A Single Breath

by Lucy Clarke

  She imagines him on the rocks threading fishing lures onto the line with numb fingers, then setting out the catch bucket. She imagines that first cast, the smooth flick of the rod. The surf’s good for the fish, livens them up, he’d told her before.

  He knew his fish. His father had run a cray boat for a decade, and Jackson studied marine biology. Living in London as they did, there wasn’t much call for marine biologists, but he said he got his fix of the coast whenever they visited her mother. In Tasmania, he owned an old sea kayak and would paddle through empty bays and inlets with a fishing rod hooked at the back of the kayak. She loved his stories of cruising beneath mountains and alongside wild coastline, catching fish to cook up on an open fire.

  There is a loud splash by the boat’s side and Eva gasps.

  The flashlight has slipped from her fingers, an eerie yellow glow falling through the dark water. “No! No . . .”

  She wants to reach down, scoop her hands through the sea and save it, but the light flickers as it sinks, and then goes out.

  “I’m sorry! I thought I had it,” she says, grasping the sides of the boat, leaning right over. “I’ve lost it. I can’t see anything now. I’m sorry . . . I . . .”

  “No matter,” the fisherman says gently.

  She hugs her arms tight to her chest. Her lips sting with the wind chill as she stares out into the endless darkness. “How cold is it?” she asks quietly. “The sea?”

  He sucks in his breath. “I’d say it’s about eight or nine degrees at the moment.”

  “How long could someone survive in it for?”

  “Hard to say.” He pauses. “But I’d think a couple of hours at best.”

  There’s silence save for the creak of the boat and the slap of waves against the hull.

  He’s dead, she thinks. My husband is dead.

  We only had two years together, Eva. It wasn’t long enough.

  There were still things I was only just beginning to discover about you; that your toes wriggle when you’re nervous; that your standards for cleanliness are bordering on slovenly; that smell is your strongest sense and you sniff everything you buy—books, a new dress, the cellophane wrap of a DVD.

  I only recently found the ticklish spot behind your knees that makes you crumple to the ground with gulps of laughter. And I love that my friends think you’re so levelheaded and pragmatic—yet you cannot get ready for an evening out without hurtling around the apartment performing a circus routine of cleaning your teeth while having a wee, or putting on your makeup in between mouthfuls of dinner.

  When we met for the first time and you focused your wide, hazel eyes on me, I felt like I did as a boy—light, hopeful, free.

  Like I said, Eva, two years with you wasn’t long enough.

  But it was two years more than I deserved.

  2

  Eva sits on the edge of the bed gazing numbly at the phone in her hand. She’s still in her pajamas, yet she has the feeling it is nearing evening again. Her mother keeps popping upstairs to encourage her to do things: Take a shower. Get some fresh air. Call Callie. But everything feels so utterly pointless that Eva doesn’t even answer. Instead, she stays in her room waiting for Jackson to walk back in, kiss her on the mouth, and say in his beautiful, lilting accent, Don’t worry, darl. I’m here now.

  It’s been four days. The coast guard tells them it is possible his body will wash up farther down the coast, toward Lyme Regis or Plymouth, because of the strong northeasterlies. But she’s not ready to think about a body, her husband’s body . . .

  The red woolen hat Jackson had been wearing was recovered. An apologetic policewoman brought it around sealed within a clear plastic bag. Eva had stared at the condensation forming against the polyethylene, thinking it looked as if the hat were breathing.

  Downstairs she hears the low voices of her mother greeting someone. Her name is spoken and then Jackson’s. She catches the word tragic.

  The house has been awash with visitors and Eva finds it odd how similar death can be to birth: the cards propped on windowsills, the bunches of flowers perfuming each room, the food in plastic containers stacked in the fridge. Then the hushed voices, broken sleeps, and the knowledge that life will never be the same again.

  She blinks, her focus returning to the phone. She must speak to Dirk, Jackson’s father. She feels guilty that it was the police, rather than she herself, who informed him of what happened. But Eva couldn’t. She just couldn’t find the words.

