“That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Ray was in the garage, sorting screws by length. Ray liked sorting. He liked the ritual: metric from imperial, hex-head from pan-head. A kind of moral geometry. As if arranging screws by thread pitch could inoculate him against the soft chaos of forgetting things such as birthdays, why he opened the fridge, or whether the fridge light was actually turning off when it was closed. He had no real use for most of the screws. He just liked knowing where things were. It made him feel, in a quiet way, accounted for. He sometimes thought if someone saw his garage—saw how carefully he’d labeled the jars—they might mistake him for someone with OCD. Or worse, someone with some kind of plan.

The phone buzzed. Unknown number. 90-second voicemail. At first, he assumed it was spam. Then he heard the voice. It was the Mime.

Voicemail #1 – 3:24 PM
Ray.
It’s Marceau.
You don’t know me, but you married my wife. My former wife.
I’ve broken my silence. Not for her. For you.
You should know the weight of her gestures.
You should know what it means when she rubs her right thumb against the inside of her left wrist. It means doubt.
Anyway. Hello.
I hope this isn’t too inconvenient.

Ray listened to the message twice, then deleted it. Three hours later, he fished it out of his recently deleted folder and saved it in a new folder he named as “Voicemails (M).”

He wasn’t sure what unsettled him more: the fact that the man had spoken after all these years, or the idea that someone else might understand his wife’s silences better than he did.

He would never say it aloud, but he sometimes suspected his wife had been happier before him. Not outwardly. But in the way she moved.

The voicemail wasn’t threatening. It was worse, it was intentional. Distinctly measured.

Marceau left another the next day. And another. After the third, he stopped deleting them. He listened while driving. While folding laundry. While microwaving the same cup of coffee four times in a span of five hours. He didn’t tell his wife.

Voicemail #3 – 1:41 AM
Tonight I walked an invisible dog named Regret.
It peed on everything.
I’ve tried painting again. Everything looks like a hallway. She used to say I had a talent for    silence. Funny how a talent becomes a punishment.

The voicemails had a tone he couldn’t place. Not exactly sentimental. Just self-aware in a way he wasn’t used to. They made him feel like someone was keeping a diary about him. He didn’t tell his wife because he didn’t know what this was yet. A prank, maybe. Or a mistake. But there was something strangely gratifying about hearing the man’s voice. Not the content—he talked about wrists, and doubt, and something about “gesture ethics.” But the fact of it. That he broke a silence just to speak to Ray. It made him feel… responsible. Of what exactly is less of an interesting thought. He didn’t know if Marceau had ever spoken aloud during their relationship. He suspected not. Which made the voicemails feel more like a haunting than a message.

Sometimes Ray would pause one halfway through and stare at the wall. Not in reflection, just to rest his eyes. But when he played the rest of the voicemail, it always landed differently.

*

He hadn’t known the mime’s name until that first voicemail. Marceau. His wife never mentioned it. She referred to her ex vaguely, as if he were an inconvenience from a former apartment. Someone who lived inside an anecdote that no longer applied.

Once, he’d asked what her ex did for a living. She said, “He doesn’t speak.”

Ray thought she was joking. “Like, literally?”

She shrugged. “Mime. Or used to be.”

He nodded, then changed the subject. Not because he wasn’t curious, but because it felt like opening a door in someone else’s house. Over time, the not-knowing solidified. It became their version of trust: mutual evasion.

He knew she used to live in Montreal. That she disliked musicals. That she once stayed up all night repainting a rental bathroom navy blue and then lied to the landlord. He didn’t know how long they’d been together. Or why they ended. Or whether she’d left him or he’d left her or if something else entirely had gone silent between them.

Once, early on, he asked about her past. They were standing in front of a microwave, waiting for a bowl of soup to finish spinning.

“Were you married long?”

She made a gesture, like she was swatting at a fly only she could see. “We lived together. It was a courthouse thing.”

“Oh,” he said.

The microwave beeped like it was trying to warn them of something. She opened the door, stirred the soup without checking the temperature, like someone confident in their ability to endure mild disappointment.

That was the only time it came up. Her past lived in passive voice. Things were “complicated,” or “not the right time.” Certain cities were “strange for me.” Old photos were never shown. He didn’t press. She wasn’t cruel. She smiled when he refilled her water glass. She asked about his mother. They had sex with the lights on.

But sometimes, when she touched his face, it felt like she was checking for resemblance. Like she was comparing him to something she didn’t talk about anymore. She would look at him mid-sentence with a sort of affectionate exasperation, and he’d wonder if that expression had a name in another language. He told himself it was better not to know. That curiosity was the first stage of failure.

*

One night, he walked into the backyard and tried to mime answering a phone. He mimed listening, nodding, then hanging up with a decisive little click.

It felt stupid.

He did it again the next night.

Ray started rehearsing miming more often. Subtler gestures. Less shtick. Less hat. Sometimes no props at all. He preferred when it felt pointless.

