The Air We Breathe

by Christa Parrish

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Molly from Maine. You’d think I’d know by now the Lord works in His own ways.”

  She wrote down the phone number the man gave her, and after a few minutes more of his incredulous chatter, hung up the receiver. His joy had been contagious, though, radiating through the phone lines and warming Molly’s cheeks until they puffed and burned. She rubbed at them as she returned to bed, unable to squish away her smile.

  31

  CLAIRE

  MARCH 2009

  Andrew loaded their bags into the back of the Mariner, slamming the tailgate closed and adjusting the magnetic New York Yankees emblem Jesse had purchased at his first live game last autumn. He’d bought a foam finger, too, paid nineteen dollars for the navy blue number-one sign Claire had seen in marketing catalogs for a buck apiece. But Jesse wouldn’t be deterred; he pinned the finger to his bulletin board, wore it during the spring training games he watched on television, and waited impatiently for his chance to go back to the stadium.

  They planned to pick up Jesse from her sister-in-law’s house that evening.

  Claire hugged Beverly and promised to visit soon. The elderly woman rested both her hands on Claire’s belly and prayed over the baby. Then Beverly patted her cheek and said, “You did good.”

  “We’ll ring once we get there.”

  “Don’t forget. It doesn’t matter the time.”

  In the car, Andrew adjusted the heat, positioning the vents toward the ceiling on both the driver and passenger sides. For him, because he hated the air in his face; it dried out his contact lenses. For her, because her pregnant body was its own travel furnace. They both knew better than to keep the air off completely, though, especially today when the sharp coastal winds passed seemingly unobstructed through metal and glass.

  “Do you want to stop?” Andrew asked. He backed out of Beverly’s driveway.

  Claire shook her head.

  “You’re sure?”

  She shrugged. “I think so.”

  “That means no,” Andrew said.

  “You think you know me so well.”

  “I do, don’t I? That must be really annoying.”

  And then he turned the car around.

  “Andrew . . .” Claire said.

  “You need to do this. Humor me, okay?”

  He parked outside the wax museum, and when he asked if she wanted company, she shook her head. He left the car idling as she squirmed out of the seat. The sign on the door read Closed and the lobby lights were off. Claire cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the unpainted parts of the window. She saw no one and motioned to her husband that she would try the door around the corner. Knocked. This time the door opened, and Susan Suller—or whatever name she went by now—stood there. “Molly said you’d left.”

  “We’re going now. I just wanted to say good-bye, if she’s up for it.”

  The woman nodded. Hesitated. She picked at her eyebrow and then, as if realizing what her fingers were doing, quickly stuck her hand in her pocket. Finally she looked at Claire, her pores clogged with six years of concealment, her eyes yellowed with six years of tears. “Thank you,” she said.

  Claire nodded.

  Susan went inside, and Molly walked into the entryway moments later. She wore her hair pinned back from her face, blond roots beginning to show at her forehead and ears. “You’re here,” she said, delight in her voice. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again before you went home.”

  “I couldn’t go without a good-bye.”

  “I read your card. It meant . . . a lot to me.”

  Claire had set the card at Shirley Temple’s feet with the hope the girl wouldn’t be so angry and distraught she’d destroy it without opening it first. She told Molly the things she treasured in her heart from their days together, things only Andrew knew, about how God had stirred her to offer a push to a young child on a swing, and the encounter—no, the entire, entirely too short relationship—had been aloe on her wounds. Hanna had given her the chance to reopen all her clamped-down places to someone, and in doing so, light and air and life circulated through the necrotic tissue, reviving it. Hanna had made it possible for Claire to allow Andrew and Jesse into her life. Hanna showed her she still could love someone as fiercely as she had her own children. She had focused so much energy on helping Hanna—both times—she continued to stumble over the obvious, the gym shoes dropped in the middle of the room she refused to pick up, until now: God had sent Hanna to help her, too.

