The Air We Breathe (27 page)

He remembered Eudora's trusting glance the afternoon she'd been in his room, and the way she'd looked toward him for help. He'd hardly noticed Naomi and yet she'd apparently studied his every move. The idea of her drawing his face again and again, and then writing that letter and sitting beside him, made his skin crawl as if insects were marching up and down in rows. He gazed longingly across the meadow at the staff cottages. Irene, who lived in one of them, might have helped him sort through his confusion. But she'd already done so much by writing to Dr. Richards on his behalf that he felt ashamed to trouble her again.

In the west clouds were gathering, weather moving in from Canada. We turned our faces to the breeze and saw Leo, perhaps unconsciously, turn his head as well. He stopped in the middle of his circuit, halfway between the clump of larches—larch, we'd learned years ago, was another name for tamarack—and the willow. Miles, he was thinking, didn't really believe that he was innocent; he was pushing the rest of us as a way of getting at him. In fact as that breeze touched our faces we were discussing another of Miles's intrusions: the arrival, that Monday night, of our own personal Four-Minute Man. Everywhere else in the country, Miles claimed, these volunteers were giving pep talks in theaters and churches, inspiring audiences to buy Liberty Bonds, plant victory gardens, conserve food, work longer hours, economize on coal. Surely we needed this more than most; why not set aside a dinnertime slot once a week, and let a series of these punchy speakers inspire us while we ate? Dr. Richards had agreed, perhaps to placate him, and so along with our baked macaroni and cheese we'd been served with a barrel-chested man, standing on a chair and chattering at auction speed for the time it would have taken to change reels, if we'd been watching a film.

His topic had been the importance of following the rules of our sanatorium even more rigorously than usual: the harder we worked, the faster we'd heal.
One of the most encouraging features of the war against tuberculosis is that it requires few new weapons or strange and complicated ammunition for the rank and file of the army,
he said. Did we look like an army?
Our weapons are food, fresh air, and sleep. If you do what you are told, and do it well, you will cut days from your cures. And each day cut saves vital funds for our effort overseas.

We could feel the knife. The harder Miles pushed, the further we pulled away from Leo—who from his place between the willow and the larches saw that he might have to leave. There was nothing here, there had never been anything here but our community, which the fire had destroyed. He hated the room he'd once shared with Ephraim; he hated his slot on the porch. He hated the chaotic new dining room where, although his tray clattered against our trays and his elbows banged ours at the crowded table, we talked across and around him. He had no friend and yet he was never alone. If he'd been alone, away from the whispers and night noises of Otto, Arkady, and Abe, he might have been able to sleep, which might have allowed him to think. He'd barely slept since moving back among us and now the whole place seemed to him diseased.

The warning bell for supper rang, six strokes thudding through the air. We turned at once, we turned as a group, and Leo saw how we'd file inside together, find our places together, whisper about him together in the few minutes it would take him to follow. When he walked through the dining room door alone we'd turn together to look at him, or together ignore him: unbearable, either way. He had to leave. He wouldn't go back to the city, though; he'd never go to a city again. He wanted a place where no one resembled him, where no one spoke Russian or German, no one remembered crossing the ocean or slept six and eight to a room and pretended that was a reasonable way to live. He wanted fresh air, animals, open land; people one or two at a time but never in groups: Ephraim's place in Ovid, near the Finger Lakes. Ephraim, his friend.

At the door to the dining room the roar of all of us talking at once rose like a concrete wall. He told the nurse on duty that he was feeling poorly and then turned and went to his room and fetched his bag. He wrote a quick note to Dr. Petrie, thanking him for his help. He wrote another to Irene, thanking her for the gift of the books and for her confidence in him; also for her letter, which he hadn't seen. Then he wrote Eudora's name on a third envelope, put Naomi's letter inside it, and added a note of his own.
I am leaving,
he wrote.
I am starting over; I don't want to say where but I'm sure you know. My health is very much on the mend and that last incident meant nothing. I wish you would join me when you feel ready. I love you. Leo Marburg.

