The Air We Breathe (16 page)

M
OLLY
F
EBRUARY
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 beetles. 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.”

The woman on the other end of the phone wanted to know her name, kept asking questions—“Is she bleeding? Is she able to communicate the problem? Does she feel like she needs to push?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Molly answered. She called out the door to Claire, relaying the questions. Claire’s head lolled against the glass. “Just tell them to hurry.”

“They’re coming,” Molly said. And then she found herself
outside the door, her body wrapped in February air, and she crouched down, too—crawled, almost—making her way toward Claire. When she got to her, she only sat there; she didn’t have a blanket for her, another coat to ball behind her head, or even a word of encouragement. But Claire took Molly’s hand and held it against her stomach. “Pray,” she said.

So Molly did, asking God to protect Claire’s baby, the words safe in her head, the only way she knew how to pray. The ambulance pulled onto the dead brown grass, its red lights staining the road, its siren bringing people into the street. Two men loaded Claire into the back and drove away, leaving Molly on the wood patio, still gripping the phone, still kneeling on the decking.

Still outside.

She looked across the street; Tobias watched her from the window of the pizzeria. She looked to the door, which stretched away from her, like in a cartoon movie, the distance insurmountable. She pressed her back up against the window, flattening herself as close as she could get to the building, and inched along as if she stood on a high ledge, with the street fifty stories below her. She crept toward the door, her head facing the pizzeria, facing Tobias, until her fingers wrapped around the entrance to the museum and she slipped back into the lobby, not opening the door far enough to set the cackling off. Her breath came in rapid puffs. She squeezed her hands into fists, opened them, shook them, trying to warm them.

“Molly?”

Louise watched her from the office doorway.

“They took Claire to the hospital.”

“I know. I saw.”

Molly didn’t move. Couldn’t. She sucked in the familiarity
of the museum. It replaced the outside within her, filling her with the things she knew. “You didn’t come.”

“By the time I heard the siren, I thought . . . Well, the EMTs were there, and there was nothing else I could do.”

“I want to go to the hospital.”

“Baby, that’s not really necessary. There’s nothing you can do there, either.”

“I want to go. Will you take me?”

Louise tugged the waistband of her yoga pants. “Are you sure you can?”

“Take me, please.”

“I’ll bring the car around front.”

Molly waited until she heard the hum of the engine beyond the glass, and then the
ding ding ding
as her mother left the keys in the ignition and the car door open to come get her. Knocking near her head. She stepped away from the entrance so Louise could push inside, hold Molly by the arm. “Come on.”

The air didn’t feel as shocking as before, and in three strides Molly was in the car, the lock pressed down, her belt holding her against the seat. She sat straight, almost cocked forward, the headrest a boulder against her skull. Louise drove, lifting her hips up to wrangle her phone from her back pocket, and called Mick. He didn’t answer; she left a message telling him where they were going and why. Molly closed her eyes, felt the vibrations in her feet, the potholes in her hips. The car made several turns, Molly swaying with them, and stopped with a jerk. Louise turned it off. “We’re here.”

Molly looked around. They were in the hospital parking lot, their spot directly under a lamppost, the entrance three rows of cars away, plus two driveways and a landscaped
median. She didn’t unbuckle, only stared at the glass door, opening and closing automatically as a few people went in and out. And then no one.

“Moll?”

“Just a minute.”

She thought,
Wrap your fingers around the handle and pull,
but her arm rested limply on her leg. She thought,
Find the red button on the seat belt and push,
but again her hands remained tucked between her knees. She tried to slow her breaths as a familiar tingle pooled at her collarbone, her shoulders, and dripped down into her elbows, her wrists. She closed her eyes.

“Why don’t I pull up front? You can go in and then I’ll park,” Louise said.

Molly nodded.

Backing out of the parking spot, her mother maneuvered around to the entrance, under the carport. Molly touched the door handle, metal, not cold like when she first got in the car, but warm from the heat vent blowing on it for the entire thirty-minute drive. She pulled slowly.

“It’s locked,” Louise said, and she pressed the button on her side, all the latches clicking open.

Molly flinched. “I can’t,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“It’s okay. We’ll go home.” Her mother lifted her foot off the brake and the car rolled forward. She turned from the parking lot, humming three tuneless notes over and over, in varying patterns. She reached over, patted Molly’s knee. “It’s okay.”

“For you,” Molly said.

“Baby—”

“You’re happy I didn’t go in.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t want me in there. You don’t want me to see her.”

“I never said th—”

“And you don’t want me to be able to do things.”

“Things? What sort of things?”

“Go outside.”

“Stop. Now. I know you’re upset about that woman—”

“Claire, Mother.”

“I know her name.”

“You never wanted me around her.”

“Why are we doing this now?”

“When are we going to do it? When are we ever going to get anything out in the open? You took me away from her.”

Louise adjusted the rearview mirror so the headlights behind her weren’t so bright in it. “Just stop. You know exactly what happened.”

“I needed her.”

“You should have needed me,” Louise snapped. “I loved you. I sacrificed for you. I went insane every day you didn’t speak. I’m your mother. She was some stranger in the park. And still you picked her over me. Why, tell me that? Because of the religion thing?”

Molly lowered her head, thin tears tracing the side of her nose, crawling up into her nostrils as she sniffled. “She was there.”

“I was there.”

Not the way I needed you to be.
But she couldn’t say that.

Her mother sighed, softened. “I’m sorry about Claire.
Really, I am. I’ll call the hospital when we get back and try to get an update.”

“Fine.”

“Moll—”

“It’s fine.”

Louise closed herself in the bedroom, but Molly had no interest in sleep. Or television. Or opening her Bible. Most of the time the Word was a comfort, but times like tonight it became her biggest accuser. Everything she read ignited her past, burning it brightly before her. But the fire never consumed it; those awful things came out the other side of the flames shinier than before.

She didn’t want to be angry at her mother.

She didn’t want to blame Louise for the life they had now.

She didn’t want to be confronted by her own part in it all—her choice to go to the bank after the post office, her inability to be the daughter she should have been, her reaction to Thin Man when he—

No, she wouldn’t go there.

Instead, she dug through the junk drawer in the kitchen and found a pocket flashlight, metallic purple, a stocking stuffer last Christmas. She snuck out into the wax museum, through several displays, and sat down near Shirley Temple. The curly-topped kid had always been Molly’s favorite, probably because she’d been closest to Molly’s size when they first arrived. She stroked the wax Toto and remembered all the secrets they’d shared, all the times she’d confided that she hated her mother, hated her life, hated herself. Told her about Henry. She tried now to talk to the figure but felt foolish.
She had more than that now. Tobias, for one. Perhaps Claire again. Even the girl who left the Bible felt more real than a wax figure. Molly had been swapping bits of her dead life for a living one these past few months. Now she needed to let go of the rest.