The Air We Breathe (14 page)

C
LAIRE
F
EBRUARY
2009

Claire didn’t want to be still. Her body had to move in time with her explosive thoughts. She paced back and forth in front of the bed, in the guest room she and Andrew shared, the plush green carpet darkly streaked with her feet’s disturbance. Her belly contracted under her palm, the skin pulling tight, hardening with a fuzzy twinge. She exhaled, her mouth starting in a little O, then flattening until her lips pressed nearly together and her breath whistled out between them.

“You need to rest,” Andrew said.

“I can’t.”

“The baby—”

“It’s nothing. Just Braxton Hicks.”

“Claire, sit.”

She did, in the chair by the window, as far from her husband as she could get. He sat on one corner of the bed, near the headboard and nightstand on
his
side. The right side. They both had been sleeping on that side when they married, and
she gave it up for him, though she was still most comfortable there, too, and sometimes she started on the right side if she went to bed before him, pretending to be asleep when he finally came upstairs. He would kiss her hair and slip in behind her, and when she snuggled back against him, he’d say, “You always know that spot is yours if you want it.”

“This is my spot,” she’d tell him, rolling overtop of him, to the left, and burrowing into his chest. “Which side of the bed—that’s just geography.”

Now Andrew moved around the mattress, sat with his leg touching hers. “You can’t go over there by yourself tonight.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, Andrew, come on. This isn’t television.”

“People don’t just disappear when they have nothing to hide.”

“I’m done with this conversation.”

“I’m not,” he snapped, and then quickly softened. “I know you loved that little girl, but think about it, Claire. If they wanted you to know where they were, they would have contacted you a long time ago.”

“I have thought about it. I’ve thought about it every day since I showed up there and she was gone. I used to wonder all the time if I’d see her on the street one day, in the grocery store, in the mall. Early on, that is. I’d look for her everywhere. Then I stopped.” Claire winced as the baby inside her jammed its feet under her ribs. “I didn’t even recognize her.”

Andrew went into the bathroom, came back with a glass of water, and gave it to her. She drank it all—lukewarm, the way she liked it—and the baby quieted. “I need to know what happened. From her,” she said.

“Then I’m waiting outside the door for you.”

“Okay,” she said, “okay.” And her husband tugged her from the chair, pulled down the bedspread.

“Take a nap. Please. For me.”

“I’ll try.”

He kissed her, pushing her down into the pillow, and her body went willingly. Then he lowered the shade and switched off the light. “I’ll call you for dinner.”

She couldn’t sleep, Hanna’s little-girl face in her mind whether she kept her eyes opened or closed, pale and ethereal and floating between the two metal swing chains, where Claire first met her. Today’s Hanna had a longer nose and narrower chin and dark hair. Colored, of course. But her eyes were the same, the palest gray-blue, cataract-like.

How could she not have seen her standing there?

Claire rolled onto her side. A stomach sleeper, usually, she had difficulty finding a comfortable position while pregnant. Sometimes Andrew stacked pillows on the bed, creating a pad for her body from the rib cage up, and from the pelvis down. She’d lie on them, her stomach beneath her in the space between the pillows, her protruding navel just brushing the mattress. She could doze like that for an hour or so, but not a whole night. Plus, baby Brenneman insisted on nestling against her bladder anytime Claire managed to make her way into a deep sleep. She didn’t remember peeing so much with her other three pregnancies. Either her memory was going, or her body.

I’m getting old.

They had, for five years, debated having another child—Claire not knowing if she could handle it emotionally, Andrew concerned about Jesse being displaced—working to avoid
it but also staying open to an accident. Finally, with indecision pushing her to thirty-nine, and him six years older, they decided that door had closed. “I don’t want to be collecting social security the same year my kid graduates high school,” he’d said.

But God and His eternal sense of humor had other plans, and Claire bought an EPT after two weeks of craving hot dogs and onions, and another week of vomiting up her tea every morning. She told Andrew she was pregnant after Jesse had gone to bed—no cutesy “To the world’s best dad” cards, no Onesie wrapped in a box for him to open; she didn’t even save the test stick—and he said, “Are you happy?”

“I think I am.”

“I think I am, too.”

