The Place Between Breaths

by An Na

  With gratitude and love for my sisters:

  Jin, Jacqueline, and Juliet

  Life begins on the other side of despair.

  —JEAN PAUL SARTRE

  Winter

  There are many versions of a story. Many sides and lenses that can distort, change, illuminate what is seen and unseen. What is heard and unheard. What is felt and unfelt. In the end, truth is but a facet of a diamond, a spark of ray from the sun, a forget-me-not flower seen from the eyes of a bee. What lives and breathes as reality is a perception, so who is to say what is possible and impossible?

  Call it fate or simply coincidence, but the shorter version of how I found you begins like this. There was a dark speck on the side of the barren winter road that grew larger and larger as I drove closer. Expanding from a dot to a stone to a tree stump until I screeched to a halt. A few dozen feet away from a headless coat turtle-shelled on top of the snow. Both of my hands released the steering wheel and coned over my mouth. Was it a body? There was no movement. I slowly opened the door and stepped out. Had someone frozen and died overnight? It wouldn’t have been the first time that something like that happened around here. I took a step forward, and then another, the fragile crack of ice and gravel rippling through me. My breath misted before my face.

  A head emerged.

  I shouted in fright. “You scared the hell out of me!” A large vapor cloud formed as I exhaled long and slow.

  Your disheveled black hair framed your face, petite, round. It was hard to tell how old you were, but something about your eyes told me you were older than you looked.

  Slowly unfurling each limb as though in pain, you stood up.

  I walked forward in relief.

  “You looked like a dead body.”

  Your brows gathered as you lifted and dropped your shoulders before bowing your head slightly. “Sorry.”

  Then a brief wave of your hand and you started walking down the side of the road.

  “Do you need a ride?” I called to your back. You stopped. “I’m on my way to town,” I said.

  You gazed back, your eyes roaming my face before you turned and kept walking down the long cold road. Away from me.

  • • •

  That is the short version of how we met. You didn’t tell me then why you were so tired that you had to rest hiding inside your coat by the side of the road, but since then, after meeting again, you have shared a few of your truths. The longer story of us is like the horizon. We can only know what we see, and all that we wish we could understand is beyond vision.

  Spring

  The alarm beats relentlessly into my mind and I choke for air, ragged heaves pushing in and out as though I have been underwater far too long. My hand moves swiftly to turn off the incessant noise. The soft morning light flickers into my eyes before I close them again. The fading remnants of my dream, my mother’s face, haunt me. They come and go like spring rains, sometimes light and steady, sometimes fleeting mist, and then the occasional, torrential downpour. Her profile lights my mind. The dark line of her eyebrow. The labyrinth swirls of her ear. The gentle round of her nose and the sharp blade of her jawline.

  In my worst moments, I wish her dead. At least then I could truly mourn. But to be missing for such a long time without any sign, lost or dead, just a name in the police data bank . . . The yearning for clarity sifts through me until all that lingers is the cancer of uncertainty. I have only the briefest memories, and these dreams, to tell me that she even existed at all. I glance over at the clock and finally force myself out of bed. The routine for school, if nothing else, is comforting in its predictability.

  In the kitchen, I make the coffee and pour two cups. Cradling my hot mug, I check the outdoor thermometer from the window above the sink. Fourteen degrees. It has got to warm up any day now. I have said this for the last two weeks and the average temperature still hovers at twenty. The wind rattles the window above the sink.

  “Nineteen.”

  I turn around and find Dad standing in the doorway, dressed for work.

  “Close,” I say. “Fourteen.”

  Dad throws his blue tie over one shoulder and walks to the counter for his coffee and his laptop.

  “You look tired this morning, Grace.” Dad tips his head to the side as he stares into my face. I lower my eyes and turn away from his hawk gaze.

  “Just dreams, Dad,” I say lightly. “And I have midterms coming up.”

  I can feel his focus shifting away, since he’s satisfied with my answer.

