The Voice on the Radio (4 page)

“I’m here, Mom,” he said reassuringly. “I’m right behind you.”

His mother tried to laugh. Tried to act casual. “You don’t have to stay with me, Bri. You can wander off and see what you turn up. Might be something special over in Hardware.”

Brian’s heart broke for his mother. All these years of restrictions and rules, of tension and anxiety: that iron grip she had kept on her children…she could let go.

She knew that. But her body’s reactions weren’t trained to the new life yet.

It occurred to Brian that he and his twin had been pushed so hard into sports because a sport kept them in one place. When your children were at baseball practice, you knew where they were. You knew there was a coach keeping watch. You could breathe.

We’re going to become the family we should have been, thought Brian.

A family that can let go, and have space, and not whip around in stores, sick with fear.

Reeve felt as if he had reached another plane of living, the kind people talked about on the talk shows that weren’t into sex or violence. A plane of joy and light.

The mike was his; he was the mike.

The audience was his; he was theirs.

The milk carton became Janie’s blanket. She used my penknife to slit it open, so she could flatten it out. She carried it under the clip in her blue-cloth three-ring binder. You know the kind. Where you write in ballpoint pen on the cover. After the milk carton, she was still my dizzy redhead, but dizzy meant stumbling and scared. If the milk carton was right, she had been kidnapped when she was three. Janie sort of moved
deeper toward being a three-year-old, as if that way, she could understand. Maybe even remember. It was just a matter of time before she started sucking her thumb. Meantime, a flattened milk carton from Flower Dairy became her blankie
.

Vinnie, Cal and Derek were motionless with listening.

“Well,” said Reeve breezily, knowing the incredible pride that comes from owning an audience, “I really liked that number by Visionary Assassins, didn’t you? Hey, Assassins! Revere is my dorm, too; come visit me. I’ve never met any assassins, let alone assassins with vision. Let’s listen to another song from the Assassins.”

The phone lit up at WSCK. Vinnie answered. Vinnie was a neoconservative who hated all ethnic groups, all causes and all man-and womankind. He made a perfect station manager, since he never worried about hurting anybody’s feelings. Vinnie took four phone calls.

He looked happy, which was not like Vinnie.

Visionary Assassins shrieked on, their lyrics grim and their chords threatening.

The phone lit up again and again.

Vinnie said, “Reeve. The callers want more about Janie.”

CHAPTER
THREE

All talk-ups were automatically recorded on a tape called the air check. It was a reel-to-reel tape, the big, old-fashioned kind you didn’t think existed anymore.

Vinnie, Cal, Derek and Reeve played back Reeve’s hour. With no music in between, it was much shorter than Reeve had expected.

His own voice sounded unfamiliar. He would not have known it was him. He felt uncomfortable, as if that voice were somebody else, using his words.

“You have a great radio voice,” said Vinnie, who despised everybody and their voice. If Vinnie said Reeve had a great radio voice, it was true.

Reeve listened to his great radio voice saying that any minute now, Janie would start sucking her thumb.

Reeve had made that up.

It was a good line. Dramatic. But it wasn’t true. Janie had not acted three. She had acted the way any stricken person would, trying to protect the parents she loved from the truth she feared.

Live, Reeve’s words had felt quite literally airy. The airwaves were his; and the power and the voice were his also.

But now the words were not air. They were permanent. They were, like the name of the station, SCK.

For a moment Janie was there with him, in the comfort posture she liked, tight against his chest, her eyes closed inside his hug.

What would she think of this broadcast?

He felt as if air had entered his gut, not his lungs. It was a sick floater feeling, like a drowning person.

Oh, well, he thought, she’ll never know. Next time I’ll talk about baseball. I’ve followed the Red Sox my whole life, and this year they actually might not screw up, so there’s lots to talk about.

Vinnie said, “When it sounded as if you were finished talking, Reeve, we got
thirty-nine calls
wanting more about Janie!” Vinnie slammed his fist against a flimsy desk. A row of cassettes toppled. High numbers made him joyful. “It’s only your first night!”

Which certainly implied Reeve would get a second night.

A CD by the Fog was coming to a close. Derek Himself signaled for silence. Vinnie, Cal and Reeve moved into the hall so that they could talk. Reeve watched Derek through the glass walls.

Deejays adjusted the mike every time they spoke. The need to touch the mike and be sure of it was strong. Derek actually launched his body with each sentence; a tiny dive into the deep, cold waters of an audience. Derek could not sit when he was talking. Nervous energy kept him on his feet. Vivid expressions crossed his face, as if the audience were in the room.

