The Air We Breathe (24 page)

The diagram did look bad, Dr. Petrie admitted to himself. So clear, so careful. But to Miles he said, “You're talking about a man who risked his own life to save that of another patient.”

In answer, Miles held out the volumes his agents had plucked from Leo's table. “Since when do patients have books like this?” he asked. “We could have another Dr. Scheele on our hands. That druggist, in Brooklyn—a German chemist, from a family of chemists, who was sent here by the German government as an undercover agent.”

“The Scheele cigar bomb,” Dr. Petrie murmured, appalled at the connections Miles was making. He'd seen the diagrams in the newspaper, a little metal tube a few inches long, separated by a thin tin partition into two compartments. Some chemical filled one compartment, a corrosive acid the other, needing only a sailor or a stoker willing to plant the tube in the bowels of the ship. Out at sea, a few days later, the acid would eat its way through the tin and combine with the chemical to start a fire. Ships had burned to the waterline.

“How is this different, really, from those cigar bombs?” Miles asked. “Even you can see the resemblance. And here we have another chemist, also with a German name, and another device in close proximity to a fire…”

“It's true that Leo has an interest in chemistry,” Dr. Petrie said, “but we all knew that. Irene
gave
him those books, and she loaned him others. I loaned him some, myself.”

His stomach rolled and burned and his ears were ringing. Was he going to faint? He'd been working too hard since the fire, seldom sleeping, eating poorly, cut off until recently from the comfort of talking with Irene.

To Miles he said, “His interests don't make him a criminal. I'm sure there's a good explanation for the box—if you have a question, go ask him. He's still weak, but he's well enough to talk.”

“You
would
defend him,” Miles said. He closed the box and tucked it carefully under his arm. “I'm going back to town, I have to check something and I need to make some telephone calls.”
I have to talk to Eudora,
he thought. “But I'll be back tomorrow,” he said.

EUDORA HE FOUND
on the ground floor of the men's annex, bent over a bucket in her blue wrapper, disinfecting the baseboards along the main hall. He was so angry that he nearly slipped on the damp linoleum as he rushed toward her. Clearly she knew far more than she'd let on weeks ago at Mrs. Martin's house, when she'd evaded his question about Naomi's disappearance. Perhaps she'd been lying all along, about everything.

But before he could ask her where, exactly, she'd been during the fire, and what she knew about Leo and Naomi, she straightened up, a wet rag in her hand, and said, “What gave you the right to search Leo's
room
?”

“The law,” Miles said, surprised at her boldness. “The new laws give me every right; I would have been remiss if I hadn't looked. Just as you were remiss not to tell me what he was studying. Those books Irene supposedly gave him: you knew about those?”

Drops of water darkened Eudora's wrapper as she squeezed her rag. She already knew what his agents had found—news does travel fast here—but she hadn't realized how he might interpret it. Without knowing she was repeating Dr. Petrie's words, she said, “Studying chemistry doesn't make Leo a criminal. I—”

“It's not just the chemistry books,” he interrupted. “Not even the books combined with what's in here.” He tapped the box tucked under his elbow. “It's everything, every aspect of his behavior. No one's thinking clearly. Not you, not Dr. Petrie. Not even me. We have to look at this rationally—I'm upset, of course I'm upset. That doesn't mean I can ignore the facts. And you—why didn't you tell me that Naomi was here the night of the fire? Why didn't you tell me before about Leo's interest in Naomi?”

“What's between them is private,” she said indignantly, ignoring the first part of his question. “And what does that have to do with—”

“I'm trying to find out the
truth,
” he said, interrupting her yet again. “Which is more than I can say for you—you've made a fool out of me. Naomi visiting Leo, at his invitation I'm sure; Leo quarreling with her on the very night of the fire. You hid this from me. All of you did.”

“There wasn't any
hiding,
” she said. “It wasn't your business. And Leo doesn't care for her. He never has.”

As she spoke, Miles's new chauffeur appeared at the far end of the hall, his left shoe with its built-up sole clumping heavily. “There's a message!” Tyler called, his face shining with eagerness.

“Stop,” Miles said. “Wait for me right there.” He turned back to Eudora. “How do you know Leo's
not
interested in her?” he asked.

“Because…” It was awful to have to say it out loud, but she couldn't think how else to turn his attention away from Leo. “Because he's in love with me.” How had she let everything grow so confused?

