The Air We Breathe (4 page)

The arms hung against one wall, with the legs, and she chose three she thought could be the right size, or close enough. Back through the curtain, another two sneezes—she always sneezed in twos—and into the lobby, where she undressed Elvis to the waist. Some of the figures were wax through and through, but others, like this one, had wax heads and arms, and occasionally legs, screwed onto mannequin bodies. She chose the replacement arm that seemed about the same length as the King’s unbroken one. It was far more muscled, but no one would notice under his clothes. She screwed the appendage into his shoulder socket, wormed his shirt and jacket back on, and fixed his wig. In the closet she grabbed the mop again, and an empty bucket to put under the leak. Wiped up the water. Gathered the broken arm pieces into a plastic bag and hid them in the storage room, in a box labeled Scraps.

She didn’t want to go back into the lobby, to sit across the street from the pizzeria, to watch Tobias tote pies and wings to his car and drive away, only to return empty-handed and do it again. She didn’t want to sit alone with Elvis, listening to the
ting, ting, tap
of the water in the bottom of the bucket. She didn’t want too much space around her. And she didn’t want Louise to find her quite yet. So, after jerking
off the light so hard she heard the chain bounce up against the bulb, she lay down on the cement floor and wriggled her body beneath one of the workbenches. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and when she turned her head to peer out into the room, she saw a patchwork of black and blacker, and all sorts of grays. Her nose nearly touched the bottom shelf of the workbench, and she smelled old wood. The peaks and points of the cement pricked her scalp, and she tensed her neck muscles to press her head harder into the floor.

Footsteps. Her mother was back. Molly heard the curtain flutter open and Louise’s breath, but then the footsteps moved away. She stayed awhile longer, eyes closed, hoping to fall asleep, but she knew her mother would come looking for her again, would be nervous if Molly didn’t show up soon. She kinked her neck to look down at her wristwatch, pressed on the Indiglo light; she hadn’t been there ten minutes. Things felt so much longer in the dark.

Molly rolled out, went back to the lobby. For the third time that day she unlocked the front entrance. The sign in the door still read Open. Tobias got into his car across the street. He looked over but didn’t wave or nod, and in that moment Molly felt as if she’d lost her chance at the normal she craved. Tobias had been her conduit to that. Now he wouldn’t want anything to do with her.

Before pushing open the apartment door, she brushed away the balls of dust from her clothes. She didn’t want her mother asking questions, not that Louise would. So much hiding between them. She knew her mother didn’t ask because she didn’t want to know—not because she was uninterested, but because it hurt too much.

Molly didn’t want to give answers anyway.

She heard pans being pulled from cabinets in the kitchen. “Oh, you’re home,” she said to her mother, who slid a Pyrex baking dish onto the stovetop and opened another cupboard to get her favorite Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

“Thanks for taking care of the leak,” Louise said, intently flipping through the pages.

“I didn’t do much.”

“I’ll call Mick tomorrow.” She turned her head from Molly. Sniffled.

“Mom, is something wrong?”

Louise shook her head and tore a paper towel off the roll hanging on the wall, crumpling it against her eyes, sweeping it beneath her nose. “Sorry, baby. It’s Linda Johnson’s daughter. She was killed in a car accident this morning.”

“The one on Beamson Island, who has the baby?”

“No. The one who moved to Hartford. I was there when Linda got the news. I didn’t want to leave, but she said she needed to be alone. Stacey has a little girl, too, but wasn’t with the father anymore. Linda doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Dakota now.” Her mother swore. “I can’t find the lasagna recipe.”

“Here, let me,” Molly said. She flipped to the index. “Page 223.”

“I just . . . can’t imagine losing a child,” Louise said. But Molly knew that was a lie. She could imagine it very well. “The least I can do is make a couple of meals.”

“Want help?”

Her mother nodded, squeezed her hand, and gave her a box of unopened noodles. “You boil. I’ll brown.”