  She glances at the long number written in pen across the back of her hand, then dials. Pressing the phone to her ear, she listens to the foreign ring tone, thinking about the physical distance between them. They are on opposite sides of the earth; there it is morning, here evening; there it is summer, here winter.

  She has only spoken to Dirk once and that was before she and Jackson were married. They kept in light contact by writing and she took pleasure in composing those letters on quiet evenings curled up on the sofa. She loved receiving Dirk’s replies, which were written in a spidery hand on airmail stationery and gave her a glimpse of Jackson’s life in Tasmania.

  “Yeah?” a gruff voice answers.

  “Dirk?” She clears her throat. “It’s Eva. Jackson’s wife.”

  There is silence at the other end.

  She waits, wondering if it’s a bad connection. She runs her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth feels dry and somehow swollen.

  “Right,” he says eventually.

  “I . . . I’ve been wanting to call . . . but, well.” She pushes a hand through her matted hair, rubbing her scalp. “I know the police have spoken to you.”

  “He drowned. That’s what they told me.” His voice wavers as he says, “Drowned while fishing.”

  “He was swept in by a wave.” She pauses. “The water here—it’s cold. Freezing. A lifeboat came. And a helicopter, too. They searched all day . . .”

  “Have they found his body?”

  “No. No, not yet. I’m sorry.”

  There is silence.

  “They found the hat he was wearing,” she offers, although she knows this isn’t enough. Nothing—other than Jackson—can be enough.

  “I see,” he says slowly.

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve called you sooner, not let the police do it, but . . . I just . . . I can’t seem to get my head straight.” She feels tears blocking up her throat. She takes a breath. “None of it feels . . . real.”

  Dirk says nothing.

  She swallows back her tears and takes a moment to gather herself. Then she says, “There’ll need to be a funeral . . . or memorial.” These are words her mother keeps on saying to her. “I don’t know when it’ll be yet . . . after Christmas, I suppose. Maybe you’d like to come over for it?”

  “Right.” She hears a chair being scraped across a floor, then a clink of glass. She waits a moment.

  When Dirk doesn’t say anything, she finds herself filling the silence. “I know you don’t like to fly, but if you did want to come you’d be welcome. You could stay at our place . . . my place,” she corrects herself. She squeezes the roots of her hair, feeling herself coming undone. Everything she has wanted to say seems to have been tipped out of her brain. “Jackson’s brother is welcome. I know things between them were . . .” She fumbles for a word, but only comes up with “strained.”

  “No, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’d work.”

  Her throat thickens. She wants Dirk to say he’ll come. She may not know her father-in-law, but they are connected by their shared love of Jackson, their shared loss. “Please,” she says. “Think about it.”

  SOMEHOW, TIME CONTINUES TO crawl forward. The days pass for Eva in a thick fog of grief. She’ll only remember brief moments from this period: a tray of food untouched outside her door; a dawn walk to the rocks, from which she returns soaked and shivering; a bunch of lilies that drop orange pollen onto her mother’s glass table, which Eva smears with a fingertip.

  Now, a month later, she stands
in her dressing gown in front of the full-length mirror. In half an hour a car is arriving to take her to her husband’s memorial. She is twenty-nine and a widow.

  “Widow,” she says to the mirror, trying out the word. “I’m a widow.”

  Leaning close to her reflection, she sees how drawn she’s become. The skin around her nose and the corners of her mouth is pink and cracked. She notices the new crease between her eyebrows and presses her fingertips against it, trying to smooth away the frown that seems to have settled there.

  Footsteps sound up the wooden stairway, accompanied by the jangle of a bracelet sliding along the banister. Then there is a bright knock at the door and Callie, her best friend, sweeps in, filling the room with her smile.

  She lays a dress on the bed, and then she crosses the room to Eva and wraps her arms around her from behind. A head taller, Callie rests her chin on Eva’s shoulder, so both their faces are visible in the mirror.

