The Air We Breathe

by Christa Parrish

  “Ready to head out?” Heidi asked, coming up next to Claire and carrying a cranky Landon, dirt crusted around his mouth, one shoe on, the other sticking out from his grandmother’s back pocket. “This one needs a nap.”

  “No bye. No bye,” Landon cried.

  “Let me take him,” Claire said. She lifted the toddler onto her hip; he ground his face in her shoulder, leaving a slimy trail of mucus on her sleeve.

  “Who were you talking to?” Heidi asked.

  She rubbed her thumb against the writing callus on her right ring finger; she held her pen wrong, always had, no matter how many times the nuns whacked her knuckles with their rulers in the Catholic elementary school her devout grandmother insisted on sending her to. All she wanted to do was get home, where peace came in little black-and-white boxes, all neat and patterned and numbered. Where she measured her own well-being in clues and obscure words people used only in puzzles. “No one.”

  10

  CLAIRE

  OCTOBER 2002

  She sat in the small waiting room, more a hallway, four antique chairs with rich fabric seats on a floral Oriental rug. The psychologist’s office was in an old Victorian home, long since divided up for offices and apartments, and the thick, white woodwork and paneled doors made the waiting area feel small, as if the walls kept pushing closer and closer together. A small black button surrounded by a brass plate stared at Claire from beside one of the doors, a thimble-sized light bulb above it. When the mother and the girl had arrived—only two minutes ago, even though Claire had been sitting here for the past ten—Susan poked the button with her pointer, and the bulb glowed dull gold in the shadowy hall.

  The girl sat next to her mother, swinging her legs, head down. Susan pinched her eyelashes between her fingers, then sat on her hands. Claire looked at her own hands, scraping at the corners of her fingernails, pushing back the cuticles, pinching away pieces of dead skin, which she flicked onto the floor. The white flecks settled on the rug, snow on the woven tulips. She turned her head, counted dogs on the toilé wallpaper.

  The doorknob jiggled, and when the door opened the light blinked off. “Ms. Rodriguez, you came. Thank you. I’m Diane Flinchbaugh.” The tall, blocky woman held out a square hand. One of the gold buttons on her polyester suit jacket hung from a single thread and jerked like a yo-yo as she shook Claire’s hand. Her unseasonable linen skirt fell in wrinkles just below her knees, and her slip peeked out from the hemline.

  “Nice to meet you,” Claire said.

  “Good, yes. Why don’t you come in first, and then we’ll join Hanna in the play area, where we usually meet. Hanna, Ashley will take you back in a moment.” She extended her arm into the office. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  The office was thick and fussy, as plush as the waiting area, with crystal lamps and Queen Anne sofas and ornate frames on the walls. Claire stood until Diane returned. She motioned to one couch, and Claire sat; the psychologist sat in a chair across from her. “Now, tell me what Hanna said to you yesterday.”

  “She said she saw a necklace like mine on television.”

  “Necklace?” The psychologist squinted at Claire’s collar.

  “This one,” she said, pulling it from beneath her sweater. “I told her my son gave it to me.”

  “Anything else?”

  Claire hesitated. “She said her mother looks at her the same way I looked when I mentioned my son.”

  “And how is that?”

  “With hurt.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Yes.”

  Diane crossed her legs. A scarlike run in her panty hose snuck out of her shoe and up the inside of her calf; a thick patch of something shiny—clear nail polish, Claire figured—glopped at the top of the run. “What happened to your son, Ms. Rodriguez?”

  “He’s dead.”

  The psychologist wrote something on a yellow legal pad. “How did the conversation begin?”

  “I asked Hanna if she wanted a push. On the swing. She was just sitting there.”

  “And she said yes.”

  “Well, she nodded.”

  More writing, and then Diane stood. “Would you mind coming with me, into my session with Hanna?”

  Claire cleared her throat, stayed seated on the couch. “I really don’t know how much I want to get involved in all this.”

  “You approached her.”

  “To give her a push on a swing.”

