The Air We Breathe

by Andrea Barrett

  “I took a night off,” Eudora said, while her friend righted herself. “I didn’t think I needed your permission.”

  At home, putting on her second-best dress, she’d ascribed the jumpiness in her stomach to curiosity. Not only about what Leo would do, but what she’d do herself when they saw each other away from their normal routines. That, and perhaps also a sense that she was doing something underhanded. She’d wanted to believe she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it was more, she realized now, that she hadn’t expected to be caught. Her own sense of betraying Naomi made her sound harsher than she’d intended. “What,” she said, “are you doing here?”

  By now those of us close enough to hear were eavesdropping with what, if we’re completely honest, we’d have to call a kind of malicious pleasure. The short films had been only sporadically interesting, whereas this…

  “But you know,” Naomi said. Her voice rose, bewildered. “You know how I feel, you’ve known all along.”

  Eudora looked beyond her to Leo, wondering how she might ease the situation.

  “You told him!” Naomi said, catching the glance Eudora and Leo exchanged.

  She ran from the room, the bag dangling at her side. For a moment, as she threw open the door, her slight figure was outlined against the white rectangle of light. “Shut it!” someone called, and she banged it behind her. Myra’s sudden hemorrhage had caused the usual speculations, but this—bad behavior without the excuse of illness—we found simply entertaining, something we could gossip about without feeling too cruel.

  Have we said how bored we often were? How hungry for something to happen? Perhaps we didn’t say enough, earlier, about the feuds and quarrels that used to be common here. The way we found scapegoats, broke into factions and groups, turned like jackals on those who tried to hold themselves apart or guard their privacy. It wasn’t that we hoped for the worst or didn’t like a happy ending, but we wanted to be included in the process.

  The door closed. Leo sat, Eudora sat; the next reel offered aerial shots of two airplanes fighting. “This is terrible,” Eudora whispered to Leo. “I have to go after her. Or maybe you should.”

  “I can’t do anything without her misinterpreting it,” Leo groaned. “She’s so convinced…”

  Eudora nodded and rose. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s better if I go.”

  Again Leo watched the rectangle of light open up on the wall, this time silhouetting Eudora for an instant before the door shut again. Several of us saw her leave, although no one was with her as she stood looking right and left down the bright corridor, trying to imagine where Naomi might have headed.

  A girl had been embarrassed, we thought, as we focused once more on the screen. It was nothing more than had happened to many of us, and she’d get over it. She was well, she was free to go wherever she wanted; what did she have, really, to complain about? Some of us looked with pity, others with amusement, at Leo, who now had his head in his hands. In the corridor Eudora turned right—she should have turned left—toward the walkway leading to the men’s annex and Leo’s room, where she thought that Naomi, trying to comfort herself by going where she was most forbidden, might have headed.

  IN THE REEL we were watching by then, the dogfights happened as if they’d been scripted, so far away that they were tiny, almost toylike. When a plume of smoke went up it seemed no bigger than what might rise from a match, while a wing torn off and falling looked like the wing of a moth. We knew there were men inside those machines but we couldn’t see them. We rustled in our seats, flirted with our neighbors, kissed our cousins if they would have us. We tuned out the Tchaikovsky Kathleen was playing, talking to anyone within range and feeling, although we wouldn’t have admitted it, slightly bored, now that the drama between Leo and Naomi had played itself out.

  Perhaps because of that, those of us in the back row, including Leo, turned toward the piano as soon as Kathleen started coughing. We were on our feet when, as the coughing grew more violent, her playing stuttered and stopped. Surely we couldn’t have a repeat of Myra, not twice on the same evening? Four of us rose, took a few steps toward her, and in an instant, as something noxious filled our nostrils and mouths, began to cough along with Kathleen. Kathleen kicked over her bench and fell to the ground, a searing pain in her throat and lungs and then in ours; someone shrieked and someone else turned on the lights; those of us toward the rear of the room saw the thick yellowish brown smoke pouring out of the ducts along the back wall, while those toward the front saw, if not the smoke itself, the rest of us clutching our throats, bending double, falling down.