  “Maybe you should cut back on some hours at the lab, Gracie.”

  I don’t bother to respond. The internship at Genentium is coveted by high schoolers looking for a way into the best colleges. I know that the other interns and doctors there think I landed a spot because of Dad, who works on the corporate end, and that means constantly proving I belong. But Dad doesn’t understand or maybe doesn’t care. He is too busy already at his computer, buried in the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems site, checking his e-mails, his science journals online.

  His winter pallor makes him look tired too, though most people couldn’t tell you if he had a tan or not because of his darker complexion. For a white man, that is. But then who can say if he really is white? With his olive skin tone and coarse black curly hair, he could be part black or Southeast Asian or Native American or Latino or Mediterranean. We joke and change his ethnicity based on the restaurant we are eating in. Dad was adopted and has never attempted to locate his birth parents. An irony not lost to someone who lives and breathes for genetics. I’ve tried to get him to take a DNA test, but he says he likes being a chameleon. The genetic history that he cares about the most is not his, but hers. And there was never any doubt of her Korean heritage or the disease that destroyed her. My mother’s bloodline, after all, is mine.

  By trade, Dad is a headhunter for one of the most prestigious labs in the country. The world. It is his job to know the research, the routines, the likes and dislikes of the top scientists in the field of genetics. It is his job to lure them away from where they are to come and work for Genentium.

  By heart, Dad is looking for a miracle. It is not a coincidence that he came to work for this lab. We moved here specifically, strategically, so he would have the funding, the power, and the reputation to entice the best scientists in the world to work on the research and treatment for genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia, Parkinson’s, cancer, Huntington’s, schizophrenia. Dad never talks about cures, only speaks about the research and the scientists making discoveries every day. But I know what he wants. I know like I know without a doubt that I am his daughter. We are looking for a cure. It is a race he and I lost long ago, the moment my mother’s schizophrenia overtook her again, forcing her to step out of the house one last time. But that doesn’t stop Dad from still crawling to the finish line, hope lashed to his back. He waits for her to return, to be found. And finally, finally, their love, our family, whole again, just as they had always dreamed.

  I open a drawer and pull out a spoon. Dad is unaware of my movements. He is already on the hunt.

  “So who are you trying to recruit next?” I ask, and walk to the refrigerator to get some yogurt.

  Dad holds up one finger and then types quickly.

  I take my yogurt to the small table in the corner of the kitchen, where the latest journal of Nature sits waiting for me.

  “Dr. Samuels.”

  “Isn’t he a little young?” I ask, digging into my yogurt. I’ve heard Dad talking about Samuels. He’s some hotshot wunderkind scientist from San Diego’s Scripps Research Institute. Supposedly, he already has three patents to his name, and that was before he even got out of graduate school. I wonder how Dr. Mende
lson would get along with him. She doesn’t like a lot of bullshit in her lab. She barely tolerates the interns, but she knows it’s good for community building and fostering young minds, or so she says at the awards ceremony and press junkets. Twenty different questions spring to mind, but now is not the right time. I’ll talk to Dad later, when his eyes aren’t glued to the screen. Besides, he won’t talk about it in the morning. Not when his mind is fresh and ready to tackle the next set of problems. It’s in the evening, when he is tired and has a beer in hand, that talking about the possibilities doesn’t sound so reckless, like playing the lottery with the last dollar in your pocket.

  Dad runs his hands over his eyes as though resetting his vision.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “Just got dizzy for a second.” Dad waves away my concern. Doctors are the worst patients. Even though he traded in his ER scrubs for a suit and tie, he’s still a stubborn doctor under all that dress-up. I remember the exact moment he stopped going into the hospital; it was a month after Mama had disappeared. He was reading an article about the discovery of the Huntington’s gene. He looked up and said to me, “I can’t find a cure, but I can find the scientists who will.”