C
LAIRE
S
EPTEMBER
2002

They met in the basement of the Avery Springs Public Library the first Saturday of every month—the Puzzle Junkies, eight men and four women, mostly over thirty but a couple of eager college kids, too. Claire sat in her regular chair, at the end of the third folding table, where someone had carved three holes, each the diameter of a Bic pen, in the laminate top.
Eyes and nose,
she always thought, the picture made clearer by the fact someone had scratched a wide smiley arc beneath the holes. She liked to stick her pencils in the holes, point side up, while she worked her puzzle.

Heidi burst into the room, travel mug in one hand, canvas bag slung over her forearm, and a pile of papers flapping in her other hand. “Oh my goodness. There was such a line at Kinko’s.”

“That’s what happens when you wait till the last minute,” Claire said.

“It’s only last minute because of the lines. Had there been no one there, I’d have been here at least ten minutes early.”

“When is there ever not a line at Kinko’s on Saturday when you need copies made?”

“I like to think of each day as full of new possibilities,” Heidi said, dropping her things on the seat. “Here. Your newsletter. Fresh from the copy machine.”

Claire took it, folded it in half the long way. “Where did you get that one?” she asked, motioning to Heidi’s blazer with black crossword puzzle squares and numbers printed on the white fabric.

“On eBay,” Heidi said. “Got a pair of pants, too, but I thought it would be too much to wear both at the same time.”

“Along with your socks, your beret, tote bag, and earrings,” Claire said.

“And my coffee.” Heidi held up her cup, shook it around eye level, and laughed. “You know me too well.”

The club’s unofficial president banged his own ceramic crossword-motif mug on the table, and everyone quieted. The members took a few moments to share some of the most difficult clues they’d come across during the month—obscure foreign words and clever puns—and then all settled into solving the same puzzle. Claire finished first, in three minutes and forty-nine seconds. They discussed the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in February, all trying to convince Claire to enter. She wasn’t interested.

Though she did enjoy accumulating crossword-inspired accessories, Heidi didn’t care a thing for working puzzles. She came to the meetings because Claire did, never finished even half the clues. And most of the ones she did fill in were wrong.

A good friend
.

“Lunch?” Claire asked, packing away her mechanical pencils.

“Of course,” Heidi said. “It’s my turn to treat, your turn to pick.”

“I don’t think I paid last month.”

“Yes you did,” Heidi said, though Claire knew she hadn’t.

“Okay, then, how about Scallions?”

Heidi looked at her watch. “I knew you’d say that.”

They walked there, Heidi leaving her car in the library parking lot, noting the time she needed to leave the lot to avoid a ticket for breaking the three-hour rule. Last month she’d argued with the meter maid, trying to get out of the ticket the woman had been tearing off the pad just as Heidi ran to her car, pressing the automatic car door opener and throwing her tote bag onto the passenger seat. “But I’m right here,” she had said, but the meter maid slapped the citation under her wiper and told her to take it up with city hall.

Claire always walked to the library, only a mile from her home.

She only recently began driving again.

They sat outside, at the tables on the sidewalk, the sun warm on Claire’s shoulders, her dark hair, the autumn wind brushing her neck, sending shivers down her back, like a lover’s breath. Daniel used to kiss her neck, little light puffs of lip from her earlobe down and around to her jugular notch. His thumb had fit in the hollow perfectly, resting there as he traced her collarbone between his first two fingers.

She missed him.

No, maybe not him, though she’d loved him completely once. She missed more the feelings that came with being married—the security, the acceptance by those around her. Her married friends didn’t know what to do with her now—
she wasn’t invited to the barbecues or game nights anymore. Oh, they tried, asking her to a couple of parties right after Daniel left, but it was awkward, tense, no one knowing what to say or how to say it. There was no place for a husbandless wife—or a childless mother—in the world Claire had once lived in, that of manicured lawns and church breakfasts and family vacations in Florida.

