Silent to the Bone Read Online Free Page B

figured that baby-sitting for me would be doing a favor for my mother, and when she came to our house on Tower Hill Road she wanted to be her father’s daughter, not my mother’s helper.
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    When Margaret came back to the add-on living room, she poured us each a glass of cold cider, and we sat at the kitchen table and talked. I told her about making out the cards and how I had put her name on one and how Branwell had chosen her. I asked her if she could tell me why.
    â€œBecause I was there.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œLet’s first talk about when.”
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    The summer before last when Branwell returned home from The Lovely Condominium, Dr. Zamborska asked Margaret to meet Branwell at the airport. She didn’t mind that Dr. Zamborska still thought of her as his baby-sitter and actually waspleased that he felt that he could still call on her when he needed help.
    When Branwell got off the plane, he was surprised to see Margaret instead of his father, but Margaret told him that his dad was stuck in a meeting. She had not seen Bran for several months and thought he was looking good and told him so. The Ancestors had sent him home dressed in a navy blue blazer, a white shirt with a button-down collar, and a necktie. Most kids would have taken off the necktie as soon as the plane took off, but not Branwell. He was the good grandson all the way home. With his fair skin and red hair, Branwell never tanned, but after a month in the Florida sun—even with double-digit sunblock—he had freckled. When he reached over the carousel to retrieve his bag, Margaret noticed a band of sunburn across the back of his neck. She said, “You’ll have to get a havelock.”
    Branwell replied, “Yeah, either that or let my hair grow long.”
    Margaret said that she thought Branwell was probably the only kid in this state who would know what she meant. Being a little disappointed that she didn’t think I would also know—I didn’t—I asked her what a havelock was. She told me that it was a cap that has aflap of cloth attached to cover the neck, named after Sir Henry Havelock, the man who invented it. “Like a sandwich is named after the Earl of Sandwich.” (I didn’t know that either.)
    It was the last Friday in July, the sidewalks were still soaking up summer heat, and the house on Tower Hill Road felt stuffy—unused—when they got there. Branwell looked around expectantly. Margaret knew he was looking for his father, whom he thought would be looking for him expectantly. Of course, in the past Dr. Z had always met his plane, waiting at the gate, craning his neck to look down the jetway to get a first glimpse of him. When Bran didn’t find his father downstairs, he went upstairs to get rid of his suitcase and to use the bathroom. While he was upstairs, Dr. Zamborska returned home, and Branwell came flying down the stairs to see him but stopped short, halfway down, for his father was not alone. Standing beside him was Dr. Tina Nguyen. Tina.
    Margaret told me, “The look on Branwell’s face brought tears to my eyes.” I asked her why, and she studied me a long time before she answered, “Because I had been there. I recognized the look.”
    Then—right then and there—just thinking about it made Margaret’s eyes fill with tears again—right therein front of me. She sniffed the tears back and said, “I remembered coming home from summer camp when I was twelve years old. I remembered coming downstairs for supper that evening. I remembered going into the family room, where my parents usually had a glass of wine before dinner. And I remembered seeing them there: Mom and Dad and your mother. I had not seen my parents for a month, and I had hoped to have them to myself that evening. But I looked over at my dad—our dad—and I think I knew, even before my mother did, that we were never again going to be the same kind of family