The Place Between Breaths

by An Na

  If I concentrate, really focus my mind, I can even hear, down the hall, the rhythmic, guttural exhale of my father sleeping. Not exactly a snore, but not just loud breathing. It’s the sound of a reluctant sneaker scraping across the blacktop at the end of recess. Even in his sleep, my father regrets the lost hours when he could be working, researching, coming, going, doing something. Anything. To keep from feeling. This place.

  The middle place. Not death. Not life. A limbo state of existence filled with the hours of turning the wheels. Eating to not feel hungry. Sleeping to not feel tired. Waking to not feel asleep. The middle place that exists between breaths, in that pause, that slight breathlessness before an exhale and an inhale. Between the crest and the valley. Where the path always meanders cliffside.

  How much longer will I be able to endure? How much longer will I have a choice? Or is it all a mirage? Our mind tricking us, showing us what we need to see in order to live just a moment longer? Is that truly our free will, our conscious choice? And what of love? Does love allow us to choose? In my leaving, the one who will suffer the most is not me, but him. Aren’t all our decisions swaddled and nestled next to those we love?

  I remind myself of where I am. Lying here in my bed. Right here. Clutching my pillow and breathing in the scent of the laundry detergent, my own salty sweat, and the faint musty odor of this old house. My house. I force my thoughts to charting the rhythmic mechanical clanking of my house. Slowly my breathing steadies, and the haunting nightmare of the train relinquishes its hold. I feel myself on the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness, and the longing for sleep to steal me away, even if only for a few hours, chokes my throat.

  This is not living. This is existing. I feel myself standing at the precipice, looking back at the shadow I cast, looking forward into an emptiness that holds no light. I know I cannot stay here much longer. In this place. This place where the train still shrieks.

  Winter

  Had I been wrong to hope, then?

  The first time I saw you swaying, your fist clenched against your lips, your neck straining, moving to the metronome of your mind like waves crashing over and over against rocks, I reached out to steady you before calling your name. I watched your eyes enlarge, your head swiveling violently all around as though searching for a lost thing.

  I knew. I knew. I knew then in my heart when you could not answer me, what I refused to see for so long. But I couldn’t let myself believe it. There had to be other explanations. I started insisting you go to sleep earlier. I kept the television on all the time so you would know the noises were real. I reminded you to shower. To eat. I pretended not to see the fatigue in your eyes as you pushed back against yourself.

  What was I to do? What would you have had me do? After everything we had endured. Suffered. Loved. What was I to do? Tell myself the truth? That I was slowly losing you? That each day would close another room in your mind until all that was left was the skin of you? How could I live this way? Unable to reach you. Unable to let you go. Unable to do anything but wait. Wait. For you to return to me. A glimpse was all that I prayed for. Those moments would be enough. I would make them enough. We would beat down the wings of the Fates again. And again. And again.

  Spring

  The keyboard protests loudly as I pound out a quick reply to the e-mail from Dr. Diaz. Another late meeting along with a million attachments that I am supposed to read before signing a nondisclosure agreement later tonight after the announcements. I glance at the time and stand up quickly. I’ll be late picking up Hannah if I don’t hurry.

  At the top of the stairs, a light-headed fluttering almost buckles my knees, making me grab the banister to steady myself. Not enough sleep makes me dizzy with fatigue. I pause to take a breath and then step carefully down the stairs. When I enter the kitchen, I find Dad already standing at the counter.

  I notice the bagginess of his suit. He has gotten very thin recently. Which reminds me to ask about dinner. He never seems to eat enough, always leaving behind plates of untouched food as he stares into his laptop.

  “Hey, Dad,” I say.

  “Hmm,” he says, his eyes scanning the screen.

  “DAD.”

  He looks up at me, a frown interrupting the smooth plane of his forehead. “Why are you yelling at me so early in the morning?”

  I look away. I hate when he acts as though I’m the one being unreasonable. I turn back to him once my irritation is in check. “Dad, I have a late meeting at the lab tonight. Can you pick up dinner?”

  He is focused again on the computer screen, his index and middle finger scrolling down the touchpad.

  I walk over to him and pass my hand over his eyes. He glances up at me.

  “Dad, I need you to be present for one minute,” I say.

  An awkward, embarrassed smile lifts the right corner of his upper lip. He brushes his hand over his face as though to rearrange his features and steps back from the computer screen to lean up against the counter.

  “What’s up, bugaboo?” His eyes are full beams.

  I smile despite my annoyance. For all his distractions and busy schedule, when Dad wants to know something, really concentrates on something or someone, even the sun seems weak.

  “I have a late meeting tonight. Pick up something for dinner, okay?”

  He tilts his head. “Late meeting? At the lab? Isn’t that kind of unusual?”

  Now it’s my turn to act distracted. I walk over to the coffee machine and start making the coffee.

  Dad walks over and crouches down, trying to study my face. I know he is looking to read me like he does with everyone he meets. It’s his job to know what other people are thinking before they even have a chance to say it to themselves.

  “Dr. Mendelson thinks she has something, doesn’t she?”