The waitress came. Heidi looked at her watch again. Claire ordered a grilled chicken salad, no onions, her friend a BLT with coleslaw on the side.

“Meghan is coming in a couple of weeks. With Landon,” Heidi told her.

“You must be thrilled.”

“I am. They’re staying a week. I wish it were longer. I wish she’d just stay put here.” Heidi stirred Sweet’N Low into her tea. “She’s pregnant again.”

Claire paused, unable to read her friend. “And?”

“It’s not Travis’s baby.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That girl . . . I don’t know where we went wrong.”

Unlike Heidi’s younger daughter, Meghan had wandered through Canaan, was still wandering. She hit her adolescent years as her father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, lived through his long battle with multiple relapses and rounds of chemo and an eventual colostomy bag, which tied him—and Heidi, for the most part—to the house; he was too embarrassed by the smell to go out in public.

Greg was also ashamed of the pain, how it drove him to the floor, sobbing. He’d lie in front of their bedroom door so Heidi couldn’t come in and see him like that, his pajama bottoms soaked in urine, his faith twisted in a mist of agony
and morphine. Heidi would sit outside the door, wet with her own tears, listening to her beloved cursing God with one breath, begging Him for relief with the next.

Meghan saw it all, too. Her sister, Jennifer, had been young enough that she floated around in her seven-year-old fog of Barbie dolls and Brownie bake sales, and hadn’t quite understood all that went on. It was Meghan, though, who missed having her parents’ attention—the guidance and instruction desperately needed by teenagers—and like the proverbial prodigal, she looked for it elsewhere. Her life had been layered with different men and jobs and ideas of what would bring happiness. None of it lasted very long, though Heidi had hoped Meghan and Travis would at least marry and settle down.

A man across the sedate downtown street waved; Claire looked behind her, but no one else occupied the tables outside the café. Heidi raised her hand and waved back, and the man crossed toward them.

“I hope you know him,” Claire said with a little laugh.

“I do,” Heidi said.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Well . . .”

“Heidi! You’re seeing someone and you never said anything?”

“Not exactly,” Heidi said, breaking eye contact, and she stood to give the man a quick hug. “Andrew, hi.”

“I’m late, I know,” he said. “My eleven thirty ran over.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Heidi said. She didn’t look at Claire. “Sit, sit. Are you hungry? Let me get the waitress.”

Andrew held out his hand. “You must be Claire. Heidi has told me so much about you.” He winced. “Sorry. That sounds . . .”

“Lame?” Claire said.

“Yes, absolutely. Lame it is.”

He sat, and Claire determined not to look at him, or at Heidi. She fought with her croutons, stabbing them with her fork until they broke and then trying to scoop the crumbs up without using her fingers.

How could she do this to me?

Heidi forced conversation with Andrew, questioned him about his work (he was an architect at a firm specializing in not-for-profit building projects), his church duties (a deacon of more than ten years), and his son (some J name, still a preschooler)—each question constructed to give Claire all the basic dating profile information.
This is a good one, this one has it together. You need someone like this.

She finished the croutons and started on the grape tomatoes, then the cucumbers, which she sliced in half because somehow a round of cucumber bulging in her cheek seemed unattractive and piggy, even as she told herself she was in no way interested in impressing this man.

As Claire scraped the last bit of lettuce from her plate, she watched Andrew’s feet through the mesh top of the café table, one brown loafer bent against the green metal leg, the other jiggled on the sidewalk, tassel wagging, a leather dog’s tail. The toes of the shoes were scuffed nearly white. The shoes of a widower.

Heidi pushed her chair back, said, “I’m going to pay,” and when Andrew stood and took out his wallet, she added, “No, my treat. I mean it.” So he sat again, tearing off the white strip wrapped around an extra napkin and rolling it into a thin paper cigarette.

“Heidi didn’t tell you she invited me,” he said.