An hour ago, Reeve had hated Derek. Now he watched avidly, drinking up the techniques of someone who’d been doing this for a long time.

“Okay, now, tomorrow night, Reeve,” said Vinnie, “same format. A little on Janie, some music, another taste of Janie.”

“Or do you think,” said Cal seriously, “that he should just be on two nights a week? Say, Tuesday, Thursday. We don’t want the audience to overdose.”

This is me they’re talking about, thought Reeve.

“Kind of save it,” Vinnie said, nodding, “keep ’em coming back.”

I don’t belong at three
A.M.
I’m prime-time.

The room where Derek was now Himself had been designed for quiet and calm: soft gray carpet coated not just the floors, but also the walls. You could not write on those walls, but you could pin. The wall carpet was carpeted itself with concert posters and sick jokes and photographs of those immortal jocks who had been suspended for foul language or disgusting suggestions.

Everybody wanted to get suspended at least once.

Reeve thought of the suspension Janie Johnson would give him if she knew about this. Janie was a private person. Many a counselor, social worker or friend had expected to gain Janie’s trust, and had failed. “No,” he said awkwardly, “I’d better not do it again. Thanks for giving me a chance, it was fun.”

“What do you mean—it was fun? It was brilliant,” said Vinnie. “Reeve, this is the break we need. I could get a real job if I turn this pathetic, worthless college station into something. Thirty-nine calls? And they weren’t nut cases. They were listeners.” He said the word
listener
reverently, because listeners were precious. “You’ll do another janie tomorrow night.” Vinnie said this as if it were a new noun; an object; a janie.

“I don’t think Janie would like it,” said Reeve.

“You didn’t even change her name to protect the innocent?” said Cal. “Some boyfriend. Listen, Reeve, you got style. Style is rare. You been on the air once and already people recognize your style and they’re calling in for more.”

The word
style
hung nicely, like great clothes.

“How many people could start out ‘Once upon a time’ and make it work?” said Vinnie. “You had great timing. The way you segued into Visionary Assassins—the way you slowed down your speech at the creepy parts—you’re a natural, Reeve.”

I’m a natural, thought Reeve.

Derek Himself put on a CD, turned off the mike and sagged back into his everyday person. Vinnie, Cal and Reeve entered the broadcast room again. Derek scribbled on the playlist taped above the control board, inserted a CD for the next song and checked to be sure he had it on the correct track.

“Come on,” said Vinnie, laughing at Reeve in a good-friends, we’re-all-in-this-together way, “we have a broadcast range measured in city blocks. She’s not gonna hear you down in Connecticut. She’s still in high school! She’s probably thinking about algebra or something. Do another one. Who’s it gonna hurt?”

Reeve was surprised, almost embarrassed, to find himself missing Janie painfully, as if he’d got his fingers caught in a slammed door. It had always been Janie who closed her eyes, but now Reeve’s closed, and she was there, complete with color and heat and voice.

The final chords on the tape disappeared like the back of a parade. Derek became Derek Himself again, jumping into the mike, eyebrows up and earrings swaying, punching On/Offs, sliding sliders, attacking the gooseneck of the mike.

“…winding up another loooooong commercial-free music sweep with Fast Liars!” shouted Derek Himself. “Singing their new recording! ‘Choke Collar’!”

Reeve loved the names of bands. Visionary Assassins. The Fog. Fast Liars. What a great world music was.

“I lied,” said Derek Himself into the mike. “There is no band called Fast Liars and no song called ‘Choke Collar.’ But there would be if I could sing and write.”

This is so much fun, thought Reeve. These guys are so great. This is why I came to college.

“No, what’s really coming up,” said Derek Himself, “is what’s hot, what’s big, what youuuuuuu’ve been on the phone demanding from us. Heeere’s Reeve! With another janie.”

“Shall we look for a six-bedroom house,” Stephen’s father had said uncertainly, when they’d started house-shopping the previous June, “so if Janie ever comes back, she’ll have her own room?”

How Stephen hated it when his father sounded uncertain. He hated it that they had given up calling her Jennie, and everybody had agreed that Jennie really had vanished more than a decade ago and his sister was really and truly Janie Johnson. He hated Jennie for having been kidnapped, for forcing him to lead the most protected life in New Jersey. “If she ever comes back,” Stephen had said, “I’d rather she slept in a coffin.”

