Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  The cat will go with us and the dog will stay with my dad. Even our pets are separating.

  * * *

  —

  On Friday afternoon, my dad’s parents arrive from Pennsylvania. I wait for him to tell them about his fractured marriage and the fact that he’s sending their daughter-in-law and their only grandchild away as soon as I have my diploma, but instead no one says anything and my dad spends all day in the kitchen creating one of his meals—tournedos of beef with braised asparagus and a four-cheese mac and cheese he makes from scratch.

  While he does this, my grandparents take turns standing in the kitchen doorway, where Mom marks their heights. This is a tradition my mom started when we first moved in—measuring everyone, kids and adults, writing names and dates beside each mark. Even Dandelion the cat and Bradbury the dog are on there.

  The entire time all this is happening, I can feel the words forming, sitting there on the tip of my tongue. He doesn’t want us anymore. But my dad has told me not to talk about it, and besides, he is home for dinner, so we all eat together, a happy family.

  “I’m sorry your folks couldn’t come,” my grandmother says to my mom at the table.

  “Me too.” Apparently Mom has told her parents and sister enough about the separation that they’re angry with my father and don’t want to see him. They’re so angry they’re skipping my graduation, and frankly I don’t blame them. I’d skip it myself if I could.

  “Neil tells us you’re working in Georgia this summer.”

  “That’s right. I have the chance to organize the papers of the Blackwood heirs, some of my ancestors.”

  “The Blackwoods, as in the Samuel Blackwood?”

  Mom nods. “In the 1920s, he built a home off the coast for his only son. I’m thinking there might be a novel there.” Her voice is cool and calm.

  Gran’s eyes are dancing. “How exciting.” My grandmother is Mom’s most avid reader and biggest fan. “Can you say anything or is it too soon? You know what? Don’t tell me.” She holds up a hand. “I don’t want you to give anything away, but just know if you need an early reader, I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Maggie.”

  Gran looks at me. “And you’re going to help her?”

  I stop picking at my food and set my fork down. And then I realize I have nothing to say. Mom answers for me, no doubt so I don’t have to lie to my own grandmother. “She’s my best research assistant.”

  Gran turns to my father. “What on earth are you going to do without them, Neil? I hope you’ll at least go down there for a little while.”

  I wait for him to tell her this was his idea, that he can’t wait to have us gone, but instead he glances at Mom, at me, and says, “I’ll have to get along somehow.” He glances at us again and I can see the guilt in his eyes. You can still stop this. You can change your mind and we will stay and none of this needs to happen. He looks away, down at his food.

  I almost say something right then. I feel like a person being held against her will, like a hostage or a kidnap victim, and all I want to do is yell at the innocent bystander, Please help me, and run for freedom.

  But the conversation moves to my grandfather’s work and his golf game and the church they go to and their neighbor, poor thing, who is in the midst of a terrible divorce.

  GRADUATION

  On Saturday, at graduation, I stand on the stage behind the microphone, behind the lectern, and look out at the sea of blue caps and gowns. The faces of my classmates swim into focus. There is Saz, my best friend, and Wyatt, the boy I love, who was supposed to love me but now apparently loves someone else. There is Shane Waller, who has seen me naked, and Matteo Dimas, who has seen me almost naked, and my friends Alannis and Mara, phones up and pointed at me. There is Lisa Yu, the girl who stole Wyatt Jones from me without knowing it, and there is Yvonne Brittain-Muir, who is stealing Saz. All of them waiting for me to share some words of inspiration. Beyond them I see my parents, sitting side by side with my grandparents, eyes on me.

  I open my mouth and out comes my speech about dreams and wonder and all the things I used to believe in before my world imploded. “ ‘Stuff your eyes with wonder….Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.”

  I hear myself but I can’t feel myself, as if the actual Claude is far, far away from here, and the one up on this stage is just filling in. I want to say, Don’t believe a word of this garbage. Get ready for divorce and heartache and betrayal and feeling like you’re completely, utterly alone no matter how big a crowd you are in.

  As I somehow finish and wait for the applause, I smile out at everyone and think, Isn’t it funny that they can’t see I dropped dead a week ago?

  I walk across the stage in my cap and gown, and afterward Saz and I pose for photos. I’m so hollowed out I’m practically invisible and I wonder if I’ll even show up on camera.

  Saz says, “I love you more than freedom and vodka and skinny-dipping.”

  I say, “I love you more than libraries and sunshine and boys with guitars.”

  Suddenly the breath goes out of me and the room is spinning. The whole world kind of tilts, and for one peaceful, terrifying second, everything goes black.

  And then I come to on a bench outside the gym, and Wyatt’s face is the first thing I see. For a minute, I think it’s all been a dream—the past seven days. But he is checking my pulse and Alannis is fanning me and Mara says something about locking my knees up on that stage and how her sister made that same mistake at a wedding. Saz is telling the onlookers, “It’s okay, nothing to see here, she’s fine,” and I want to yell, I am not fine at all.

  But then I look up at Wyatt and he looks down at me and I say, “Wyatt?” I reach for him.