“But if that's true,” he said, “if that's true…” His fingers moved as if he longed to be holding a pencil, noting on a sheet of paper this new piece of data, which needed to be fitted in among all the others. “Then what was Naomi doing here at movie night?”

“You'd have to ask Naomi that.”

Miles looked at her suspiciously. “You're still hiding something.”

“I'm not,” Eudora said. “Just saying that what's private is private.”

Forty feet down the corridor, Tyler bounced in place and gestured at his watch but, obedient to Miles, approached no closer. Before Miles could ask her anything else, Eudora dropped her rag and stalked away, brushing past Tyler as if he were a potted plant. She went home, went straight to bed, and slept for ten hours, comforted only by the knowledge that she had the next day off. In the morning—this was August 1—she opened her closet before she'd even had breakfast and pulled out the drawings that Naomi, over the years, had given her. Her own face, her parents, her brothers; the elegant house with a large front garden that once had been Naomi's home and now was occupied by strangers; all vibrated with life and none offered a clue as to what had happened to her.

If she could find Naomi, she thought. If Naomi would only call or write, she could apologize. She stared at the drawings for a few minutes longer before carefully packing them up again. Since the time they'd met, Naomi had been threatening to run away; finally she'd carried out what had often seemed like no more than an idle threat. Too clever to signal her intentions, she'd taken only the Model T and the money she'd stolen from Miles and her mother: all she needed, really, to speed her trip. Eudora couldn't figure out, though, whether she'd meant all along to leave that night and had stopped at Tamarack State to say goodbye to Leo—perhaps even to convince him to come with her?—or whether she'd left on an impulse. When Leo had reached for Eudora's hand, Naomi had looked as stricken as Miles had yesterday, in the corridor. My fault, Eudora thought: both times. If only Irene were well enough to advise her.

L
ATE ON THAT
afternoon of August 1, Leo sat, propped up by a mound of pillows, looking at the wall. The new infirmary was smaller than the old, as the new beds were shorter, and he was alone in the dark and narrow room. Kathleen, Irene, and Janet had all been released and no one new had come to fill the beds. He'd missed the announcement that intake had been halted, as he'd missed so much else; everything since the fire was hazed by his fever. Vaguely he remembered Eudora's visits, her beautiful skin obscured behind a mask, and Irene sitting by his bed, silently pressing his hand. Except for them his only company had been Dr. Petrie, who, perhaps sensing his loneliness, had come by almost daily. Lately, as he'd begun to eat again and to recover some of his lost strength, his isolation had felt like actual pain.

Dr. Petrie's new office was close by and at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall Leo straightened himself against the pillows, hoping the doctor might stop by for a minute. Then he slumped down again: two sets of steps, a disappointment. Orderlies, perhaps. He'd already begun to turn away when Dr. Richards and Miles Fairchild marched into the ward.

Their faces were drawn and Miles's cheeks were flushed, but Leo had no chance to wonder why. Dr. Richards held out, opened, and then closed again the little tin box that Ephraim had left behind. Leo was so bewildered by his accusations and by Miles, yapping like a dog, that at first he couldn't understand what either of them were saying.

“We found this in your
locker,
” Dr. Richards repeated.

Miles was barking words like “traitor” and “spy” while Dr. Richards, obviously upset, seemed to be weighing two stories. In one, Leo had done everything Miles accused him of doing—plotted cunningly, planned carefully, obtained and concealed a secret weapon, attempted to destroy an institution of the state—while in the other, there was a different explanation for the presence, in his locker, of this box. No point, Leo saw, addressing Miles. He turned toward Dr. Richards.

“The box isn't mine, and neither is anything in it,” he said. “It was never mine.”

“So how did it get in your locker?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it, registering what he'd glimpsed when Dr. Richards had opened the lid: one of the little fire-wands was missing. Ephraim, he thought at first. In his occasional notes from Ovid, Ephraim had described his daughter's slow recovery, his own brief relapse, and then, cheerfully, his increasing strength throughout the spring. Perhaps he'd taken one of the pencils before he left—but he couldn't have, Leo realized then. All three pencils had been in the box when he'd dissected one and made the diagram. Then someone here had nosed around in his locker? Almost he groaned out loud. He'd kept the box when he knew he shouldn't, he'd left it where anyone might find it; if the missing pencil had anything to do with the fire, then he was at least partially to blame.

“I was taking care of it for someone,” was all he would admit. We give him high marks for this, even though we wish he and Ephraim had told the rest of us, back when it happened, how it got here.