  “There must have been a reason. Or are you in the habit of asking the same question to other children you don’t know.”

  “I was being nice,” Claire mumbled.

  “You’re a religious woman,” Diane said, or asked; all her questions sounded like statements, with psychological assuredness Claire found disconcerting. She’d gone to a shrink—two, actually—after the car accident. Alone, at first, at Daniel’s prodding. He’d hoped the counseling would work some voodoo magic on her, snap her free from the depression that coated her, keeping her in bed, indoors, in the same flannel pants for days at a time.

  She’d went for seven sessions, maybe eight. They’d asked her about her faith in God and assured Claire her babies were in heaven. Platitudes. Prayers. None of it worked to lessen the guilt. And when, fourteen months later, Daniel declared he couldn’t take it anymore, they’d gone to counseling together—his way to assuage his own guilt, since he’d already had one leg out the door for weeks, already fancied himself in love with the woman in the next cubicle at work. After a few sessions of counseling, he asked for a divorce and she signed the papers, not caring one way or another. He deserved a new life anyway. Who would want to stay with the woman who’d killed his kids?

  “Are you religious?” Claire asked.

  “No. But you are. And so you would believe there is a reason you spoke to Hanna, a reason you’re here today. A reason she connected with you. Would your God want you to abandon this child?”

  “You’re manipulating me.”

  “I’m speaking your truth. Do with it as you will.”

  “Fine.” Claire sighed. “I’ll stay.”

  She followed the psychologist into a yellow room with a cerulean rug. Child-sized recliners huddled in one corner, shelves of toys in another. At a kidney-shaped table surrounded by plastic chairs in primary colors, Hanna sat poking holes into a flattened mound of blue Play-Doh, a college-aged woman beside her. Diane nodded at the woman, who moved from where she sat to a chair in the corner. Diane replaced her, touched Hanna’s hands. “Would you draw me a picture today?”

  Hanna nodded.

  Diane rolled up the dough and gave her paper and markers, looking gargantuan in the too-small chair, knees bumping the edge of the table. Claire stood against the wall, unsure of her place.

  “Can you show me where you saw Claire’s necklace before?”

  The little girl’s eyes flashed toward Claire, who smiled. Hanna nodded again, reached for a black marker and twisted the cap off. She drew a rectangle, and a smaller one inside it, coloring between the lines she made. Then she took a pink marker, drew a cross shape inside the box. Claire thought she had finished, but Hanna drew a yellow circle on the paper, below the black rectangle, and then lines coming off it. She added a blue body shape, yellow hands and black feet. She slid the paper in Claire’s direction.

  “Is that the man who watched you?” Diane asked.

  Hanna nodded.

  “The man who kept you locked away?”

  Looking at Claire, Hanna moved her head up and down, once, twice. Claire saw something in her face, a hint of untruth, a secret. Saying what others wanted to hear—Claire knew that well. She’d been doing it for years. Oh, yes, things are well, thank you. You’re right, God does heal all wounds. Thanks for asking, I barely think about it anymore.

  She wanted to wrap her arms around the girl, pray over her, rock her and hold her. Claire felt the Spirit expand within her, pressing against her insides, pushing up and out through her eyes, falling in tears of grief. Oh, God, wh
y? She’s just a baby.

  Hanna walked her hand across the table, her fingers legs of a spider, and touching the corner of a clean sheet of paper, pulled it back to her and uncapped a brown marker. She drew a triangle with curved corners, with deliberation, not loose lines and carelessness like the last picture. She colored it in, adding darker squares, topping it with a scoop of mint green, dotted with chunks of black.

  “Ice cream,” Diane said. “Did you eat ice cream where you were?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Do you want ice cream?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, we can send Ashley to find some. That’s easy. That looks like mint chip, yes?”

  “I want her to take me,” Hanna said.

  The psychologist flinched, and for one stunned instant seemed to grope for words. She recovered, saying, “Well, I’m sure that’s a fine idea. When we’re done here, you and Ms. Rodriguez can go for ice cream before you both head home. I’ll make sure it’s all right with your mother.”