  “We’re just finishing up the last of the packing, but you can come in, if you want,” Molly said. “Mom’s getting married, so we’re moving. Just to another island about twenty-five minutes from here, but it’s good to start fresh sometimes. I think so, anyway.”

  “I’d love to, but I left poor Andrew in the car waiting for me.”

  The girl hesitated. “You’ll still visit Beverly, right?”

  “I’ll still visit you.”

  Molly smiled. “And I’ll write. Or email. But maybe not call so much. I hate the phone.”

  “I’d really like that,” Claire said. “Tell that cutie of yours to take good care of you.”

  Blushing, Molly said, “I will.”

  They embraced, more clinging to each other than a hug. The girl still felt delicate beneath her arms, but no longer fragile. A sturdiness had come into her bones, calcified with her conquered battles of the past two weeks.

  She’ll be okay.

  Claire stretched away, smoothed her fitted maternity tee down over her torpedo-shaped belly, navel poking through the plum-colored fabric, the cool beach breeze tickling a narrow patch of exposed skin at her beltline. With her other three she’d had a compact bulge, no larger than a soccer ball beneath her clothes. She buttoned the chunky sweater around herself; she’d bought it at a craft fair and couldn’t get the musky wool smell out of it.

  “It’s like when John leaped in his mother’s womb,” Molly whispered, eyes on the overstretched sweater. “Their souls knew each other.”

  “You take care,” Claire said, sniffling.

  She waddled back to the car. Had to pee. Andrew stopped at a gas station, and she used the bathroom while he refueled. He paid inside, bought her an iced green tea and lemon pound cake. Before pulling onto the highway, he took her hand. “You good?”

  “Yes,” she said. And meant it.

  They arrived at sundown to pick up Jesse. He threw his arms around Claire and squished her until she had to say, “Enough, Jess. I can’t breathe.” Andrew’s sister invited them for dinner. After eating, the three of them sat on the porch, despite the bite in the mountain air—Jesse snuggled against Claire on the wooden porch swing, Andrew in the rocking chair, coffee cup between his knees. When the baby kicked, she took her stepson’s hand—

  No, he’s my son—and said, “Feel.”

  Jesse laughed. “So cool. It’s like an alien.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I still think it’s a girl.”

  “Well, we’ll see soon, won’t we?”

  The boy leaned close, lips nearly pressed to Claire’s side. “Hello in there, baby. It’s your big brother. We can’t wait to meet you.” He looked up at the only woman he knew as his mother, eyes round and hazel, a perfect replica of the one he didn’t remember. “She can hear me, right?”

  Claire nodded. “She, or he, will definitely know your voice.”

  “You’re sure loud enough,” Andrew said.

  Jesse giggled. “I’m supposed to be loud. I’m ten.”

  “Almost eleven. And eleven-year-olds are decidedly not loud. Especially eleven-year-olds who have napping infants living with them. Maybe you should start practicing now.”

  “Dad.”

  “Just saying.”

  “Okay, you two,” Claire said. “We should probably say good-bye and be on our way. I’m ready to be home.”

  Jesse ran into the house to get his bag and books, slamming the door behind him. The porch light fli
ckered from the vibrations. Andrew offered Claire his hands, tugging her out of the swing, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I think it’s a girl, too, you know. And I’m always right, remember?”

  “You think you’re always right.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  Claire laughed. “Come on.”

  She tried to pull him toward the front door, but he held her still. Kissed her. “You’re wonderful. And I am right about that.”

  “We’re okay?”

  “More than okay.”

  “I love you,” she said, and it overwhelmed her. She couldn’t help but thank God for all He’d given her.

  He kissed her again. “I know that, too.”

  32

  MOLLY

  MAY 2009

  She and Tobias sat on the beach, jeans rolled to the knees, feet buried in mounds of damp beige sand. Castles, Dakota called them, decorating each pile with pebble windows and seaweed moats, a flagpole twig pointing from the top. Neither Molly nor Tobias had the heart to move and destroy the nine-year-old’s architecture. So they sat, trapped, listening to the waves and watching Dakota’s latest game—throwing random washed-up things back into the water. Sea gifts, Molly thought. Little treasures of glass and wood and shell, deposited on the sand for someone to find and marvel at. God’s gifts, left around for His children to pick up, brush off, and recognize they came from Him.

