The Air We Breathe (18 page)

H
ANNA
N
OVEMBER
2002

They drove east first, into Massachusetts, in the dark. Hanna watched the headlights on the opposite side of the highway, not many, one or two every minute, though sometimes they came in bundles. Her mother flipped a lever on the rearview mirror and the bright bursts of light from the cars behind them dulled into pale, smudgy specks. A truck passed them, shaking their van. The driver tossed a cigarette from the window; it bounced over the pavement, throwing off flecks of orange, hot sprinkles of glitter. And then the color died, and once the truck’s taillights rounded a curve ahead, there was no warmth on their side of the road. No other vehicles.

“At least no one will miss us, not for a while,” Susan said. “Diane will probably give it two appointments before she calls someone to come looking. Maybe three. That’s four days or more. There’s time.”

Hanna didn’t remind her mother that Claire would be there tomorrow.

Before leaving town, Susan had stopped at the bank’s ATM. She stuck her card in, punched a few numbers, and swore. “There’s a limit,” she mumbled. She pressed more numbers and grabbed the cash and slip of paper that popped out of the machine. Then they drove into the night.

When her mother turned off on the Barrington exit, she knew where they were headed. Aunt Serrie’s farm. Not a farm, really. A big, old falling-apart house with acres and acres of land on which nothing grew. Uncle Charlie called the place Foulton Hollow Farm. Foulton was his last name; he painted a sign for the end of the dirt driveway, big white post and white wood, and bought black stick-on letters from the hardware store. Hung the sign with hooks and eyes so it swayed in the wind, and her cousins would throw crab apples at it to make it shake more. Her, too, when she visited. The last time had been a few weeks before the bank robbery. They used to go all the time, at least a weekend a month when her father was alive.

They drove up to the house, the front porch light on, candles in every window. Not because it was close to Christmas; her aunt kept them all year long. She decorated her entire house like the pilgrims lived there, everything looking old—chipped paint, scuffed floors, worn cupboards, all sanded and prepped that way—or bought old. Primitives, she called them. Susan called them junk. Her mother decorated their house with all sorts of shiny furniture and beautiful, bold art canvases without frames. So different, the sisters. Hanna wished she had a sister of her own.

Aunt Serrie poked her head out the door. “Sue?”

“It’s us.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We need to stay for a day or two.”

“Yeah. Get in here.” Aunt Serrie hugged her mother, then Hanna.

“Where’s Charlie?” Susan asked.

“Working an overnight.”

The cousins came running down the stairs, all three talking over one another, asking their mother why she didn’t tell them Hanna was coming, telling stories from that day at school, asking for dessert. Aunt Serrie sent them all into the kitchen. “Get everyone brownies, Paul. And milk. Not soda. There’s leftover stew, too, Hanna, if you’re hungry.”

Paul, only a year older than Hanna, dragged Jensen and Liam down the hallway. She followed. The two younger boys climbed on the countertop to get plates and glasses from the cabinet. Paul pried off the cover of the brownie pan.

“Two,” eight-year-old Liam said.

“Mom said one,” Paul said.

“She didn’t say any number.”

“I want chocolate milk,” Jensen said. He stomped his five-year-old feet, covered in his blanket sleeper.

“Mom said white.”

“Nah-uh,” Liam said, stuffing his second brownie in his mouth. “She didn’t say anything about it.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Jensen opened the refrigerator and lugged out a bottle of Hershey’s syrup, bit off the clear cap and pulled up the spout with his teeth. He squeezed three inches into the bottom of his glass. “My milk, Paulie. I can’t pour it.”

Paul filled his glass and then three others. Liam added
chocolate to his, too, dipped his third brownie into it. “Hanna, do you want one before Mr. Piggo eats them all?” Paul asked.

She shook her head.

“I thought you were talking again,” Liam said, teeth dark with cakey mush. “Mom said so.”

“She is,” Paul said. “Leave her alone.”

“I don’t hear her.”

“Be quiet.”

“Mom said you go to a shrink.”

