Her Voice

For six years of marriage, I never made a sound in front of my husband.

He said he was hypersensitive to my voice. Whenever I spoke, his head would split with pain and he’d drop to his knees, shaking.

So for him, I had five surgeries on my vocal cords. The voice that once carried me to the national finals was cut down to a broken rasp.

When I gave birth and the epidural failed, I bit my lip bloody rather than scream.

Then one day, I found a hearing aid he’d dropped, and I put it in my own ear.

There was music playing. My stepsister’s voice.

On the stairs, my six-year-old son was laughing.

“Dad, I want a fake pair too. Then I can pretend I can’t hear the mute either.”

Six years of careful, painful silence, and to the two of them, it had only ever been a game.

That night at dinner, for the first time, I opened my mouth in front of him.

“I want a divorce.”

——

Chapter One: Nora

"Dad, I want a pair too. Fake ones."

I was holding the hearing aid I'd just dug out from between the couch cushions, and I stopped dead in the kitchen doorway.

Out in the hall, six-year-old Theo went up on his toes, plucked the other hearing aid out of his father's ear, and flicked it onto the marble floor like something dirty.

"Then I can say my head hurts whenever Mom talks, like you do. Every time she starts signing at me, I'll just cover my ears and say it hurts, and I'll never have to deal with the mute again. I can just talk to Aunt Sienna on the phone all day."

Callum laughed. Not angry. The kind of laugh you give a kid who's being a little too clever.

"Kids shouldn't wear earbuds all day. It's bad for your ears." He bent down and picked it up. "And what if your mom figures it out?"

"She won't," Theo said, totally sure of himself. "She never figures anything out."

They went upstairs together, laughing.

I stood there a long time. Then I put the hearing aid in my own ear.

Music was playing. A woman's voice, bright and sweet, with a little rasp at the end of each line.

My stepsister, Sienna. Her breakout single, the one the radio played eight times a day.

I pried the casing open with my nail. There was no amplifier inside. Just the chip from a Bluetooth earbud, its little green light blinking on and off, like it was laughing at me.

*  *  *

Callum lost part of his hearing to a high fever when he was a teenager. He'd worn hearing aids ever since.

Three months after our wedding, I was watching a sitcom in the living room and laughed out loud. He went white, clutched his head, and dropped to his knees on the rug. He tore the hearing aids out and flung them across the room.

Dr. Hale called it "frequency-specific auditory hypersensitivity." Damaged nerves could amplify certain sounds out of all proportion, and in Callum's case, the sound happened to be me.

He could hear the whole world. Just not me.

So I chose surgery.

Over four years, I had five operations on my vocal cords. Every time the stitches came out, I'd come home and say his name, very carefully. "Callum." And then I'd watch his brow knot and his fingers go to his temple.

Another failure.

That voice had won me a full scholarship to Juilliard and carried me all the way to the finals of the National Vocal Competition. After the second operation, I couldn't sing anymore. By the fifth, what came out of my throat sounded like sandpaper dragged across sheet metal.

Then I got pregnant. The day Theo was born, the epidural failed. I labored for eleven hours and bit my lip bloody without making a sound, because Callum was standing in the doorway of the delivery room.

Dr. Hale told me hearing loss could be hereditary. So every fall, I took Theo in for a full hearing screening.

And every time, I sat out in the hallway during the tests and prayed, over and over.

I thought that was love.

But the thing that had kept me terrified for years was just a game to the two of them.

*  *  *

Halfway through dinner, Theo put his fork down and rubbed his ear.

"Mom, I think I can't hear very well." He made his mouth move big and slow, so I could read it.

Across the table, Callum kept cutting his chicken. He didn't even look up.

This was their new game.

Yesterday, I would have scooped Theo up and run him to the ER, while the two of them traded looks behind my back, laughing at how easy I was to fool.

I put my knife and fork down and spoke.

"Finish your dinner first."

It was the first time in six years I had made a sound in front of Callum. My throat was dry, and the words scraped out like a rusted hinge.

Theo's face crumpled. Callum's knife paused for half a second, then went on cutting, as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"Mom! Did you forget Dad can't stand your voice?" Theo slapped the table. "And your voice is so ugly! I told you my ears hurt and you don't even care. Were you just faking it all those times you took me to the doctor?"

Six years old, and he already knew exactly where to put the knife.

"My voice is like this because of your father," I said. "If your ears hurt, have him take you to a doctor. I'm busy."

Callum finally looked up, surprised. In six years, even when I had no choice but to speak, I had never said more than three words at a time. If he so much as frowned, I'd be so sick with guilt I couldn't eat for three days.

I had doubted myself. I had doubted the surgeries. I had doubted the doctor. I had never once doubted him.

Callum raised a hand to his temple, wincing.

"Nora, I'm sorry. The second you open your mouth, my head starts pounding again." He sighed, his voice soft and kind. "It's all my fault. But Theo might have inherited my condition. If he can't stand your voice someday either, try not to take it too hard."

It was a beautiful performance. Good enough that I'd spent six years aching for him over nothing.

"I won't take it hard," I said. "It's been six years and you still can't stand my voice. Maybe we're just not right for each other."

"Let's get a divorce."

Callum's hand froze at his temple.

Only Theo lit up.

"Really? Then I'm going with Dad! I'm not going with you. You don't even have a job. How would you take care of me?"

A cheerful electronic chime came from the front hall. Someone outside had entered the door code.

The door swung open and the smell of tuberose perfume drifted in ahead of her. Sienna stood on the threshold in a cream cashmere coat, a box of macarons in her hand, smiling.

"Is this a bad time?"

Theo shrieked and ran to throw his arms around her legs.

"Aunt Sienna! Mom's divorcing Dad! You can be my mom now!"

Sienna stroked his hair and looked over his head at me. Her lips were just starting to move.

I got there first.

"Why," I asked, "do you have the code to my front door?"