  “I’m gonna try the kite now,” Dakota said. “Help me, Tobias.”

  “At your command,” Tobias said. He gently removed his feet from their encasement, but as soon as he did, the pile of sand collapsed. Dakota didn’t care; she called for Tobias to hurry, tearing open the package. “Don’t let the wrapper blow away,” he said, but too late. The cellophane cartwheeled down the beach.

  “Sorry,” Dakota called as he ran after it, eventually stomping on one end. He rolled it up, crammed it in his pocket, and made his way back to the girl.

  Molly watched as Tobias flattened the kite on the ground, one knee on each corner to keep the wind from carrying it off, too. He inserted the support sticks into the proper holders, attached the tail, and tied the string to the center flap. “You’re all set,” he told Dakota. She ran down the shoreline, kite bobbing behind her on two feet of twine.

  Tobias came back to Molly, offered his hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. She wiped off the seat of her jeans. “Follow her?” he asked, and she nodded.

  They walked close to the surf, and he found Molly’s hand again. She laced her fingers with his. Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, she thought. She liked her arm to be behind his, her palm facing forward. She’d tried it the other way—her arm in front, palm back—but it wasn’t nearly as comfortable; she felt as if her elbow would twist out of joint.

  “I’m free to paint tomorrow,” Tobias said.

  “I haven’t picked a color yet.”

  “I thought you wanted lavender.”

  “I did,” Molly said. “Now I don’t know.”

  She and her mother had moved into Mick’s house three weeks ago, after he and Louise were married in the town’s court building. Their marriage license listed the bride as Susan Suller, but Mick still called her Louise.

  Molly had a huge bedroom of her own and a private bathroom, and the go-ahead to decorate them however she liked. She wasn’t used to having choices, so the walls remained white, despite the stack of paint chips Tobias brought her from Home Depot. He taped them to the walls, creating various shapes—trees and peace signs and smiling faces—hoping to inspire her.

  In the days since Claire’s departure, the chasm between Molly and her mother had closed and begun to heal, wounds sutured together with ugly black thread. Their relationship in an adolescence of sorts, they fought more and with all the dramatics that came in those preadult years, sometimes shouting at each other from across the house or slamming doors in grand exits.

  “I feel like I’m living with two teenagers,” Mick said, more with amusement than complaint.

  But they talked more, too, and deeply. Molly told her mother some little things about Tobias—though she guarded most of those feelings, unsure of what they were and how to express them. Louise shared memories of her father, and Molly loved that, could listen to those stories all day.

  Her mother spoke of Henry with such tenderness Molly couldn’t help but ask why Louise had married Mick, what she saw in him? “It’s always been your father,” she said, eyes wet with loss, “so there’s no sense looking for someone to fill his place. But I’m lonely, Hanna. And tired. Mick’s a decent man, and I enjoy him, and that’s enough for me.”

  Yes, she’d called her Hanna. She did that sometimes now, too.

  Molly tried not to dwell on the past too much. She wanted to be like Tobias, like Beverly, eyes always turned toward the brightest point and focused on the growing list of things gained.

  Dakota.

  The girl had worn a short, ruffled cotton skirt, despite it being early May in Maine, and a thin tee. When she got cold, Tobias had given her his hooded sweatshirt, rolled the sleeves until they mushroomed at her wrists. She pumped her stout legs, tossing the kite in the air as she stumbled along, bare feet kicking up foam. The plastic triangle dove nose-first into the sand.

  “Stupid,” Dakota said, kicking it. “I can’t do it.”

  “Try again,” Tobias called over the wind.

  Beverly’s words still resonated intensely in that place Molly knew only the things of the Spirit were sown, a sweet-smelling, earthy place way down deep she needed to keep cultivating so the soil wouldn’t turn rocky or thorny or too hard to penetrate. “I have no doubt I had that stroke so I could be in that bed, that day, to sing to a woman I’d never met.”

