Silent to the Bone (10 page)

When the tape finished playing, he sat up and made a whirling motion with his finger. He wanted me to play it again. And I did. This time he kept his ear low the whole time it played, and at that same point in the tape, he pounded with his fist—only once and not real hard—on the table. I knew there was something there that needed to be heard. I rewound the tape and asked him if he wanted me to play it again. He shook his head no.

I took the pack of flash cards from my pocket and put it on the table. The one marked TAPE was on top, faceup. Branwell's eyes fell on that card immediately, and he blinked twice very rapidly. Still nervous, still upset by his reaction to my mentioning the bathroom invasions, I asked, “The tape?” He blinked twice. “You want me to investigate the tape?” He blinked twice again, very rapidly. You could say he blinked in anger. “Good,” I said, but didn't mean it.

Trying to put the best face I could on a very bad session, I said, “The tape it will be. I'll check on the
tape.” I tumbled everything—cards, cassette, cassette player—back into my backpack and waved good-bye. Which Bran didn't see, since he was already heading back to his quarters.

I left the Behavioral Center with the tape and with a very bad feeling. I should have found out if it was God or the Devil who was in the details of Vivian's deposition. But I had blown it. I couldn't go back to that topic. Not yet. Maybe never.

I had to do something with the tape. I knew that there were ways to improve the sound by bringing up the volume on the good parts and cutting out the static in other parts. I suspected that it was done on a computer, and if it was, Margaret would either know how to do it or where to get it done.

As I was leaving, the guard at the front desk asked me if I had made any progress. If you consider that I had gotten a violent response out of Branwell, you could say yes. But if you consider that he was still not speaking, and I still didn't know why, you would have to say no.

“Too soon to tell,” I replied. I was becoming an expert at saying nothing by saying something: excellent training for politicians or talk-show hosts.

As soon as I got home, I called Margaret and told her about the tape. She explained that there is a way to enhance a tape, but it has to be sent away to a lab to do it. Then she thought a minute more. “There's a sound studio in the music department at the university. Maybe they have the equipment to do it. I'll call you back.”

Margaret called me back to tell me that there was good news and bad news. The good news was that the school did have the equipment. The bad news was that the head of the sound lab said that he couldn't get to it until after Christmas. There was a long pause on the phone before she added, “You could ask your father if he could use his influence.”

“He's your father, too.”

“Remind him when you ask,” she said, and hung up.

I guess Margaret and I will always disagree about our father. When I told him what I needed and why I needed it, he was not only willing to help, he was eager to. When I gave him the tape, he asked if it was a first generation copy—meaning if this was a copy from the original tape or a copy of a copy. I didn't know. I told him to call Margaret to find out.

I heard only his end of the call. He did not sound
like a father calling his daughter. He sounded like his other self—the university registrar calling for information. I imagined Margaret's end of the conversation, and I could guess that she sounded like a telemarketer giving details of the carpet-cleaning special of the week.

The good news was that it was first generation and good enough for the music department to digitize (or whatever they had to do). I only heard Dad's end of the conversation when he called the head of the student sound studio. He said, “I understand,” three times. And then he said that he wouldn't be asking if these were ordinary circumstances. He said, “I understand,” twice more. He also said that he would be willing to take the tape to a commercial lab, but he knew that the work done at the university was much better. And then he said, “I'll drop it by first thing in the morning.” One more “I understand,” and then, “I'll pick it up Monday afternoon.”

I thanked him and told him that I would tell Margaret how helpful he had been. “That won't be necessary,” he said.

It was the first Saturday in December, the day that Margaret asked me to go to the mall with her so that we could buy Christmas presents for the family. I had never had this kind of date with her before. Margaret is half-Jewish and doesn't do much about Christmas, but Hanukkah was only a week away, and she liked to give out her presents then.

Margaret didn't see clients on Saturday, but usually spent a half day in the office catching up on the paperwork. She had started out as a one-woman business, but now she has three others working for her. She favors hiring women. Most of her clients are doctors and dentists. She develops software that helps them manage patient care and accounting. Last year she developed
a system for the Clarion County Hospital. That was the hospital where I was born and where I had had my tonsils removed when I was in fourth grade and where Nikki was now.

I decided to walk from my house to hers. I could have taken the city bus, which circles the campus, but it was a clear, crisp day, not too cold, and since I had been going to the Behavioral Center after school, I had not spent much time out-of-doors.

Halfway across campus, I was over The Ditch and, out of habit, I stopped on the bridge and began looking for lovers. I spotted a couple in bright quilted jackets with their arms around each other's waists weaving their way down to the bottom of the gorge. When Branwell and I were little, we would run to another place on the bridge and try to find them again. If we did, we would yell, “Spot.”

They wound in and out of view, then around a bend and out of sight. I didn't move.

Since the night before last, for the first time in all the years I had been going to the gorge, I was not interested in watching. For the first time in all these years, I wondered how it would feel to be part of a couple. How it would feel to have someone other than Branwell to take a walk with.

The lovers came into view again. They still had their arms around each other. They could hardly feel as much of each other as I had felt when Vivian had touched my bare wrist. Without trying too hard, if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could still feel her fingers on my wrist (she had held the same one in the same place each time) and see her face as she thanked me for lighting her cigarette.

I remembered that day in September, the last time Bran and I had met over The Ditch, that day he had said, “She calls a motorcycle a
motorbike
and a truck, a
lorry,”
and then had looked at me with that loony smile, and I had gotten sarcastic. Here was my lifelong friend changing before my very eyes. Here he was interested in taking a walk with someone other than me, someone who was female, an older woman, someone who had shown a lot of interest in him.

