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.
18
MOLLY
FEBRUARY 2009
Her mother wasn’t speaking to her. She couldn’t say she was particularly bothered by the silent treatment or that it hadn’t happened before. Louise’s favorite weapon was silence, and most of the time Molly gave in first—she couldn’t handle the grating tension around her—apologizing for whatever she had said or done or hadn’t done. Today, though, she refused to be the one to cry “uncle” with the first words.
I can be stubborn, too.
Sh
e used to be feisty. Her preschool teacher had called her parents in for a meeting not long after the year began, because Molly had claimed the play kitchen area as her own kingdom, and those who wanted to cook play fruit in the oven had to pay half their plastic bounty to her. Her father had told her she needed to share, and she did because he’d asked, and when Mrs. Conroy had thanked her for being kind, she told her, “I’m doing it for my daddy, not for you.” But that was when she was Hanna, before her father’s death and the kidnapping and her mother vanishing inward.
And then they ran, and Molly dropped little crumbs of Hanna along the way, like Hansel and Gretel, hoping to find her way back. Instead she lost the little girl who wanted to survive and became a young woman who didn’t know how to open a door.
She showered, sat on the floor of the tub, and lathering her legs with a bar of Dove, shaved from her ankles to the tops of her knees. When she finished, she toweled dry and dressed in her favorite brown corduroy pants and a cotton turtleneck.
Claire would come for her in seven hours. She had that long to find a way outside. She’d start with the words.
She licked the tips of her fingers and stuck them to a sheet of white paper in the printer, pulled it toward her. Then she fished the scissors out of the desk drawer and cut the paper into strips, at first as thick as her wrist, as long as her hand. Then she trimmed those down to the size of half a playing card, a matchbook, a Chinese-cookie fortune. She could admit she was Hanna now, allow herself to take part in the things that used to be her. Like the words. On the smallest paper she wrote breathe. Folded it into her front jeans pocket.
Louise, from the kitchen table, rattled the newspaper as she opened it somewhere in the middle. Molly gathered her schoolbooks and went into the lobby of the museum to slump on the stool for the day and wait. She spent the first hour picturing herself holding open the museum’s front door, listening to the cackle from the speaker above, saying to Claire, “After you,” and then allowing the glass door to puff closed as she let go, leaving the wax behind her. Leaving her mother. Leaving it all.
How did she end up stuck in a museum, inside and alone?
Gradually, like a frog in a pot, the water slowly heating, the amphibian not realizing it was being boiled to death. It started with too much wind and sea and not wanting to be outside with her friends. Even then, though, she could still go places with Louise—to the grocery store, to the mall in Portland, to a diner or movie theater. But those outings soon became more difficult, her anxiety building on the car ride, growing until Molly would ask to ride in the cart, even though her almost-thirteen-year-old legs were too long, but her mother said that was certain to draw attention. So she’d laced her fingers around the thin, cold shopping cart bars until the metal was the same temperature as her hand and she couldn’t tell one from the other, sidestepping strangers and formulating plans in her head should someone try to touch her.
There’s the closest exit. The best place to hide is in those clothing racks. No one will find me if I curl up behind all those bulk packages of paper towels.
Soon all those thoughts tingled in her skull, working their way down her arms, her legs, making her limbs heavy and numb. Her breath thickened in her lungs like pudding and she was certain she’d suffocate. Every man looked like Thin Man or Fat Guy or Short One. Molly started crying and shaking when Louise made her go to the store with her; once she passed out in the pharmacy section at Target. Those were attention grabbers they didn’t need, so Louise let her stay home.
The museum had dead bolts, alarms, and nothing worth taking. Molly locked her bedroom door and pushed her dresser in front of it when her mother had to leave to buy milk or toilet paper, drew her curtain over the window, and balled herself up in her blankets, hoping it would look only like some teenage girl had forgotten to make her bed. She’d stayed there, contending with her hot breath bouncing back at her, filling the blanket tent, heating it until the sweat sprouted between her fingers and toes, until her mother came back. Then she’d jump out of bed, move the dresser, and with a smile help put the food away, shrugging off Louise’s concern when she said Molly looked a little flushed.
At least she didn’t need to hide in her bedroom anymore.
Her mother realized, at some point, that Molly had stopped leaving the building, even to pull the sandwich-board sign inside during the summer months. And Molly was sure Louise was happier with the situation like it was, her daughter safe from anything in the outside world and, seemingly, never going away.
