Con didn’t hold out his hands, although his fingers continued to move up and down, as if he were playing an invisible piano. His upper lip lifted a few times in an involuntary snarl, and his eyes went through spasms of fluttering. Once, still in that grating, gravelly voice, he said, “I . . . can . . . talk again!”

“Hush!” Jacobs said sternly. His index finger hovered over the switch, ready to kill the current, his eyes on the moving second hand of his watch. After what seemed like an eternity, he pushed the switch and that faint hum died. He unloosed the buckles and pulled the belt over my brother’s head. Con’s hands went immediately to his neck. The skin there was a little flushed, but I don’t think that was from the electric current. It was from the pressure of the belt.

“Now, Con—I want you to say, ‘My dog has fleas, they bite his knees.’ But if your throat starts to hurt, stop at once.”

“My dog has fleas,” Con said in his strange grating voice. “They bite his knees.” Then: “I have to spit.”

“Does your throat hurt?”

“No, just have to spit.”

Claire opened the shed door. Con leaned out, cleared his throat (which produced an unpleasantly metallic sound like rusty hinges), and hocked a loogie that to me looked almost as big as a doorknob. He turned back to us, massaging his throat with one hand.

“My dog has fleas.” He still didn’t sound like the Con I remembered, but the words were clearer now, and more human. Tears rose in his eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. “They bite his knees.”

“That’s enough for now,” Jacobs said. “We’ll go in the house, and you’ll drink a glass of water. A big one. You must drink a lot of water. Tonight and tomorrow. Until your voice sounds normal again. Will you do that?”

“Yes.”

“When you get home, you may tell your mother and father hello. Then I want you to go into your room and get down on your knees and thank God for bringing your voice back. Will you do that?”

Con nodded vehemently. He was crying harder than ever, and he wasn’t alone. Claire and I were crying, too. Only Reverend Jacobs was dry-eyed. I think he was too amazed to cry.

Patsy was the only one not surprised. When we went into the house, she squeezed Con’s arm and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “That’s a good boy.”

Morrie hugged my brother and my brother hugged him back hard enough to make the little boy’s eyes bug out. Patsy drew a glass of water from the kitchen tap and Con drank all of it. When he thanked her, it was almost in his own voice.

“You’re very welcome, Con. Now it’s well past Morrie’s bedtime, and time for you kids to go home.” Leading Morrie to the stairs by the hand, but not turning around, she added: “I think your parents are going to be very happy.”

That was the understatement of the century.

 • • •

They were in the living room, watching The Virginian, and still not talking. Even in my joy and excitement, I could feel the freeze between them. Andy and Terry were thumping around upstairs, grousing at each other about something—business as usual, in other words. Mom had an afghan square in her lap, and was bending over to unsnarl the yarn in her basket when Con said, “Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad.”

Dad stared at him, mouth open. Mom froze, one hand in the basket and the other holding her needles. She looked up, very slowly. She said, “What—?”

“Hello,” Con said again.

She screamed and flew out of her chair, kicking the knitting basket over, and grabbed him the way she sometimes had when we were little, and meant to give one of us a shaking for something we had done wrong. There was no shaking that night. She swept Con into her arms, weeping. I could hear Terry and Andy stampeding down from the second floor to see what was going on.

“Say something else!” she cried. “Say something else so I don’t think I just dreamed it!”

“He’s not supposed to—” Claire began, but Con interrupted her. Because now he could.

“I love you, Mom,” he said. “I love you, Dad.”

Dad took Con by the shoulders and looked closely at his throat, but there was now nothing to see; the red mark had faded. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, Son.”

Claire and I looked at each other, and once more the thought didn’t need to be spoken: Reverend Jacobs deserved some thanks, too.

We explained about how Con was supposed to use his voice sparingly to start with, and when we told about the water, Andy went out to the kitchen and came back with Dad’s oversize joke coffee cup (printed on the side was the Canadian flag and ONE IMPERIAL GALLON OF CAFFEINE), filled with water. While he drank it, Claire and I took turns recounting what had happened, with Con chipping in once or twice, telling about the tingling sensation he’d felt when the belt was turned on. Each time he interrupted, Claire scolded him for talking.

“I don’t believe it.” Mom said this several times. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Con. Several times she grabbed him and hugged him, as if she was afraid he might sprout wings, turn into an angel, and fly away.

“If the church didn’t pay for his heating oil,” Dad said when the tale was finished, “Reverend Jacobs would never have to pay for another gallon.”

“We’ll think of something,” Mom said distractedly. “Right now we’re going to celebrate. Terry, fetch the ice cream we were saving for Claire’s birthday from the freezer. It will be good for Con’s throat. You and Andy put it out on the table. We’ll have all of it, so use the big bowls. You don’t mind, do you, Claire?”

She shook her head. “This is better than a birthday party.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Connie said. “All that water. Then I’m supposed to pray. Reverend said so. The rest of you stay out while I do it.”

He went upstairs. Andy and Terry went into the kitchen to serve out the Neapolitan (which we called van-choc-straw . . . funny how it all comes back). My mother and father subsided into their chairs, staring at the TV without seeing it. I saw Mom grope out with one hand, and saw Dad take it without looking, as if he knew it was there. That made me happy and relieved.

I felt a tug on my own hand. It was Claire. She led me through the kitchen, where Andy and Terry were squabbling over the relative size of the portions, and into the mudroom. Her eyes when she looked at me were wide and bright.

“Did you see him?” she asked. No—demanded.

“Who?”

“Reverend Jacobs, stupid! Did you see him when I asked why he never showed us that electric belt in MYF?”

“Well . . . yeah . . .”

“He said he’d been working on it for a year, but if that was true, he would have showed it off. He shows off everything he makes!”

I remembered how surprised he had looked, as if Claire had caught him out (I had on more than one occasion felt the same expression on my own face when I had been caught out), but . . .

“Are you saying he was lying?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes! He was! And his wife? She knew it! Do you know what I think? I think he started right after you were there. Maybe he already had the idea—I think he has thousands of ideas for electrical inventions; they must pop around in his head like corn—but he hadn’t done anything at all on this one until today.”

“Gee, Claire, I don’t think—”

She was still holding my hand, and now she gave it a hard and impatient yank, as if I were stuck in the mud and needed help to get free. “Did you see their kitchen table? There was one place still set, with nothing on the plate and nothing in the glass! He skipped his supper so he could keep working. Working like a demon, I’d guess from the look of his hands. They were all red, and there were blisters on two of his fingers.”

“He did all that for Con?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. Her eyes never left mine.