  He traded in medicine for research, practice for reading scientific journals and analyzing spreadsheets and interviews of geneticists. There was only so much a single doctor could do, but an entire orchestra of scientists working together, that was real progress. After moving here for Genentium, however, work has spiked a fever. Sometimes I barely see him, since he is either traveling or working late.

  I push away my half-eaten yogurt, my appetite suddenly gone, and pick up my mug. As I sip my coffee, I stare at the bowl of fruit at the center of the table. The pears are pale with faint brown spotting. I reach out and press. The point at which ripeness crosses over into decay is unperceivable. Only the fact remains. The slight overly sweet, acrid stench. The soft yielding flesh. The discoloration. I pick up the bowl and throw the entire contents into the trash.

  At the front door, I grab my backpack off the coat hook and yell back, “Bye, Dad. I’ll see you after work.”

  “Bye, bugaboo.”

  I know he hasn’t even looked up from the screen.

  As soon as I step outside, the frost slaps my face, making me gasp for air. I’m so done with this cold I want to scream. Instead I take out my anger on the steps and stomp down. At the bottom, as I move past the shadow of the house into the sun, a patch of colors catches my eyes. The first gladiators of spring wave their blue and yellow flags against the snow. Family: Iridaceae. Genus: Crocus. Legend: the symbol of the Greek noble Crocus’s undying love for the nymph Smilax.

  I sigh and walk over to them. Crouching low, I touch the fragile blossoms. Time expands and contracts, boundless, but always forward. Only the seasons remind me of what has passed and what is to come. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since we moved here to Jericho because it was close enough to the lab in Chicago. Since Dad and I first drove out to see the house, the lines of the building emerging from the field like a kindergarten drawing. The miles of green swaying grass, the white turret with wide encircling porch, pretty as a lady flouncing her skirts. I knew Dad had made up his mind before we had even stepped inside. He got out of the car and immediately bent down to pick the tiny periwinkle blossoms surrounding the front steps, interwoven into the lawn and gardens. The house sat in the middle of a field of forget-me-nots. Family: Boraginaceae. Genus: Myosotis. Legend: my mother’s favorite flower.

  It still kills me that Dad wanted to live so far away from anyone or any place. It takes us at least forty minutes to get anywhere: school, the city, the lab. Luckily, we still have Mom’s car, which became mine as soon as I learned to drive. The black Lincoln Continental moves like a boat in a storm, but Dad won’t hear of replacing it. It’s solid. Built to last, Dad likes to joke, with that lopsided grin that always makes him look like the used car salesman he once was when he was my age. Still, a car is a car, and without this boat, I would never be able to leave the house. I would be a captive in the tower forever.

  I pat the hood, silently greeting my car, and step inside. With both hands firmly on the steering wheel, I drive out onto the desolate frozen road. Any sudden jerk can throw the entire thing into a tailspin. A rut or bump can mean sitting by the side of the road for hours before someone stops to lend a hand. I drive carefully over the snowblown roads. A few miles from school, I spot Hannah standing in her usual spot.

  “Hey,” she says as she steps into the car and immediately places her hands over the heating vent. “I damn near froze my ass off last night.”

  I slowly ease back onto the dirt road and keep my eyes peeled for any bumps.

  “Why won’t this winter end? We’re low on wood,” Hannah complains.

  “It can’t stay cold forever,” I respond. “I mean, it’s March; spring must be right around the corner.”

  Hannah smiles. “You sound like Frog.”

  I glance over at her, raise one eyebrow.

  Hannah baps me on the shoulder. “God, were you raised by wolves? For such a geek, I can’t believe how little you’ve read. Frog and Toad. Remember reading Frog and Toad back in, like, second grade or something?”

  I shrug. My memories are not always reliable.

  “It’s the one good thing my mom did before she cut out,” Hannah says. “But you were probably reading National Geographic instead of having a normal childhood.”

  I snort. “If normal means moving all the time so that you’re so far behind in school you have the great distinction of being the oldest kid in high school, yeah sure, it was super normal.”

