An American Childhood - Annie Dillard [37]
Molly possessed a dingy blanket, which she trailed behind her like a travois on her crawls. During this period, she held the belief that when she herself could not see, she was invisible. Consequently, in order to hide, she draped her head in this blanket. When it was time for her nap, we found her a pyramidal woolly mound on the pantry floor, a veritable monadnock, her fat foot protruding from the blanket’s edge. She barely breathed from suspense. It broke her heart to be discovered and bundled away, day after day; she tried hard to hide ever more motionless.
When the spirit of Lister seized Mother, she flung the appalling blanket into the washing machine. Molly wept inconsolably, so Mother carried her to the basement to let her watch the thing go around in the dryer. Molly plumped down intently, straight-backed, before the dryer as if it were a television screen; her big head rolled around and around on her tiny neck. Mother, Amy, and I watched from the top of the stairs, trying not to let her hear us. Finally, Mother cut the blanket in two so she could wash one easily, and that particular joke was over.
After Father got back from his river trip, he needed something to do. He had an income, but the days themselves, if not the coffers, needed filling. So he joined as its business manager an offbeat outfit that made radio spots in its recording studio, and also rented the studio to all comers. The company was small enough so that he got to do some acting, which he loved. He practiced around the house, saying in rotund tones, for my amusement, “Hello, Horatio.” The line came from a story I liked, about one of his friends’ acting lessons at the American Academy in New York. The budding actors stood in the opened window over Fifty-sixth Street and intoned, over and over again, “Hello, Horatio.” The idea was to say “Hello, Horatio” not loudly but deeply, in a voice so resonant that passersby far below would look up. That was the test. The window was high above the street. Did anyone look up? Then the actor had boomed his speech well. Once I was playing mumblety-peg with my friend Pin Ford on the side lawn under the buckeye trees when I heard it from my parents’ upstairs window: “Hello, Horatio!” I looked right up.
Pittsburgh was a great town for radio—KDKA was the world’s first commercial radio station—and a great town for KDKA’s funny-voiced radio characters, like Omicron, a little fellow from outer space. Father’s senior partner in the recording studio was the voice of some of these characters. Father ran the business end of the enterprise, and sales, and in those years he had a good time. The people there called him Paco. He did some straight advertising spots, and got called from his desk to help out with crowd noises—what radio people call Walla Walla talk. A mere two people, he said, could sound like a great crowd—a lively cocktail party or a muted full house at the theater—if they continuously muttered, “Pork chops and Lyonnaise potatoes.”
This was not the way any other man we knew lived. Our father had been reared, for instance, cheek by jowl with Oma’s best friend’s son, Edgar Speer. They played together summers at Lake Erie; they spent holidays together. Our family still spent some holidays with the Speers and their boys, but now Edgar Speer—Uncle Ed—was pretty busy; he was executive vice-president of U.S. Steel, and soon would be president, and then chairman. “Edgar’s, er, promotion,” Oma called the last, uncomfortable.
Much later, Father and his company got involved in the making of a low-budget local horror movie, in which Father played a scientist interviewed on television. The name of the movie was Night of the Living Dead. It was a startling success both in Europe and in the United States. First Mother was angry that he