  How fast does chaos arrive? Faster than we can say it. We heard a hissing sound, which seemed to come from beneath us, and then more smoke mushroomed through the ducts. The lights were still on but the room was dark; some of us squeezed toward the three doors opening into the corridor, pushing so hard that we might have killed each other if Otto, Albert, Ian, and Frank—they deserve much credit—hadn’t seized chairs and hurled them through the windows running the length of the room. Through those jagged holes we poured, shredding our hands and faces and backs. Someone heaved Kathleen, already unconscious, out one opening; her arm broke when she landed. Dr. Richards and Dr. Petrie, handkerchiefs tied over their faces, crawled along the floor beneath the clouds, working toward the back and searching for those who’d already fallen, dragging them toward the windows and doors. The night watchman, walking the grounds, saw the smoke and rang the fire alarm, which sent Eudora, who by then was standing in Leo’s empty room and wondering where next to search for Naomi, down the stairs at the end of the wing and outside. The moon was full and across the wide lawn she saw the crowd tumbled in the flower beds in front of the dining hall and the lobby, the figures stretched out on the circular driveway, a resident doctor herding those of us who could walk or be dragged into the raised garden that filled the center of the circle. We knelt and clutched our chests and choked, vomited and gasped and began to turn blue. Eudora ran in our direction, trying to grasp what was happening.

  But this wasn’t like any fire we’d known before; there were no flames shooting out the windows, no floors collapsing downward in the heat. Nothing that might, had the fire engines from the village been anywhere near us yet, have driven back the hoses. There was only the smoke, which, those of us less badly hurt were beginning to realize, was not so much smoke as a suffocating gas. Still it poured through the dining hall, which was empty by now, pushing through the corridors, the lobby, and the solarium, into the elevators and the stairwells of the administration building and then up, and up.

  Jaroslav, who’d been sitting in the second row behind Dr. Petrie and Dr. Richards but who’d bolted before the bulk of the crowd, running into the lobby and throwing open the main entrance doors, was in better shape than many of us; he was the first to shout, “The infirmary!” and to remind us that seven people lay up there. In the center circle Nan and Polly were already counting, although they could barely breathe themselves. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty; was everyone here, was everyone out of the dining hall? We knew how many of us had been present, but weren’t sure how many staff had joined us, and the confusion over that distracted attention from the infirmary patients.

  We weren’t cruel, we weren’t stupid; we were nearly dead. We had broken wrists and legs and ribs, wounds small and large from the broken glass (Zalmen was struggling to get a tourniquet around Belle’s thigh, which was jetting blood), while even those without a scratch were coughing so hard tears ran from our eyes.

  Our heads swam, our vision dimmed. But some of us looked up not long after Jaroslav called out, and then we saw that two of the fourth-floor windows had been opened and were leaking trails of smoke. Framed in the windows were five faces: Mary, Vivian, Morris, Pinkie, George. Still there were no fire engines. The building had no fire escapes; the stairwells were fireproofed, lined with gypsum block and tile, and we’d been instructed to avoid the elevators in an emergency and use these sturdy passages instead, wh
ich could never burn. Indeed they were not burning now.

  “They’ll have to jump,” the night nurse, who’d rolled Myra out in a chair to the front lawn when the alarm sounded, said to Eudora.

  “Onto what?” Eudora asked. Knowing the answer, refusing to think it, she continued to scan the crowd. By then she’d glimpsed Leo, Dr. Petrie, almost everyone she’d seen inside the dining hall. But where was Naomi?