She couldn’t imagine not having this baby now. Jesse wanted to be a big brother. Andrew painted the nursery three times—first pale yellow, then pale green, then a bright Granny Smith, because neither of them were pastel people, even for a baby’s room. And Claire framed the ultrasound printout, adding it to the collection of photos on her nightstand. Caden and Amelia. Alexis’s ultrasound, faded gray and hard to discern her head from her feet, but Claire still knew. Jesse’s baseball picture, his ears pushed out from the band of his too-big hat, the brim bent into a deep upside-down U, the way Andrew wore his own caps. Her wedding photo.

She got up, went to the bathroom to change from her rumpled clothes into fresh ones and brush her hair. Strands of silver glinted in the mirror, and she pulled several out, along with even more brown hair, and shook the hair off her hand into the sink. Washed them down the drain. Andrew hated that. At home, he kept a Zip-It tool on top of the medicine
cabinet because, inevitably, the sink clogged at least once a month. He’d stick the toothy plastic strip down the pipe, pull out the dark, disintegrating hair in clots of foul-smelling mush, and ask her to
please, please
use the trash can instead.

“Mom,” Jesse called, barging into the bedroom.

Claire stepped out of the bathroom. “Knock much?”

“Sorry.” The boy stepped back into the hallway and closed the door.
Tap, tap. Tap.

“Come in.”

Jesse slipped back into the room, his round cheeks stained with the afternoon’s walk. “Dad told me to get you for dinner. Beverly made ham.”

“I’m coming,” she said.

He looked nothing like Andrew, was every bit his mother. Elizabeth Brenneman died when Jesse was two; he had no memory of her, which made it easy for Claire to slip into the place she’d left. It was more difficult with Andrew. Not for him. For her. She had seen the photos at his home, framed on every wall and in every corner, of his darling Lizzy and her long, firm dancer’s body, her face like a Botticelli. She’d died of lung cancer, a smoker during her career, like many ballerinas, the nicotine an appetite suppressant, the cigarettes something in their mouth instead of food. Seven months and gone. Andrew had been devastated.

The depth of Claire’s relationship with Andrew had been inversely proportional to the number of pictures he kept out, more frames disappearing with each of her visits to his home, replaced with ones of only Jesse or both him and his son together, until finally even the wedding photo above the fireplace came down the week before he proposed. Claire said yes but didn’t understand what he saw in her, after all he had with
Lizzy. She still had days when she felt like his second-best wife, though he never did anything to promote those emotions.

She went downstairs and ate the ham, and potatoes and peas Beverly made for dinner, not speaking, listening to Jesse chatter away about saltwater taffy and the beach and the shells he’d found in the sand. When he switched to the wax museum, Andrew tried to hush him, saying, “Nothing gruesome at the dinner table.”

“It’s all right,” Beverly said, her words tumbling lopsidedly from the sagging corner of her mouth, courtesy of a stroke several years ago. She had been the best friend of Claire’s mother and was now one of Claire’s closest confidantes. “Always fascinated by that place.”

“You’ve been there?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, a few times, when I first moved to the island.”

Claire couldn’t resist. “Do you know anything about who owns it?”

“Still Mick Borden, I think. He got it from his papa and I haven’t heard of it changing hands.”

“There’s a woman who works there. And a teenage girl?”

“They’ve been there, oh, I don’t know, maybe five years or so. They stay in the house part and run the place for Mick. He can’t be bothered with it. Won’t sell it, though, because he’d have to split the money with his brother, and he’s not likely to do that, ever. Those Borden boys haven’t been able to stand each other since the day little Petey was born.”

Beverly sipped her iced tea, holding a napkin under the glass to catch the dribbles. “Andrew says you two are having a date tonight?”

Claire stopped her head from whipping toward her husband, pulling the surprise at his lie inward. “Yes,” she managed.

“Jesse and I already have plans to play Monopoly into the wee hours.”

“Beverly likes it, just like me. I told her you and Dad never play ’cause you hate it so much.”

They took the car because the night had frosted, no longer fooled by the sun into believing spring had come, and drove in silence not three minutes down the street. Andrew pulled into the peastone parking place next to the museum, and they climbed stone stairs cut into the hill; at the top the gravel continued on a forked path—one curved left to the museum’s porch and front door, the other kept straight before wrapping around the side of the house. Andrew walked Claire to the apartment door, not touching her but hovering, and said, “You have your phone?”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

She knocked, and the outside light burst on. Susan opened the door, and Claire slipped past her, into a spotless mudroom area, laundry folded neatly in plastic baskets on top of a front-loading washer. “This way,” she said, motioning through the only doorway—a curtained opening in the wall.

