Silent to the Bone (6 page)

Operator
:
Epiphany 911. Hobson speaking.

SILENCE.

Operator
:
Epiphany 911. Hobson. May I help you?

SILENCE. [Voices are heard in the background.]

Operator
:
Anyone there?

A woman's voice
[screaming in the background]:
Tell them. Tell them.

Operator
:
Ma'am, I can't hear you.
[then louder]
Please come to the phone.

A woman's voice
[still in the background, but louder now]:
Tell them.
[then, screaming as the voice approaches]
For God's sake, Branwell.
[the voice gets louder]
TELL THEM.

SILENCE.

Operator
:
Please speak into the phone.

A woman's voice
[heard more clearly]:
TELL THEM. NOW BRAN. TELL THEM NOW

SILENCE.

A woman's voice with a British accent
[heard clearly]:
Here! Take her! For God's sake, at least take her!
[then speaking directly into the phone]
It's the baby. She won't wake up.

Operator
:
Stay on the phone.

British Accent
[frightened]:
The baby won't wake up.

Operator
:
Stay on the line. We're transferring you to Fire and Rescue.

Male Voice
:
Epiphany Fire and Rescue. Davidson. What is the nature of your emergency?

British Accent
:
The baby won't wake up.

Male Voice
:
What is your exact location?

British Accent
:
198 Tower Hill Road. Help, please. It's the baby.

Male Voice
:
Help is on the way, ma'am. What happened?

British Accent
:
He dropped her. She won't wake up.

Male Voice
:
Is she having difficulty breathing?

British Accent
[panicky now]:
Yes. Her breathing is all strange.

Male Voice
:
How old is the baby, ma'am?

British Accent
:
Almost six months.

Male Voice
:
Is there a history of asthma or heart trouble?

British Accent
:
No, no. He dropped her, I tell you.

LOUD BANGING IS HEARD.

British Accent
[into the phone]:
They're here. Thank God. They're here.
[then just before the connection is broken]
For God's sake, Branwell, MOVE. Open the door.

Funny thing: As the tape was playing, the grown-ups watched the tape. When given a choice, people will always watch something that moves—even if it's only the tiny wheels of a cassette player. But I watched Branwell. He sat perfectly still, his hands folded on the table in front of him. When the tape got to the part where the operator says that she is transferring the call to Fire and Rescue, Branwell squinted his eyes and moved his clenched fist in front of his mouth.

The two men paid no attention to me at all. Which was good. It allowed me to be silent and to listen. I didn't just listen, I fine-tuned my listener. And I watched. The energy I would normally use for thinking up what I was going to say went into listening hard and watching well, and I remembered everything.

I listened like Branwell, struck dumb.

Think of it this way. Think that you're in a restaurant. You're in a restaurant, and the server comes to the table to recite the specials of the day. Most of the time you only half-listen because (1) you want to hear it all before you make your choice and (2) after you
have chosen, you know you can always ask, “What did you say comes with the
osso buco?”
But if you have to listen as Branwell would—as if you could not speak, could not ask—you would have to remember what comes with the
osso buco
and make your choice without asking.

That meeting with the irritating, aggravating, annoying Ancestors and Big Beacham made me glad that Branwell could not speak. Not speaking was the only weapon he had. Branwell knew all the choices on the menu, and for once, he wasn't taking the
risotto
just because it came with the
osso buco.

I called Dr. Zamborska from Margaret's and reported on the meeting. When I described their lack of success in getting Branwell to speak, there was a long silence on his end of the line. As much as Dr. Z wanted his son to speak, that long pause on his end of the line told me that he was glad that Branwell didn't do it for The Ancestors. I was learning that silence can say a lot.

I still had not told even Dr. Zamborska that I had found a way to communicate with Bran, and I still was not sure why. Maybe I wanted a monopoly. Maybe—and believe this of me if you are kind—I didn't think Branwell would want me to.

But I knew there was something on the tape that Branwell wanted me to investigate.

I knew where the spot was—the part where the operator said that she was transferring the call to Fire and Rescue and the part where Epiphany Fire and Rescue comes on. That's when Branwell squinted his eyes and moved his clenched fist in front of his mouth. I knew where it was, but I was not sure what it was. I also did not know how I would get a copy of it to take to him so that we could go over it.

