Silent to the Bone

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Branwell told me that he had read somewhere that schools that were trying to keep teenagers from having babies had made them carry a five-pound sack of flour around with them all day, and he had been practicing holding the baby by holding a sack of flour. Actually, he had been practicing in secret because The Ancestors had cautioned him, “We don’t want you to become a servant to that child. You are not to be a volunteer baby-sitter, Branwell. You are not to make yourself available whenever Tina wants.”

  Considering the way that Branwell had practically fallen over himself, Tina didn’t volunteer to hand Nikki over to Branwell. Instead, she clutched her closer before pulling the little blanket back from her face so that Bran could get a better look. He leaned forward toward Nikki and studied her. “Well, what do you think?” Dr. Zamborska asked. “What is your first impression of your baby sister?”

  “Half sister,” he replied.

  * * *

  Margaret asked, “Could Branwell explain why he said that?”

  “Never could. Did you say something like that when you saw me for the first time? Did you say, ‘half brother’?”

  Margaret laughed. “I don’t think I said it. But I probably thought it.” She waited a minute before adding, “I guess that remark along with the fact that he never asked to hold Nikki—”

  “He didn’t know that he should have.”

  “Of course he didn’t. But Tina didn’t know that. Branwell gave the impression that he was staking out his place in the family, letting them know that he was there first.” Margaret sipped her cider and said, “I’m sure that Branwell’s long stay in Florida—even though it was not his choice—along with that half sister remark, along with not taking the baby gave Dr. Zamborska and Tina the impression that he was jealous.”

  “But he wasn’t. He told me that he thought she was beautiful.”

  “You know, Connor,” she said, “first impressions—especially when everyone is watching and waiting, looking for signs—are hard to overcome.”

  “Is that why you’ve never liked my mother?”

  Margaret thought awhile before she answered. “Maybe.” Margaret was too honest a person to ever deny that she did not like my mother. “But it was The Registrar that I most changed my mind about. He is not the father I thought he was.”

  “He likes you, Margaret. He always says that it’s as important for a parent to like his children as it is for him to love them.”

  “The Registrar says that, does he?”

  “Often.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “he has a way with animals.”

  I drank the rest of my cider and set my glass down. “I guess I’ll be getting back.”

  “Would you like me to drive you?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Margaret smiled. “I have another thought. Why don’t you stay for supper? Vivian is back in town, and Gretchen Silver wants to see her before she leaves.”

  “Where has she been?”

  “According to her contract, Vivian was entitled to two weeks’ vacation after she finished her year with the Zamborskas. Under the circumstances, she fulfilled only one fourth of her contract, but Tina and Dr. Z gave her one week—half her due. She just got back from wherever it was she went.”

  “Where is she now, and where is she going?”

  “She is now at the Holiday Inn, and I don’t know where she’s going, but my guess would be that she’s going to her next job assignment. I was going to pick her up at the motel and bring her over here for dinner. Want to join us?”

  I said yes immediately. This was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Vivian had been Nikki’s nanny. Actually, she was an au pair. (There’s a difference.) Hers was the British accent on the 911 tape.

  Margaret said, “Call your mother and tell her you’re having dinner at The Evil Empire.”

  “Why do you say that, Margaret? My mother likes you.”

  “It is convenient for her to like me.”

  “And maybe it’s convenient for you to hate her.”

  “Let me think about that one,” she said. “Now, do you want to call your mother or not?”

  “Want to.”

  I started for the phone, and Margaret said, “You know, Connor, kids who grow up in a university develop smart mouths before their brains can catch up.”

  “You grew up in a university, too, remember.”

  “That’s my point.”

  I made the call but did not tell my mother that Vivian was coming over. Margaret was putting on a jacket when I hung up. “Well,” she said, “am I dropping you home on my way to the motel? Or are you staying?”

  “Staying.” She started out the back door. “Before you go, do you mind telling me why Gretchen Silver wants to see Vivian?”

  “She’s giving a deposition to the prosecution.”

  “Oh.”

  I know I looked puzzled, for instead of leaving, Margaret closed the door and asked, “Do you know what a deposition is?” I shrugged. Deposition was one of those words that you always think you know the meaning of until you are asked to define it. “A deposition,” Margaret said, “is a statement by a witness that is written down or recorded for use in court at a later date.”

  “Is Branwell really being prosecuted?”

  “Let’s say they’re gathering information.”

  I felt my blood go cold—or at least drain from my face. Margaret put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” My throat was so dry, I couldn’t speak. I just nodded yes. “It’s not a game, after all, is it, Connor?” I shook my head no. I didn’t bother telling her that I had come to that same conclusion just about a half hour ago. “Why don’t you set the table while I’m gone. Wineglasses for Vivian and me. Coke glass for you. You know where everything is.”

  8.

  After I finished setting the table, I took one of the spare cards and wrote TAPE. I stacked the cards and bound them with a rubber band, leaving TAPE on top.

