The Language of Silence (4 page)

Chapter Eight

Ed
:

The night of the wedding, we drank.  It was something different to do. We never really fooled around with drinking. Brett once compiled a VHS—you know, those bulky tape-things parents buy for a dollar from the bins at Walmart—of her favorite episodes of
90210
,
Dawson’s Creek
, and
Gossip Girl
. Each episode involved underage drinking. We mocked the shit out of them. The next day at school, Brett wore a white t-shirt on which she had sloppily written in permanent marker,
Donna Martin Graduates
.

No one got it.

Needless to say, drinking and making asses of ourselves wasn’t really the way we liked to spend our Saturday nights, but it seemed like the best way to get through this particular one. It was your typical Wendall wedding. It was more about flash than substance.

“I give the couple ten years,” I leaned over and whispered to Tristan as the bride slowly made her way down the aisle in an obvious haze of prescription pills. “Just long enough to forever rid themselves of the stigma they are too weird to connect with another human being, but not long enough to waste away in an institution they don’t believe in,” I continued.

This would usually be the point Tristan would call me self-righteous and pretentious and laugh. Tristan didn’t laugh. It left me unsettled. This was the sort of thing he loved to laugh over. We were experts at mocking. We were jerks.

“Shit, they’re both trust fund babies. They won’t even need a divorce settlement,” I said, fingering the flask in my jacket pocket.

I stole the flask from one of my mom’s pretend-you-don’t-see-me-men that casually came around. I didn’t intend to drink it, but figured the guy was screwing my mom—the least I could do was take his flask. Tristan stayed quiet, grabbing the flask from my pocket and taking a swig. I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself as the ceremony continued.

As I looked up at the happy couple, I knew this was the way to do it, the way to succeed. Wendall would ask f
or an act of conformity; it would ask you to publicly sacrifice something important to you. It was the only way you could get anywhere, be anyone. This is what it means to live in a town with a long and important history. Wendall immersed itself in its constructed identity, and it would let nothing and no one destroy it. It had survived both the American Revolution and the War of Northern Aggression, and that meant it could survive anything—liberalism, feminism, pretty much any ism.

You know your town has a knack for preserving its identity when the biggest day of the year is the announcement of the lineup for the Fourth of July parade. If you were in the front, it meant you were someone. In the back
—we just feel sorry for you. Sorry, hard workers of Joe’s Auto Shop, who despite having an awesome float shaped like a firecracker that shot off candy, you’re spot will always be two spaces from last.

Tristan and I had spent the majority of the remainder of the proceedings sneaking swigs from my flask in the back pew. Occasionally, Brett would look back at us and frown disapprovingly.

They had made her a bridesmaid.

Tristan and I had joked the hell out of her when she told us. Brett didn’t believe in marriage at all. When her mother told her that her cousin had selected her as a bridesmaid, Brett disappeared into her room for three days. She refused to go to school or come out to eat. On the fourth day, she left the house without saying a word and headed to the library.

I remember sitting with Tristan watching the Falcons game when Brett busted through the front door. She always made an entrance. It wasn’t contrived. It’s just the way she’s always been. She can’t help but announce herself to all those in her presence.

“Hello there, Brett,” Tristan yelled, waving his hand in an exaggerated fashion, a goofy-ass grin plastered on his face. He was trying to bait her. He hopped up on his knees and leaned over the back of the couch. “I’m so honored that you would grace us with your presence. Aren’t you honored, Ed? Your homage to Gandhi was a hoot. Really. I mean
, my life was changed. Wasn’t yours, Ed? Passive resistance. Whew. Wait. What were you protesting again?”

I chuckled and scratched the back of my head. I knew when not to mess with Brett. I knew when she would see it as a challenge and when she would see it as an intrusion. I could always read her. But unlike the rest of
the sub-humans around me, I actually liked reading her. I
loved
reading her.

She stopped and glared at her brother, barely able to carry her book bag on her shoulder. “Oh. Wow. What did I miss? You pretending you actually give a darn about football? Tell me, Tristan, which one of them is your favorite player? Which one do you just gush about? I’m buying Christmas presents and I want to know which poster would get you going….” She stopped and bit the inside of her cheek.

She was pissed. Tristan sighed and turned back around, pretending to enjoy the game. Brett and Tristan fought all the time, but always about superficial things. Rarely did either one of them attack to hurt. Brett was dancing on the edges of that agreement, and Tristan knew he had to back down.

She turned her glare onto me. “What?” I asked with a nervous laugh. She shook her head and went to her room.

That night, I stayed at the Jensen house. Mrs. Jensen never objected to my staying. She’s always had a crush on me. It doesn’t mean anything, not really. She doesn’t even see me. Not the real me. She sees youth. She sees something that will never happen but can be longed for. Those are the only type of dreams that are safe to have, the dreams that you will never fulfill, the dreams that you won’t realize were never as glorious or rewarding as you thought they could be.

While Mrs. Jensen didn’t mind if I stayed the night, I didn’t do it often. I had my reasons. Tristan often snuck out
, and I never wanted to cramp his style. There was also the other reason—Brett. Unlike Mrs. Jensen, I saw Brett. I saw everything about her and she saw me. As a result, I could only handle her in small doses. She was a dream I could achieve, and I did not want to ruin it by actually succeeding.

Tristan shook me awake the next morning. He looked horrible. He had snuck out two nights earlier in the week, and I knew he had gotten little sleep the night before. He had been all over the place since the secret breakup. His spat with Brett upset him more than he let on. He knew he had struck a c
hord with her, and he was bothered by how quickly she had retaliated. To any other observer, their argument would have seemed petty, not even worth discussing, but I knew it was anything but that. Tristan had subtly pointed out that all Brett’s idealism and speeches would more than likely amount to nothing. You couldn’t change the world. She hated to be reminded of that, but she proved he was just as delusional as she was.