  Molly did have doubts. She looked at the jumble of her life, all the heartache, and despite God’s Word’s assertion it all worked together for the good of those who loved Him, suffering’s residue blinded her belief. But He cradled those doubts in His tender hands, turning them this way and that, until the haze evaporated from the blurry pieces and Molly could begin to see how the puzzle fit together.

  The bank. Her father’s death. The commercial on the television. The preacher. Her prayer and escape. That day on the playground with Claire. That day in the kitchen with Thin Man. The museum. Intersecting lines, intersecting lives, all purposing toward a cup of tea with an old woman she’d never have met otherwise, who told a story of Providence she’d never have heard, stirring her to see the first gleam of feathers rising from the ash. Another little girl who’d lost her mother had stared at a television across town, her worried aunt and uncle unable to break through her wall of mourning. But Molly knew she could, because she’d been there, too.

  She began by meeting with the girl at her home after school most days; Tobias drove her there, and at first they just watched episodes of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in silence. It didn’t take long for Dakota to share a few things about her mother, and when Molly spoke about losing Henry, the kindredness of loss built a bridge between them. “I can’t believe how much better she seems after she spends time with you,” Kat told Molly when they’d picked Dakota up earlier that afternoon. “Thank you for doing this for her.”

  “It’s a start,” she’d replied. “There’s still a long way for her to go.”

  Molly knew that all too well.

  She moved forward and she stayed stuck. Yes, she went outside now, and occasionally into stores. She could hold Tobias’s hand—sometimes. She went to church each Sunday with him; they brought Beverly with them and had lunch with her afterward. She had emailed Claire a dozen times in the past five weeks; her friend was eight days overdue and absolutely miserable. “This baby needs an eviction notice,” she wrote. Her mother took her to test for her instruction permit, and she passed the written exam easily, the name Hanna Suller printed on the card.

  But she never left the house alone. Some days she still couldn’t leave her bedroom. She startled at all the unfamil
iar noises in Mick’s house, from creaky floorboards to microwave timers. Some days she asked Tobias to take her back to the museum for a few minutes, a few hours, so she could breathe the familiar air, be cradled within the well-worn walls.

  She had no place now. She pictured everyone in the world fitting perfectly in their own contoured space, a dimple in the atmosphere enveloping them as they moved and worked and lived. She had vacated two of those places—the one for Hanna Suller and the one for Molly Fisk. She needed to carve out a new spot, but she had no idea how to manage that on her own.

  Help me, Gee.

  They stopped in front of the beach’s famous shipwreck. When Tobias first told Molly about it, she’d expected an actual boat embedded in the sand, but a hundred years of sea and sun had a way of picking things apart, and only a short portion of the ship’s hull remained, weathered wood rising up like a moss-covered dinosaur rib cage.

  “Counseling today?” Tobias asked.

  “It got moved to tomorrow,” Molly said. “I know you have class. Mom’s taking me.”

  He drew a circle in the sand with his toe. “So, uh, how’s it going?”

  “I’ve only had two sessions.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Just wondering.”

  She let go of his hand, brought two fingers up to his chin and touched that small triangle of beard. His soul patch. Hesitantly, she slid her thumb up, over his bottom lip, chapped skin as rough and pleated as her own.

  Dakota burst between them, frustration reddening her face as much as the wind. “I can’t do it very good,” she whined, sand in her hair, kite dragging behind her.

  “It’s breezed up quite a bit,” Tobias said. “Maybe too much.”

  “Let me try,” Molly said.

  She took the spool of string—yellow, with a handle for ease of holding—and gripped the kite’s crossbar. Ran.

  She heard Dakota shout, “Let go, let go,” so she did. She unwound the string, felt the pulling behind her lessen, looked up. The kite had caught in a current; it rose, dipped, rose again and held, twisting against the olive sky.