  I took dishes down from the cupboard and silverware from the drawer and set the table. I thought about Vivian. And Branwell. And Branwell with Vivian. And how my friendship with Branwell changed after Vivian Shawcurt arrived at 198 Tower Hill Road.

  It all started on our way to the bus stop the first day of school. We had hardly seen each other over the summer, and the first words out of his mouth were, “Our au pair has arrived from England.”

  I had never heard of an awe pear before, and Branwell was not volunteering any more information, and there was something about his tone of voice that put me off, so I was not about to ask what an awe pear was. When I tried to look it up, I couldn’t because awe is in the dictionary and so is pear, but awe pear is not au pair. Somehow, I found out how to spell it and looked it up, and I was a little bit puzzled because the dictionary said that an au pair is a young foreigner who works for a family in exchange for room and board and a chance to learn the family’s language. Branwell had said that their au pair was coming from England, and although I have never been there to hear it for myself, I very well knew that people in England spoke English but with an accent.

  I asked my father about au pairs. He knew all about them. Being the registrar at the university, he has to know a lot about people coming from England and other places. Au pairs frequently work for university families because they are encouraged to take educational courses during their exchange year.

  The Zamborskas were expected to treat Vivian more like a family member than like an employee. They were supposed to include her in family celebrations and vacations and help her enroll in educational programs and even pay her tuition if necessary. They had to give her a private room and all her meals, $ 140 a week for pocket money, and at least once a month she was to have off one full weekend—from Friday evening until Monday morning. If they needed her to baby-sit on Saturday nights or any other nights, she was supposed to be paid extra or given more time off during the week.

  In exchange, the au pair was to help out with child care for up to forty-f
ive hours per week, five and one half days per week. She was supposed to have no more than six hours of active duty (such as feeding, bathing, and playing with the children) a day and three hours of “passive availability”—meaning that she baby-sits while the children sleep, play by themselves, or watch TV. Those hours of passive availability are considered part of the forty-five hours of child care she would owe the Zamborskas.

  Vivian Shawcurt was twenty years old but looked like a teenager—of which she was only one year on the far side of. She was only five feet two inches tall. And although Branwell had just entered his teens, he towered over her.

  Because of his love of words, in a strange way, it was the language difference—English English versus American English—that started Branwell’s fascination with the au pair. He fell in love with her British accent, and at first he couldn’t stop talking about her. He referred to her as Vivi and told me that she had asked him to call her that.

  * * *

  Halfway between Tower Hill Road and Margaret’s, in the middle of the campus, there is a suspension bridge over a deep gorge that had been carved out by the glaciers. The walls of the gorge form a bowl, and water falls over the edge onto the rocky bottom of a creek below. Everyone calls the gorge The Ditch. There is a zigzag path down to the bottom, and when the weather is good, the trail is full of hikers and joggers. After the trees leaf out, young lovers often hide in the shadows of the trail.

  The bridge over the gorge is only wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It is a popular meeting place. If you say to someone, “Meet me over The Ditch,” they know you mean the bridge over the gorge.

  When Branwell and I were little, we used to stand on the bridge over the gorge and look for lovers on the path to the bottom.

  One day in early September shortly after Vivian had arrived, Branwell and I were on our way to the campus bookstore to get our school supplies, and we stopped on the bridge and looked down. The trees were still in full leaf, and we couldn’t spot any lovers, so Branwell rested his arms on the bridge railing and spoke to the open air. “She calls gasoline petrol. A motorcycle is a motorbike and a truck, a lorry.” And then he looked at me with an other-worldly smile.

  I knew he was talking about Vivian, but I pretended that I didn’t. “Who?” I asked.

  “Oh?” he said, surprised. “Vivian Shawcurt. Our English au pair.”

  “And what would she call the goofy look you have on your face?” I asked. Branwell blushed. He turned away from The Ditch and looked at me, puzzled. My sarcasm surprised me as much as it surprised him. Something in his dreamy look had set me off.

  He said nothing more, and neither did I.

  I was never in their company very much, but one time I heard her call him Brannie. No one else ever called him that. He hated it, and let everyone know he did. I have already mentioned how kids at school didn’t mess with Branwell. There was something about him—maybe it was his brains or his sincerity—something kept kids from messing with him. So once he let someone know he didn’t like being called Brannie, they didn’t. Except Vivi. I heard her call him that, and I didn’t hear him correct her. When I heard her call him that, I knew that there was something special between them that I was not to be part of.

  After a while, Bran stopped talking about her, and our friendship changed. By the middle of October, Branwell hardly had time for me at all. He rushed home from school every day. I assumed that he had chosen to spend his after-school hours with her instead of me.

  Dr. Zamborska and Tina were loose about how Vivian spent her time when they were home and she was off duty. The city bus stop for Tower Hill Road is right across the street from my house, and on the evenings when I wandered over to the window after supper, I would see her out there, ready to catch the eight o’clock bus to town. Even when it was not real cold, she wore a cranberry red hat that she pulled down over her ears. The hat had two tassels on a knitted string that bounced as she stepped up onto the bus.