“We found your books,” Miles said. “We know what you've been studying, we
know
you have a background in chemistry.” He reached over, opened the box in Dr. Richards' hands, and extracted the sketch showing the instrument's design. “So don't pretend you don't understand exactly how these work. Or that you didn't make this diagram. Isn't this your handwriting?”

Again Leo sat helplessly. Of course it was. But nothing seemed safe to say; any comment would lead to other questions and then to lies.

And indeed Miles was already saying, as he rattled the paper in his hand, “Are you going to lie right to my face?”

The sun, blazing through the window, cast a bright shaft across the room, truncating Dr. Richards' legs and cutting Miles in two. Leo let himself slide an inch or two down the bed, and then an inch or two more, into a posture that often bothered him. As he slipped into the pool of sun, he began to cough. At first the racking croaks that had accompanied his pneumonia, and then something deeper, something wet and bubbling he hadn't felt in months. He coughed and coughed, his face burning, the bed shaking, half lost but still aware of Miles and Dr. Richards stepping back and of their expressions when, after a few minutes, he pressed a napkin to his lips and was able to pull it away spotted with blood.

NEWS OF THAT
scene spread quickly, and some damage was already done by the next day, when Dr. Petrie was called into Dr. Richards' office for yet another discussion. There he found Dr. Richards struggling, as were the rest of us, between his own knowledge of Leo's character and what, he said, was Miles's fierce conviction that Leo had somehow caused the fire.

“If you had seen Leo yesterday,” Dr. Richards said, “the way he went silent—”

“I
did
see him,” Dr. Petrie said. “Last night, when I went to check on him.” On the corner of Dr. Richards' desk lay the confiscated copy of
The Principles of Chemistry
. Months ago, before the fire, Dr. Petrie had paused in his rounds while Leo read to him a sentence from one of those green volumes:
Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the realm of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals.
They'd laughed like hyenas, agreeing that science as they knew it was endlessly interesting, even engrossing—but never free, not here.

To Dr. Richards, he said, “I was getting ready to release him to his room, but now—he's taken a big step backwards.”

“His health has to come first,” said Dr. Richards, tugging at his ear. “Still, even you might admit that the evidence Miles has gathered is more than troubling.” He gestured toward the books. “If those belonged to one of us, it would be different. But for someone like Leo to have them, along with that box, and then to offer such a feeble excuse…”

“But he has a perfectly good reason for having those books,” Dr. Petrie said wearily, repeating what he'd already told Miles. What, exactly, did Dr. Richards mean by “one of us?” “Irene gave them to him, so he could study. Give him a little time to explain himself.”

“I don't think we have much. Miles wants me to go to the Board of Overseers and see about a new official investigation. Or, failing that, that we let him organize one himself through his committee. He took the box as evidence.” Dr. Richards plucked his ear again. “We're supposed to keep this secret, but I think you know already—I'm on that committee too, now. Along with quite a few people you know. Miles reports to someone at the Secret Service and I think it's going to matter, later, who joined and who didn't.”

Dr. Petrie stared at the mounds of paper surrounding the green volumes, aware that even his silence cast him as Leo's champion. Whatever evidence Miles had uncovered, he wouldn't get to see it; Miles would tell him nothing more now. If he'd joined the league, Miles might have spoken more openly—but how could he have done that? The letter of invitation had burned his hands like poison. He'd dropped it, tossed a newspaper over it, failed to answer it for a week, and finally responded with a one-line note. All he could do now was try to delay Miles and Dr. Richards until Leo was ready to explain himself. Baffled, he said, “I have work to do. Would you excuse me?”

At least, Dr. Petrie thought as he left, Leo had friends: by that he meant us. Back in his own office, he pushed aside a pile of papers and then, exasperated by the chaos on his desk—how could he work, how could he
think,
with these tongues of paper lapping from stack to stack, stray sheets wandering from one report into another?—he swept the whole array into a single mass and heaped it on the floor. One project on his desk at a time, which he could then work on unimpeded. For the moment he wanted only to think about Leo and Miles. If Miles really wanted to push matters, he'd be supported by the rest of his league and maybe even by Dr. Richards. On the other hand, Leo would be supported by all of us. So many companions, willing to testify about Leo's good character, must be worth something. Calmed slightly by that realization, he began pulling sheets from the pile.