  To keep from meeting his stare, I focus on the slow drip of coffee and run over the ratio of ground beans to water for the optimal caffeine extraction.

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  It has been a while since the lab has been on high alert; the gossip mill churning while everyone looks for signs. It is still too early. Nothing definitive. If anything, it is even more questionable, since in the end, everything, all the tests, all the results, the data, will have to be documented and replicated and tested again and again. We are only beginning, yet even that fact holds power. Hope unchained is a beast.

  The drip slows to a halt and I reach up into the cupboard to pull down two mugs. As soon as I set them on the counter and reach for the coffeepot, he pounces and catches my eyes.

  Dad pumps one fist into the air. “Goddamn it. She is brilliant. I knew she was going to change that lab around. But in one year. Who would have even guessed? Goddamn it.”

  “Dad, you can’t say anything. Absolutely nothing. Interns only get the gossip, not the real briefings. Nothing is for sure, okay? This meeting could just be about announcing some new clinical trial or something.”

  “Gracie, come on. Give me some credit here. How long have I been in this business? Ten, twelve years? Besides, that’s why they have corporate in an entirely different building. So we don’t pressure you geek types.” Dad turns to his computer screen and his fingers fly over his keyboard.

  “How about pizza tonight?” I ask.

  Dad mutters, “This could be the link. This could be the opening for the next round of clinical trials. I can’t believe she did it in a year.”

  Watching him work in such excitement reminds me of all the other times when he thought he was onto something. Back then, when I was younger, I could lean against him and he would reach out with one hand to pull me close while with his other hand he typed out a final sentence. Then he would hug me. Lift me up onto the counter and sit me in front of him to talk. Really talk. About the too many movies and TV shows I was watching and how come I had no friends. Sometimes after those conversations, he would rush around and sign me up for tennis or pottery or ukulele lessons. Only he would forget what day, what time, an
d I would end up either missing them, or worse, sitting there waiting, feeling abandoned because he forgot to pick me up again as the sympathetic or annoyed eyes of strangers gazed down at me. After a while, I stopped complaining and learned that reading at home was just as good as any friend.

  Now I move away from his frenetic energy. This need that consumes every day of his life. All for love. For us. For me. The exhaustion creeps across my shoulders, drips down my spine.

  Before heading out to the car, I yell back, “Don’t forget the pizza.”

  Silence.

  I resist the urge to yell again and simply pick up my backpack by the door and head out. If nothing else, we can have soup. There is always soup in the house. I have come to hate soup.

  • • •

  When I drive by the place I usually pick up Hannah, at the cross stop where the dirt road meets the paved one, and find it empty, I know she is still angry. She has never let me drive her home, so I don’t know where she lives. And I can’t call her because she doesn’t own a cell phone. Every time I tried to push my old one on her, she would get angry until she finally shouted that her family couldn’t afford those things. I stare down the dirt road and wish so badly to see her walking toward me. I want to cry the way Toad probably did when Frog left him. If Hannah would forgive me, I would eat all the soggy sandwiches in the world. At school I search the halls, but there is no sign of her. Dave Riley can’t be found either. In AP Chemistry, I overhear a girl named Gloria talking to her lab partner, Beth.

  “Why didn’t I sign up to go on the Costa Rica trip?” Gloria complains.

  “Because we have an AP exam in a month. And you know it’s a god squad trip.” Beth carefully titrates some hydrochloric acid into the sodium hydroxide base. “That was another milliliter.”

  Gloria jots it down in her notebook. “I don’t know why we’re considered the smart ones when we’re stuck here while they’re in ninety-degree tropical heat and swimming with sea turtles.”

  “Oh, stop whining. They’re doing missionary work. They aren’t on the beach lying around. They’re supposed to be building some damn church in the mountains. That’s why the trip is free.”

  “You have a point,” Gloria says, and turns back to her notebook.

  I calculate the millimeters for the acid-to-base ratio for the titration and wonder if Hannah has gone on that trip with Dave. He would have gone, since he is a part of that Methodist church group. Maybe Hannah signed up at the last minute to go with him? If only people were as predictable as chemical reactions.

  My only comfort of the day comes when I drive into Genentium’s parking lot. Here I have a role. A function that is bigger than just breathing for living’s sake. Here there is a purpose for me. I enter the building ready to control my mind and focus on results. It’s going to be a big day for Genentium. For Dad. But what if Norah is right and all of it will just come to nothing?

  At the end of the day shift, everyone whispers and rushes down the hall toward the announcements. The meeting doesn’t take place in the conference room, but instead, everyone crowds into Dr. Mendelson’s lab. The senior scientists gather at one end of the room, and the rest of us push in where there is space between the workstations and the rows of desks. I can barely see into the room. I lean left, then right, hoping for a glimpse of the doctors at the front.

  Someone wonders, “Why aren’t we meeting in the conference room?”

  “Top secret stuff,” someone in the back says. “That room could be bugged.”

  “Shhh!” Dr. Diaz shoots her laser beams around the room, trying to identify the culprits.