HE LEFT US
with hardly more than what he'd brought to Tamarack State. That night, carrying one small bag with a change of clothes and the little box Eudora had given him, he caught a ride down the hill with Roger, our night watchman, who'd been called up and knew he'd be leaving soon. Sympathetic to anyone wanting to get away, Roger dropped Leo off at the lake. There Leo spent an hour on the bench where Miles and Dr. Petrie had talked. When dawn came he walked to the village station, which he hadn't seen before. Red brick, a square tower capped with a skylight, a stone arch over the door rimmed with green tiles. In the stone were chiseled the words that would have greeted him had he arrived by choice, with money in his pocket, headed for a place like Mrs. Martin's house:
Welcome, Health-seekers!
He took the first train headed south.

I
F WE FELT
ashamed of ourselves—Otto, Abe, and Arkady especially; if we worried about the ways we'd failed Leo, we were comforted by the way, almost immediately, the tension here eased. Still the Four-Minute Man came to lecture us; still Miles came several times each week to consult with Dr. Richards. But our routine settled down after Leo vanished, as if Miles wasn't interested enough in the rest of us to continue constricting our lives. Curiosity about our own behavior would come to us later; what we had at first was a continued curiosity about the fire and its causes, and also about what had happened to Naomi. Any information, we knew, would come to us from Eudora—but Eudora, after Leo left, didn't spend much time with us. She worked extra shifts, still; she performed her duties carefully and was always pleasant when cleaning our rooms. But she left as soon as her tasks were done, and although she never said anything about Leo's sudden departure, we knew she judged us.

To Irene, her only real companion after Leo left, she admitted how angry she was with us (we expected that) and also, more surprisingly, how angry she was that Leo had bolted without talking to her. That he'd finally state his feelings not in person but in a note: how was she supposed to respond to that? Something delicate and interesting had arisen between them in the X-ray room, which was one of the reasons she'd agreed to meet him at movie night—and which, after all that had happened, still hung unresolved. A blunt line, at the end of a note, only served to hide everything worth talking about. And she was further distracted by his first paragraph, which explained how, after all this time, he'd finally received Naomi's letter.

That letter itself she read with a terrible pang. Naomi's feelings had developed in front of her as steadily and clearly as a photographic plate, but she'd acted as if, because Leo didn't share them, they meant nothing. When she'd suggested that Naomi should let Leo know how she felt, she'd imagined a few words, perhaps a warm glance at the end of a Wednesday session—never a letter like that. But she also hadn't imagined that Naomi would sneak into the movies on a night when she was driving Miles. All their walks and talks and bicycle rides, the confidences they'd exchanged, the times they'd skated on the frozen lake with their arms linked and the moon rising over the mountains, counted for nothing against the moment when Naomi had caught the look she and Leo exchanged. Naomi had left without a word, without even a hint. Now the letter made Eudora suspect she'd never hear from Naomi again.

When she did get news of Naomi, it came indirectly, in late September. In Irene's tidy room, which Eudora visited each week and which was slowly filling with the books Dr. Petrie begged from friends to replace the collection destroyed in the basement, she flipped through a radiography manual. She glanced at a formula for mixing a developing solution—already, this was out of date—and then she told Irene that her brother Ernest had seen Naomi in New York.

Irene reached for her pad and pencil. Still, then, she hadn't regained her voice.
I didn't know they were even friends,
she wrote.

“I didn't either, really,” Eudora said. “She used to see him at our house, but I never thought of them as
close
. Ernest wrote that she'd gotten in some trouble during her first few weeks in New York—I guess that's where she went from here—and then she looked him up.”

She's all right, then?

“So Ernest says.”

You must be relieved.

“Ernest didn't know how she got to the city, or what she did when she first arrived. But he said she showed up at his room one night—he has a tiny place in an attic, near Central Park—and stayed for a couple of months. Then one day she told him she'd found work in Brooklyn, and the next day she left.”

Irene, who still hadn't admitted to Eudora, or to the rest of us, all that had happened between her and Naomi, wrote,
What kind of work?

