“You look weird. White. Scared.” He pinched his little beard. His soul patch. “Does she hurt you?”
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
“You’re practically a prisoner here, and—”
“I am not.”
“I never see you go out. You always have some reason why—”
“Stop it, will you? There’s nothing wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t know anything.”
He took a step toward her. “Then tell me, Molly.”
She spun the bolt and, staying behind the door, pulled it open so she was trapped against the corner of the wall, the glass between her and Tobias. “Go,” she said again. It hurt to say it, the word barbed wire in her mouth, because she wanted him to stay, too. She wanted someone to strip off her skin and look beneath, to the tissue and vessel and bone, and see everything that she kept hidden away—to prove she wasn’t wax but flesh. She wanted normal.
Tobias looked at her through the glass, knocked gently on it with the second knuckle of his middle finger. His breath condensed, a film between them, and then, with his eyebrows crunched into the bridge of his nose, he shook his head and walked across the street.
She’d lost her only real, living friend.
When they’d first moved to Dorsett Island, there had been no lack of curious neighbors; no one can hide in a town of two hundred year-round residents. People wanted to know what tempted the Fisks to move from away to Maine, why Molly schooled at home, and what on earth convinced Louise to work for eccentric Mick Borden. Molly didn’t know exactly what stories her mother fed them, though from snatches here and there she gathered they included fleeing some sort of abusive relationship and a desire to make a new start. People nodded and welcomed them, bringing homemade chowders and jams and neighborly wisdom in their loose-jawed accents. And for a precious short while, Molly thought the island could be home.
There were a handful of girls her age—newly turned twelve—and they came around inviting her to do twelve-year-old things. Molly tried to join them, but soon the waves outside became too loud in her ears, the wind too rough against her cheeks, and the wildness of it all forced her back through the doors of the museum, safe inside.
She only left with her mother.
And then not at all.
And the girls scattered to do their twelve-year-old things without her.
Molly didn’t meet Tobias until later. She knew of him, of course—one of the reasons the island girls had been so eager to come around and befriend her had to do with the fact she lived across the street from his family’s restaurant, he being an object of several of their almost-teenage crushes. Tobias had nothing to do with them, too busy working or hanging out with his own friends to take much notice of some girls a couple of years younger, dressed with too much eye shadow and too small bathing suits, strutting for his attention.
Molly’s Bible had started things with Tobias. She wasn’t quite certain what those things were, exactly—on his side of it, at least. It had been toward the end of last summer, a frantic weekend of tourists trying to cram in a few more hours of carefree leisure, a few more days of sun-induced forgetfulness. The museum was busy enough that Molly didn’t want to duck back into the apartment to make a sandwich, and her mother couldn’t get her lunch. Louise had locked herself in the bedroom, suffering from one of her “migraines”—those times when she couldn’t cope and ended up chasing a few sleeping pills with spoonfuls of applesauce. It had been some time since Molly believed her mother had real headaches, and some time since Louise thought she was fooling her daughter, but they both still played along.
Molly had been starving, her stomach curling around itself and making noises worthy of the Chamber of Horrors. She decided to order some fried mozzarella sticks from across the street, have them delivered. Tobias showed up not long after that, styrofoam container balanced in one hand. “Hey,” he said. “Molly, right?”
She nodded. “How much do I owe you again?”
“Five thirty.”
She gave him seven dollars from the cash drawer. As he reached for it, he noticed her Bible open on the counter. “Job, huh? I read that today, too. You working through the one-year schedule?”
“Yeah, the one online.”
“Me too. Wicked cool.” And he looked at her, the way she’d once looked at a drab, dusty brown owlet moth in her father’s tweezers—him holding it up to the desk lamp, her at first finding it startlingly dull compared to the brightly colored butterflies in cases around the room and not any different than the hundreds of stupid moths that bumped around the porch lights every night.