  And now Saz is next to me, holding my hand and patting me. “You fainted, Hen. Jesus.” She shakes her head and her cap comes loose. She yanks it off and tucks her hair behind her ears so that it’s not hanging in her face and she can see me clearly. She leans in and studies me. “Are we sure you’re not pregnant?” She says it under her breath, and she is joking, and the normalcy of this is so comforting and familiar that suddenly I feel the tears coming.

  “Sazzy,” I say.

  But then everyone is crying—Saz and Mara and Alannis—as they pile on top of me and hug me tight, and Alannis shouts, “Mary Grove High forever!”

  * * *

  —

  That night Saz and I drive, just the two of us, with the music up and the windows down. We are driving just to drive, and somehow, in a town we know inside and out, we find ourselves on a street and in a neighborhood I don’t recognize.

  Stretching ahead, as far as the eye can see, are all these little houses, small and neat and identical. Saz turns off the music and rolls to a stop. Each house faces away from the road, with the entrance on the side, and a single orange streetlight marks the entrance of every driveway. Little mailboxes. Little porches. All a perfect distance from one another. Not a light on in any of them. A concrete rabbit sits in a garden.

  “Where are we?” I say.

  “The loneliest place in the world.”

  No, I think. The loneliest place in the world is my house.

  We pass cul-de-sacs and side streets. It’s like a maze, everything identical. I almost tell her then, in spite of my dad and in spite of my mom, but suddenly Saz says, “I know where we are. We’re in purgatory. All of these unseen, sleeping people are waiting, just waiting, for proper deaths. Here in Nowhere.”

  I shiver, and this is part of the fun. Trying to spook each other. And I think these are the kinds of moments I’ll miss most when I’m gone this summer and when I’m at college. I tell myself, Be here while you can.

  Saz turns the headlights off and we creep up and down the streets, a great, rolling shadow. In a dead end, she turns the car
around. My head buzzes. I hang out the window, and the air is cool on my face. The moon is bright and close.

  We see it at the same time, up near the left. This house is as neat and tidy as the others, but there’s a light flickering inside, and I can see the blue of the television. At the edge of the driveway, trash waits to be picked up. A FOR SALE sign stands on the lawn.

  Saz stops in the middle of the road, engine humming. “Look, Hen. They’re moving out of purgatory.” We sit, taking it in, letting the quiet settle around us, watching the flame of blue flicker and waver inside the house.

  I say, “I bet they’re going as far away from here as they possibly can and never coming back.” And I feel a little blue flame of my own—hope, maybe—dancing in my chest. “We should do that. Start driving west.”

  “Don’t I wish.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t. Where would we stay? How would we pay for it? And what about Wyatt?”

  What she really means is, What about Yvonne?

  She’s still talking. “It’s not that I don’t want to but…Hey, hello? Earth to Hen. Where’d you go?”

  “What? I’m here.”

  “Uh-uh. You’re here but not here. What’s up with you lately? And then today—passing out like that.”

  “I’m good. It’s just a lot of change.” And then I tell her that my mom and I are leaving for Atlanta soon. Like, soon soon.

  “What about our road trip?”

  “I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks? It’s our last summer, Hen.”

  “I know.”

  “The hell?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why don’t you stay here with your dad? Or you could stay with me?”

  “Because I can’t.” And I could say it nicer but she won’t let it go, and I can’t tell her why, and now there’s Yvonne, which means that if I stay with Saz and her family, I will eventually be in the way.

  I don’t know how long we sit there looking at each other, my heart beating so loud I can’t hear anything else. Finally her eyes go back to the road and she steers us away from the house. I stare into the side mirror at the blue light, at the FOR SALE sign, and feel the little flame in my chest flicker out.

  4 DAYS BEFORE WE LEAVE

  On Thursday, I walk a mile to the college where my dad works. Past Roosevelt Hall, with his office on the fourth floor and an executive assistant named Pamela and the window overlooking National Road and the patch of sunflowers—little spots of yellow—hugging the building. I walk through the student union out into the warm early-summer air and across the parking lot onto the grass that will lead me to the soccer field, where I see a blur of legs—long, strong legs attached to long, strong boys.

  I walk until I can see the faces attached to these boys attached to these legs. I stand on the field, feet planted in the grass, and it’s hotter out here than I thought, but I’m too mad and numb to feel it, really feel it, so I stand there and stand there, and eventually one of the boys with long, strong legs yells “Hey!” at me. I don’t say anything. I keep standing there until he runs over, shirt wet through. He is blocking the sun so that all I see of him is this outline that is like a glow.

  “Claude.”

  “Wyatt.”

  I knew he would be here because the first time I ever saw him was on this field, back when I thought he was a college student, before I saw him in the hallways at school. But the moment he says my name, I know why I’ve come here today. No more waiting. Nothing to lose.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I smile, and it’s easy. Without telling them to, my lips automatically curve up at the corners. My teeth flash. My mouth spreads open wider and wider until my face may crack in half. And then he reaches out and takes two of my fingers in two of his, and I feel the jolt of his skin on mine, even this little bit of it. And it’s more than the jolt—it’s the sudden closeness of another person, touching me, that makes me say: “Actually, I’m not good. My parents are separating. I’m not supposed to say anything. Saz doesn’t know. But if I don’t tell someone, I might disappear. Please don’t repeat this to anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I promise.”