  I hoist myself onto a lab counter and sit so I can see over the taller people’s heads. Dr. Mendelson is flanked by two other senior researchers. She raises both of her hands and begins to wave. Her shining halo of blond hair and wide brown eyes make her look almost elfin. Except when she’s concentrating, which is almost always, and then her eyes take on a demonic quality that makes one step back when she approaches.

  “Settle down, everyone,” she booms.

  It’s disconcerting to hear such a trucker’s voice coming from a short, middle-aged woman.

  The entire room stills and readies itself for the news that has been creeping through the labs.

  “Now, some of you may have been privy to the latest round of gossip. I want to address these rumors.” Dr. Mendelson takes her time, eyes locking on various faces around the room.

  Will is leaning against a counter on the far left side of the room. He catches me glancing at him and winks. I quickly revert my attention back to Dr. Mendelson.

  “There has been a development.” She lowers her voice. “The information that I am about to share with you cannot leave this building. All of you will be asked to sign a document before leaving tonight.”

  A few people shuffle their feet. Someone in the back claps briefly. Another complains, “We already signed a confidentiality agreement when we came to work here.”

  Dr. Mendelson barks out a laugh like a seal and seems to know exactly where to look when she says, “Well, now you’ll be doubly careful about opening your big mouth.”

  She smiles serenely and waits a few beats, allowing the room to grow tense in anticipation. Finally, after another pass with her eyes, she continues.

  “Tomorrow we will be announcing that C4-511 will commence a phase one clinical drug trial.”

  Shoulders begin to slump with the announcement; the phase one trial was expected, even late. After all, the approvals from the FDA had been posted last summer. The latest antipsychotic drug was just a minor victory, but a useful one for funding, Dad had said. With the anticlimactic announcement, restlessness descends. I lean forward, watching all the scientists whispering to one another like schoolkids at a boring assembly.

  Dr. Mendelson is pacing back and forth as though she is thinking. Suddenly she stops. “Nothing is certain.” She runs her hands through her hair and then places them palms together, as though in prayer. “We are at a momentous point in this lab.”

  A ripple of silence spreads across the room. A few people lean forward.

  Dr. Mendelson lowers her hands. “We are on the cusp of history. Each procedure, each measurement, each move that you make will either aid or detract from this occasion. Each one of you can and will make a difference.” She pauses, letting her words expand and grow. “We believe we have located a gene. SIC-5 holds the key to understanding how the other cluster of risk genes play a role in the development of schizophrenia.”

  My heart stops beating as I gasp. A gene. I can hear the distant slam of a door closing. The slight scrape of a chair leg on the concrete floor. The brush of denim rubbing together as a leg is crossed.

  A lightning charge passes through the room. A few stand up from their chairs, craning to see Dr. Mendelson’s face. “This is the critical juncture. We need everyone on board. This is the Rosetta Stone.”

  I can feel the energy swirling around me. The air becomes thick with voices. They found a universal genetic marker. How many years has Dad been waiting for this news? How many jobs? How many moves? How many years of hoping? Does this news change anything? A wave of nausea makes my mouth fill with saliva. The past is the past and nothing can bring her back.

  Dr. Mendelson raises one hand and beckons. “I need senior scientists in my office in ten minutes. The rest of you can sign the paperwork that will be waiting for you out in the hall. Thank you, everyone.”

  Voices erupt.

  “Did she just say what I thought she said?”

  “Which test group? Mango?”

  “I heard it was Richardson’s group, Odin.”

  “I heard it was Dillon’s.”

  “That prick.”

  I let the crowd of hips and shoulders carry me toward the door. The cavernous hallway begins to fill with people. Everyone is talking about the SIC-5 gene. How many of us have been working on that discovery without even knowing?

  At first all I can do is stand there. Even as I
feel people brush past me, I stand in place, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Along one side of the hallway, a few of the office people from upstairs are standing behind folding tables loaded with papers. The excited chatter of the discovery reaches a crescendo.

  I walk to the far end of the hall. Safely away from everyone, I lean my back against the wall and let my legs finally buckle beneath me. As I sink to the ground, I taste the first warm, salty tears. They found it. I clutch my legs and press my forehead to my knees.

  Mama, they found it.

  Autumn

  “Mama,” she called.

  Her mother stood at the sink, her face turned toward the window. She had been standing there for such a very long time. Standing without moving or even breathing, it seemed. She was so still the light moved over her like an empty chair in the living room.

  “Mama,” she called again. The timer had been ringing nonstop and still Mama did not move.

  The glass window into the oven revealed nothing except the doomed crowned circles that she imagined blackening and darkening into pieces of coal as she watched helplessly. It had happened before. Too many times. The only thing Mama never burned was soup, and that was because it was from a can.

  She sniffed at the air. The muffins were burning. She knew it. She reached for her mother’s elbow and pulled hard on her arm.

  Her mother blinked as though waking from a dream, her eyes adjusted to the new scene in front of her, growing wide in her realization of the noise invading the kitchen. She raced to the oven and shut off the timer.

  “They are fine. Just fine. Just fine. Fine. They are fine,” Mama said over and over again as she slipped on the oven mitts and threw open the oven door. A blast of hot air blew out.

  “Move away,” her mother said, pulling the muffins out of the oven.