It's been over a month I am so sorry T^T I've been moving and I just got grad school and I joined a RP group and oml there's just so much going on right now.
Hopefully, I'll be back on track again. Once again, I'm sorry! I realize these chapters are short and this one is extra short, but I'm trying my best.
Anyways, I'm glad you guys are reading it! I really hope I can get around to longer chapters soon.
Comments are always appreciated, so please let me know if there's anything you want to see or directions you want to go in. I can't guarantee anything, but I will always try to accommodate.
Gil and Ludwig are sitting in the back of a taxi cab on their way home. There is a stifling silence that overwhelms the air. A low whirring from the engine mixes with the faint hum of a new Katy Perry song in the background. A rosary hangs from the rearview mirror and clicks against itself as the cab rolls through pitted streets. The silence is getting louder.
Ludwig sits upright in the cab. He glances over at Gil. His paleness is grey, desaturated. His figure is gaunt. Shadows fall against hollow cheekbones and tired, deep set eyes. His silence is thick and penetrating and seeps deep into Ludwig's bones. He shifts in his seat and glances down at the white discharge band around Gil's wrists. His bones protrude. He sits, slouched. His elbow rests against the thin shelf of the window and his chin rests against the heel of his palm. He stares out at the moving pavement. Ludwig wonders what he is thinking now. Ludwig wonders what he was thinking back at the hospital.
Gilbert had always been difficult. His parents were relieved when they watched him play music. Their father, especially, though not by any virtue of his talents. Rather, it was for the few moments in a day that they did not have to worry about a broken dish or chocolate syrup in the sock drawer or a pile of worms in the kitchen sink.
It was always automatic, like the time he put a raw egg in his father's pillowcase at the age of 9. What were you thinking? People would ask him, but the truth was that he simply wasn't thinking. He just saw the eggs when was helping Mom unload the groceries. Maybe he was angry. Maybe it was when he saw his father come home at 8 that evening from an open-heart surgery. When his Mom said, "I talked to Ludwig's teachers today. They said he's doing exceptionally well in his classes." Ludwig was sitting in the living room, watching Scooby Doo reruns. "They said he's already at a 5th grade reading level." Ludwig was 6. He was in 1st grade. "There's a special program for gifted students and they want to put him in it. He's just like you."
Maybe it was the way she drew out those last words as if they tasted sweet on her tongue.
Or maybe it was when his father gave his mother a kiss on the cheek and said, "That's amazing. I better go congratulate him." Maybe it was the way his father's hand grazed past Gil's back, but he forgot to ask him how his day was and instead, walked over to Ludwig.
Maybe it was when Gil heard them laughing together in the living room.
The fact of the matter was, their father never understood Gil. Why sometimes he would break things or forget things or ignore rules, and, if Gil was ever honest with himself, he would admit that he never understood himself either. Why he did the things he did – or rather, why he could never do the things he was supposed to do. Their father and Gil, they seemed to share only one understanding, and it was that Gil's only redeeming quality was his music, but at least he was good at music.
At least he was good at music.
The silence is screaming now. Ludwig cannot bear it any longer. "What was that about?" he asks.
Ludwig's voice sounds garbled. It catches Gil off guard and he glares at his brother. "What?"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Why did you—"
Gil figures the conversation was about the hospital. He didn't need to hear to read a facial expression after all. "Do you think my insurance will cover the additional tests?" He tells himself there is something wrong with Ludwig's voice. It's Ludwig's fault.
"I'm sure Dad can co–"
Gil catches the word, 'Dad.' "Did he even visit me?" Gil stops staring at Ludwig and spots a piece of newspaper, balled up in the seat pocket.
"Of course he visited you." Ludwig watches Gil smooth the page out in the loudest way possible. The taxi driver glances back at them and Ludwig exchanges an apologetic look with the man. Gil is clearly not listening. Ludwig, again, finds himself wondering if all of this is deliberate.
"I bet he did come to visit me. Of course he has to. He works there. He wouldn't have come if it were inconvenient, though." Gil is straining to hear all the sounds of the newspaper. "He wasn't here today." He can almost hear the sounds and it makes him angry. Ludwig's muffled voice makes him angry. It's Ludwig's fault.
"He's at a conference in Boston."
Gil stares at the newspaper. He doesn't respond immediately. It's partially because he's thinking about sound of crinkling newspaper. It's Ludwig's fault. "He would be here if you were sick."
Gil shoves the newspaper back into the pocket in front of him. Ludwig stares at Gil and in that moment Gil looks especially thin and frail and defeated and Ludwig feels guilty so he swallows his suspicions again. He wants to tell Gil that that wasn't true, that their father would have gone on the trip regardless, but somehow that feels worse and so this time, they both choose to remain silent.
When they get back, Gil says, "I'm tired." He walks to his room and slams to the door shut. He's not lying. He lays in the bed and strains to hear his brother, who is standing in the living room, dazed.
After Mom died, Ludwig and Gilbert quickly mastered the language of silences. There was their father's angry silence when he picked Gil up from detention for placing magic grow dinosaurs in the pool gutters. There was their father's apathetic silence after Gil drunkenly tried to bounce a watermelon off of the awning and broke it. There was their father's proud silence when Ludwig received his admissions letter from his former residency, the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern. This last silence, Gil knew by heart.
Gilbert turns to his side. He is restless with heavy limbs. He is enveloped in white sheets. Freshly laundered. They smell of dryer sheets. Crisp. The sounds he misses. Grains of cotton rubbing against skin as he shifted. The soft crumble of down and microfiber. The constant grind of tires against pavement. The neighbor's grey terrier, yipping at squirrels that run up the sides of a thin sapling, which grows two feet from the fire escape.
He pulls the sheets over his head and shuts his eyes. It is dark now and he wishes it would stay this way. He doesn't want to admit to himself that he has lost anything.