  I take a breath. I shouldn’t have said anything, but he doesn’t know my parents, and his parents don’t know my parents, and he doesn’t really know me, and I don’t really know him, which is why I told him. Somehow I feel my secret will be safe here.

  “In case I never see you again, I just want you to know that I like you. I’ve liked you since sophomore year.” I should feel bad about Lisa Yu, but I don’t. She is the furthest thing from my mind. Because after suffering a loss, you become a ghost in your own body. You observe yourself doing things and saying things that you might not normally do or say. You need something to ground you and prove to you that you’re still here. As a way of feeling something. Anything.

  Which is why I say, “I want to kiss you now. I hope that’s okay.”

  I wait for this to register. It only takes a second or two, and then he gets this smile on his face, and says, “That’s definitely okay with me.”

  I lean in and kiss him. His mouth is warm. I can taste the sweat and salt. I am kissing Wyatt Jones. I tell myself this to make myself feel it and believe it and know it as much as I can. I keep my mouth pressed to his as long as possible.

  When I pull away, I lick my lips, drinking in this little bit of him. He moves his head and suddenly the sun blinds me. I close my eyes for a second and he’s still there, a silhouette.

  I open my eyes again and he is looking at me with a mix of confusion and concern, and his friends are yelling at him, and now I can see his eyes, which are brown and deep-set.

  Just in time, I scratch at the tear that goes running down my cheek, pretending it’s an itch. And then, before he can say anything, I walk away.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE WE LEAVE

  On our last night as a family, my parents and I sit at the dining room table and eat dinner together and pretend the world isn’t ending. They talk in these courteous, matter-of-fact voices that make me pinch my arms. Upstairs, my bags are packed and waiting.

  “If we leave by ten, we can beat the traffic around Cincinnati and make it to Atlanta by dinner,” my mom says.

  “You should leave by nine to be safe.” My dad sounds worried. “Earlier if you can.”

  Both of them are speaking so politely, as if they’re just meeting for the first time.

  My mom sets down her fork. “Why?”

  The word sits in the air between them.

  “Why, Neil? Why do I need to leave by nine?”

  I look back and forth at Mom, Dad, Mom, Dad. She is hurt and she’s not hiding it anymore, and this throws me. And for the first time I see it—the divide, as if a crack in the earth has suddenly opened up. I feel stupid for not having seen it before now. So incredibly stupid and blind and naïve. Sitting there, I make a promise to myself: I will never be surprised again.

  I say, “The chicken is good.” Even though I can’t taste it. Because suddenly I don’t want to see any of this—the hurt, the divide. For the next few minutes, or as long as this dinner lasts, I just want them to be the parents I’ve always known.

  They look at me, remembering I’m here. I see them remembering and this is when it hits me. It will not be the three of us anymore. It will never be the three of us anymore. From now on, it will be:

  Claude.

  Lauren.

  Neil.

  Every person for themselves.

  * * *

  —

  Afterward Dad finds me in the bathroom brushing my teeth. Before I can run away, he says, “I love you, Clew. No matter what. I need you to know
that.”

  He hugs me. And then, like that, he lets me go. The door closes behind him. I spit. Rinse. Dry my mouth. And then I hold on to the sink and get ready to cry all the tears I’ve been carrying around since May 30, enough to fill that crack in the earth. My mom is right that tears come out eventually, but that doesn’t mean I want anyone to see them.

  I hold on and I wait but nothing happens. I stare at my face in the mirror, and my eyes are burning and tired, a little red, but completely dry.

  * * *

  —

  I can’t sleep, so at two a.m. I sneak out. The neighborhood is quiet, the houses dark, the streets empty. I walk three blocks, turn right, and I’m at Saz’s place. Her room is in the basement and she always sleeps with the windows open, even in the dead of winter, because she’s a human furnace and also because she wants me to be able to get in at night if I need to. It’s the same reason I leave our living room window unlocked for her.

  I squeeze through the opening and land on the rug. I can hear her snoring. I give my eyes a minute to adjust, and then I tiptoe over to the bed and climb in next to her. She stirs. “Hen?”

  I whisper, “Sorry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t want to go away.”

  “I know.” We lie on our sides and she throws an arm around me. “I don’t want you to go either.”

  There’s this part of me that’s angry at her for falling for Yvonne and for sleeping with Yvonne and, more than that, for not telling me about it. But mostly I’m angry with her for not knowing that something’s wrong with me. She should be able to read my mind and figure out what I’m going through without me telling her. She should force it out of me so that I have no choice but to tell her, which means my parents won’t be able to get upset. If we’re really best friends, she should just know. But then, I didn’t know about Yvonne until she told me, did I? And there’s this other part of me that’s mad at myself for being able to hide things so well.