“No.” Claire sipped her water, catching a wafer of ice in her mouth. She swallowed it whole; it slipped down her throat, the cold sensation melting away, disappearing into her stomach but leaving a slowly fading trail.

Andrew creased the paper in the center, creating a V, opened and closed it between his thumb and forefinger like a duck’s beak. “I’m really sorry. I had no idea she was going to spring me on you like this. And then leave you alone with me.”

Claire managed a small smile, finally looked up. “That’s Heidi.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” He flicked the paper on his saucer, hesitated. “This is going to seem absolutely ridiculous and rude, given the last twenty minutes, but can I give you my card?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just a thought.”

“I’m not going to call you,” Claire said.

“I know. And I won’t hold my breath or anything. I’d just like knowing you have my number, in case you change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

Andrew smiled. “I don’t expect you will, Claire.”

Her name curled off his tongue, and she liked it, a man saying her name. When was the last time she’d felt wanted? It had been so long.

There was a neediness that came from being abandoned by a husband, a desire to know that it wasn’t her, but him. That she wasn’t defective or unlovable. Yes, she knew Christ should be enough, but sometimes in a cold bed, He wasn’t. She’d take the card as a reminder.
Someone else could want me
. “If you feel the need to give it to me, you can, I suppose. I’ll make every attempt not to lose it.”

Now he laughed. “I don’t expect you’ll do that, either.”

He tucked the card next to his coffee cup. “Tell Heidi she owes me,” he said, “and you, too, I bet,” and walked with extra-long strides across the painted pedestrian crossing without looking back. Heidi came out of the café and said, “Don’t hate me.”

“How could you do that?”

“I know, I know. I just figured you wouldn’t agree if I asked.”

“Of course I wouldn’t have agreed,” Claire said.

“He’s nice.”

“So what?”

“You need someone nice. It’s time.”

“I think I’ll know when it’s time, thank you very much.”

“Will you?” Heidi spun her teacup. “You’re lonely.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes. Lonely and alone.”

Claire bit the inside of her cheek. “Speak for yourself. I don’t see you out there.”

“I was married to the love of my life. There’s no one else for me.”

“I could say the same for myself.”

“If he was the love of your life,” Heidi said, “he wouldn’t have left.”

“Don’t do that,” Claire said. “It wasn’t Daniel’s fault.”

“It wasn’t yours.”

Heidi had sought out Claire after the accident. They’d had a passing acquaintance before—from an occasional Bible study, a small group, a fellowship dinner—but hadn’t known each other. Heidi was nearly fifteen years older, with two grown kids; Claire was busy with homeschooling and running her children to piano lessons and gymnastic classes. But when
Heidi came to her at the funeral, Claire recognized grief on her—the particular grief of death, a watermark seen only when held up to the light in just the right way, and only those who had gone through the same knew where to look. So when the sea of casseroles and prayers and encouragement cards retreated in the low tide, leaving all the debris of Claire’s life damp and exposed in the sand, Heidi stayed.

She understood, having lost her husband of thirty-three years, never expecting Claire to just
snap out of it
and
get on with it
and
be thankful they’re with the Lord.
She’d lived the paradox of believing in something bigger, something better, something beyond—alongside the smallness of her own human sight, a tunnel vision straight through to the ache of longing that didn’t go away because a certain amount of acceptable time had passed.

Would enough time ever pass?

“I’m not ready,” she said.

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have interfered. But I worry about you. You sit home with your pencils and puzzles, beating yourself up over something you can’t do anything about.”

“It wasn’t
something
. I killed my children.”

“They died in a car accident. An accident, Claire.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t,” Heidi said. “But I don’t think you do, either.”

Claire pushed her chair back, stood. “You don’t need a ticket today,” she said, slinging her tote bag on her shoulder, walking toward home. Heidi didn’t follow, or at least not closely enough for Claire to notice; she didn’t turn around.