The Air We Breathe

by Christa Parrish

  “Lie down, baby,” she said.

  Molly pushed the blankets aside, crawled into the flannel sheets, her clothes crackling with static electricity, and in the darkened room she saw small sparks of light in between her pants and the bedspread. When she was a child, she’d hide under the covers and try to make the sparks happen. Like fireworks. Like lightning bugs.

  Animalia. Arthropoda. Insecta. Coleoptera. Lampyridae.

  “Don’t go,” she told her mother.

  “I’ll only be a second.”

  Louise returned shaking an orange bottle. She pressed down on the lid, turned, bounced two tiny blue pills into her hand. “Sleep. It will go away if you sleep.”

  That had always been her mother’s refuge, one or two bitter dots to usher her into forgetfulness. She took them after Molly’s father died. She took them during the long days Molly and Louise rattled around the house—after the tutor and their daily walk and television filled up all the time it could, but there was still more, always more, and nothing left to eat the hours. She took them the days Mick wasn’t around, pleading a migraine and covering her head with a wet washcloth while she stretched out on the couch. She wanted that escape now, too, letting Louise drop the pills into her own hand. Molly popped them into her mouth, drank the water her mother gave her. “Don’t go,” she said again.

  “I won’t.” Her mother lifted the blankets and Molly scooted to the wall, giving Louise room to lie down. And it was like before, wedged in the gully between the paneling and the mattress, but this time Molly fell asleep first.

  19

  CLAIRE

  FEBRUARY 2009

  Claire left the museum, Tobias behind her, and they waited outside, huddled under the awning, both silent in their own ways—she completely still, him a mass of facial ticks and joint popping. She didn’t know what they waited for, but neither spoke for several minutes. When the lights in the lobby shut off behind them, Tobias finally asked, “What is going on?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not mine to tell. You need to ask Ha—Molly.”

  “Hanna. Molly. What is all this? How do you know her, really?”

  “I told you. We lived in the same town, when she was a child.”

  “There’s more.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t say anything else.”

  Tobias motioned helplessly to the window. “We can’t just leave her in there.”

  “Her mother will take care of it.”

  “I think her mother’s the problem.”

  Her uterus contracted; Claire inhaled a short, wheezy breath. She needed water. Closed her eyes, leaned back against the door and massaged the twinge in her right side. “No. She’s not.”

  Tobias looked unconvinced. He peeled off his hat, kneaded it between his hands. “She never leaves, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Molly. Or whatever her name is. She never leaves the museum.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Annoyance oiled her voice.

  “Packing,” he said, in that way he had—his way, his only way—the one she hated when she was upset, his tone calm, steady, making her feel flamboyant and neon and out of control.

  “Why?”

  “We’re leaving in two days. I thought I’d get a start on it.”

  “Put them back.”

  “What?”

  Claire gathered her clothes from the open suitcase, dropped them in the drawer, stuffed them down and shut it. “I can take care of my own things.”

  “I can see that. Very well taken care of.” He moved the suitcase to the floor. “Want to talk about it or just throw stuff around?”

  “I can’t go.”

  Andrew sat on the bed. “Okay. Go where?”

  “Home. I can’t leave yet.” She closed her eyes, Hanna’s crumpled face appearing in her mind, repeating Tobias’s words. “She never leaves.”

  “Who?”

  “Hanna. She never leaves that building.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what the pizza boy told me. He said Hanna never goes outside. She wouldn’t go with me today. She had this . . . I don’t know, breakdown. She . . . she . . .” Claire flailed her arms. “Andrew, something’s not right. And I can’t go.”

  “I can’t stay. I have to be back to work.”

  “I know.”

  “And Jesse?”

  “I can keep him with me.”

  “While you’re running around trying to save the world? I don’t think so.”

  “Your mother will take him.”

  “For how long? A weekend, maybe. She’s too old to do much more than that.”

  “Your sister, then.”

  “I can ask her. But, Claire . . .” He took her hand, cupping his fingers around hers, like two Js—what he did when he wanted to make her aware he was close. “This is us, together,” he had told her the first time he held her hand that way, on their honeymoon night under white hotel linens. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long are you planning to stay?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “What do you know, then? Please tell me, because I seem to be missing something. My wife, who happens to be almost seven months pregnant, doesn’t want to go home with her husband and stepson, but instead plans to hang around a deserted island town to help a stranger, who may not even want to be helped by some woman from her past.”

  “She’s not a stranger.”

  “Yes she is, Claire. This isn’t the Hanna you knew. This is some other young woman, six years removed from her relationship with you. And you’re not the same person who she met then, either. At least, I thought not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That we were past all this. That you were done beating yourself up over things you have no control over.”

  She shook his hand off, pulled one of her shirts from the drawer. Shook it, trying to flap away the wrinkles, then flattened it on the bed. “I can’t talk to you. You don’t understand,” she said, folding the shoulders and hem toward the middle and then in half again.

  “I do understand. That’s what you can’t handle.”

  “I shouldn’t be long. A week, maybe two.” She folded a pair of jeans, a sweater. “You won’t even miss me.”