  Across the bottom of the paper, Hanna wrote kin, over and over again, until she ran off the edge. Looked at Claire. “Do you like ice cream?”

  “Sometimes,” Claire said. “But, Hanna, I don’t think—”

  “I need to ask you.”

  “About . . . ?”

  Her eyes shifted toward Diane. She puckered her lips closed, skin dimpling in her chin. After sticking the lid back on her marker, she opened a can of Play-Doh, pink this time, and mashed it onto the tabletop. Diane tried to engage her some more, but other than a few curt nods at benign questions, Hanna had closed herself off from conversation. Ashley scribbled notes in the corner, yellow pad on her knees; it matched the one Diane used in her office.

  Finally Diane said, “Okay, Hanna, I suppose it’s ice cream time. Wait here a moment.”

  The psychologist left, returning with Susan. “Hanna, you and your mom are going to drive to the ice cream parlor, and Claire will follow in her own car. The two of you can eat your cones there, and your mom will wait in the van, if you’d like her to.”

  Hanna nodded three times, slowly. Her mother curled her arms around her purse, a large chartreuse leather thing with pockets and buckles and metal studs, cradling it against her ribs. She looked at her feet, kicked one against the vinyl floor, sole squeaking, moved one arm from the bag to her daughter and led her from the room. Hanna turned her head back, briefly, peered at Claire through her milky hair before disappearing down the hall.

  Picking up her own bag from against the wall, Claire said, “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Just talk to her,” Diane said. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “But what if she brings up . . . you know? I have no idea what to say to that. What if I make it worse? I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are.” The psychologist handed her a small white card. “Next appointment, on Friday. We’ll discuss it then.”

  Claire took the card and slid it into her back pocket. She left, got into her car, backed out behind the minivan waiting in the parking lot driveway with its left turn signal on. Her palms secreted perspiration onto the steering wheel. She didn’t make left turns, not since that day. Had only started driving again last summer.

  But the van pulled into the street, and Claire willed her leg, clamped down hard on the brake, to relax, and the car crept forward, front bumper protruding only inches past the sidewalk. She could see the van stopped at a traffic light not a quarter mile down the road. Her vision muddied, and she fought to keep from hyperventilating as every blood vessel constricted. Her hand fumbled with the directional, pushing the lever up—right—and she turned from the driveway, around the block, half stopping at the signs, and ended up three cars behind the minivan, which parked in a Stewart’s Shop lot. Claire followed, stopping, walking to the mother’s rolled-down window. The woman handed her five dollars. “For the ice cream. Hanna will wait here until you come out.”

  Claire went into the store and bought two single-dip mint chocolate chip scoops—on sugar cones, like in Hanna’s drawing. She carried them back outside, and Hanna slid out of the van. Claire held out one of the cones, but Hanna didn’t reach for it; she walked to the outdoor picnic table and sat, her back toward them. It was one of those mild autumn days that teased people, and they dug out their T-shirts after packing them under their beds for the winter, only to wake the next morning to frost on the windowpane and a load of spring laundry to rewash and refold into storage.

  “I’m watching,” the mother said.

  She nodded, climbed over the wooden bench, settled across from the girl. Now Hanna took the cone. Closed her mouth over the top of the ice cream and sucked, creating a green dairy cowlick. She dug chips out with her tongue.

  Claire waited, licked around the bottom of her own ice cream, pushed the softening mound deep into the cone so it filled down to the bottom and there would be cream in every bite. As she peeled the cone wrapper off, Hanna said, “If you do that, it will leak out the bottom.”

  The girl was right. A sticky drop rolled down the inside of her hand; Claire wadded a napkin against the point. “You’ve had these before.”

  Hanna tore her own wrapper off in strips, an inch or two at a time, unwrapping more only when she’d eaten down to the paper. When she finished, she wiped her mouth and held the napkin in her balled fist. “I need you to tell me about Gee.”

  “G? Like the letter.”

  Hanna shook her head. “On the television, the man said Gee would help me if I asked.”