“Liam,” Paul said. “Shut your trap.”

“What’s a shrink?” Jensen asked.

“Nothing. Go brush your teeth.”

“Mom didn’t say we had to,” Liam complained.

“Go.”

“No.”

“Now or I’ll tell Mom you ate three brownies.”

“I don’t care.”

“And I’ll tell Jessica Clark you still wear Pull-Ups to bed.”

“Stupid,” Liam said, but he went.

“You too,” Paul said.

“You won’t tell Mom I had chocolate milk, will you?” Jensen asked.

“Not if you head upstairs right now.”

Jensen saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain,” and he ran out of the kitchen, skidding on the smooth hardwood floor and crashing into the banister.

“You want stew?” Paul asked Hanna.

She shook her head again.

“You are talking, right?”

“Yeah.”

Paul stacked the small saucers in one hand, managed to
collect three of the four glasses in the other, his fingers inside them, holding them together, and dropped them all in the sink. Wiped his hands on his jeans. He left her milk for her, but it was too late to drink it. She’d have nightmares.

Probably would anyway.

Aunt Serrie came in, with Susan. Her mother’s eyes were glazed over, rimmed with red. Her aunt’s lips were white, really white, like she had eaten a powdered donut and not wiped her mouth. “We have a dishwasher, you know.”

“I know,” Paul said, though he didn’t move to load it.

“Where are your brothers?”

“Washing up.”

“You too. Get your sleeping bag. You’ll sleep with them. Hanna has your bed tonight.”

“’Kay.”

“Take Hanna up with you. And change the pillowcase.”

He turned to Hanna. “C’mon.”

She followed Paul through the house to his bedroom, the attic room, the ceiling low enough she could touch it if she stood against the sidewalls. He stripped off the blue pillowcase, dropped it on the floor near some sweatpants and socks. “Flannel or regular?”

Hanna shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Flannel’s warmer,” he said, and shook open a plaid case with a big black bear in the middle. Threw the pillow on the bed. “You want me to change the sheets, too?”

“No.”

“You got pajamas?”

“My bag is still in the van.”

“I’ll get it.”

She rinsed her face in the bathroom and dried it on her
shirt. The tub was the old-fashioned kind, white with feet. The sink, too, hanging on the wall without a pedestal or cabinet. She heard footsteps, went back out and sat on the bed. Paul set the bag next to her. “Your mom’s crying.”

“Oh.” What else could she say?

“Is it about what . . . happened to you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“My mom’s cried about it, too. I guess there were . . . bad things . . . you went through,” Paul said.

“Yeah.”

He looked away, crossed the room to the dresser, fished out a pair of camouflage thermals. Wadded them against his belly. “I know.”

“Paul?” Aunt Serrie called up the steps. “You can talk to Hanna tomorrow. Get down here and let her sleep.”

Her mother slept with her for most of the night. She came late, jostling Hanna’s eyes open as she climbed under the blankets and left sometime before Hanna woke. Hanna spent much of the morning in bed, listening to the boys run around the house beneath her, occasionally opening the door to the attic, hinges groaning, and trying to tiptoe up the steps to spy on her. She wasn’t sure they ever made it to the top, heard Aunt Serrie shouting at them to shut the door and stay out of there.

She smelled Susan, her perfume, coming up the stairs before her. Miss Dior. Her father had taken Hanna to Macy’s every Christmas to buy it for her mother, had the lady at the counter wrap it in thick gold paper and stick a red bow in the middle. When was the last time Hanna had smelled
her perfume? She must have been wearing it in the weeks or months since Hanna had been home. Must have. Why would she start today? But Hanna never recalled waking or eating, or walking past her mother as she sat watching television, and catching a whiff of the scent, not since she’d been home. Maybe the smell made Susan feel safe, like it was something she knew. It made Hanna feel that way. If she could have, she’d have rolled up in her mother’s neck and stayed there in the familiar scent of her parents’ love.

