Silent to the Bone (19 page)

The receptionist was curious, and as she put the phone back she asked, “Who is Vivian?”

“Rhymes with rich,” I said. That was something that the wife of my father's second favorite living president said. The receptionist knew what I meant, and she laughed.

There was a brighter, better look to Branwell. He came into the visitors' room looking ready. Ready for something. For something new. For anything. I pressed the buttons on the cell phone and handed it to Bran. He held it up to his ear and smiled. He smiled the widest, most real smile I had seen since day one. He handed the phone to me when the message was done. I pressed END, and Bran reached for it again. I pushed the message button and TALK and handed it back to him. He listened again, and pushed END himself and slid the phone across the table. Then he made a motion like he was dealing cards. I dutifully got them out, and put them on the table—alphabet-side out.

Imagine my surprise when he motioned for me to turn them over, and as I did, he laughed. I had turned
them all over before I realized that Branwell had laughed. My head sprang up. Branwell had made a sound.

He picked up the card that said BLUE PETER and held it in front of his chest so that the words faced me.

I was speechless. But not for long. “Since when?” I asked.

“Yesterday.” That was his answer, and that was the first word he had spoken after three weeks of silence. You could think of
yesterday
as a word with a past, or you could think of it as the title of a Beatles song. Any way you think of it, it was music to my ears.

I asked, “Were you able to speak the day you told me to interview Yolanda?”

“Almost.”

“Do you want me to tell anyone?”

“Not yet. Let's wait until Vivian is safely out of the way . . . and . . . and Nikki is . . .”

“Okay, Bran. You don't have to say anything more. I understand.”

“I think you do.” He leaned across the table toward me (and I swore to myself then and there that if he ever sat too close to me on the bleachers ever again, I wouldn't say a word about it). “I want to tell you everything.”

“Do you want me to come back tomorrow?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, “I like to hear about what's happening at day care.”

So he had been listening after all.

Over the next two days, my conversations with Branwell were once again only one-way. But the important difference was this: He did the talking, and the first thing he talked about was Columbus Day.

“It was twelve-thirty when Yolanda left for the day, and Nikki was sitting in her carryall, gurgling. Vivian said, half to me and half to Nikki, ‘Now it's time for the grown-ups to have lunch.' She made us ham sandwiches—spreading one of the slices of bread with mayonnaise and the other one with mustard. She cut off the crusts, and then cut them into quarters. She laid them out on a platter in a star design. She sliced a pickle and placed the strips like the spokes of a wheel. It all looked so pretty. And so did she as she concentrated
on making everything even and nice. We sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, and she told me that she had taken this job because it was near a university, and she told me how much she hoped to become a lawyer. A barrister, she said. Then she asked, ‘You don't think I'll look too silly in one of those wigs, do you?'

“I told her that I couldn't think of anything that would make her look silly. I couldn't think of anything except how pretty she was and how she could even make ham sandwiches pretty.

“We finished lunch and cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. In a way, we did it together. I handed her the dishes, and one by one, she took them from me and slowly—very slowly—put them into the dishwasher. Our fingers touched a couple of times, and when they did, I said, ‘Sorry,' and she just smiled shyly.

“This whole time, Nikki was happily playing with her fingers and gurgling, so after the dishwasher was loaded, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her to ask me if I would mind bringing Nikki up and putting her in bed when she started to get restless. She said, ‘Yolanda insisted that I turn in all the towels, so I haven't had a chance to take my bath. I
usually take it while Nikki has her morning nap.' She stopped halfway out the room and said impishly, ‘But you know that.' ”

“ ‘Yeah,' I said. And I suppose I blushed.

“The first time I walked in on her while she was taking her bath was purely accidental. The second time, I'm not so sure. I try to remember how it happened. I try to remember how I felt.”