Claire went through into a dining area, where three pedestal coffee mugs waited on the table beside a Bundt cake. Hanna stood behind one chair. “Hi,” she said.

“Hanna.” Claire went to her, drew the girl in, her pregnant belly a rock between them. Hanna was tall now, inches taller than Claire, but still willowy frail, a mix of teenaged growth spurts and melancholy. She wore lean straight-legged jeans, a hooded thermal top, striped socks, and no shoes. She allowed herself to be hugged but didn’t relax into it.

“It’s Molly now,” Hanna said.

“Molly.” It felt unnatural on her tongue, as fake as Hanna’s brown hair. “You had a cat . . .”

“My aunt did.” Hanna hooked the handles of all three cups with one hand and lifted. “Sit, sit. Can I get you some coffee? We have decaf.”

“That’s fine, Ha—Molly. Thank you.”

Claire sat. The girl poured coffee and cut cake, dropping a slice on a creamy white saucer—it matched the mugs—and sliding it in front of Claire, and then sat, too, leaving one chair between them. Susan still stood, close to the curtained doorway. Claire took a tiny sip of her drink, scalding the tip of her tongue. She itched the burn against her teeth. Took a breath. “So, how are you?”

“Good. I’m good,” Hanna said. “You?”

“Really good.”

“Pregnant.”

“Yes, you see that,” Claire said, smiling a little. “That’s why we’re here. On Dorsett Island, I mean. A family vacation before the baby comes.”

“You’re married again, then. To that man?”

“Andrew, yes.”

“And happy?”

“Yes, very much.”

“I’m glad for it, Claire. You . . .” Hanna’s finger’s fluttered around her thin hoop earring. Tugged at it. “I’m just glad.”

There were no forks on the table. Claire broke a piece of cake off with her fingers, tasted it, not because she was hungry—the ham had given her indigestion—but for something to do to keep her from falling into the deep, deep moment between their words. She wanted to ask what she knew she couldn’t. The answer waited at the very bottom of the chasm,
and she wasn’t ready to jump down into that dark place with Lord-knows-what-else lurking there.

She only wanted safe answers.

Hanna wasn’t ready to go there, either—her legs crossed, her hands trapped between her thighs, her elbows tight to her ribs. Closed off.

“You’re eighteen now,” Claire said.

“You remember.”

“Of course I remember, Hanna. How could I not? I looked for you. Everywhere. Your aunt wouldn’t tell me anything. I went to the police. I thought—”

“Enough,” Susan said. “Ms. Rodriguez—”

“Brenneman,” Hanna said.

“Whoever you are,” Susan snapped, “we left Avery Springs to have peace, to get Molly away from the scrutiny. To make a fresh start. I expect you to respect that. If not, please leave.”

Claire brushed crumbs off the edge of the table. “Of course. I apologize.”

Hanna shredded her napkin, rolling pieces into tiny wads and piling them on the table by her mug. She sniffled, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Turned her head away. If Claire wanted to have a conversation with her—a real conversation with the real Hanna—they both had to be away from the girl’s mother.

“Ha—Molly, would you have time tomorrow to, maybe, get some dinner?”

“No,” Susan said.

“Yes,” Hanna said. Her mother squeezed the flap of skin under her own arm, twisted it, sketched eyebrows low.

“Good, okay. I’ll pick you up around four? You’ll be home from school then, right?”

Hanna nodded.

“Okay. Right. I’ll see you then. Hanna?”

The girl looked at her, pale eyes unblinking.

“It was so good to see you.”

She nodded again, her face crinkling as she pressed her palm to her eye and dragged it over her cheek, toward her ear, swiping her long hair away from her face.

“Tomorrow, then,” Claire said.

She left, back through the curtain, a disillusioned Dorothy who had seen the wizard was nothing magical. Andrew took her hand and, walking her back to the car, said nothing. He understood her, could read her body, knew that for all the words she knew and used and loved, none could fill the boxes now.