Her mother smoothed Hanna’s hair from her face, touched her back. “Baby, get up. It’s late. There’s pancakes downstairs. Get dressed and come down to eat.”

She did, wearing yesterday’s clothes, and her mother didn’t say anything about it when she sat down at the table. Susan stood at the counter; Aunt Serrie filled a plate with pancakes, layered thick pats of butter between them. “Real syrup or Aunt Jemima?”

“Aunt Jemima isn’t real?”

Her aunt laughed. “Should have known with you, Sue.”

“Henry did all the pancake cooking. I had nothing to do with it.”

Serrie squeezed stripes of the brown syrup from the Aunt Jemima bottle, zigzagging them over the pancakes. “There you go.”

Hanna cut them into triangles, ate two at once, before they got soggy. She hated soggy pancakes, especially cold, the syrup squishing over her mouth, the pancakes disintegrating around her teeth so she didn’t even have to chew. Her mother poured her a glass of orange juice. “I thought we’d stay here a few days. Would you like that?”

She nodded, then the clock caught her eye, on the microwave
over her mother’s shoulder. Nearly eleven thirty. Claire would have come to the house already, to bring Hanna the ice cream she asked for yesterday and to spend time with her.

Susan followed Hanna’s eyes, saw the clock, and her body stiffened. “It’s Saturday,” she said.

“What?” Aunt Serrie asked, peeling Jensen off her leg. He wanted a fruit punch drink box; she told him they were for school lunches. He wanted one anyway.

“Pleeeeeeese,” he whined. “Just one.”

“And then your brothers will want one, and that will be three.” She took a green Tupperware cup from the cupboard. “You get apple juice.”

“We have to get going,” Susan said.

“I thought you were gonna stay the weekend,” Liam said, barging into the kitchen. “I’m thirsty.”

Aunt Serrie took out another cup, this one yellow. Poured juice into it. “Here. Sue, what’s going on?”

“We have to go.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Hanna, go get your bag.”

“Liam, Jensen, go up to your rooms,” her aunt said.

“Mom, you said Hanna was staying the whole weekend,” Liam said. “She slept all morning. We didn’t even get a chance to see her.”

“Get upstairs now,” Aunt Serrie said, her voiced raised—something she never did; the two boys looked at each other, then scrambled out of the kitchen.

“Go, Hanna,” Susan said.

She climbed the stairs to the first landing, waited, listened. She couldn’t hear enough, murmurs with the occasional word or phrase, mostly in Aunt Serrie’s voice. “. . . do anything
wrong . . .” “. . . need . . . call . . . understand . . .” “. . . enough already . . .”

She whirled as something touched her arm. Paul. He put a finger to his lips and bobbed his head toward the bedroom. So she went up the remaining stairs to the attic, where he pointed to the phone on the desk beside the computer. “Hold the mute button down before you pick up.”

Hanna hesitated, did what he said. A conversation was already in progress between her mother and a man, who said, “—know where you are.”

“We’re staying at my sister’s house in Great Barrington.”

“Take a few days. When you’re back, come in and make an official statement.”

She recognized the voice. Detective Woycowski.

“You have my statement. We’re not coming back.”

“Mrs. Suller, I realize you’re upset—”

“You have no idea how upset I am.”

“We can have a patrol car—”

“No. You can’t do anything for us.” Hanna heard a soft cough, a deep swallow—the sounds her mother made when holding back tears. “I’m sorry. I just need to keep her safe.”

The detective sighed. “Give me your number. We’ll stay in touch.”

Hanna gently replaced the receiver. She curled her finger up and down; it had cramped from her pressing it so tightly on mute. Paul sat in a monstrous leather swivel chair, staring at the computer monitor, clicking matching sets of colored jewels and watching them disappear. “So?” he said.

“I think we’re staying for a while.”

C
LAIRE
M
ARCH
2009

She rested for a day, sleeping, lounging in the bedroom, roaming the kitchen, watching Beverly bake cookies for the church fellowship supper, her steady right hand scooping lumps of oatmeal raisin dough with a metal tablespoon, her shaky left fingers pushing it onto a greased pan. She left each lump where it landed, the baking sheet patterned like a minefield, random blobs here and there, some touching, some close enough to grow into each other as they baked.

