Silent to the Bone

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “Fine,” Margaret said, smiling and lifting an eyebrow in the way she does when she is secretly amused. “What wouldst thou propose?” she asked sarcastically.

  I lifted my glass and said, “To Nicole Zamborska, Nikki.”

  Margaret’s smile went from sarcastic to sincere. “That was very thoughtful, Connor. Poor little Nikki seems to be the forgotten soul in all of this.”

  Vivian held her glass high, lowered it, took a dainty sip, and replied, “Such a sweet child, was Nikki. I never thought that Brannie would do anything to hurt her. He was always so . . . so . . . interested in her. Of course, I sometimes wondered . . .” Vivian laid her wineglass down on the coffee table and took a small handful of peanuts in her right hand. She opened her hand and studied the peanuts for what seemed like a minute before choosing one. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, suspended between her lap and her mouth.

  “Wondered what?” Margaret asked.

  Vivian continued studying that peanut before looking directly at Margaret. “I sometimes wondered if he wasn’t a little too interested in his little sister.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Margaret asked bluntly.

  Vivian at last put the peanut in her mouth and chewed on it long enough for it to have been the whole handful. She swallowed. (I did, too, even though I wasn’t eating peanuts.) “I just wondered if Brannie would have been as interested in the baby if Nikki had been short for Nicholas instead of Nicole.”

  “You better explain,” Margaret said.

  Vivian looked from me to Margaret and back to me. Finally she said, “Connor, did Branwell ever tell you about what happened the first week I worked there?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Are you sure?”

  I didn’t know whether to shake my head no that he didn’t tell me or to nod my head yes, that I was sure. So I said, “He never said much about you.”

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. I suppose he had to keep his little secrets.”

  I waited while Vivian put another peanut in her mouth and chewed it endlessly. Finally, she smiled (slowly) and said, “Well, I might as well tell you. I am about to be deposed, you know, and I shall have to tell them, shan’t I?” She took a lengthy sip of wine.

  Without being asked, Margaret lifted the bottle, raised it to the rim of Vivian’s glass, and poured in a single motion. Then Margaret leaned back into the sofa and folded her hands over her stomach. She was as anxious to hear what Vivian had to say as I was, and Vivian knew her time was up. She drew a deep breath and began. “Do you know what a Jack-and-Jill bathroom is?” she asked.

  Margaret swept her hand around the room. “The houses in Old Town,” she said, “were built when a family of five or seven or ten all shared the same bathroom. When I was eleven years old, I lived here one summer with two great-uncles, and the single upstairs bathroom served both those Jacks and this Jill.”

  Vivian laughed. “Actually, that is true of where I live in England as well. I had never before heard of a Jack-and-Jill bathroom until I came to the States. What it means is a bathroom that is between two bedrooms and has a door from each of those bedrooms into the bath. But there is no entry from the hall. It was Brannie himself who told me that they were called Jack-and-Jill. He loved having the proper names of things, Brannie did.”

  “Still does,” Margaret corrected.

  “Has he spoken?” Vivian asked.

  “No, but he also has not died, so I assume he still loves having the proper names of things even if he isn’t saying them.”

  I cleared my throat to get attention. I said, “You were telling us about the Jack-and-Jill bathroom.”

  “Yes, so I was.” She tilted the wineglass back only enough to wet her lips. “Well, when I arrived at the Zamborskas’, they gave me what had been the guest bedroom and converted what had been Branwell’s bedroom into the nursery. That way, I could connect easily to the nursery through the bathroom. My bedroom opened onto the toilet side of the Jack-and-Jill, and the nursery opened onto the bathtub end. Both bedrooms—but not the bathroom—also have doors from the upstairs hall. Branwell was moved downstairs to the bedroom that was off the kitchen. I understand that in many American homes, this is called ‘the mother-in-law suite,’ and that is where an au pair would normally sleep. But since Nikki was so young and was still often waking at night, the Zamborskas decided that it would be best to have me in the guest bedroom that was on one side of the Jack-and-Jill, and have Nikki in the nursery on the other.”

  Now that she had laid out the geography of the bedrooms and the bathrooms, Vivian took another drink of wine and drained her glass. Without being asked, Margaret filled it up again.

  “Actually, we Brits like a proper bath, you know. I say showers are not nearly as therapeutic. The first week I was there, I had just submerged, ready to settle in for a good soak, when what should happen but that the door at the nursery end of the bathroom opens. I whipped my head around, called out, ‘Hello? Hello?’ and who should I see there but Branwell. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned as red as his hair before muttering, ‘Sorry’ and walking out.”

  Margaret said, “Don’t you think that was quite a natural mistake? After all, he was coming in from what—until only a short time ago—had been his bedroom.”

  “That is true. And I find that a perfectly logical reason for something like that to happen once.” Vivian plucked a single peanut from the bowl and held it between her thumb and forefinger and studied it for a while. When she took her eyes off the peanut she looked from Margaret to me and asked, “How do you explain its happening twice?” She seemed to be waiting for an answer. Most particularly from me. It was me she was looking at now. Not until Margaret cleared her throat did she look away.