  “What man?”

  Shrugging, the girl rolled the napkin back and forth beneath her palm, against the table. “He was glittery, and he shouted and wiped his face with a white cloth a lot.”

  “I don’t know, Hanna.”

  “You have to know,” she whispered, her lower lip quivering. “They showed a necklace just like yours on the commercial, and then he came on and told me to say, ‘Help me, Gee.’ I did. Not even out loud but in my head. And the fat guy died. And I ran away.”

  Claire suddenly understood, her body bathed in a head-to-toe shiver. She’d heard the stories, of course. Of the missionaries, of prisoners for Christ and of powers. Or when someone told her about a friend of a friend of a friend who came home from a revival with solid gold tooth fillings, or had a cancerous lump evaporate after being anointed with oil. Claire had always listened to these tales with a mixture of disbelief—how could anyone believe that nonsense?—and longing—why couldn’t God work that way in her own life?

  But she’d never seen a real out-of-the-ordinary miracle, until today. This little girl sitting before her, who prayed to some misheard name she didn’t know, because some seedy TV preacher had told her to. And, in response to her childlike faith, He answered. “The man didn’t say Gee, sweetie. He said Jesus.”

  Hanna swallowed. “The one on the cross?”

  “You know about Him.”

  “I saw a statue once.”

  “But you don’t know anything about Him?”

  “He made Easter. And He keeps people from going to the hot place. Well, some people. The ones who go to St. Catherine’s.”

  “Who told you that?

  “Katie Torino.”

  “A friend?”

  Hanna nodded.

  “Well, your friend should listen better in church, I think. Jesus is our friend. He does more for us than we can imagine.”

  “Why?”

  “He loves us.”

  “Why?” Hanna asked again, her white-blue irises, marble-sized and icy, floating nearly invisible in her wide eyes.

  “Because—”

  The van horn honked behind her. Hanna stood, climbing over the picnic bench, and Claire turned to see the mother motioning her to come. “I have to go,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again, right?”

  “Yes,” Claire said.

  “He wants me to see you again.”

  And Hanna climbed into the van. Her mother shut her in and drove away as Claire w
atched, autumn leaves scuttling over her feet.

  11

  MOLLY

  FEBRUARY 2009

  Uncle Mick came with more books and beer and a tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Molly had known he was on his way because her mother wore the expensive dangling earrings he’d given her—gold-tone disks the size of clementines, the metal etched with an Aztec design. With an expression of expectation Louise looked like a woman who hadn’t been hiding for the past six years. Molly was glad for it.

  “Come eat, Mollidoodles,” Uncle Mick said, shaking the box of biscuits at her. She wasn’t hungry but sat anyway. She liked the life Mick brought to her mother, to the apartment. And, yes, to her. He was outside of them, unattached to their past, a buffer between then and now. And he made them laugh.

  Louise hadn’t trusted him in the beginning, especially when he started sniffing around them with gifts and flattery and all the “Call me Uncle Mick, not Mr. Borden” talk. Molly didn’t remember when it changed, had no idea why, but figured her mother’s loneliness played a part.

  No one wanted to be alone.

  Mick wasn’t anything like her father—not book smart, not handsome, not fastidious. He was the kind of guy who was rich enough people pardoned his obnoxiousness, but his money came without culture or style. His favorite clothes were Carhartt jeans, stained from work, T-shirts, and dusty steel-toed boots. He lived in an oceanfront house about a half hour’s drive from the museum, the siding covered with old Shell Motor Oil signs and reproduction fishing nets; she’d seen pictures on his Facebook page.

  He seemed to genuinely care about her mother, though. Louise had nothing to offer him except herself. And when he was around, she shined a little bit like she used to when Molly’s father was alive.

  Her mother had sacrificed for her, more than any mother should be asked. They weren’t living the life Louise wanted or deserved; it wasn’t some consequence for her past sins. She did what she needed to do for her daughter’s sake, and had been successful—mostly—in giving Molly as normal and happy a life as possible.