Claire offered to help.

“No one complains about ugly cookies,” Beverly said. “Just as long as they taste good.”

“These do,” Claire said, swiping a bit of dough.

“Shame, shame. You should be resting.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Claire threaded her hand through the handle of her mug of tea. No dainty china cups for Beverly. All her beverages
were served in sturdy, thick-lipped stoneware, dark, earthy colors with the glaze dried dripping down the sides. They’d been handmade by a potter acquaintance years ago, Beverly had told her yesterday, even though Claire knew that already. Her friend repeated things more often, forgot things. Age? The stroke? Something else? That Claire didn’t know. But she worried about Beverly. Stubborn as a boar, she’d been on her own all her life and would never admit to needing help, even as she opened the oven and, arm shaking, slid the baking sheet inside without wearing an oven mitt because she couldn’t put it on herself.

“These will be done in fifteen minutes, if you want one cooked,” she told Claire.

“I just might. I’m going to call Jesse now, though.”

“And Andrew.”

Claire didn’t answer, carried her mug upstairs, settled in on the made bed, on her side—the left side—and used her cell phone to dial her sister-in-law’s number. Jesse talked excitedly about all the things he’d been doing with his cousins, playing soccer in the snow, helping the neighbors with maple sugaring, and riding the four-wheeler.

Jesse wasn’t an only-child type kid, entertaining himself for hours in his room with Legos or model airplanes. He was Mr. Social, like his mother, and Claire was his secretary, juggling play dates and trips to the museum art program and Tae Kwon Do classes and basketball at the YMCA. Every day something else. Even with the new baby, he’d still be an only. Two only children, almost eleven years apart.

“You are doing school out there, too?” she asked.

“Of course I am. Aunt Jane is more of a stickler than you. She makes me do all the problems in math, not just the odd ones.”

“Really.”

“And I got a ninety-eight on my last test. Multiplying fractions.”

“Maybe I should start making you do all the problems, if that’s the results.”

“Mom.”

“Just thinking out loud,” Claire said, laughing.
He’s such a light
. And he was—the stepson she couldn’t love more if he were her own, the one who could make her smile just walking into the room. “Anything else?”

“Simon’s doing a poetry unit, and I’m doing it with him.”

“Hmm. How’s that going?”

“Fine, because I missed all the boring stuff and we’re doing the fun stuff, like writing limericks. Want to hear one?”

“Should I be scared?”

Jesse giggled. “Okay, here goes. There once was a woman named Claire, who kept tripping all over her hair—”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“Just listen, Mom.”

“I am. I am. Go ahead.”

“She took out her knife, and for the rest of her life, poor Claire had to walk around bare.” He laughed some more. “And that’s not even my best one.”

“Spoken like a true ten-year-old.”

“I gotta go. Simon and me are heading to the Robinsons’ to sled.”

“Simon and I.”

“Mom,” Jesse said, and she could hear his voice roll with his eyes. “We’re done with school for the day.”

“School is never done for the day. You know that.”

“Do you want to talk to Aunt Jane?”

“No, I’m good. You have fun, and be careful. I don’t want your poor aunt to have to rush anyone to the emergency room for stitches or broken bones.”

“The hill isn’t that big.”

“Well, be careful anyway.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Claire said, unsure if the boy heard her before he dropped the phone. She pictured him struggling into his snow pants and cramming his double-socked feet into his boots. He’d put his gloves on first, like he always did, because he wanted them to stay under the cuffs of his coat, but then he wouldn’t be able to zip, so he’d ask Jane to do it because Claire wasn’t there.

What am I doing?

She looked at the numbers on her phone’s screen, blinking, indicating the nine-minute call had ended. It was nearly one o’clock. She scrolled through her contacts and dialed Andrew’s office. His assistant answered.