But when Daddy told her this moth had special organs in their ears that could pick up bat sonar, and they flopped to the ground when they heard it so the bats couldn’t eat them, the boring bug suddenly became special. And she saw it not as a pesky thing that stupidly chased the hallway lamp when she opened the front door, getting trapped in the house to die there, but as something with value.
Molly had that value now in Tobias’s eyes. Before that day, he had waved a few times but was just as likely to ignore her. He’d delivered pizza or subs or calzones to the apartment every four or five months. But now, he said, “Maybe I can come over sometime and we can talk about the readings.”
“Okay.”
“Awesome. Wow. This was really a God thing, wasn’t it?”
She had to agree it was. And since that day he had stopped in nearly every day, some excuse or another in his pocket, and Molly told herself that he was, like herself, lonely. He’d told her more than once he didn’t fit with his family, that they were content on Dorsett Island and he wasn’t, that they wanted him to stay on with the business forever, and he planned to go to medical school, Lord willing. “And,” he said, “they’re Catholics. So they totally don’t get me.”
Molly had been so thankful for a friend. And now she’d gone and ruined it.
She rammed the door shut, locked it again, and ran back into the museum, through the first three exhibit rooms, to the workshop door hidden behind a musty black curtain. Every time she moved it aside to get through, her nose filled with dust and she’d sneeze, like now, covering the bottom half of her face with her sleeved arm. She knew instinctively where the pull was to the light; three steps in she swept her arm through the air around her head until the balled chain caught her fingers. She tugged. On burst the light, and she flinched at the body parts strewn over the workbench, dangling on hooks, staring down at her from shelves. She still wasn’t used to that initial inhuman sight.
The arms hung against one wall, with the legs, and she chose three she thought could be the right size, or close enough. Back through the curtain, another two sneezes—she always sneezed in twos—and into the lobby, where she undressed Elvis to the waist. Some of the figures were wax through and through, but others, like this one, had wax heads and arms, and occasionally legs, screwed onto mannequin bodies. She chose the replacement arm that seemed about the same length as the King’s unbroken one. It was far more muscled, but no one would notice under his clothes. She screwed the appendage into his shoulder socket, wormed his shirt and jacket back on, and fixed his wig. In the closet she grabbed the mop again, and an empty bucket to put under the leak. Wiped up the water. Gathered the broken arm pieces into a plastic bag and hid them in the storage room, in a box labeled Scraps.
She didn’t want to go back into the lobby, to sit across the street from the pizzeria, to watch Tobias tote pies and wings to his car and drive away, only to return empty-handed and do it again. She didn’t want to sit alone with Elvis, listening to the ting, ting, tap of the water in the bottom of the bucket. She didn’t want too much space around her. And she didn’t want Louise to find her quite yet. So, after jerking off the light so hard she heard the chain bounce up against the bulb, she lay down on the cement floor and wriggled her body beneath one of the workbenches. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and when she turned her head to peer out in
to the room, she saw a patchwork of black and blacker, and all sorts of grays. Her nose nearly touched the bottom shelf of the workbench, and she smelled old wood. The peaks and points of the cement pricked her scalp, and she tensed her neck muscles to press her head harder into the floor.
Footsteps. Her mother was back. Molly heard the curtain flutter open and Louise’s breath, but then the footsteps moved away. She stayed awhile longer, eyes closed, hoping to fall asleep, but she knew her mother would come looking for her again, would be nervous if Molly didn’t show up soon. She kinked her neck to look down at her wristwatch, pressed on the Indiglo light; she hadn’t been there ten minutes. Things felt so much longer in the dark.
Molly rolled out, went back to the lobby. For the third time that day she unlocked the front entrance. The sign in the door still read Open. Tobias got into his car across the street. He looked over but didn’t wave or nod, and in that moment Molly felt as if she’d lost her chance at the normal she craved. Tobias had been her conduit to that. Now he wouldn’t want anything to do with her.