“As a trolley conductor,” Eudora answered, wondering why this would matter. “Maybe being so good with her mother's car helped.” While Irene drew a jagged border in the margin of her writing pad, she added, “But the important thing is that she's in one piece.”

Eudora had found a fresh glove for Irene after the fire, changed the cotton inside the fingers, later wrapped the ugly wound on her neck with a bright printed scarf. In all ways she'd been an excellent assistant and it would have been nice to spare her feelings. Still, Irene had to ask,
Do you know why Naomi left?

“I'm not sure,” Eudora said.

Irene waited, her pencil motionless.

“She saw Leo and me together, at the movies,” Eudora admitted. When Irene nodded, Eudora continued, “She was upset. We were all upset. But it's worse than I knew. She…” Eudora paused and looked out the window—it was lovely outside, the leaves just beginning to turn color on the trees near the pond and the swallows eagerly darting—before taking two folded sheets of paper from her pocket. “I've been wanting to show you these.”

Irene read Naomi's letter, and then Leo's. Then Naomi's again. She wrote,
What did she have that belonged to Leo?
Leo's name she underlined twice.

“She had a bag with her that night. I saw some drawings in it. Drawings of him.”

Irene nodded.
She showed them to me as well.

“Did she?” Eudora asked. For a minute they looked at each other. “She might have meant those.”

She might,
Irene wrote. She turned her gaze to the swallows while she decided what she'd keep to herself. Then she added,
What will you do now?

WE WEREN'T SURPRISED
to hear that Eudora had decided to leave us; with the X-ray laboratory destroyed and Irene unable to work, she didn't have much reason to stay. Irene and Dr. Petrie helped her apply to a nurses' training school in Jamestown, where she might get certified quickly as an aide. She planned to head overseas when she was done, with whatever organization would take her. Once she was in France she could find a place helping with a mobile X-ray unit or assisting a radiographer in a field station. At worst, she could work in a base hospital.
Three months,
she told Leo, when she'd forgiven him enough to write.
I'll let you know where I'm posted as soon as I hear.

From Miles, who caught her one afternoon on the lawn near the men's annex, she hid both her own plans and Leo's whereabouts. Nor did she tell him what she'd learned from her brother about Naomi. Behind his good manners was not, she thought, the meek creature Naomi had thought she could manipulate so casually. She avoided Miles when she could, now, and concealed anything important when she couldn't.

“I suppose Leo's gone to be with Naomi,” Miles said bitterly. The wind, blowing from the west, carried with it the smell of a thousand miles of pine. “They're probably in the same place. What have you heard?”

“Not a thing.” She turned and headed toward the annex.

From right behind her, crowding her heels, he said, “Why do I ask you anything? You thought he was in love with
you.
”

“I've been wrong about quite a few things,” she replied. Including, she thought, her own feelings for Leo. Packing up her few belongings, explaining to her distraught parents why she had to do this, her anger at Leo had faded. She liked Leo enormously, she realized. She longed to touch him, take care of him, sleep next to him—was that love? She couldn't imagine joining him now, when she'd still accomplished nothing and been nowhere, but she could imagine returning to him.

WINTER SET IN
not long after Eudora left, the coldest winter anyone could remember. The lakes surrounding us froze quickly, their surfaces so glossy that from our porches we could see them gleaming like mirrors between the hills and hear the runners' whisk as the iceboats flew from shore to shore. In New York, the Hudson River locked up partway into the bay, allowing astonished men to walk from Staten Island to New Jersey but stopping all traffic between there and Albany. Families froze to death in tenements as wood and coal grew scarce. Men who'd been drafted in July and shipped to army camps thrown up from wood and canvas shivered next to each other on cots without blankets, trained without woolen socks or overcoats; whole regiments came down with pneumonia. There were investigations, hearings, newspaper articles condemning the ill treatment of our new soldiers. Once the revolutionary government in Russia signed an armistice with Germany, the war news became even worse, and that, in a way, was a blessing for us: suddenly no one had time for us anymore, and we were left alone.

