Silent to the Bone

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “Enough to either be arrested or deported.” She sat down on the sofa and asked, “Do you want me to go on?” He nodded. “Officially, she is a fugitive. It is illegal for anyone to knowingly harbor a fugitive.”

  “What if the person doing the harboring doesn’t know this person is a fugitive?”

  Margaret shrugged. “I guess that’s something the person would have to convince the authorities about.”

  “Convince them how?”

  “Sometimes the authorities make plea bargains if you give them information they need.”

  Morris laid his helmet at his feet and sank into the chair. “Like what?”

  “Like what you know about Vivian and Nikki.”

  “She says that she didn’t hurt the baby.”

  “I’m sure she does. But you suspect something else, don’t you, Morris?” He nodded. “Maybe if you tell us what you witnessed, we can help.”

  “She says that the brother, that Branwell kid, he was always at her.”

  “Her being the baby or her being Vivian.”

  “Both. I did see that Branwell kid take care of the baby a real lot. Like I told you. He was always changing her whether she needed it or not.”

  “But that is what Vivian told you, isn’t it? You don’t know that the baby didn’t need changing. As a matter-of-fact, you probably suspect that she did.”

  “Well, yeah. That part about whether she needed it or not is what Vivi said.” He picked up his helmet and began rubbing the chin strap. Back and forth. Back and forth. He studied what he was doing for a long time, then said, “Vivian wasn’t always nice to that baby.” He took a deep breath. “Like I told you, we always waited until it was time for her to take a nap, but sometimes, we’d be up in Vivi’s room and the baby would not be quite asleep. Those times—I mean those times when the baby was not quite asleep, and she would be cranky—well, there were those times when I would hear Vivi go in there and yell at the baby, and if she was laying on her back, she would pop her over onto her tummy. And if she was on her tummy, she would pop her over onto her back and jam a pacifier into her mouth. I actually seen her do that a coupla times. She’d yell at the kid. What good is yelling at a little kid like that, I’d ask. A coupla times I hadda ask her to change the baby’s diaper—her nappy—like she called it. It took only one whiff to know what was the matter, but after Columbus Day—that day we talked about—she never did. ‘Branwell will be home soon enough,’ she’d say. ‘He’ll do it. Brannie will be only too happy to do it.’ ”

  Margaret asked him if he knew anything more about what had happened to the baby on that Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

  “I only know that she told me that the brat—that’s what she called her, but I don’t know how a baby that little has been around long enough to be a brat—she told me that the brat had been cranky all morning. ‘It’s been snot and spit all day,’ she said. When we got up to the bedroom, the baby was crying. At this point, I had just got there, and we didn’t know that Branwell would be home soon, so she went in and changed the diaper. She had pooped in her pants, and it was loose—a real mess. She carried her into the bathroom to change her, and I heard the baby let out a real loud cry, then go quiet. Vivi made some cooing sounds—she could be sweet, you know—and she put the baby into the crib. Then she came on back to the bedroom. She seemed a little upset. I asked her what was the matter. She laughed. ‘You can add another s-word to snot and spit.’ We had hardly undressed when the kid came home from school, and I heard him yell for Vivian.

  “Vivi ran there right away. She was in her bra and panties. I waited there in the bedroom when Vivi she comes running back through the bathroom and tells me to get dressed. She throws on her clothes and goes back into the nursery. I had more clothes to put on than Vivi did because I had finished getting undressed. So I pulled on my clothes and started toward the nursery through that there bathroom. I stopped by the tub, and I seen that there was a spot of blood on the edge of the tub, right by the floor. I took a washrag and wiped it up. Vivi is yelling to the kid to call 911. He does it, and nothing comes outta his mouth. I come outta the bathroom, and ask what happened, thinking I can help, and Vivi, she just yells at me to go. I went. I was outta there by the time the ambulance come.

  “Now, you see, I was telling you the truth when I said that I never seen what happened. I didn’t. It still could be that the kid dropped her.”

  “Morris,” Margaret said, “has Vivian threatened you?”

  “Not really. She just mentions how I shouldna wiped off that blood. I’m not going to be charged with being an accessory to a crime or anything, am I?”

  Margaret said, “Gretchen Silver will know what to do.” She told him who Gretchen Silver was and suggested that they try to set up a meeting for the next morning. She told Morris to call her. “I guess I know why you don’t want to take any calls from me.”

  “The same reason I hung up when I made the call.”

  “Vivian doesn’t know that you’ve talked to Connor or me, does she?”

  He looked at Margaret out of the corner of his eye and said, “Miss Kane,” he said, “if I had that kind of death wish, I would go straight to Dr. Jack Kevorkian. I wouldn’t go sneaking around to the back of your house.”

  He made us both laugh.

  He got up and tucked his helmet under his left armpit. “She was a lot of fun at first. And maybe she could be a lot of fun again. But right now, living with her is like living with that Greek god whose hair is all snakes.”

  “Medusa?”

  “Yeah, that one. That one they say about how she was once beautiful, but she did something wrong and her hair was turned to snakes and every time someone looked at her face they were turned to stone. I’m not stone yet, but I ain’t putty anymore, either, and she’s working on it.” He turned to me and asked, “How did you find me?”

  “Well, there was this Frenchman who could only blink his left eye . . .”

  “Oh, that guy with the eye in the middle of his forehead?”

  “Cyclops.”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “No, this was a Frenchman. It was his left eye.”

  “A French myth.”

  “No, it was a memoir.”

  Margaret interrupted. “I’ll let you tell Gretchen Silver your address. I don’t want to know it yet.”

  Morris shook Margaret’s hand. I think he would have saluted if he had thought that it would be the right thing to do. He was obviously relieved. Just as he turned to go, he asked, “You’re not going to tell any of this to Branwell, are you?”

  “Oh,” Margaret said. “I think we are. I can’t think of anyone who deserves to know it more.”

  “Yeah,” Morris replied. “I guess you’re right.”

  “But we’ll tell Gretchen Silver first.”

  And Morris Ditmer was out the door.

  I didn’t want to go home. Going home meant hitting the books for the rest of The Week From Hell. I wanted to stay with Margaret and talk about “what ifs,” but we both knew where duty lay. I had to get home.

  So this is what Margaret did. She gave me her cell phone and set it to vibrate (so that it wouldn’t ring in class). If the phone vibrated when I was in class, I was not to answer it, but to check for a message. She showed me how to retrieve messages.

  Margaret Rose Kane knows how to make things happen. Or not happen. Whichever.

  22.

  Margaret was as good as her word. She always was. I checked the cell phone after every class, and finally, just before social studies, I felt a buzz. The message was from Gretchen Silver, who said that as of ten o’clock that morning, Vivian was an illegal immigrant. She could not get work anywhere in the United States and would be deported to England as soon as the paperwork was finished. Margaret has a good sense of timing. I did not ace the social studies test—I never do—but I did well enough.

  * * *

  I had never before had a cell phone in my backpack, and the officer at the recepti
onist desk played the message before she would allow me to take it up with me. I realized then that Margaret had wisely allowed the message to come from the lawyer. Gretchen Silver had identified herself on the tape so that there would be no question of allowing it in the visitors’ room.

  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.

  23.

  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 br
easts. 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.”