  The nurse looked down at Myra, whose eyes were closed and who was very pale. Then she turned her head at the sound of a motor and Eudora, following her gaze and hoping the sound signaled a fire engine approaching, instead glimpsed a Model T headed away from us, far down the hill but only just emerging from the curve that, for a long stretch, hid everyone approaching or leaving Tamarack State. Later, when Eudora could leave us for a moment (already she was bending over our bodies, encouraging one of us to breathe deeply, wiping another’s foaming mouth, pressing a wadded shirt against a wound), she would check the parking lot for Mrs. Martin’s car and feel relieved by its absence. But for now Eudora moved among us, trying to help everyone at once and realizing as she did so that she hadn’t seen Irene. Irene hadn’t been in the dining hall; perhaps she’d gone out for the evening, or perhaps she was still at work. Like the rest of us, she hadn’t yet remembered what would seem obvious later: that Irene’s domain was directly underneath the dining hall.

  “Jump!” called one of the four orderlies who’d appeared beneath the infirmary windows, each holding one corner of a blanket. They moved together, like the legs of a horse, shifting the small scrap of safety right and left.

  Instead of fading, the clouds pouring from the infirmary windows increased, and when the fire engines still didn’t arrive (their ladders wouldn’t have reached, but they had nets), all five patients did jump, one by one, onto that improvised device. Mary bounced off, hit the ground a glancing blow, and broke her collarbone, four ribs, and her shoulder. Vivian broke both legs. Pinkie was fine—except for his lungs he has always been lucky—while George broke only his wrist. Morris fell at an odd angle and died just a few minutes later; a rib had punctured his liver and one lung. And in the excitement everyone who was still conscious—not very many of us by then—forgot that not five but seven people had been up there, and that two were still in their beds, where they remained. Edith Weinstein, Denis Krajcovic: gone.

  17

  LATER, WHEN SUCH things became possible, we placed these notices in our Kill-Gloom Gazette:

  EDITH WEINSTEIN, b. 1881 in Brooklyn, New York. Daughter of Israel and Ida Weinstein; stepdaughter of Helen Graber Weinstein (first) and Louise Rubin Weinstein (second); beloved sister of Helena, Shmuel, Louis, Yudele, Esther, Leike, David, and Gabriel. First employed at age fourteen as a buttonhole-maker, Edith continued work in the garment industry until 1913, when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a short stay at Bellevue Hospital and a period living in a roof-tent, she arrived at Tamarack State in March of 1915. An avid moving-picture fan, her reviews in The Kill-Gloom Gazette were much appreciated by those too ill to attend movie nights. She entered the infirmary only a week before the fire, after the onset of intractable intestinal symptoms, and on the night of her death had delegated two assistants to take notes as she was unable to attend herself. Her skill with a needle was legendary and many of us benefited from the alterations she made, without charge, to our clothes. Among her many friends here she is particularly missed by Hazel, Rosika, and Belle.

  DENIS KRAJCOVIC, b. 1890 in Bukovina. Parents unknown; brother of Simon and others unknown; beloved husband of Karin and father of Thomas and Stephen. Immigrated to New York in 1902. First worked as a telegraph delivery boy; later as a pushcart vendor; then entered employment with a building firm where he specialized in the installation of ironwork, especially cornices and skylights. After a three-story fall, during which he broke a rib, Denis failed to recover as expected and was diagnosed eight months later with tuberculosis. In July of 1913 he was sent to Tamarack State and seemed through December of 1916 to be making a slow but steady recovery. In February of 1917 he suffered a series of hemorrhages and was confined to the infirmary. He is particularly missed by his former roommate Frank Turner; by his close friend David Yavarkorsky; and by Lydia Lasky.

  MORRIS VIOLA, b. 1896 in Utica, New York. Only son of Sadie and Joseph Viola. In high school Morris was notable as a champion debater, two-time winner of the central New York spelling bee, and outstanding thespian, best remembered for his role as Brutus during his senior year. After graduating from high school in 1914 he enrolled at Cornell University but was taken ill before the end of his first semester. His father having suffered an accident at the slaughterhouse that year, and his mother much occupied in caring for his father, he was sent to Tamarack State in February of 1915. Released in April of 1916, he was sent back in July after a relapse; from November of that year until his death he was confined to the infirmary. Not well known among us generally, he was a particular favorite of Dr. Petrie’s.

