Eloquent Silence by Margaret Weise Read Free Book Online Page B

arranging a meeting with Brian.
    A date was set for Brian and his wife to travel to Queensland to meet his long lost relatives. The timing had to be set to suit Tootsie, when she had a reasonable length of time to adjust to the change and digest the fact that there was another sibling in the wings of the von Hildebrand theater.
    He quietly prepared, bought a superlative caravan and a massive four wheel drive to pull it, purchased all the sundry items that would be necessary for the long drive north-east. He was exhilarated, although his wife was a little more wary about the exercise.
    ‘I absolutely forbid you all to have anything to do with him,’ Tootsie affirmed with fury when she was invited to participate in the reunion. ‘If any of you do I’ll never speak to you again. Never. Until the day I die. Not a word, ever. Coming over here and barging into the family is not an option for this man. He could be anyone.’
    Tootsie worked up a full head of steam and did the rounds of the family dragging her placid husband and several grown children who still lived at home in tow. Something cold and argumentative had settled around her heart for the last years since she had heard about this person who was trying to scale the embattled walls of the von Hildebrand family and Tootsie would fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. She knew herself to be at the epicenter of a fiasco which must be controlled at all costs or Tootsie would go down fighting in the attempt. How dare he? What did he expect to gain from acceptance into the family? She was baffled.
    The family was also baffled. Why was Tootsie in such a state about the matter? Was it because she was in denial about her parents having done such a thing, which in her eyes was almost a crime? Having a child out of wedlock, ‘getting into trouble’, even sex outside marriage was incomprehensible to Tootsie. She turned up her nose in disgust at any mention of such concepts.
    Despite all of her strong opinions and years of training of those around her, her husband, Bernie, had kicked over the traces a year into their marriage and had an affair with a blonde and buxom waitress from the local Chinese Cafe. In a fit of confession, he had revealed all to his wife’s brother, Phillip, who, with family loyalty at heart, had gone helter skelter to his sister, Commander-in-Chief Tootsie. She had brought Bernie to heel quick smart and had given Tootsie something to hold over his head for the balance of the marriage. Sally swore he had never raised his eyes from the ground from that day forward.
    The battle regarding the phantom relative in the west and a proposed reunion with him continued to simmer in the background of all their lives for several months. The vast majority of the family wanted to meet their long-lost sibling but feared to do so because of Tootsie’s rages.
    They argued about it for months while Brian kept putting his holidays off time and time again, waiting for the moment to suit them all and Tootsie in particular. Her reputation went before her and he knew he had to curry favor with this person who held his fate in the palm of her hand. Unfortunately, he did not know how to do so, as all attempts to contact her were thwarted. She did not reply to him or acknowledge his existence in any way.
    ‘You can’t come over here, mate,’ Douglas told Brian on the telephone one night for the seventh time. ‘Our sister is so furious about meeting you, even about your existence, that we dare not upset her further. Sorry, old fella. We’re real sorry about the whole thing. We would have loved to have met you but we have to consider Tootsie’s feelings. She could have a nervous breakdown over this. She’s teetering on the bridge of the abyss as it is.’
    ‘You won, Tootsie,’ Douglas told her on the weekend before Brian and his wife had been determined to start out for Queensland. ‘They won’t come near us. Won’t even come over to have a look around, thanks