  Andrew sighed. “Fine. You do what you need to do.” And he left the room, closing the door tight behind him.

  She kept away from the museum for the remaining time Andrew and Jesse stayed in town, a day and a half of awkwardness, Beverly’s knowing eyes following them when they were at the house, Jesse’s kid radar tuned in to the tension. He ate paper when his nerves acted up, and Claire found herself reminding him to spit the wad of napkin in the trash, gave him chewing gum to keep the pulp consumption to a minimum. When Andrew loaded their half-empty suitcase into their Mercury Mariner, Jesse squeezed Claire around the middle, both of them in Beverly’s living room.

  “You’re not getting divorced, are you?”

  “Oh, kiddo, of course not,” Claire said, kissing the top of his head.

  “Who’ll do school with me?”

  “Aunt Sharon will, and you’ll have a great time with your cousins. It’s just a week or so.”

  “Promise?”

  Claire nodded and squeezed Jesse tight.

  When he pulled back—his eyes almost level with hers—she noticed how tall he’d gotten, his jeans short enough that his bare ankles showed above the flip-flops he insisted on wearing—“I don’t care that it’s winter. It’s the beach.”

  She wasn’t tall, could fudge five-three in sneakers, but Lizzy had been statuesque, an inch taller than Andrew, so it was no wonder Jesse grew in his sleep like some magical beanstalk. She certainly didn’t remember him coming up so high on her last week.

  “Don’t worry, my love. It won’t be long.”

  He nodded. “Call every nig
ht, ’kay?”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Jesse hugged Beverly and dragged his handled backpack down the hall, wheels catching in the fringe of the rug. He pressed the button, pushing the handle down into the case, and picked the bag up instead, pushing the front door open. Andrew met him there, told him to get in the car, and came inside.

  “All set,” he said.

  “Okay,” Claire said.

  He put his hand on the back of her neck, pulled her into his shoulder. “You are a stubborn, stubborn woman.”

  “Even if I am, I don’t have half as many flaws as you.”

  “That you don’t.”

  “Thank you for this.”

  “Was there a choice?”

  She took both his hands, held them against her stomach as the baby rolled beneath her skin. “You didn’t say no.”

  “I would never do that.” He pushed back a little. “That’s not a foot.”

  “Backside, I think.”

  “Figures,” he said, laughing quietly. “You love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Yeah, but it’s nice to hear every so often.”

  Andrew took his hands away from her belly, placed them on either side of her head, squishing her ears. He kissed the bridge of her nose, where it met her forehead, each eyebrow, her mouth, his breath smothered in her cheek. “I love you. I’ll call when I get home.”

  “Be safe.”

  “Always am.”

  And he left, too, and Claire was alone in the living room, watching them drive away through the big picture window. Beverly waited long enough to make it seem like she hadn’t been listening, then, leaning on her metal four-footed cane, shuffled in to join Claire. “Tea?” she asked.

  “I think I’m going to lie down.”

  “Tired or sad?”

  Claire turned to her mother’s friend. Her friend now, in that strange way children grow up and find their identities as adults in a world that had always seemed foreign to them, forbidden, and then one day at eighteen or twenty-one or thirty are welcomed and expected to call all those people they’d previously known as Mr. and Mrs. by their first names.

  It felt almost blasphemous the day she’d first called Ms. Watkins Beverly, and even today, almost twenty years later, she sometimes had to stop and think about it. Beverly had never married and had no children of her own, so she loved on Claire and her brothers as if they were worth all the time and attention she lavished on them. She and Claire’s mother had grown up together, dirt poor on adjacent dairy farms in upstate New York; their favorite times together had involved drinking warm milk straight from the cow and swimming in the muddy creek separating their parents’ land.

  When Claire’s mother died, Beverly had stepped into the role, dulling the loss. But, after the accident, she hadn’t been there, was recovering from the stroke that weakened the left side of her body. Claire had felt her absence acutely, angrily demanding why God would not only take her children and her marriage, but deny her the comfort of her pseudo-mother, as well.

  “Both, I think,” Claire said.

  “I can’t help with marriage advice, but I can listen.”

  Claire sat, as did Beverly, on the Victorian-inspired sofa in front of the picture window. “Do you remember when I told you about that little girl in Avery Springs? The one who disappeared?”

  “Yes, I think so. You went to her home and there was some sort of . . . altercation there. Or had been.”

  “That’s it.”

  “That was before you and Andrew married, was it not? Is there a reason it’s coming up now?”

  Claire sighed. “She’s here. In this town. The teenage girl at the wax museum. It’s her.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’re staying because . . . ?”

  “Because she needs me.”

  “Does she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you need?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Claire, Claire, Claire. I have known you since you were born, and I see this restlessness in you. You’re looking for something.”

  “I have everything I want,” Claire said, shifting her pregnant body on the uncomfortable sofa, the cushions too hard, the back too straight. “Andrew. Jesse. The baby. That’s my life.”

  “Then why, my dear, are you still sitting in my house and not with them?”