“Shut up,” Jodie had said. “If Janie ever comes back, Dad, she can share with me. You know she won’t come for more than a weekend, and my new room has plenty of space for two beds.”

Jodie’s old room had fit two beds, too, but Janie hadn’t wanted hers.

The Springs had found and bought a house within days, because Mom had said, “I can’t wait,” and Stephen knew this was literally true. For twelve terrible years, Mom had waited for the return of her daughter, and she could not keep waiting. “What color do you want your room to be?” she had asked Stephen a dozen times.

“It doesn’t matter, Mom. I’ll be at college. Paint it anything.”

His mother had been crushed. As always, this had crushed Stephen right back. “Actually, I like blue,” he said at last. “Cobalt blue.”

This was the blue of Mrs. Johnson’s magnificent living room. Stephen hoped his mother would not realize this. How stunned Stephen and his brothers and sister were that first strange weekend when they went to Connecticut to visit Janie with her kidnap family. Planning to crash the visit, hoping to crash the Johnsons, they were bewildered to find they liked the Johnsons.

And Stephen liked Reeve, who lived next door to the Johnsons.

Stephen and Reeve were the same age, but Reeve was so much more independent and sophisticated. Reeve at eighteen was just plain older than Stephen at eighteen. Stephen held the kidnapping responsible. How was a guy supposed to grow up in a household where they held your hand every minute of your existence?

Reeve was Stephen’s model. Stephen couldn’t match Reeve for muscles; he wasn’t built that way. He gave up hoping for Reeve’s inches, too, because you didn’t grow after eighteen. But last spring and this summer, miraculously, Stephen had shot up to six-three. His body finally matched the enormous freaky feet attached to his ankles.

It was difficult for Stephen to care about Jennie-Janie or paint chips when the mirror had to be moved higher up on the wall or else his face wouldn’t show.

Reeve had driven Janie down for her last visit before Stephen left for college.

What a moment, when Reeve had first seen Stephen’s new inches. Reeve’s grin had covered his entire face, reminding Stephen of a panting golden retriever. “Wow, Stephen,” Reeve had shouted, “like tall! Like basketball hoop! Like extra-long mattresses!” Reeve had shaken hands with Stephen.

Then came the countdown: four weeks, three weeks, two, one—gone. Takeoff. Airplane wheels leaving the ground, putting behind his family history.

Sure enough, out here in Colorado, Stephen was too long for the regular mattress in the dorm. They had ordered an extra-long bed for him, but it hadn’t come, so Stephen slept with his feet hanging off the end of the bed. He had gotten used to the odd posture of not enough mattress, and he was pretty sure he had grown yet another inch, because doorways threatened his forehead.

Out here in Colorado, nobody had ever heard of the Spring family. Nobody remembered the media attention. Stephen Spring was nobody but another (very tall) freshman on another (very large) campus.

Nobody was holding his hand.

Nobody was terrified if he was five minutes late.

He had no mother’s anguish to worry about, no father’s pain.

Stephen loved to leave his dorm late at night, stand on the parched earth, and look up at the huge, starry sky. He would think: I’ll never go home. I’m done. They’ll make it without me.

I’m free.

“Have you decided what colors you want in your bedroom, Brendan?” asked their mother. She was happily putting away her Price Club booty. She loved stashing a year’s supply of tuna fish.

“Mom,” said Brendan, in his new how-can-I-possibly-be-patient-with-this-dumb-woman? mode, “only girls care about colors.”

“How about you, Bri?” said Mom.

Brian wanted a room just like the dining room at Mr. and Mrs. Johnson’s house in Connecticut. The house in which Janie lived was dramatic and intense. Big strips of window alternated with vivid indigo walls or smash-you-in-the-face blood red walls. Mrs. Johnson knew how to decorate, and Brian had never previously considered such a thing as decoration. Now he saw that his own house was not decorated, merely full of furniture and very lived-in.

He could not say to his mother, “The colors I like are Janie’s mom’s colors. Drive up to Connecticut, will you, check them out, match them perfectly.”

Connecticut meant The Enemy.

And yet, from the first visit, they weren’t the enemy anymore. And after that first visit, for Brian, although it was not right for Janie to prefer her kidnap family to her real family, it was okay.

So he said, “I like red, Mom,” and to prevent her from choosing wallpaper with sailboats or ducks, he said, “Just red paint. Like a barn.” He hoped his twin would not recognize where he got his color choice from.