OVER THE NEXT
few days, what Dr. Petrie sensed as he made his rounds among us shocked him as much as if we'd all sprouted tails. We were so cold-blooded we shocked ourselves. From the moment Miles's agents searched Leo's room, something swept through the sanatorium that we're still ashamed to admit, and that we still don't completely understand. On the night of the search, it spread from the cluster of Abe, Arkady, and Otto through the second-floor porch in both directions.
The chemist,
we muttered among ourselves: as if we didn't know Leo, as if we didn't know better.
Of course. Who else?
From that row of densely packed chairs, the judgment we were so quick to pass seeped up to the women on the third-floor porch, down to the men on the first-floor porch, voices rising as the conversation took hold. Leo had shown no one the little tin box; why was that? We hadn't seen the diagram, and we knew nothing then about Ephraim's visitor; why had Leo been so secretive? And what had he said to Naomi that had so upset her on the night of the fire?

He kept secrets, we felt. He always had—and now, as news spread of Leo's well-timed coughing fit and his failure to answer Miles's questions, we discovered that we'd all resented that. Who'd given him the right to keep himself to himself? By the end of the second day, our suspicions had painted a portrait of Leo about as close to his true self as Eudora's X-ray portrait was to his living, breathing lungs. Dr. Petrie and Eudora both found, over those two days, that each time they moved toward a group of us we'd break up and slip away, no one saying anything, everyone avoiding any mention of Leo. Dr. Petrie, so sure he understood us that he often assumed he
was
one of us, could not believe what he was seeing. When it registered, he went to Irene.

During Irene's stay in the new infirmary, he'd visited her daily, reading aloud to her or simply chatting into the silence. Leo, so glad for Dr. Petrie's visits, didn't know that she was the one who'd really drawn Dr. Petrie there; he'd stopped by to see Leo only after seeing her. He brought her tidbits from the newspapers and news about the latest conception of atoms and their structure. Astonishing, he said, the reverse of common sense. Instead of seeing the atom as a solar system, electrons whirling like planets around a dense nucleus, now we were to imagine that each atom possessed a certain number of possible shells which the electrons might inhabit.

Irene, her throat bandaged, her face scarred, had listened intently, comforted as no one else would be by his blundering explanation of atomic structure. Her mind, he'd seen then to his huge relief, was as keen as ever. Now, as he knocked at the door of her room in the women's staff cottage, he felt sure that she'd be able to make some sense of Miles's accusations, Leo's reticence—he felt sure Leo had willed his collapse, as a way of gaining time—and our disturbing behavior.

Her room, which had only one window, still seemed cheerful and bright and Dr. Petrie sank with relief into her blue upholstered chair. Resting his feet on the ottoman, he explained the events of the last three days as Irene, still unable to speak, listened closely, nodding now and then. She'd already heard about the search.

“The worst of it,” Dr. Petrie said, “is what's driving Miles to pursue this. He told both Dr. Richards and his own agents that Leo's background makes him particularly suspicious. Russian, Jewish, German—there's not a part of him Miles trusts. But we both know the real reason. Apparently someone hinted at Naomi Martin's feelings for Leo, and once that happened…”

Irene, her mouth compressed, reached for her pad of paper.
Why are the patients acting like such sheep?
she wrote. Us, she meant.

“They're frightened,” Dr. Petrie said with a shrug.

But not of Leo,
she wrote.
Surely not of him. I should have told them why he was studying, this is partly my fault
—

“Not at all!” Dr. Petrie protested. “We were trying to help.”

Still,
she wrote.
I don't understand how he got that box.

“I don't either,” Dr. Petrie said. “I was hoping you might.”

But let's be logical,
she wrote.
I had a good reason for giving him those books. So let's assume someone else gave him the box for a similarly good reason. Also that he has a good reason not to tell us what that is.

“Rather a leap,” Dr. Petrie said. “Very generous; probably correct. But not convincing.”

There are also other factors,
she wrote, tearing off that sheet and turning it over.

For another half hour they continued their conversation, Dr. Petrie rising once to close the window. Although the afternoon had been hot, the night was beautifully cool and the room had slowly chilled. This was the weather that convinced people to cure in the Adirondacks: this antiseptic pine-scented breeze, these stars brilliant in a dense black sky, owls and nighthawks speaking in the dark. The noise Dr. Petrie heard was unfamiliar, though, a gentle, low-pitched wave of sound that rose and fell, rose and fell, wordless but still signaling emotion. It took him a few minutes to realize that he was hearing our porches humming, fifty feet away.