At this point, Branwell stopped talking. Here he was, getting to the good part, and he stopped to stare into space. I wondered if he needed a prompt. After awhile, he seemed to remember that he could talk, and he said, “I think that second time . . .” Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “That second time, I'm not sure.” After another long pause, he said, “I'm not sure it was an accident. I suppose it was a mistake I was waiting to make.” Another long pause. “And she knew.”

Now it was my turn to blush. Branwell looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and he said, “You know about it, don't you, Connor?”

I swallowed hard and said, “If you're asking me if I've thought about Vivian . . . if you're asking . . . if I dreamed . . .”

He held up his hand. “You don't have to say anymore.”
He was blushing again, and it was another while before he continued. “I know that after lunch I could hardly wait for Nikki to get fussy. I was tempted to pinch her or something to give me an excuse to pick her up. But, of course, I wouldn't. Finally, Nikki started to get sleepy, so I carried her upstairs in her carryall. I think I knew that I would find the door to the bathroom open. I settled Nikki down. I wouldn't let myself look up at that bathroom door. But I did start the little music box that was at the foot of the crib. I guess I wanted to make sure that Vivian would know that I was up there. I wanted something to happen, but I wanted it to be . . . oh I don't know . . . I wanted it to be something that was beyond me. Something that just happened, not something that I made happen. Do you understand, Connor?”

I thought of all the dreams I had had about how I was going to find some excuse for seeing Vivian to give her the barrette I had bought for her. That was before I knew she was a
rhymes-with-rich.
(And even sometimes after, I'm ashamed to admit.) I said, “I think I do.”

Bran continued, “Well, I looked up at last, and I saw that the bathroom door was open.
Ajar,
I guess is what you would say. It wasn't open wide. I stared at that
door a long time, but I didn't move. The little music box wound down, so I wound it up again, and it started to play again. ‘Lara's Theme.' Then I heard her call from the bathroom, ‘Oh, shoot! I forgot the shampoo.' Then a second later, she called my name. ‘Brannie,' she called, ‘Brannie, would you be a dear and bring me my shampoo? It's just over there on the vanity. I don't want to traipse water all over the floor. Yolanda will have my head if I do.'

“Well, that was the
beyond-me
I was waiting for. I opened the door to the bathroom, and there she was in the tub, her arms folded crosswise over her breasts. ‘Now, don't you be a naughty boy and look,' she said. ‘Just reach me that shampoo bottle over there and be on your way.' I walked straight past the tub to the vanity sink and grabbed the bottle of shampoo and held it out to her. I've tried and tried to remember whether she asked me to put the shampoo on the edge of the tub or if she asked me to hand it to her, but I can't. I've tried and tried to remember the order in which things happened next, but I can't.

“I'm not sure what she said or what I said, but I do know that I didn't put the shampoo on the edge of the tub. I handed it to her. She reached for it, and, when she did, I saw . . . I saw her breasts. She laughed and
said, ‘Oops!' when she realized that . . . that she had . . . that she . . . what she had done, she let the bottle drop into the tub. She quickly leaned forward and grabbed her hands behind her knees. Her head was turned, her cheek resting on her knees, facing me. She said, ‘As long as you're here, Brannie, you might as well give the girl's back a scrub.' She reached into the water and handed me the washcloth.”

“Did you? Did you wash her back?”

“I did. I washed her back.”

“Is that all?”

“Not quite.”

“You don't have to tell me the rest.”

“Yes, I do. I have to tell you. My father and Gretchen Silver and even—in time—Tina will understand what happened to me, but you, Connor, are the only one who recognizes it.”

I remembered when Margaret was telling me about Branwell's first day home after she had picked him up from the airport, and she said that when she saw the look on Branwell's face, she recognized it from her “own personal wardrobe of bad memories,” and that was when I knew why Bran had wanted me to start with Margaret. Now he was telling me that I would recognize what had happened to him, and when I
thought about lighting Vivian's cigarettes, I knew that I did. I said, “What happened after you washed her back?”