  “The girl, Hanna . . . she’s hurting. I feel like I need to stay and do what I can to help.”

  “At what expense?”

  “It’s not like that. Andrew understands.”

  “That man would throw himself under a bus for you,” Beverly said, lips loose, a string of drool stretching from the corner of her mouth. Claire reached into the pocket of Beverly’s housecoat, found the handkerchief she always kept there, and dabbed. “Thank you, dear.”

  “I think God wants me to stay. He brought Hanna into my life once. He brought her again. What are the chances?”

  “Then I’m praying for you. All of you.”

  “Bev . . . Thank you.” Claire hugged the woman, tucked the hankie back in her pocket. “I need a nap now. And I need to pray, too. I have no idea what to do next.”

  “We usually don’t. And that’s usually where God wants us.”

  20

  MOLLY

  FEBRUARY 2009

  She wondered if she’d scared Claire away. She knew Tobias wouldn’t be back but had expected Claire to be waiting outside the museum when she turned the sign and unlocked the door yesterday morning. She’d glanced up every time a shadow passed the window. Now today, nearly closing, and Claire still hadn’t come. She’d said she was going home this afternoon.

  Molly thought about trying to track her down. Claire had mentioned staying with a Beverly. Someone would know her; Tobias—though Molly couldn’t ask him—or Mick, or perhaps even her mother. She even began going through the phone book, down each column, looking for Beverlys who lived on Dorsett Island; she made it through the Es before giving up, her eyes skimming over names without reading them, having to go back to the top of each column time after time.

  She cleaned the lobby instead, down on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a stiff-bristled brush and a bucket of water with too much Mr. Clean, each stroke dredging up dark, soapy streaks on the green tile. Her knees soaked up the water, and she breathed in the chemical scent, her head throbbing. When she finished washing, she towel-dried the entire floor, changed her wet jeans, and walked stocking-footed back out into the lobby. She decided to clean the windows next—Windex and three rolls of paper towels—and when she was done, she moved on to the radiators, sliding the wads of paper between the slats.

  Louise looked in on her as she ran a hand broom beneath the baseboards. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to.”

  “Moll—”

  “Just leave me alone. Please?”

  And her mother left the room, closing the office door.

  She poked through the dust with her fingers, sliding the dead insects into piles, sorting them. Thirty-two ants. She remembered her father, firing questions at her.

  “Kingdom?”

  “Animalia,” she whispered.

  “Phylum?”

  “Arthropoda.”

  “Class?”

  “Insecta.”

  “Order?”

  She always forgot the order, no matter what. There were only five kingdoms, or six, depending on the textbook. Her father stood with six. Either way, those weren’t difficult to keep in her head. Thirty-six animal phyla or there about, though ninety-five percent of all animals belonged to only nine of them. With her father’s specialty, it was always Arthropoda. Again she only needed to remember Insecta. Once she hit order, she had the main ones memorized, the ones her father had quizzed her on most. Lepidoptera for butterflies and moths. Coleoptera for beetle
s. Diptera for flies.

  After that, she had to look them up in her copy of Peterson’s A Field Guide to Insects: America North of Mexico, the one she bought from Amazon with a gift card Uncle Mick gave her and had mailed to the museum. When she accidentally used her old name and Louise saw it, she shouted about her carelessness—one of the rare times her mother had raised her voice.

  Molly had ordered that guide because it was the same book that used to be in her father’s office when they had the big house in Avery Springs, the one that Louise packed to send back to the college after his death, the one Molly found before the box was taken away and had slept with sometimes because she missed her father so much. The one she had left behind in their rush to leave.

  She left her pile of ants to find the guide in her bedroom, came back and sat cross-legged on the floor and looked up the order for ants: Hymenoptera. She sorted out the houseflies, the ladybugs, the spiders—not insects—and a couple of daddy long-legs—not spiders. All of them crunchy, their organs long mummified inside their exoskeletons.

  Like her. She had shriveled up within her skin.

  Why hadn’t Claire come?

  She helped me before. She could help me again.

  And Molly realized she wanted that help. Who sits on the floor, picking dead bugs from the dust? She kicked the pile with her foot, scattering the dirt and carcasses, a few ants clinging to her sock by the hooked claw at the end of their legs. The vacuum was in the office, cord looped on the floor. She untangled it, dragged it behind the counter, and plugged in the wire. Sucked up the insects, the dust, the ants on her sock. And then she saw her. Claire. Walking in front of the museum window. No. She was bent at the waist, one hand on her stomach, the other against the glass, stumbling along. And then she sank to the ground, her hair pressed against the window.

  Molly opened the door, stuck her head into the air, her shoulders, her torso, all the rest of her still safely warmed in the fluorescent lights of the lobby. “Claire?”

  The woman looked at her, face grooved in pain. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Call the ambulance.”

  Closing the door, Molly rushed to the counter, grabbed the cordless phone, and dialed the emergency number. The operator answered, and she said, “There’s a woman outside the museum. She’s pregnant and said something isn’t right.”