“Uh, yes, could you tell me if Andrew Brenneman is in his office?” Claire asked. She deepened her voice a bit.

“I’m sorry, he’s at a lunch meeting, but I’ll put you over to his voice mail.”

Andrew’s recorded message came on, the same one he had when they first met. When his voice ended, another electronic one began, giving Claire all the options she already knew, and she pressed one. A beep and then, “Hi, Andrew, it’s me. How are you? Lisa said you’re in a lunch meeting, so I guess we’ll catch up later. I just talked to Jesse and he’s having a great time. This is good for him, I think.” She hesitated. “Anyway, we’ll talk later. Have a good day. I miss you, you know. Bye.”

She closed the phone, left it on the bedside table, and wriggled
her swollen feet into her shoes. Downstairs, she snagged a cookie from the plate in the kitchen. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Where?”

“Maybe on some of the walking trails.”

“Not the ones along the bluffs.”

Claire shook her head. “I wouldn’t worry you like that.”

“Hmm. Do you have your phone this time?”

“Yes.”

Beverly slid the spatula under a cookie on the baking sheet, transferred it to the plate. “If you’re going to the museum, I think you should take my car.” She didn’t drive anymore but kept her Olds in the garage, lending it out to people whose vehicles were in the shop or who temporarily needed a set of wheels.

“I’d like some air.”

“Remember what happened yesterday.”

“I’m good to walk.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“You’d know.”

“It’s fine on your own time, my dear, but don’t be stubborn with that baby you’re carrying.”

Claire sighed, closed the top three buttons of her coat. “Where are the keys?”

“Good girl. In the drawer right on the end there.”

“Bev,” she said, slipping the ball chain around her finger and closing her hand around the keys, a mix of shiny silver and dull brass. When she opened her palm again she could smell the warm, sweaty metal. “It’s a small island. Do you know anything more about Hanna, at the museum, or her mother?”

“Just gossip.”

“Gossip you can repeat?”

Beverly added more dough to the cookie sheet. “I’ve talked to the mother several times. She’s friendly and personable and I know has helped with several town fund-raisers—for the library addition and such—and has some closer friends on the island. Linda Johnson’s daughter was killed in a car accident, and she’s helped her a lot. People ask her for decorating advice all the time. I’ve never met the girl. She’s quite shy, I hear. And I believe there was talk of them moving here to get away from some past drama, to start over. Perhaps an abusive husband or boyfriend. I never bothered with the details. That’s about it.”

Outside, Claire yanked up the garage door, pushing it over her head. It rocked down again and she caught it, nudged it up more gently. It stayed, and she started the car, let it run for a minute, then backed it out into the road. Left the garage door open. She wouldn’t be out long.

She drove to the museum, parked in the lot again, but walked over the frozen lawn rather than taking the path. She knocked, waited. A shadow passed by the window. The door opened, and Susan stood there, staring back at her. “Molly’s around front.”

“I’d like to talk to you, if you have a little time.”

“Time’s about all I have these days.”

Claire followed Susan through the mudroom, this time piled with boxes instead of laundry. Boxes lined the dining room table, some taped shut and labeled, others open and half filled.

“Going somewhere?” Claire asked.

“It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“I’m getting married. We’re moving into my fiancé’s place. Well, he’ll be my husband then.”

“Hanna’s going, too?”

“Molly. Yes, she’s going.” Susan stacked a pile of DVDs in her arms, dropped them into the cardboard box on the coffee table. “What do you want from us?”

“I’m worried about your daughter.”

“That’s right. My daughter. Let me worry about her.”

“She needs help.”

“Playing savior again?”

“Is she in counseling?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“So she’s not.”

Susan looked as though she wanted to snap back another retort but instead closed the box in front of her, overlapping each of the flaps, folding the last one under the first so it stayed shut by itself. She sagged, motioned loosely around her with a flap of her hand. “For better or worse, I’ve done what I thought was best. Please, just forget you’ve seen us and leave Hanna alone.”

She called her Hanna.