In January one blizzard after another marched over us and then on to the East Coast cities. The wind blew, the snow fell. The snow fell and fell and fell and no one could get anywhere, but we didn't care: we had nowhere to go. There were Bolsheviks in the Bronx, we heard; no longer admirable fighters for freedom and peace but traitors. We ignored the cold, we ignored the news. (Although we paused at that word “traitors”: was that what
we
were?) Clinging to what was left of our weekly gatherings, beginning at the same time to realize what we'd done, we went to work. No single person, we thought, had done anything so terrible. Yet together, without noticing exactly what was happening, we'd contributed to destroying our own world. We wanted to understand how we'd done that, or how we'd failed to prevent it.

Even as our time on the crowded porches grew more bitter, our hands stiffer, our faces more frozen, we continued to sift and sort our recollections. We've made more progress than we might have thought. By February, we'd looked at the various letters and at Dr. Petrie's reports, and also at the drawings Eudora left with us, which deepened our sense of Naomi's desperate attachment to Leo. We looked at the green volumes Irene tried to give to Leo, which Dr. Petrie retrieved and which taught us something about scientific proof. The last piece of the puzzle came from Irene herself, though, when she regained a whisper of her voice.

She's completely one of us now that she can't work, a patient again as she was in her youth. She was, as she's admitted, unwilling at first to rejoin us, disappointed by our cowardice, our pettiness, the misplaced sense of clannishness that drove us to cling together and push Leo away. But eventually, she also began to remember some of what she'd seen in us during our Wednesday sessions. Our hopefulness, our eagerness to learn. Our belief that, sick and inadequate as we were, we might help each other. One night, finally—we had gathered in the kitchen, completely against the rules—she told us what she'd omitted from her letter to Dr. Richards and also withheld from Eudora.

On the Friday evening of the fire, she'd been sorting radiographs, looking for images that Dr. Petrie might find useful. Later she meant to go upstairs to the movies, but she was behind in her filing and the work went slowly. Images of the dead she laid to her right, images of the living to her left. Through the door, which she'd left open to air out the musty room, she heard footsteps pounding down the stairs and rushing past before stopping, walking back, and tentatively entering the lab.

She rose from her desk in the back, which was behind a dividing wall lined with shelves, and walked into the area nearest the corridor. In the pale light of her desk lamp, she could see a young woman huddled on the couch. Her head was in her arms and she was weeping.

“Are you all right?” Irene asked gently. The woman raised her head and Irene recognized Miles's driver. Despite the Wednesday afternoon sessions they'd shared, Irene didn't feel she knew her well. Naomi sulked, and had a biting tongue; sometimes she drew Eudora away from her work; otherwise Irene couldn't figure her out. Still, she couldn't work with Naomi sitting alone in the gloom. Lowering herself into a chair, she asked why Naomi was so upset.

“Because,”
Naomi said, flinging her hands dramatically.

She leapt from the couch and began circling the room, touching the walls, trailing her fingers against the edges of the gray paper envelopes holding each patient's films. We were all there, arranged alphabetically, our folders thicker or thinner depending on when we'd been admitted and what crises we'd had: lungs before, during, after, lungs scarred or healed or dense with fluid and deposits. Naomi circled counterclockwise, her right arm outstretched, fingers clicking over the edges of the folders and making a sound like a stick rubbing down a washboard, which at first Irene could only envy: it had been years since she could imagine doing something so harsh to her own scabby, truncated hands.

“What can I do?” Irene asked. In the kitchen where we listened to this, the radiators popped and hissed and we drew closer together, as if the anxiety Irene had felt, listening to Naomi, had made its way across the months to us.

A cloth bag hung from Naomi's left shoulder, Irene said. The bag—some of us remembered seeing it—swayed back and forth as she moved. Her head was down, her arm was out, her dress was red and had a crisp white collar. Her fingers clicked against the films as she began to speak. Disjointed phrases, disjointed feelings. Her yearning for Leo and the signs he'd sent her, so surreptitiously, all through the winter and spring. His secret intention to meet her and watch the movies together, and the letter she'd sent him, which he pretended not to have seen. Eudora had tricked her, lied to her…