  In a low voice she says, “This is going to be a hard day. But you will get through it. And you will get through the other hard days that follow. And then there will be some days when it’s not so hard. Okay?”

  Eva nods.

  Callie fetches the dress and holds it up for Eva. “I got it from that shop you like near Spitalfields. What do you think? If it’s not right, I’ve got two backups in the car.”

  Eva undoes her dressing gown and steps into the heavy black material, which tapers in at her waist. She pulls the zip up her side and then faces herself in the mirror. The dress fits as if it’s been made for her.

  Callie smiles. “You know what Jackson would’ve said, don’t you?”

  Eva nods. Look at you, darl. Just look at you! She closes her eyes, briefly losing herself to the memory of his voice and the image of him taking her hand and turning her once on the spot, making a low whistle as she spun.

  Callie glances at her silver wristwatch and says, “The car will be arriving in twenty minutes. When we get to the church, you’re just going to walk straight in with your mother. I spoke to the priest about the music. That was fine to change tracks.”

  “Thank you.”

  Callie squeezes her hand. “You okay?”

  Eva tries for a smile but it doesn’t come. Her head throbs at the temples and she feels raw inside. “It feels . . . too soon.”

  “What do you mean?” Callie asks softly.

  Eva bites down on her bottom lip. “Four weeks. Is it long enough to wait?”

  “Wait for what?”

  She swallows. On the morning of your husband’s memorial service you do not say, I am still waiting for him to come back. So instead she says, “It’s just . . . I can’t picture it, Cal. I can’t imagine my life without Jackson in it.”

  IN TASMANIA, SAUL UNCLIPS his seat belt and leans forward, his thick hands locked together on the steering wheel of his truck. He gazes through the windshield at the view from the top of Mount Wellington. On a clear day it feels as if you can see the whole of Tasmania from up here, but this afternoon the vista is obscured by the gathering clouds.

  Beside him, his father shifts in the passenger seat as he slips a silver flask from his suit pocket. His hands tremble as he unscrews the lid. Whiskey fumes seep into the truck. “One for courage,” Dirk says.

  Saul looks away, watching instead as the mourners arrive in their dark suits. Some of them are friends of Jackson’s that Saul hasn’t seen in years—from school, or the boatyard—but most are people Saul’s never even met.

  Dirk tucks the flask back in his pocket. He sniffs hard, then says, “Ready?”

  Saul slips the key from the ignition and climbs out of the truck. Sharp mountain air fills his lungs, and his borrowed suit jacket flaps in the breeze. He does up his top button, then bends to look in the dust-covered sideview mirror as he straightens his tie.

  When he’s done, they walk reluctantly toward the group of mourners. Beside him, Dirk says, “No father should have to outlive his son.” He gives a terse shake of his head, adding, “England! He should never’ve bloody gone there!”

  “Will there be a service or anything over there?”

  “Yeah. They’re having a memorial, too.”

  “Who’s arranged it?”

  “His wife—”

  Saul stops. He turns to look at his father, who has frozen on the spot, his mouth hanging open. “What did you just say?”

  Dirk screws up his eyes, then rubs a thick hand across his face.

  “Dad?”

  Dirk exhales hard. When he opens his eyes, he looks directly at Saul. “You and me, son, we’re gonna need to have a talk.”

  3

  Eva slots the key into the door lock, then hesitates. She hasn’t been back to their apartment since Jackson’s death. She’s been staying with her mother, as she wanted to get through Christmas and then the memorial before she could even think of returning. Perhaps it was a mistake to refuse her mother’s offer of coming to the apartment with her. She’d insisted on doing it alone, but now the idea of going inside fills her with dread.

  She takes a deep breath, then pushes open the door, putting the weight of her shoulder behind it to force it over the mound of mail on top of the doormat. With her foot, she moves aside junk mail, Christmas cards, and bills, and squeezes into the hallway. The air smells musty and stale, and there’s an undertone of leather from Jackson’s coat that hangs on a hook behind the door.

