The Voiceover Artist by Dave Reidy

Author:Dave Reidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing
Published: 2015-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

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THE WARMTH OF the welcome I receive from the people of St. Asella’s takes me by surprise. Before mass, I am stopped every few steps by someone standing up at the end of a row to grasp my hands, ask about my trip and, at a low whisper, update me on her life. The bigger surprise, though, is how easily my own warmth rises to meet theirs. At the airport in Marrakech, I reduced the people of St. Asella’s to their problems. But in the face of their inelegant kindness, the humanity of these people is harder to ignore, and it stirs my own. Before I have reached the back of church, I am convinced again that what I said to Nicola is still true: There is a community here, and it’s worth something to all of its members. Even to me.

Mrs. Landry, with her husband standing unsteadily at her side, meets me at the mouth of the side aisle. She raises her hand to pat my arm, gently.

“It’s good to see you,” she says.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Mrs. Landry.”

“Did you meet the new lector?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, but what I’ve heard is lectern, and I look over my shoulder expecting to see a new podium at which I will do my singing.

“He’s by the doors,” Mrs. Landry says.

“Oh,” I say, and when I see a young man in a sport coat standing by the church door with a big red book in his hand, I put her meaning together. “I’ll introduce myself.”

My return to St. Asella’s is proving full of surprises. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the new lector, Simon Davies, is really good. The quality of his voice and performance oblige me to listen to what I have been ignoring since I was a girl. And as I listen, I get an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh. The high level of quality Simon brings to the amateurish proceedings at St. Asella’s is comically out of place. It’s as if I am flipping through channels and happen across a network news anchor on cable access recapping a three-car parade with his customary gravity. As he reads to us, I get the sense that we are a tribe of two, Simon and me: we have some of the talent and appeal necessary to make one’s way in the world, and yet, here we are, volunteering at shabby St. Asella’s. I allow myself to imagine that Simon Davies will help me help the needy of St. Asella’s find a foothold in the world. I go so far as to envision a day in which parishioners might go to Simon, instead of me, with their problems. By the time he completes the second reading, I have plans for him. But Simon has other plans for himself and for me.

On the sunlit sidewalk after mass, I am greeted by more people and made to summarize my trip to Morocco several times. It has been a month since I have had any contact with the people of St.

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