  “Shut up, you’re not the oldest. I thought Andy Deter was the oldest.”

  We drive over a bump and I grip the steering wheel harder. “Nope,” I say through clenched teeth. “I beat him by six months, easy.”

  Hannah reaches over and touches my hair. “Yup, it’s gray. Okay, Granny, you win.”

  I swat her hand away and Hannah laughs, leaning back into the seat and digging around in her jacket pocket before pulling out sections of granola bar from a foil wrapper. She pops one into her mouth. Soon a crinkling and smacking noise, like a small ravenous animal, fills the car. Hannah worries the wrapper in her hands as she stares out her window. Her sudden silence tugs at me.

  “Tell me a Frog and Toad story,” I say.

  She keeps her gaze toward her window but responds faintly, “Frog and Toad are best friends, and they have all these adventures together.”

  “Really? Frogs and toads prefer different habitats.”

  Hannah laughs, spraying bits of granola all over the dashboard. “You are such a nerd.”

  I accept this honor with a beauty-queen wave.

  Hannah smashes the wrapper in her hands and balls it up before shoving it into her coat pocket. She turns and tucks herself deep into her seat. “Well, my favorite one was about the time Frog wanted to be alone, and Toad starts freaking out because he thinks his friend doesn’t like him anymore.”

  “That sounds terrible. Why’s that your favorite?”

  “Just listen.” Hannah draws her knees up to her chest. “Frog wanted to be alone to think about all the wonderful things in his life. The sun shining, how being a frog was so great, and having the best friend in the world, Toad. But Toad, who’s kind of insecure and always jumping to the worst thoughts, thinks that Frog is mad at him and doesn’t want to be his friend anymore.”

  “So Frog’s the optimist and Toad’s the pessimist?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Like yin and yang.”

  “Or two sides of a coin.”

  “So what happens in the end?”

  “Toad makes some sandwiches and iced tea and tries to take them out to Frog, who’s sitting on a rock in the lake, thinking his happy thoughts. But as Toad’s on his way out there, he falls and everything ends up in the water.”

  “No wonder he’s a pessimist.”

  Hannah snaps her fin
gers and points at me. “But Frog doesn’t care and tells Toad he’s a great friend anyway and they eat the wet sandwiches sitting on the rock together. The end.”

  “I would say eating cold, wet sandwiches is truly a testament to friendship and love.”

  “I would eat wet sandwiches with you,” Hannah says softly.

  I keep my eyes on the road and smile. “Me too.”

  Before long the town’s buildings appear on the horizon. Hannah’s arms wrap around her middle as though she is cold.

  “Do you want me to turn up the heat?” I ask.

  “No, I’m fine.” Hannah’s expression hardens as she spies at the gray buildings ahead. I stop at a red light.

  “You okay?”

  Hannah’s eyes suddenly glisten with pooling tears. “Shit,” she says.

  “Whoa, wait, what’s up?” The light turns green and I speed over to the side of the road. “Hannah, what’s wrong?”

  Hannah covers her face with her hands.

  “Come on, Frog and Toad, right?”

  She nods, but her hands do not drop.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, Hannah!” I reach over and gently pull down her hands. Tears stream down her cheeks.

  “Are you sure?” I feel the trembling in her bones.

  She nods.

  “Oh man. Or should I say, oh Dave.”

  “Stop.” She pulls her hands from mine and rubs away the tears with her fingers.

  “I just . . . I just didn’t think things were that serious with you two. I thought it was strictly messing around.”

  Hannah glares at me. “God, for a fucking scientist, you know nothing about biology.”

  “I study genetics, not physiology.”

  “Grace, you’re not helping.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” I take a deep breath. “So . . . how long . . . never mind. So what are you going to do? Are you going to tell him?”

  Hannah chews her lower lip but doesn’t answer.

  “This is heavy. Like Lifetime movie after-school special heavy,” I try to joke.