  She puts down her bag and moves silently along the hall, peering into each room. She has the strangest sensation that if she moves slowly enough, she may catch Jackson lounging on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, or see his long back in the shower as water streams down his body.

  But, of course, the apartment is empty. A deep wave of loneliness storms her. It is so intense and so absolute that it steals the breath from her lungs and the floor seems to lurch beneath her. She leans against the wall for balance, breathing deeply till the sensation passes. She must hold it together. Jackson has gone and she is alone. These are the facts and she needs to get used to them.

  After a moment or two, she swallows, lifts her chin, then propels herself toward the kitchen. In a rush of movement, she throws the windows wide open, hearing traffic, voices, the scuffling of a pigeon on the roof. Then she flicks on the central heating and hurries through the apartment switching on lamps, radios, and the TV. Noise and light and fresh air swirl through the rooms.

  Eva keeps her coat on and returns to the kitchen. She will make tea, and then unpack. Kettle. Fill it with water, she tells herself. She curls her fingers around the handle, glancing away from her reflection, which is distorted in the curve of aluminum. She carries it over to the sink—and then freezes.

  A used tea bag lies there, bloated and dried out, the basin stained rust brown around it. It’s Jackson’s. He had the infuriating habit of dropping his tea bags in the sink, not the garbage can. Seeing it is such a tiny, inconsequential detail of his life, but somehow the mundaneness of it is what chokes her.

  She stands there staring with the kettle poised in her hand, thinking that right now she would give anything to watch Jackson walk into this kitchen, make a cup of tea, and drop the tea bag into the sink with a wet thud.

  Eva puts the kettle back and drifts into the bedroom, where the radio is blasting out a tinny pop tune. The electronic beat is like an itch in her head and she snaps it off. She stares at their unmade double bed, biting on her lip as memories filled with warmth and comfort float toward her. Before she can stop herself, she climbs into the bed in her coat and pulls the covers up to her chin.

  Grief is physical, she thinks. It feels like something corrosive is burning through her insides, dissolving layers of herself, leaving her raw. She buries her face in Jackson’s pillow, breathing in the faint musk of his skin through her sobs.

  EVA MUST HAVE FALLEN asleep because, when she opens her eyes, the room is in darkness. Her head throbs and her skin feels clammy and hot. She shakes herself free of her coat and sits up, switching on Jackso
n’s bedside lamp.

  His drawer beneath it is ajar and she pulls it wider, her gaze wandering over bundles of receipts, a pair of broken binoculars, a pack of cards, condoms, a book about Henry VIII that he’d never finished reading, two AA batteries, and some loose change.

  She slips out a photo of them that had been taken in Paris, where they’re standing overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. Just after this photo was taken, the rain had come down and they’d run into a café, the floor soaked from dripping coats and shaken umbrellas. They’d dried off eating pastries and drinking coffee, and by the time they’d left, the sun was glaring off rain-slick sidewalks.

  As she leafs through the rest of the items in the drawer, she sees an envelope addressed in her handwriting. She tugs it free and finds it is a letter to Dirk. It was her most recent one about a surprise trip to Wales that Jackson had arranged. She’d thought they were going to see her mother, but he managed to distract her so completely that it was half an hour into the journey before she realized they weren’t heading to Dorset at all. He’d booked them into a cozy B&B in the Brecon Beacons and they’d spent the weekend strolling through damp bracken-lined mountains and making love by the open fire in their room.

  At the bottom of the letter she sees that Jackson had added his own message asking if his dad had seen many Wallabies games. Jackson always liked to include a personal note and he sent the letters from the mail room at work, but he must’ve forgotten this one.

  As she returns it to the drawer her fingers meet a second letter, which she slips out. It is another one of hers to Dirk, the date showing the end of August. She scans the contents, which are innocuous: an account of a summer picnic on Clapham Common; a trip to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream; a photo of them at a gig.