Silent to the Bone (2 page)

Later that afternoon, a police car arrived at 198 Tower Hill Road and took Branwell to the Clarion County Juvenile Behavioral Center. He said nothing. Nothing to the doctors. Nothing to his father, to his stepmother. Calling to Vivian was the last that Branwell had spoken. He had not uttered a sound since dialing 911.

Dr. Zamborska, Branwell's father, asked me to visit him at the Behavioral Center and see if I could get him to talk. I am Connor, Connor Kane, and—except for the past six weeks or so—Branwell and I had always been best friends.

When Dr. Z called me, he reported that the pressure in Nikki's skull was dropping, and that was a good sign, but, he cautioned, she was still in a coma. She was in critical condition, and there was no way of knowing what the outcome would be.

I was not allowed to see Branwell until Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. On that first visit to the Behavioral Center and on all the visits that followed, I had to stop at a reception desk and sign in. There I would empty my pockets and, when I had my backpack with me, I would have to open it as well. If I had nothing that could cause harm to Branwell or could let him
cause harm to someone else (I never did), I was allowed to put it all back and take it with me.

That first time the guard brought Branwell into the visitors' room, he looked awful. His hair was greasy and uncombed, and he was so pale that the orange jumpsuit he wore cast an apricot glow up from his chin just as his red hair seemed to cast the same eerie glow across his forehead. He shuffled as he walked toward me. I saw that his shoes had no laces. I guessed they had taken them from him.

Branwell is tall for his age—I am not—and when he sat across the table from me, I had to look up to make eye contact, which was not easy. His eyeglasses were so badly smudged that his blue eyes appeared almost gray. It was not at all like him to be uncombed and to have his glasses smeared like that. I guessed the smudges were to keep him from seeing out, just as his silence was to keep him from speaking out.

On that first awful, awkward visit, a uniformed guard stood leaning against the wall, watching us. There was no one else in the visitors' room, and I was the only one talking, so everything I said, every sound I made, seemed to echo off the walls. I felt so responsible for getting Branwell to talk that I asked him a bunch of dumb questions. Like: What happened? And:
Was there anything he wanted to tell me? He, of course, didn't utter a sound. Zombielike, he slowly, slowly, slowly shook his head once, twice, three times. This was not the Branwell I knew, and yet, strangely, it was.

Dr. Zamborska had asked me to visit Bran because he figured that I probably knew Branwell better than anyone else in Epiphany—except for himself. And because we had always seemed to have a lot to say to each other. We both loved to talk, but Branwell loved it more. He loved words. He had about five words for things that most people had only one word for, and could use four of five in a single sentence. Dr. Z probably figured that if anyone could get Bran to talk, it would be me. Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.

But when Dr. Z had asked me to visit Branwell, he didn't know that about six weeks before that 911 call something had changed between us. I didn't know what caused it, and I didn't exactly know how to describe it. We had not had a fight or even a quarrel, but ever since Monday, Columbus Day, October 12, something that had always been between us no longer was. We still walked to the school bus stop together, we still got off at the same stop, and we still talked.
But Branwell never seemed to start a conversation anymore. He not only had less time for me, he also had less to say to me, which, in terms of our friendship, was pretty much the same thing. He seemed to have something hidden.

We had both turned thirteen within three weeks of each other, and at first I wondered if he was entering a new phase of development three weeks ahead of me. Was something happening to him that would happen to me three weeks later? Had he started to shave? I looked real close. He hadn't. (I was relieved.) Had he become a moody teenager, and would I become one in three more weeks? Three weeks passed, and I didn't. Then six weeks passed—the six weeks between Columbus Day and that 911 call—and I still had not caught the moodiness that was deepening in my friend. And I still did not know what was happening to Bran.

After that first strange, clouded visit, I decided that if I was going back (and I knew that I would), nothing good was going to come out of my visits unless I forgot about our estrangement, forgot about having an assignment from Dr. Z, and acted like the old friend I was.

Once on our way to the school bus stop in the days when Branwell was still starting conversations, he asked me a famous question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” When he asked me, I couldn't answer and neither could he, but when I left him that first Friday of his long silence, I thought that Branwell could answer it. On that day and for all the days that followed when he made no sound, my friend Branwell was screaming on the inside. And no one heard.

Except me.

So when Branwell at last broke his silence, I was there. I was the first to hear him speak. He spoke to me because even before I knew the details, I believed in him. I knew that Branwell did not hurt that baby.

I won't say what his first words were until I explain what I heard during the time he said nothing.

I cannot explain why Branwell and I became friends. I don't think there is a
why
for friendship, and if I try to come up with reasons why we should be friends, I can come up with as many reasons why we should not be. But I can be definite about the where and the when.
Where:
nursery school.
When:
forever.

I've mentioned that we are practically the same age—he's three weeks older—and since the day I was born, our paths have crossed. Often. We both have fathers who work at the university. We both live on Tower Hill Road on the edge of the campus, and we both spent our nursery school and kindergarten days at the university lab school. Friendship depends on interlocking time, place, and state of mind.

These are some of the differences between us. Branwell was raised by a single parent, but I have always had a mother. Branwell is the product of a first wife; I am the product of a second. Branwell's half sister is younger; mine is older. There was divorce in my family. There was a death in his.

Branwell's mother was killed in an auto accident when he was nine months old. His father was driving. Three blocks from their house, he was blindsided by a drunk driver. His mother was in the passenger seat up front. Branwell was in the back, buckled into the best, most expensive, safest car seat in the world, which had been a gift from the Branwells, his mother's parents.