I told Margaret about the session with The Ancestors and the tape and asked her if we could get a copy. She said that it shouldn't be too hard to get, because the tape was part of the public record. “Let's call the Communications Center. They should release a copy if we need it for a possible defense.”

“Just what is Branwell being defended against?”

Margaret said, “Sit down, Connor.” I did. “He can be charged with aggravated assault . . . or . . . worse. Depending on what happens to Nikki.”

“Nikki? Nikki's going to be all right, isn't she? She's already opened her eyes.”

“Connor,” Margaret said gently, “Nikki is not out of the woods. Technically, she's out of the coma, and they are weaning her off the respirator, but she is now entering what they call Stage Three. It can last a few days or a week or a month or many, many months.”

“But eventually, she'll be all right, won't she?”

“I don't know, Connor. No one does. Everything about the outcome is still iffy. It's a cruel time.”

“So if something bad—really bad—I mean
really
bad, like the worst possible thing—happens to Nikki, what will happen to Bran?”

“Manslaughter. He'll be charged with manslaughter if he did not hurt her deliberately. But if they can prove otherwise—that he hurt her on purpose—he'll be charged with murder.”

I panicked. “They have no right to charge him. He didn't hurt that baby,” I said.

“Did he tell you that?” Margaret asked.

“You know he didn't. He's not speaking. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get him to speak. The tape,” I said. “We need to get a copy of that tape.”

Margaret sensed my panic. In a voice as calming as a lullaby, she said, “Let me make a few calls and see if we can get a copy.”

She went back to her office to make the calls, and I sat there trying to calm myself down. I needed to find out what had made Branwell stop talking if I was going to find a way to make him start. But if I was going to help him—really, really help him—I had to find out what had happened on the day of the 911 call.

I don't know who Margaret talked to or what she said, but when she got off the phone, she told me that she would be picking up the tape the following afternoon.

“What do you think is wrong with Branwell?” I asked.

“I think he's afraid.”

“Of what?”

Margaret smiled. “I don't know, Connor. I really don't. Do you want to talk about it?”

I nodded.

We sat on opposite ends of the sofa in the add-on living room. Margaret tucked her legs up under her and asked, “What do you know of Branwell's reaction to Tina?”

Why was she starting there? That was like going to the doctor's office for a pain in your stomach and he starts by taking your blood pressure in your arm. I told her that Branwell had never said much about Tina except to say that he had never seen his father so crazy about anyone. When I reminded him what my mother had said about his father's coming into the nursery to give him his bottles while the other mothers were nursing their babies, he blushed. “Yeah,” he had said, “I can't complain. Don't get me wrong. I know my father
loves me. But the way my father loves Tina is different. The way a man loves a woman is different from the way a father loves a son.”

Once, before they got married, I had asked him if he liked Tina, and he had said, “Yes. Yes, I do. I don't love her the way my father does. I don't know if I love her at all. But I do like her. Do you think that's enough?”

No one had ever asked me that before, so I told him that my father always says that it's as important for a parent to like his children as it is for him to love them. Then I added, “I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.”

Branwell had clapped his hand on my shoulder. (When Branwell clapped a friendly hand on your shoulder, it was always something between a slap and a clamp. Sometimes his movements were so heavy, you wanted to poke him back.) “You always give me something to think about, pal.”

“You like that in me, eh?”

“Like,
yeah, but don't call it love.”

Margaret moved from taking blood pressure to taking temperature. She asked me about Branwell's reaction to Nikki. I told her what I knew.

The baby was born on the Fourth of July. She was over three weeks old when The Ancestors finally released Branwell from The Lovely Condominium. Tina and Dr. Zamborska and Nikki were all there to meet his plane. Bran was still an unaccompanied minor, so he had to wait until his father showed proper ID before he could go over to where Tina was holding the baby. In Florida he had bought a mobile of natural seashells for above the baby's crib, and he was so excited and suddenly so shy about at last seeing his baby sister that he awkwardly thrust the package at Tina and said, “Here.” What he had wanted was for her to take the package so that he could take the baby, but Tina stepped back and the package fell to the floor. He bent down to pick it up and in a rush of words said, “I wanted to get something that doesn't take any batteries, but there is some assembly required. But it's all natural. Even the string. Well, maybe not the string. The string may be nylon, and nylon isn't natural. The Ancestors sent something, too. It's clothes. Packed in my suitcase. I'll unpack it when we get to the house.”

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.”