  On Veterans Day, November 11, which was on a Wednesday, Bran and I had the day off from school. Bran was supposed to come to my house at noon, and my mother was to take us to lunch at Ruby Tuesdays. Then we were to go to the multiplex while my mother “picked up a few things at the mall,” which is what she calls shopping. It had been a month since we had spent a whole afternoon together. At eleven that morning, the phone rang. I was expecting it to be Bran, saying, “Blue peter.” I smiled as I picked up the phone, thinking that I was going to tell him that we were on Eastern Standard Time now and had been for more than a week and that noon was still an hour away. (I couldn’t believe that I was actually rehearsing what I would say to him.)

  It was Bran, all right, but he was not saying, “Blue peter.” He was whispering into the phone. “Listen, Connor,” he said, “I won’t be able to make it today.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Bran? Speak up.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t because . . . because I have a sore throat, that’s why.”

  I didn’t believe for one minute that he had a sore throat. “Are you telling me that Brannie wants to stay home and play patient with Nurse Vivi?”

  “Nothing like that,” he whispered. “Cut it out.”

  I couldn’t stand the whispering. “Speak up, Bran,” I said.

  He hung up.

  * * *

  I had written VIVIAN on one of the flash cards. I would have predicted that she would be one of the first that Branwell would blink at. But when he didn’t, I thought it was because he had never wanted to share her with me.

  I was glad that Margaret had asked me to stay for supper.

  9.

  When she walked in with Vivian, Margaret said, “You remember Vivian Shawcurt, don’t you, Connor?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Vivian handed Margaret a small pot of African violets. The pot was covered with shiny pink paper that made a cuff around the lip. “Thank you for having me over to dinner,” she said.

  Margaret took the flowers and said, “Thanks.” Then, turning to me, she said, “Connor, why don’t you put these on the table as a centerpiece?” As I took the flowers from her, I thought that she should have said something more. Like how pretty the flowers were or how thoughtful it was of Vivian to bring them. But she didn’t. She said, “You’ve met my brother, haven’t you?”

  Vivian replied, “You’re Connor, Branwell’s good friend, aren’t you?” I said that I was. “How’s he doing?” she asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I had to say something, but I didn’t know what, and that became probably the seventh time since Branwell went silent that I wished that I was, too, because the truth is that if you don’t say anything, you can’t say anything wrong. The best I could come up with was, “All right, I guess.”

  Vivian took off her coat. She was wearing a short plaid skirt, black stockings, and a pale blue sweater that looked as soft as a baby blanket. I remembered that Branwell had told me that she called pullover sweaters jumpers. (That is, when he was still talking about her to me.)

  She took off her tasseled hat. Her hair was blond, parted in the middle, and twisted into a roll on either side. The two rolls were held together in the back with a plastic barrette. The strands that were held in the barrette were a lighter shade than the rest. Her hair looked the way I had always imagined a skein of flax spun into gold by the miller’s daughter would. I remembered that Branwell had told me that she called barrettes hair grips.

  Vivian herself looked like one of those English schoolgirls you see on TV. Except her outfit did not look like a school uniform—or at least that blue jumper didn’t. She definitely was an older woman, and as soon as she took off her coat and tasseled hat, I could understand how Branwell might have gotten interested in jumpers and hair grips and not just because they were the English English names of things.

  Margaret looked at the pot of violets I was holding and jerked her head toward the kitchen. Margaret
can be bossy like that, and I didn’t appreciate her ordering me around, even if she did it silently. I silently disobeyed. I stayed put until Vivian looked comfortably seated on the far end of the sofa. Then I said, in a grown-up voice, “Will you excuse me a minute?” And with a cold look at Margaret—who smiled in return—I went into the kitchen and put the pot of violets on the table.

  I heard Margaret ask, “White or red?” She was referring to wine.

  Vivian answered, “Whichever you’re having.”

  As Margaret and I passed each other at the kitchen door, under her breath, she said, “Watch your head.” I looked up. I wasn’t about to bump my head on anything. It wasn’t until much later that I knew what she meant.

  When I returned to the living room, I sat down on the chair that was opposite the end of the sofa where Vivian was seated. She fastened her bright blue eyes on me and said, “Margaret told me that you’ve been to see him.”

  “Branwell?” I asked. “Do you mean Branwell?” She nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen him.”

  Vivian did not have a chance to ask me anything else because Margaret appeared carrying two glasses of red wine. She handed one to Vivian and said, “Your Coke’s chilling in the fridge, Connor. Want to help yourself and join us?” I thought that the least Margaret could have done would be to bring me my Coke. When my back was to Vivian, I passed her a smoldering look as I made my way back into the kitchen. I slammed the refrigerator door after taking out my Coke. I decided to wrap the can in a napkin—mostly so that I could slam the napkin drawer when I shut it. I wanted to say something grown-up, possibly something memorable, so when I returned to the living room, I said, “I would like to make a toast.”