Amy Grimm—I heard her voice before I met her.
My house was quiet, a rare moment. My young son was sitting on the floor occupied and content with his thumb, my daughters outside. I was nervous to make the phone call, but needed to know if I had been accepted. There was a decision to make about a job.
I did everything in my application to present myself as artistic and sophisticated. Complex, if a little modish. Did I sell my soul to the devil and neglect to mention the scope of my family—four children? Absolutely.
As it happened, the moment I introduced myself to Amy, my son commenced his earsplitting bawl, so pitched and blaring I lost her voice and so abandoned ship, running with the phone to the room at the top of the stairs, closing the door. I could hear the girls returning to the house; and, while this eased my anxiety around my son sticking a slobbery finger into an electric socket, their presence only escalated the moment as they launched into full-bellied, piercing shrieks over their brother’s tears. This was the horrid game the girls enjoyed when their brother cried, their shrill and deafening howls delighting and distracting him, making him laugh. The game, however, amounted to the most horrible sounds ever made in the history of the world.
So much for sophisticated.
“You have children?” Amy asked. Every Wally knows Amy’s voice, a sweet generosity tinged with playfulness.