She opened her physics book and read about states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas. Plasma. Bose-Einstein condensates. She didn’t understand that one completely; something about multiple atoms superimposed over one another, sharing the same space as to be indistinguishable. Multiple lives superimposed over one another. Molly over Hanna.
She would have to lie to Claire. She lied every day, every time she told someone her name, every time she answered to it.
“But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.”
The move to Dorsett Island had brought a relief in anonymity, a distance between past and future that comes only when one’s past is erased and one’s future shimmers in uncertainty. But now, with Claire’s arrival approaching like the waves she watched from the window, Molly felt the two halves of herself poised to collide.
Tobias came first, and when Molly saw him walk through the door, panic spurted up her throat, bitter and raw. She swallowed the acidic mouthful back down, asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“I just mean . . . I thought . . . Don’t you have class?”
“Molly, I’m on break. I told you that two days ago.”
“Oh, right.” She fiddled with a paper clip, straightening the curves, bending it into a circle.
He stretched, arching his shoulders back toward each other; his knapsack—army surplus with ink drawings covering it—slipped down his arms, and he caught a strap in one hand. “I brought a movie,” he said, opening one of the pockets. “Popcorn. Yeah, the microwave stuff, but it tastes really good with a whole lot of butter melted over it.”
“Tobias—”
“I know, I know. Don’t say it. You don’t have butter, right? Well, ta-da.” He opened another pocket, pulled out two sticks of Land O’Lakes butter and a plastic ice pack. “I’m prepared.”
“My mom is home.”
“Does she have something against movies and popcorn?”
Something moved in Molly’s peripheral vision, and by the time she turned her head toward the window, Claire had entered to the cackle, her cheeks dressed in February, pink and shiny with dry skin. She wore a fleece poncho, shook off the hood and lifted her hair out from beneath the fabric. “I hope it’s okay I came in this way. I knocked on the side door, but no one answered.”
“It’s fine,” Molly said.
“I’m surprised you keep this place open in the winter.”
“Tell me about it,” Tobias said. “Hey. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Oh, sorry. Claire, this is Tobias. His family owns the pizza place across the street. And this is Claire. She’s here . . . visiting.”
“Nice to meet you, Tobias.” Claire extended her arm. “Your folks keep their business open, too, all year?”
“Ayuh, but people gotta eat, locals as well as flatlanders.”
“That pesky food thing. Who knew it would be so important?”
Tobias and Claire laughed, and their voices scraped along Molly’s spine, vibrated through her pelvis, into her stomach, churning her lunch around until she felt nauseated. She waited for the inevitable, the How do you know Molly? question, and it came seconds after she thought it, falling out of Tobias’s mouth, smacking Claire in the face. She wrapped an arm around her stomach. “We both lived in Avery Springs, before Hanna moved here.”
“Molly,” Tobias said.
“What did I say?”
“Y
ou said Hanna.”
Claire reddened, swatted the emptiness in front of her nose. “Pregnancy brain. Really, half the time I can’t even remember my own name.”
Tobias looked from one to the other. She saw the wheels turning.
“So, are you ready?” Claire asked.
“I’m not sure I can now,” Molly said.
“I’ll speak with your mother.”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . . I’m not sure I can now.”
“Okay,” Claire said. “I don’t leave for a couple more days. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” Molly whispered. The room tilted. She smoothed her fingertips over her eyelids, pulling the corners outward until she saw the world through thin, blurry slits.
“Hanna? Are you sure you’re okay?”
Tobias scratched beneath his hat. “Why do you keep calling her that?”
“Because it’s my name,” Molly said.
She sank down against the window, night seeping through the glass, through the thin fabric of her gray shirt, her skin. She hugged her knees and rocked, tears coming hard and fast, her body shaking with the cold and the crying. Claire didn’t move, seemed stunned, but Tobias crouched down next to her, cupped his hand under her chin. “Molly?”
“Don’t touch me,” she shouted. “Don’t.”
Louise burst out of the apartment, pushed Tobias aside and, falling to her knees, blanketed Molly with her body. “Go away, both of you.”
“I don’t—”
“Tobias, for once in your life, just leave.” Louise’s eyes looked past him, to Claire. “You see what you’ve done?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You see. She was fine before you showed up here. We were fine.”
“It was only dinner.”
“You bring it all back to her.”
“I—”
“Get out.”
And suddenly Molly was being lifted, her mother stumbling backward with a grunt, shifting Molly up a little higher with a jostle, bracing her fleshy shoulders on the window for support. Too tall for Louise to carry her, Molly leaned against her, stumbling into the apartment, to her bedroom.
The Air We Breathe Page 15