  “Last year,” Margaret began, “yes, it was just about a year ago, I changed around my kitchen drawers. I put the silverware where the napkins were, and I put the napkins where the dish towels were. Do you know what? Even last week I was still reaching into the wrong drawer for the silverware.”

  Vivian put that peanut—no, placed that peanut—on her tongue and slowly closed her lips. She just stared into space, and then, shaking her head sadly, asked, “Can you explain its happening a third time?”

  There was dead silence in the room.

  Vivian looked first to Margaret and then to me for an answer. We had none. She reached for her pocketbook, opened it, and took out a pack of cigarettes. She offered one to Margaret, who refused, and started searching for something inside her pocketbook. She didn’t find what she wanted, so she turned to me and asked, “Connor, would you please get me a light?” Margaret does not smoke and does not approve of smoking, so I didn’t look at Margaret for permission to get Vivian a match. There was a packet of them on the kitchen countertop that Margaret had put there so that she could light the candles on the table.

  I started to hand Vivian the packet, but instead of taking it, she put the cigarette between her lips and leaned forward. I assumed she wanted me to light it for her. (I had seen that sort of thing in the movies.) So I tried to strike the match, but I was not successful. I had never before lit a match. We had an electric stove, and on the rare occasions when we ate by candlelight, my mother lit them, and when the charcoal grill was to be lit, my dad did that. No one in my family smoked. Firecrackers were illegal. When would I ever have had a chance to practice lighting matches? I closed the cover before striking, but the cardboard of the matches kept bending on me. Finally, I held one close enough to the head of the match to get it to take, and Vivian leaned forward with the cigarette between her lips. She held my wrist that held the match until she had sucked in enough fire for the entire end of her cigarette to catch. Before she let go of my wrist, she looked up at me and said, “Thank you, Connor. You are a gentleman.”

  Just like in the movies.

  At that moment, I knew why no one should be allowed to play with matches. There’s no telling what besides a cigarette may catch fire.

&n
bsp; Vivian looked around for an ashtray but couldn’t find one. (There’s not a single one in the house. As I said, Margaret does not approve of smoking, but she believes a lot in personal choice, so she would never forbid someone from doing it.) Vivian said, “Margaret, may I use a saucer for an ashtray?”

  Margaret didn’t exactly say yes. She said, “Connor, would you please bring Vivian a saucer?” I nodded yes but forgot to move. I watched as Vivian took a long drag on her cigarette, pursed her lips as if blowing kisses, and blew out the smoke. I watched until the last faint puff of smoke disappeared.

  Vivian said, “Connor? A saucer?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Yes. Yes, of course.” If she had asked me for a flying saucer, I would have sprouted wings and searched the night sky for one.

  As I walked back toward the kitchen, I heard Vivian say, “Actually, there’s more.”

  “About Branwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about him?”

  “About his interests, actually.” Vivian was speaking slightly above a whisper, but Margaret’s kitchen is right next to the add-on living room, so I could hear practically everything.

  Margaret spoke in a normal voice. “Will this be something you will be saying at your deposition?”

  Vivian replied, “I’m afraid I will have to, won’t I?”

  “I suppose so,” Margaret said.

  Then I heard, “. . . unhealthy interest . . . nappies.”

  Nappies are what the British call diapers. The word had amused Branwell. He told me that it came from napkins. “When you think about it, Con,” he had said, “diapers do the same thing that napkins do. They catch a mess.” After Vivian arrived on Tower Hill Road, Branwell had also started calling the toilet the loo. He did that with me, but not with other kids. He knew exactly where they drew the line between different and weird, and he never crossed it.

  “Actually,” Vivian said, “I’m not sure this is the right time.”

  I took a saucer from the cabinet and returned to the living room as Margaret was saying, “Actually, Vivian, this is a very good time. Think of it as a dress rehearsal for the lawyers.”

  Vivian topped off her glass of wine, settled back into her chair, and said, “I don’t know how to put this delicately.”

  “Then try directly,” Margaret said.

  “All right, then,” she said, setting her glass down firmly on the coffee table. “Here goes. Branwell Zamborska seemed to have an unhealthy interest in little Nikki’s nappies.” Still holding her cigarette between her first two fingers, she leaned forward and picked up her wineglass in her cigarette-holding hand. Peering mischievously at me over the rim, she said, “Of course, a lot of it was little-boy curiosity, you know.”

  Margaret asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. A little boy’s curiosity about what the other sex keeps inside her panties.”

  Margaret looked over at me to see how I was taking this information. I was doing all right even though I had never had a discussion about sex with a mature woman before.

  Margaret said, “Don’t you think it’s a natural curiosity? I remember when Connor here was a baby, I actually asked to change his nappy. Once.”

  Vivian asked, “Did you, really?”

  “Yes. When he was new, and I was young and curious.”

  Laughing, Vivian said, “What did you find out?”

  Margaret looked at me and smiled. “That God has a sense of humor after all.” I flared my nostrils at her and jerked my head away. I should have stayed in the kitchen.