“She stood up and got out of the tub.”

“Without shampooing her hair?”

“Without shampooing her hair.”

“After she made you bring her the shampoo?”

“I don't think she exactly
made
me bring her the shampoo.”

“I think she did.”

“She got out of the tub and told me to hand her the bath towel. It would have been an easy reach for her to get it herself, but she wanted me to hold it out for her. I did. And she backed into it, and then—keeping her back to me—she took the two ends of the towel and wrapped them around herself. But she didn't move. She just stood there, her back to my front. And . . . and . . . I kissed her. I kissed her in the curve of her neck where it meets her shoulder, and something happened. A very grown-up thing . . . happened.”

“Like a Viagra thing?”

He nodded. “She knew it. She was there, right up against me, and she felt it happen. She turned around and faced me, front to front, with the towel wrapped around her—but not all the way around her—and she
said, ‘Branwell Zamborska, you are a naughty boy.' I couldn't say anything. I couldn't do anything. Things were happening to me that really were beyond me. She watched and smiled a secret smile.

“I didn't want my father or Tina to know. I didn't want anyone to know. So it became our secret. Except that it became Vivian's secret more than mine. From that day forward, I did whatever she wanted me to do. I took care of Nikki from the minute I came home from school until Dad and Tina came home from work. I did whatever she wanted me to do, and I didn't do what she didn't want me to. I never told them about how I would come home and find Nikki crying with a dirty diaper. I never told them how I would find Vivian with Morris in her room. I never told them about Morris or the smoking or anything. I never said a word.

“And if my father or Tina noticed a difference in me, they never said a word either.”

“I did,” I said. “I noticed a difference.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know you did. But don't you think it's funny that my father didn't?”

I didn't answer that. I could have told him that Margaret had said, “I have no doubt that Dr. Zamborska is brilliant, but he is also stupid.” But Branwell didn't
want me to run his father down any more than Margaret wanted me to razz The Registrar. I thought of telling him about the perfectly carved ivory, but I didn't do that either. This was not the time or the place. Besides, it was Margaret's story. It would be better coming from her.

“You knew all along that something shameful happened on Columbus Day, didn't you?”

“I'm not that smart. I didn't know it all along. I had to figure it out.”

I thought it was time to tell Margaret that he could speak.

I told Bran how helpful she had been, and asked him for permission to tell her. He did not reply. He folded his hands on the table in front of him and said nothing. This thinking silence was not empty the way his other silence had been. At last he said, “I knew Margaret would recognize how left out I was, but you can't tell her yet. I cannot leave this place until Nikki leaves the hospital.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why?”

Branwell shrugged. “Maybe if I tell you what happened the day I made that 911 call, you'll understand.”

This is what he told me.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he had come home from school to find—as he often had—Morris's motorcycle parked in the back of the house. He went up to Nikki's room immediately, and found her asleep. She had been cranky for the last couple of days. Runny nose. Teething. But when he looked at her, her sleep seemed different. Her breathing was funny. Shallow. She was unresponsive and seemed limp. He tickled her under her chin, but when she opened her eyes, they seemed to roll back in her head. He felt her forehead and thought she felt hot. He picked her up, and she vomited, and her arms extended—rigidly. Branwell knew something was seriously wrong. He called Vivian, and she came running through the Jack-and-Jill. She was in her bra and panties. She took the baby and cleaned the vomit out of her mouth. She started yelling at Branwell. “What have you done?” Then she handed Nikki back to him and rushed back through the bathroom to put on the rest of her clothes.

Nikki's breathing was shallow and labored. So Branwell laid her down on the floor and started giving her CPR. Vivian came back in, and yelled to Branwell to call 911.

He did, but when he tried to answer the operator,
he couldn't. He tried to speak, but he couldn't. Morris came into the room, and Branwell started to hand him the phone, but Vivian hollered at him to go. She grabbed the phone from Branwell and talked to the emergency operator herself.