By the fifth voicemail, Ray had started taking notes. He told himself it was ironic. A way of cataloguing absurdity. “Mime breaks 20-year silence to address the guy who replaced him.” It had a documentary edge. A kind of structure.

But late at night, when his wife was asleep and he couldn’t stop thinking about having to call back his ailing father or if the amount of calcium buildup in the kettle would eventually poison him, he’d replay the voicemails. Simply for the cadence. There was something clean about them. Like someone speaking from the bottom of a well.

 *

He started mimicking Marceau in the backyard everyday. Not as a humiliation ritual. Not as art. Not even as a means to try to understand Marceu. He told himself it was like stretching. Emotional calisthenics. The body rehearsing something the mind wasn’t ready to admit. He didn’t try to “act.” He just let himself move through the motions.

A slow reach.
A turn away.
A hand curled around nothing.

One evening, he rehearsed a scene from Voicemail #4. It involved a folding chair, a paper cup, and a vague sense of needing to leave without knowing why. He did it at dusk, not intending to be seen. But the Harpers were out again. She held a watering can while side eyeing Ray in the distance. He sat in one of those chairs that folds like a mouth. He could feel them watching. Not impolitely, just with…interest. The next night, he noticed someone else. The young couple from two doors down. Standing behind their screen door, holding beers, watching while trying not to be seen.

This was a routine he repeated often: folding chair, cup, gaze over shoulder while sporting a trench coat. A silent performance of someone deciding to stay when leaving would be easier.

Each night, a new reenactment. Always at twilight. Always facing a window.

Sometimes, after his wife went to bed, Ray would do a slow mime of walking away. Then stop mid-step. Frozen in the act of departure. Not leaving. Not staying. Just standing there, in potential. At some point, it stopped feeling like an imitation. He wasn’t doing Marceau. He was working from a score no one else knew about.

Voicemail #6 – 10:12 AM
I saw you in a dream. You were trying to mime a shrug, but it came out as surrender instead of defeat.
You were very good.
I applaud your wrists.

Somewhere, in his body, something opened up. Not related to performance. Not confession. A kind of permission.

Voicemail #9 – 5:56 AM
There are gestures I invented just for her.
A shoulder drop for jealousy.
A hand twitch for restraint.
Once, I cupped my palm in the air and she said, “Stop collecting what you can’t name.”
Ray, how do you touch something that doesn’t want to be remembered?

He started noticing the way his wife touched her coffee mug before speaking. The way she glanced at the floor when he asked about the future. Before, he’d taken it as evasion. Now, it felt choreographed. Not dishonest—just learned behavior. Marceau hadn’t just been silent. He’d made silence a language that they shared. And she, Ray realized, had become fluent in not being heard.

*

Years earlier, Marceau had once mimed a birthday dinner for her in silence: three courses, candlelight, a linen napkin he kept pulling from his coat sleeve. She’d smiled politely, waiting for the punchline. There wasn’t one.

Afterward, she’d said, “Can you stop performing now?”

He nodded. Held up an invisible check. Walked it to an invisible register. Waited for change.

“Seriously,” she said. “Can we just eat?”

They were already eating. They’d finished eating. There was nothing on the table except a bowl of grapes and two glasses of lukewarm water.

He took a grape, placed it in his palm like a small offering. She didn’t take it. He ate it, slowly, and the juice ran down his chin. She laughed at him with disdain.

“You’re sad.” she said.

He didn’t respond. Not out of principle, but because he didn’t know how to mime: I’m trying, and you’re right, and I hate that you’re right. That night, she slept in sweatpants and turned the other way. He mimed a storm quietly under the blanket. Lightning with his fingers. Thunder with the rhythmic tapping of his wrist against the mattress. She never turned back around to watch him.

Voicemail #11 – 3:33 PM
I think this is the last one.
Just… I’ve run out of silence to convert.
Whatever you’re doing with it now... I guess it’s yours.
Anyway. Thank you, I think.

The voicemails stopped.

Ray checked his phone obsessively for a few days. Then he would forget to. He stopped performing for the neighbors. Folded the trench coat away, deleted the playlist. He sometimes found himself wondering if the voicemails had ever really been for him. Maybe Marceau had needed a witness as much as he once needed an audience. Maybe Ray had played his part too. The mute observer. The new husband. The stand-in. There was something oddly mutual about the whole thing. Like they’d both been speaking to something in the other neither could name.

Sometimes, late at night, when his wife was already asleep, he stood in front of the dark kitchen window and practiced the gesture.

A hand extended.
A half-step back.
A nod, as if to say I don’t know how to say it.

One night, he mimed pouring a glass of water. Carefully. Two hands, weight balanced and with a heightened sense of self-awareness of his posture, like it mattered.

Behind him, the fridge opened. She stood there holding the Brita, barefoot, unspeaking. She poured him a glass of water. She watched him for a moment. Smiled, faintly. Not warmly. Not cruelly. Just in the way you smile at something that has finally stopped glitching.