “What are you thinking about? Stop looking at nothing. Eat something. Say something. Do you understand me?” and he was laughing in a way you wouldn’t want the man you love laughing about you.
◆
Years have passed since then. I don’t like phrasing it that way: years have passed. But that’s what happened. They passed. I had to marry someone who doesn’t know about the voice and for the most part I don’t think about him. But this morning I went to the laundromat and they were playing an old movie on the TV. I saw two beautiful people whose faces I recognized. Only the man wasn’t smirking in an armchair and the curly-headed woman wasn’t standing above him. They were outside in some beautiful place. They were sitting on these giant rocks that jutted out into the sea. It looked like either the end or beginning of something. The volume on the TV was turned way up because of how loud the dryers were. When the woman spoke I could hear her. I can’t remember what she said but she didn’t sound a thing like I’d imagined.