  WE DON’T HAVE funerals here. When we die our bodies are taken away at night, to the village for an autopsy or directly to the undertaker’s, returned either way in a plain pine box and buried quietly. The cemetery is a mile north of our central buildings, in a clearing on the other side of the hill, hidden by a border of white pines, never shown to visitors and not mentioned in our rule book. We learn where it is from each other. When, during an afternoon walk, one person shows another the clearing for the first time, it usually signals a new stage in the relationship. After that, we think differently about how long we’ve been here and what time we might have left.

  Twice since the fire, all of us involved in the Wednesday gatherings have gone to the clearing as a group, to visit the three who, although they didn’t join in those afternoons, were still tied to us. The hospital commission gives us modest grave markers rather than headstones, low oblongs twelve by four inches, set almost flush with the ground. Morris, Edith, and Denis lie at the western edge of an area about the size of a swimming pool, neatly paved.

  18

  EARLIER ON THE night of the fire, before anyone was dead, Miles had indeed made Naomi drive him to his meeting. They hadn’t spoken during the journey. Beside him the hills slanted up and down, trees giving way to fields, but instead of enjoying the view he’d been looking at his notes, his concentration interrupted by Naomi’s low, tuneless humming. When he asked her to stop she frowned, obeyed, and then a few seconds later started tapping her thumbs against the steering wheel, increasing the speed as they pulled up at the meeting place. As she jolted to a stop he said, “Please come back at ten o’clock.” Then he stepped down from the car, one hand still on the door, and found himself surprised by the clear, soft, twilit sky.

  He could hear but not see a flock of geese moving high overhead. The leaves in the trees, just opening, were small and sharp, lovely in this light, and for an instant he recognized that he should be outside, walking around the lake or lying on his porch, watching the stars appear in the darkening sky. Instead he was five miles west of Tamarack Lake and seven miles from us, about to enter the limestone hall where league members from across the county were meeting to discuss their most recent cases. He turned back to Naomi, who was smoothing the front of her dress—a new dress, he thought—and who said, “Whatever you’d like.” Her voice was peculiarly flat.

  “That’s what I’d like,” he said. “Ten it is, then.” He peered in through the open window but her face revealed nothing.

  “Naomi?” They’d argued over every drive this week.

  “What would you do if I just stopped doing this?” she asked.

  Cars were drawing up to the building in twos and threes; men, streaming up the steps, were nodding seriously. Miles said, “Please.”

  “You’d find someone else,” Naomi said calmly. “In a day. It’s not like I’m the only person capable of driving you, it’s just that you want to make me miserable, you like forcing me.”

  “You offered…”
/>   “Months ago. And I offered something different.”

  A Cadillac pulled up, disgorging three men in dark suits—all strangers to Miles but all, he saw with embarrassment, looking at him and Naomi; without meaning to, he’d opened the door of the Model T, craned his head inside, and raised his voice. Carefully he closed the door and stepped back. “Let’s not have this argument again,” he said. “I will expect you later.”

  Naomi drove off without answering him. Throughout the meeting, which was long and complicated, only the mass of business kept him from dwelling on her. Each of the sixteen lieutenants had reports from their operatives to present, and two cases had to be discussed in detail. A man known to be a dues-paying Socialist had been overheard in a library talking about the Socialist meeting held in St. Louis. The proclamation signed there had deemed participation in the war to be a capitalist ploy, both dishonorable and unjustifiable—and the man’s tone, the agent reported, suggested that he approved and would have signed himself if he’d had the chance.

  Miles’s attention fluctuated during the discussion that followed, but he was alert enough to hear the motion delegating an agent to befriend the suspect and try to determine his true attitudes. The motion passed. Someone who worked for the electric company next volunteered to enter the suspect’s house under the pretext of reading his electric meter, and to look through his mail and his private papers. That motion passed as well. Then it was Miles’s turn to present the case of the Baums.