There were times when Branwell thought that he remembered nothing about the accident, but he had been told about it so often that there were other times when he was not sure if he remembered being there or being told he was. My mother, who has a master's degree in psychology, says that Dr. Zamborska has never stopped wishing that he had been killed instead of his wife. Branwell would appreciate knowing that there is a name for those feelings:
survivor guilt.
My mother told me that whole books have been written about it.

The differences in our families are not enough to
explain why we should not be friends any more than the similarities between us are enough to explain why we should be. Let me put it this way: The big difference between Branwell Zamborska and me is Branwell himself. Branwell is just plain different. First of all, he stands out in any crowd. For one thing he is tall, and for another he has bright red hair. But even those things don't explain his differences.

Branwell drops his books—usually all of them—at least five times a day. If he's talking to you, and he's in the middle of a sentence, and he drops his books, he picks them up and finishes his sentence without stopping.

Branwell cannot hit a ball with a bat or get one into a basket, and he is never on the A-list when kids are picking players for a makeup game of soccer or softball. When he isn't picked, he seems just as happy to watch as to play.

Branwell has very long legs, and he can run. Actually, he's a very good runner. But when he runs, he looks like a camel—all knobby-kneed and loose-jointed with his neck stretched so far out that his nose is over the goal line five minutes before his shoulders. So most people comment on his gait rather than his speed—even though he often wins, places, or shows.

Branwell is very good at music. He plays the piano and has an excellent singing voice. But even his taste in music is offbeat. He loves Mozart and Beethoven and the Beatles—all the classics—and doesn't know that Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam are musical groups and not ingredients and that Smashing Pumpkins is not directions for using them. And—most offbeat of all—he doesn't care that he doesn't know.

Earlier this year we were studying the American Civil War. The teacher asked, “What was the Missouri Compromise?” Branwell had his hand up, so the teacher called on him. Instead of answering the question, he asked one: “Have you read
A Stillness at Appomattox?”
She hadn't read it, and Branwell said, as innocently as you please, “An excellent book. I highly recommend it.”

Branwell (1) Did not realize that he had not answered the teacher's question. (2) Did not realize that he was making the teacher uncomfortable because he had read a grown-up book that she probably should have read and hadn't. (3) Did not say the book was
neat
or
cool;
he said it was excellent and that he highly recommended it. (4) Did not realize that he was treating the teacher like his equal. (5) Did not realize that the teacher didn't think he was her equal
and did not like being treated as if she were.

No one in the class ever mentioned (1) through (5) because we were proud to have someone in our class smart enough to recommend
A Stillness at Appomattox
to our social studies teacher.

Last year we were asked to write essays about freedom for a contest sponsored by our local Rotary Club for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. I wrote about the Freedom Riders who rode buses through the South in 1961 challenging segregated seating, rest rooms, and drinking fountains. There was a lot of stuff in the library about them. Branwell wrote about the Four Freedoms of World War II: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He wrote about each of those freedoms and how they were the basic reasons wars were fought. You could say that his essay was philosophical; mine was historical. His was long; mine was short. Mine was good; his was better. Mine won. When I won, my mother was proud and happy. My father was proud and happy. But no one was prouder of me or happier for me than Branwell, and I think he would not have been prouder or happier if he had won himself. And I don't know anyone anywhere who has a friend like that.

Until Dr. Zamborska met and married Tina Nguyen and except for the month of July when Branwell was sent to Florida to spend time with his mother's parents, father and son went everywhere together. When Branwell was a baby and if Dr. Z's research required that he return to the lab in the evening, he took Branwell with him—even if it was midnight. If he was scheduled to give a paper at a conference of geneticists, he took Branwell along even if it meant that Branwell had to miss a day of school. Dr. Zamborska never missed a single teacher-parent conference, Disney movie, school play, or soccer game.

My mother told me that even when Branwell was an infant, Dr. Z would bicycle over from his lab to feed him. He sat in the nursing room among the women who were nursing their babies—she herself was one—to give Branwell his bottle. Dr. Zamborska is tall like Branwell, and has red hair like him. He stands out in any crowd, but in that room of nursing mothers, he hardly seemed out of place because after only a few visits, the nursing mothers stopped being embarrassed and considered him one of them and exchanged information about Pampers and pacifiers.

When Branwell rides his bike, he gets his pants leg caught in the chain of his bicycle. When he sits next to
you in the bleachers, he sits too close. When he laughs at one of your jokes, he laughs too loud. When he eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he ends up with a pound of peanut butter caught in his braces.

When he sits too close, I tell him to back off. When he has peanut butter stuck in his braces, I tell him to clean it up. When he gets his pants leg caught in his bicycle chain, I stop and wait for him to get untangled.

I figure that Branwell got his awkwardness from his father, and I guess I got my acceptance from my mother. And here's the final thing I have to say about being friends with Branwell. He is different, but no one messes with him because everyone knows there is a lot to Branwell besides the sitting-too-close and the laughing-too-loud. They just don't choose to be his friend. But I do. Who else would invite a guy over to hear his new CD of Mozart's Prague Symphony and let him listen without having to pretend that he likes it or pretend that he doesn't? Who else would ask a question like “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” the first thing in the morning?

Branwell had always been fascinated with words and names. He liked to name things. When his dad and Tina found out that the baby would be a girl, they
drew up a long list of possible names and studied it for a long time. They decided on Nicole, Nikki for short. Branwell liked the name. Liked it a lot, but when they asked him what he thought of it, he didn't say much except, “Nice.” They thought Branwell was only lukewarm about it, but the exact opposite was true. Branwell liked the name
Nicole—Nikki
—very much, but his answer had little to do with the question. He was trying to tell them how disappointed he was that he had not been part of the decision. Dr. Z must have forgotten how much Branwell loved naming things, and Tina never got to know him well enough to find out.