We knew his secret.

How much of himself was a lie.

“What’s going on?” I could always sleep in at the Jensen house. No one bothered to wake me up at ungodly hours.

“You have to see what she has done.”

Brett.

I threw on my hoodie and ran a hand through my unkempt hair. I could hear Mr. and Mrs. Jensen arguing as I trudged groggily down the steps. It was odd to hear Mr. Jensen’s voice bounce off the walls. He was usually much too busy to take part in the family drama.

I always thought it was funny that despite his father never actually being around to see him, Tristan still managed to begrudgingly watch Sunday football as if his mother was keeping a journal of his viewing activities. It was an unspoken agreement that I would always watch football with him on Sundays. I like to think I made it a little more bearable. I don’t mean just the football watching. I mean all of it.

Mr. Jensen was a dick.

I stopped mid-step
. Brett was sitting in the middle of the living room on an old beanbag chair. She always had a knack for surprising Tristan or me with suddenly possessing some strange object that clearly didn’t belong to her. I joked with her once that she was a klepto, and she merely replied she was an anthropologist.

She sat on the beanbag with a look that clearly said
, “
try and prove me wrong
.” Every inch of the living room floor was covered with pages upon pages torn from novels. On each page, some section, some quote was furiously circled in red ink. I saw such an unquantifiable amount of passion in the shaky lines of those circles that for a minute, I could not breathe. For a minute, I wanted Tristan and Mr. and Mrs. Jensen to disappear. I wanted to be alone with her. I wanted her in a way that was ungovernable.

I ran my hand over my eyes to shut out her image. I turned to Tristan and asked, “What is this?”

“They’re quotes from the classics about marriage. They’re all there, everything from Jane Austen to fucking Nicholas Sparks. Quotes about falling in love. Quotes about getting married. Quotes about living happily ever after.”

“This is unacceptable, Brett. These were not yours! Think of what this will cost,” her father yelled, his face turning red.

“Have you even looked at them?” Brett asked stoically. She always refused to allow her dad to elicit any emotion from her. Her mom always thought it was because she resented her dad for working such ridiculous hours. I knew it was because she felt nothing for him at all.

“Clean. It. Up. Now,” he snapped.

“Are you still going to make me be a bridesmaid?”

“Is that what this is about?” her mom asked. She really was dense sometimes. “You don’t want to be a bridesmaid? But all these quotes are about love!”

“You just don’t get it,” Brett replied, standing up. “These quotes are from works of fiction.
Fiction
!” Her eyes shot to me and I looked down. I’m not sure what she expected me to do.

Mrs. Jensen bent down and randomly selected one of Brett’s pages. It was a quote from Shakespeare. I’d seen enough romantic comedies to know it was one of those speeches often read during wedding ceremonies.

Brett threw her hands in the air. “Shakespeare’s Sonnet Eighteen? Really?”

A slight blush appeared on Mrs. Jensen’s cheeks. She cleared her throat. “You
r father and I read this at our wedding.”

Brett started to laugh. Hysterically. “Oh. That’s priceless. You do know the speaker is addressing a man, right? It’s all about getting this guy to make babies.”

“Enough!”

Tristan, who usually avoided these family squabbles at all costs, stood seething in the corner. He no longer found it funny. Brett fell quiet
, her eyes on the floor. In fact, none of the Jensen family could look at each other. Mr. Jensen stormed out of the room.

He slammed the front door only seconds later.

****

             
Like all weddings, the pictures took an agonizing amount of time. This time was made even more enjoyable because Tristan kept asking me how much longer I thought the pictures would take. As if I spent all my hours watching Bridezilla.

“Here,” I said
, handing Tristan the flask. “What’s got you so anxious?”

Tristan looked to me and then to the flask. He shrugged. “I got something to do.”

I laughed and patted him on the back. “Well, man up! You’re a son of Wendall, and it’s your duty to be here. So wipe off that silly frown, go ask some second cousin to dance, and try not to let any of the city council members know you’ve been drinking.”

Tristan laughed
, but it bordered on bitterness. “Is that all it takes?”

His attitude temporarily sobered me. “You alright, dude?”

Tristan inhaled deeply and looked at me. I could see it, some truth waiting to get out. In that moment, he did not hide from me that he was suffering. I stood up and grabbed his arm, pulling him from his seat in the reception hall. “Come on, let’s go find Brett.”

He nodded.

I felt something settle inside me, something like dread. Or maybe it was helplessness. I began to quicken my pace toward the lobby of the hotel. I knew that I had to find Brett. Whatever was going on, we needed her.

Tristan stopped abruptly. I looked back to see him staring at me, his head tilted to the side. A group of giggling pre-teens made their way past us toward the reception hall. I gave them a wink. Their laughter became even more nauseating, but at least it caused them to scurry.

“Ed?”

“Want me to get you some water?” I asked, for some reason not wanting to hear his question. Something about it felt threatening.

“Ed?”

“Seriously. Maybe you and booze don’t mix. What about some Sprite? That’s my mom’s cure-all after a binger.”

“Ed!” This time it wasn’t a question—it was a declaration. He saw what I was trying to do, and he would not let me escape so easily. I felt myself suddenly grow weak. I leaned against the wall and focused my eyes on the floor. He stepped close to me. His forehead almost touched mine. “You like her, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” I mumbled.

“Mallory.”  Tristan only called Brett that once in a blue moon. I wondered why he used the name now. My heart started to pound. Tristan shook his head. He reached a shaking hand up and grabbed the collar of my second-hand suit. “You both are so stupid.”