Before pushing open the apartment door, she brushed away the balls of dust from her clothes. She didn’t want her mother asking questions, not that Louise would. So much hiding between them. She knew her mother didn’t ask because she didn’t want to know—not because she was uninterested, but because it hurt too much.
Molly didn’t want to give answers anyway.
She heard pans being pulled from cabinets in the kitchen. “Oh, you’re home,” she said to her mother, who slid a Pyrex baking dish onto the stovetop and opened another cupboard to get her favorite Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.
“Thanks for taking care of the leak,” Louise said, intently flipping through the pages.
“I didn’t do much.”
“I’ll call Mick tomorrow.” She turned her head from Molly. Sniffled.
“Mom, is something wrong?”
Louise shook her head and tore a paper towel off the roll hanging on the wall, crumpling it against her eyes, sweeping it beneath her nose. “Sorry, baby. It’s Linda Johnson’s daughter. She was killed in a car accident this morning.”
“The one on Beamson Island, who has the baby?”
“No. The one who moved to Hartford. I was there when Linda got the news. I didn’t want to leave, but she said she needed to be alone. Stacey has a little girl, too, but wasn’t with the father anymore. Linda doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Dakota now.” Her mother swore. “I can’t find the lasagna recipe.”
“Here, let me,” Molly said. She flipped to the index. “Page 223.”
“I just . . . can’t imagine losing a child,” Louise said. But Molly knew that was a lie. She could imagine it very well. “The least I can do is make a couple of meals.”
“Want help?”
Her mother nodded, squeezed her hand, and gave her a box of unopened noodles. “You boil. I’ll brown.”
5
CLAIRE
SEPTEMBER 2002
They met in the basement of the Avery Springs Public Library the first Saturday of every month—the Puzzle Junkies, eight men and four women, mostly over thirty but a couple of eager college kids, too. Claire sat in her regular chair, at the end of the third folding table, where someone had carved three holes, each the diameter of a Bic pen, in the laminate top. Eyes and nose, she always thought, the picture made clearer by the fact someone had scratched a wide smiley arc beneath the holes. She liked to stick her pencils in the holes, point side up, while she worked her puzzle.
Heidi burst into the room, travel mug in one hand, canvas bag slung over her forearm, and a pile of papers flapping in her other hand. “Oh my goodness. There was such a line at Kinko’s.”
“That’s what happens when you wait till the last minute,” Claire said.
“It’s only last minute because of the lines. Had there been no one there, I’d have been here at least ten minutes early.”
“When is there ever not a line at Kinko’s on Saturday when you need copies made?”
“I like to think of each day as full of new possibilities,” Heidi said, dropping her things on the seat. “Here. Your newsletter. Fresh from the copy machine.”
Claire took it, folded it in half the long way. “Where did you get that one?” she asked, motioning to Heidi’s blazer with black crossword puzzle squares and numbers printed on the white fabric.
“On eBay,” Heidi said. “Got a pair of pants, too, but I thought it would be too much to wear both at the same time.”
“Along with your socks, your beret, tote bag, and earrings,” Claire said.
“And my coffee.” Heidi held up her cup, shook it around eye level, and laughed. “You know me too well.”
The club’s unofficial president banged his own ceramic crossword-motif mug on the table, and everyone quieted. The members took a few moments to share some of the most difficult clues they’d come across during the month—obscure foreign words and clever puns—and then all settled into solving the same puzzle. Claire finished first, in three minutes and forty-nine seconds. They discussed the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in February, all trying to convince Claire to enter. She wasn’t interested.
Though she did enjoy accumulating crossword-inspired accessories, Heidi didn’t care a thing for working puzzles. She came to the meetings because Claire did, never finished even half the clues. And most of the ones she did fill in were wrong.
A good friend.
“Lunch?” Claire asked, packing away her mechanical pencils.
“Of course,” Heidi said. “It’s my turn to treat, your turn to pick.”