  Vivian said, “At first I thought it was only the natural curiosity of a thirteen-year-old boy. But after awhile, it became something else. Branwell became absolutely obsessive about changing Nikki’s nappies. That wasn’t . . . wasn’t . . . natural . . .” Her voice trailed off as if she had ended that sentence with a comma and not a period. She transferred her wineglass to her other hand and took a long drag on her cigarette before saying, “It seemed to me that Brannie always spread the cheeks of her little bum and spread her little legs and wiped and wiped some more. All that wiping. All that powdering . . .”

  Margaret said, “On the rare occasion when I was requested to change Connor’s nappy, his mother always insisted that I clean all his little bits and pieces.” Margaret was determined to embarrass me. She was pissing me off. “Even though there wasn’t that much to do,” she said, smiling—she was really pissing me off—“the whole process was nothing but a chore.” Really, really pissing me off.

  Vivian said, “I kept thinking that Branwell, too, would find it a chore and just stop, but he didn’t. Even when I was there, he insisted on changing her nappies himself.”

  At last I knew why Branwell rushed home from school every day.

  “I tell you, he was always changing her. Whether she needed it or not.” She took a long pull on her cigarette. I held my breath as I watched the ash grow until it seemed ready to drop. But as she took it from her mouth, she held it straight until it was over the saucer. With the tiniest flick of her finger, she made the ash drop. Then with a delicate movement of her wrist, she stubbed it out. “Actually,” she said, “I think that’s when he did it.”

  “Did what?” Margaret asked.

  Vivian answered in a hoarse whisper as if the words hurt her throat. “Dropped her. That’s when he must have dropped her.”

  Margaret asked, “He didn’t take her out of the crib to change her nappy, did he?” It seemed to me that Margaret was saying nappy a lot.

  “Sometimes he did, actually. And on that day, the poor little thing was teething, and she had caught a bit of a cold to boot. She had already had two rather messy nappies that morning, so I guess Branwell took her into the bathroom to sponge her off, and that’s when he dropped her. Surely you know how awkward he is.”

  Margaret said, “So, actually, you never saw him drop her.” It seemed to me that Margaret was saying actually a lot.

  “I didn’t even know he was home. I was in my room on the other side of the Jack-and-Jill.”

  “And when he dropped her, the baby didn’t cry?”

  “Of course not. She had gone unconscious.”

  “Was Nikki out of the crib when Branwell called to you?”

  “Yes. He was shaking her, trying to get her to wake up.”

  “How do you know he dropped her in the bathroom?”

  “They found traces of Nikki’s blood on the bathroom floor, actually. How else would it have got there?”

  “And you didn’t notice the blood when you ran through the Jack-and-Jill after he called you.”

  “Of course not. The adrenaline was pumping, and I wanted to get to the nursery.”

  “What did he say when he called?”

  “He called, ‘Vivi, come here. Nikki’s breathing funny.’ I came running. Brannie was shaking her to wake her up.”

  “Was that the last he spoke? When he called to you that the baby was breathing funny?”

  “Not quite. I came into the room and was shocked to see him shaking her. You should never, never shake a baby. It’s quite dangerous, actually. Their little brains go sloshing around in their skulls and get nicked and battered. I screamed, ‘Stop!’ and I grabbed the baby from him.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The poor little thing threw up. When I had her in my arms, she felt feverish. I was worried that she would choke on her vomit, so I cleared the vomit from her mouth with my fingers, and I sent Branwell into the bathroom to get a washcloth. ‘Get a washcloth,’ I yelled. I did a good bit of yelling, actually. He came back with a damp washcloth. That is probably when he tried to wipe the blood off the bathroom floor. I cleaned her up a bit, but as I held her . . . her breathing was . . . so . . . so hard.” Vivian began to tear up. “This was not an ordinary little ear or nose thing. I screamed at him, ‘What have you done?’ And he just stared at me. He looked toward the Jack-and-Jill and said, ‘I . . . I . . . I.’ But Branwell just kept staring and making his mouth
go and the only sound that came out was, ‘I . . . I . . . I.’ I yelled at him to call 911, and I started to do CPR. Branwell dialed. But when the operator came on, he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. I had to stop the CPR to take the phone from him.”

  Vivian folded her arms across her blue sweater and hugged her upper arms. She shuddered. “It sends shivers down my spine every time I think of what poor little Nikki is going through.”

  “Yes,” Margaret said, “it is chilling.”

  Vivian said, “I want to thank you, Margaret. This rehearsal has been most helpful.”

  Margaret said, “I’m sure you will do very well.”

  “Yes, our little talk has helped me remember the details.” Vivian took another cigarette from her purse, held it to her lips, and looked at me and nodded. I popped out of my seat, picked up the matches from the coffee table, and was able to strike one on the first try.

  She held my wrist in the same place.

  She thanked me again and then said, “Some people say ‘God is in the details.’ Others say it’s the Devil.”

  Margaret replied, “Maybe it depends on who’s reporting the details.” She checked her watch and announced that supper was ready.

  She took the chicken casserole from the oven, placed it on the table, and reached into the drawer for a serving spoon and told us to help ourselves.

  At dinner we talked about Vivian’s plans. She said that as soon as she finished giving her deposition she would be returning to England. “In a way, I am living on standby. If Nikki dies, I’ll have to return to the States for the trial.”