I have to admit that I had been jealous.

Yesterday had been payback time. I had wanted to make him jealous of me, and my secret feelings must have crept into my voice, just as his had crept into that loony smile.

How he must have hated hearing me talk about her blue jumper and her flaxen hair. So he had turned over his chair to shut me up just as my sarcasm had shut him up.

I guess the only way to keep secret thoughts secret is not to say anything. Even to your lifelong best friend. If you don't speak at all, you don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing or having the right thing interpreted wrong. And that is what Bran had done. He had stopped talking about Vivian. She became the unspoken.

I wondered if my sarcasm is what started it all. Maybe my sarcasm led to his silence about Vivian, and that led to more things
unspoken,
and the unspoken just deepened and darkened from that day in September to Columbus Day until the great wall of silence that was now.

Maybe.

But I don't think so.

Following that 911 call, his silence was not just a different size of the unspoken. It was a whole different species. Before, he could talk but would not. Now he would if he could, but he can't. Something had caused a serious disconnect.

After learning the details of Vivian's deposition, I had begun to have doubts about my friend. How much of that had crept into my voice yesterday when I began asking him about the Jack-and-Jill bathroom? Was that what had angered him?

Vivian had once again come between us.

I looked down into the empty gorge and was suddenly terrified. Being Branwell's only bridge to the outside world, I was in a position of power. I realized that I could destroy my friend.

If I had let Bran walk out when he had turned over the chair, I would have broken the last connection between him and me. If I was to continue as Branwell's friend and as his bridge to the outside world, I had to believe in him as I had the day of my first visit to the Behavioral Center before I learned the first detail. I was now the one who had to leave my thoughts and dreams of Vivian unspoken and let the information take me where it would.

SIAS: Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space—it makes connections.

I gave myself four stars.

I found Margaret in her office, staring at her computer screen.

“No news. They're still weaning Nikki off the respirator.”

It had not occurred to me until that minute that Margaret was keeping tabs on Nikki through her computer. I should have known that Dr. Zamborska would hardly be calling her with reports. I don't know if
what she was doing could properly be called
hacking,
but I didn't care if it was.

“Dad got the guy at the sound lab to enhance the tape.”

“So he did,” Margaret said, not taking her eyes off the computer screen.

“He was very helpful.”

“Yes, The Registrar has a way with underlings.”

I usually didn't answer Margaret's sarcasm about Dad. But because of what I had been thinking about Branwell and how my sarcasm had led to the unspoken, this time I did. “Margaret,” I said, “I think you're awful hard on Dad. He didn't even want me to tell you that he had been helpful.”

“So are you telling me to grow up?”

“Maybe I am.”

She turned away from the computer and, looking straight at me, said the strangest thing. “Connor, suppose for this Christmas I give you something very beautiful—say, a beautiful ivory carving.”

“I wouldn't mind,” I said.

“This gift has been made with care and given to you to keep forever. It is intricately and deeply carved. There are no rough edges. All of it is polished, and all of it is pure ivory.”

“What would be wrong with that?”

“Nothing would be wrong with it if it came with instructions and a warning.”

“What instructions?”

“That it must be oiled now and then or it will get brittle, and pieces will break off.”

“And what's the warning?”

“That ivory comes from a living organism, so it is bound to change as it ages. Ivory darkens. A day comes when you have to put this beautiful thing away. So not knowing about maintenance and aging, you put it in a drawer and close the drawer. Time goes by, and the gift giver wants to see his gift. So you take it out of the drawer, and both of you are surprised that it isn't what it was. It doesn't look the same. Without maintenance, delicate pieces have broken off, and some of the places where the carving was very deep have darkened to the color of a tobacco stain. You haven't been careless; you have just never been warned about the changes that happen with time, and you haven't been taught proper maintenance. But you know one thing—you are never going to put this gift on display again.”

Margaret and I looked at each other. “You're talking about love, aren't you?”

“I knew I didn't have a dummy for a brother.”

“Are you basing all this on the way you felt about Dad and the divorce?”

“What else would I have to base it on, Connor?”

“But, Margaret, it wasn't Dad's fault if his gift changed with time. You said yourself when something comes from a living organism, it is bound to change as it ages. Well, love comes from
two
living organisms. You should expect twice as many changes.”

Margaret stared at her computer screen. “I wasn't warned.” She waited a long time before she added, “If I am very honest with myself—and on occasion I can be, you know—when Dad fell in love with your mother, I felt left out.”

I wondered if I had been so irritated with Branwell that day on the bridge because I had felt left out. Before I could decide, I heard Margaret say, “I was definitely left out of that relationship.”

“You wanted to be included in their love affair?”

“In the romance of it. Listen, Connor, I was just about your age when it all happened, so what should I know about romance?”

“I thought you just said that you didn't have a dummy for a brother.”

“I don't. That's why I know you understand.”

“Am I to understand that you're also talking about Branwell?”

“I am. I can relate to him because a lot of what happened to him happened to me. I often think about Branwell last summer. Here he was just returned from a month with The Ancestors, who had long ago laid down the rules. Rules they are very definite about. All that was required to keep their love was total obedience. Being in need, Branwell obeyed. He did all that they required. He wore a jacket for dinner every night and took golf and tennis lessons he didn't want or need. He was the perfect grandson, reflecting their perfect love. Then he comes home, ready to be Dr. Z's perfect son. And what does he find? He finds that Dr. Z has allowed someone to whittle the ivory. The rules for keeping everything perfect had changed.” Margaret pursed her lips to keep the words inside until they were fully formed, and then she said, “I think Branwell felt cheated.”