“I don’t think I paid last month.”
“Yes you did,” Heidi said, though Claire knew she hadn’t.
“Okay, then, how about Scallions?”
Heidi looked at her watch. “I knew you’d say that.”
They walked there, Heidi leaving her car in the library parking lot, noting the time she needed to leave the lot to avoid a ticket for breaking the three-hour rule. Last month she’d argued with the meter maid, trying to get out of the ticket the woman had been tearing off the pad just as Heidi ran to her car, pressing the automatic car door opener and throwing her tote bag onto the passenger seat. “But I’m right here,” she had said, but the meter maid slapped the citation under her wiper and told her to take it up with city hall.
Claire always walked to the library, only a mile from her home.
She only recently began driving again.
They sat outside, at the tables on the sidewalk, the sun warm on Claire’s shoulders, her dark hair, the autumn wind brushing her neck, sending shivers down her back, like a lover’s breath. Daniel used to kiss her neck, little light puffs of lip from her earlobe down and around to her jugular notch. His thumb had fit in the hollow perfectly, resting there as he traced her collarbone between his first two fingers.
She missed him.
No, maybe not him, though she’d loved him completely once. She missed more the feelings that came with being married—the security, the acceptance by those around her. Her married friends didn’t know what to do with her now—she wasn’t invited to the barbecues or game nights anymore. Oh, they tried, asking her to a couple of parties right after Daniel left, but it was awkward, tense, no one knowing what to say or how to say it. There was no place for a husbandless wife—or a childless mother—in the world Claire had once lived in, that of manicured lawns and church breakfasts and family vacations in Florida.
The waitress came. Heidi looked at her watch again. Claire ordered a grilled chicken salad, no onions, her friend a BLT with coleslaw on the side.
“Meghan is coming in a couple of weeks. With Landon,” Heidi told her.
“You must be thrilled.”
“I am. They’re staying a week. I wish it were longer. I wish she’d just stay put here.” Heidi stirred Sweet’N Low into her tea. “She’s pregnant again.”
Claire paused, unable to read her friend. “And?”
“It’s not Travis’s baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That girl . . . I don’t know where we went wrong.”
Unlike Heidi’s younger daughter, Meghan had wandered through Canaan, was still wandering. She hit her adolescent years as her father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, lived through his long battle with multiple relapses and rounds of chemo and an eventual colostomy bag, which tied him—and Heidi, for the most part—to the house; he was too embarrassed by the smell to go out in public.
Greg was also ashamed of the pain, how it drove him to the floor, sobbing. He’d lie in front of their bedroom door so Heidi couldn’t come in and see him like that, his pajama bottoms soaked in urine, his faith twisted in a mist of agony and morphine. Heidi would sit outside the door, wet with her own tears, listening to her beloved cursing God with one breath, begging Him for relief with the next.
Meghan saw it all, too. Her sister, Jennifer, had been young enough that she floated around in her seven-year-old fog of Barbie dolls and Brownie bake sales, and hadn’t quite understood all that went on. It was Meghan, though, who missed having her parents’ attention—the guidance and instruction desperately needed by teenagers—and like the proverbial prodigal, she looked for it elsewhere. Her life had been layered with different men and jobs and ideas of what would bring happiness. None of it lasted very long, though Heidi had hoped Meghan and Travis would at least marry and settle down.
A man across the sedate downtown street waved; Claire looked behind her, but no one else occupied the tables outside the café. Heidi raised her hand and waved back, and the man crossed toward them.
“I hope you know him,” Claire said with a little laugh.
“I do,” Heidi said.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Well . . .”
“Heidi! You’re seeing someone and you never said anything?”
“Not exactly,” Heidi said, breaking eye contact, and she stood to give the man a quick hug. “Andrew, hi.”
“I’m late, I know,” he said. “My eleven thirty ran over.”
The Air We Breathe Page 4