Claire watched the woman in front of her, thicker than she remembered from six years ago, eyebrows penciled on, hair dyed the same color as her daughter’s, but still well groomed and well dressed in dark-wash jeans and a camel-colored duster, belted at the waist. As Susan stared down at the creased cardboard box, inspecting it as if it were the most important thing on earth, Claire saw she was terrified—of her, of what she could do to her. The woman had lived the past six years pulled into her shell, Hanna crammed in there with her, two snails sharing the same protective coating. And
here came Claire with her two-pronged escargot fork, ready to pry them from the safety of their home, sauté them in garlic and butter, and serve them up to whoever waited on the other side of their past.

“I’m not planning on saying anything,” Claire said, and she heard the way the words came out, coated in a threat she didn’t mean but left hanging there because it served her purpose.
I’m not planning on saying anything. Not planning to, if I get what I want, if you answer my questions.
“But will you tell me . . . Does Ha—Molly leave the building?”

“She went outside for you.”

And Claire heard it in her voice, the same feeling that had come over her when Caden was three and he had fallen on the cement, scraping his knees and, with blood trickling down his chubby legs, had run to Daniel. He scooped the boy up as she watched from the lawn, stunned that her baby had chosen his father over her.

It was the first time and she didn’t know what to do with the intensity of her—what? Disappointment? Displacement? Plain ol’ hurt? It was ridiculous, she knew, resenting Daniel for, in that moment, usurping her place in the pecking order. He was her husband, for crying out loud. And Caden’s father. But her heart didn’t care. Her body had carried Caden. She rocked him through his colic and nursed him night after night, sacrificing her sleep and her perky breasts and daily showers and waistline. She was the most important person in his life.

And then she wasn’t.

Susan had that look, the one that cried out,
It’s not right. She did for you what she won’t do for me.
It was how the woman must have felt the day Hanna spoke to Claire, on the swing, and every visit afterward.

“I guess she did.” Claire hadn’t fully appreciated it at the time, seeing the girl inch out on the sidewalk, shoulder and hipbone pressed against the glass, creeping unsteadily toward her. The pain, the worry, it was all too great. But afterward, in the ambulance, once the contractions lessened and the oxygen cleared her head, she blinked and thought,
Dear Lord, she crawled to me.
And now, because it was the only thing she could think of to add, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, you always had part of her.”

Claire thought she wanted to add more, but Hanna came through the door, calling, “Mom, do you think we can . . . ? Claire.”

“How are you?”

“No, how are you? Is the baby okay? Oh, I’m such an idiot. Of course it’s okay or you wouldn’t be standing here.”

“The baby’s fine.”

“I wanted to make sure . . . We called the hospital, but you had already left. Mom thought she knew who you were staying with, but I wasn’t sure I should . . .” The girl’s voice faded and she tucked her hair behind her ears. “I was worried.”

“I’m fine.”

“Good. That’s good. I was really worried.”

“It’s close to dinnertime, so I should get going. But, can I go through the front?”

Susan sucked her upper lip into her mouth until it disappeared, emitting a long, soft squishing sound. But Hanna nodded, motioned through the office door.

In the lobby she unlocked the dead bolt. Claire touched her arm. “Thank you . . . for yesterday.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You did. You did.”
Just say it, Claire.
“The other evening,
you know, after I came and you . . . Well, I spoke to . . . Oh, what’s his name again, the pizza guy. Thomas?”

“Tobias.”

She nodded. “Yes. He said that it’s hard for you, sometimes, to leave the building—” The girl opened her mouth, but Claire shushed her. “So I know . . . I
know
that yesterday was . . . a big deal.”

“Claire?” Hanna said.

“Mmm?”

“I want to go down to the beach.”

“Okay,” Claire said slowly.

“With you. Now. Before I change my mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I have to. If I wait, you might go home. He sent you to me again. He’s giving me a chance.” Hanna wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”

She was the girl on the swing then, frail, broken. But Claire also saw a glint of something more, a bubbling potion of bravery and tenacity and hope. “Well then. How about a coat?”