Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

“Breathe,” Brian said. “Just breathe.”

“Exhaust fumes?” she said as they crossed Mass Ave.

“Sure. Builds character.”

It was when they reached the far sidewalk that she realized what he had in mind. He turned them toward the Hynes Convention Center subway stop.

“Whoa.” She clamped her free hand over his wrist.

He turned with the tug, looked into her face. Smiled. “You can do this.”

“No, I can not.”

“You can,” he said softly. “Look at me, honey. Look at me.”

She looked into his eyes. There was a part of Brian that could inspire or grate, depending on her mood, a can-do attitude that bordered on evangelical. He preferred music and movies and books that, in one way or another, reaffirmed the status quo or at least the idea that good things come to good people. But he was no naïf, either. He held enough empathy and wisdom in those blue eyes for a man twice his age. Brian saw the bad in the world, he just chose to believe he could dodge it through force of will.

“You win,” he’d said more times than she could count, “by refusing to lose.”

To which she’d replied, more than once, “You lose by refusing to lose too.”

But she needed that part of him now, that mix of Vince Lombardi and self-help guru, that relentlessly upbeat (sometimes just relentless) attitude that her cynical self would have deemed far too predictably American were her husband not Canadian. She needed Brian to out-Brian himself now, and he did.

He held up their entwined hands. “I will not let go.”

“Shit.” She heard the suppressed hysteria in her voice even as she smiled, even as she knew she was going to do it.

“I will not,” he repeated, “let go.”

And the next thing she knew, she was on the escalator. No modern wide escalator, this. The escalator at Hynes was narrow, black, and steep. Definitely not up to current code. She feared that if she leaned forward for any reason, she’d bring herself, Brian, and everyone in front of them tumbling to the bottom. She kept her chin and head up, spine straight, as they descended. The lights dimmed until the descent felt like part of some primitive ritual, one of fertility perhaps or birth. Behind her were strangers. In front of her were strangers. Faces and motives shrouded in the dim light. Hearts beating like the tick of a bomb.

“How you doing?” Brian asked.

She squeezed his hand. “Hanging in there.”

A single drop of sweat left her hair by the temple and slid behind her left ear. It found the back of her neck and rode the line of it into her blouse where it dissolved against her spine.

She’d last suffered a panic attack on the same elevator she and Brian had taken down from their condo this morning. That had been seven months ago. No, eight, she realized with some pride. Eight, she thought, and squeezed her husband’s hand again.

They reached the platform. The crowd wasn’t too thick once it cleared the narrow escalator. She and Brian walked a quarter way down the inbound side of the platform and she was surprised to discover her hands were dry. Through most of her twenties and early thirties she’d traveled extensively. Descending into a dark tunnel with hordes of strangers to board a tube packed with even more strangers hadn’t even registered on the threat scale back then. Same thing with going to concerts and sporting events and movie theaters. Even in the tent cities and refugee camps of Haiti, she’d had no issues with panic. She’d had plenty of other issues over there and immediately upon her return — alcohol, Oxycontin, and Ativan sprang immediately to mind — but not panic.

“Hey,” Brian said, “you with me?”

She chuckled. “I think that’s my question for you.”

“Oh, I’m here,” he said. “I am right here.”

They found a bench built into a wall that sported a map of the MBTA routes — green line, red line, blue line, orange, and silver, crisscrossing like veins before branching out on their own.

She kept both her hands in his now and their knees touched. People would look and see an attractive couple, clearly connected.

“You’re always here,” she said to him. “Except—”

“When I’m not,” he finished for her, and they both chuckled.

“When you’re not,” she agreed.

“That’s just travel, though, babe. You can come with me anytime.”

She gave that a roll of her eyes. “I’m not certain I can get on this train. I’m sure not getting on a plane.”

“You’ll get on this train.”

“Yeah? Makes you so sure?”

“Because you’re stronger now. And you’re safe.”

“Safe, uh?” She looked out at the platform and then back at his hands, his knees.

“Yes. Safe.”

She looked at him as the train blew into the station hard enough for the air to muss Brian’s unruly hair even further.

“You ready?”

“I don’t know.”

They stood.

“You are.”

“You keep saying that.”

They waited for the exiting passengers and then stepped to the threshold where the car met the platform.

“We go on together,” he said.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“Want to wait for the next one?”

The platform was empty. Everyone was on.

“We can wait for it,” he said.

The doors started to close with a whoosh and she jumped on, pulling Brian with her. The doors snapped back as they passed between them, but then they were in the car, a pair of old white ladies giving them annoyed looks, a young Hispanic boy with a violin case on his lap giving them a curious one.

The car lurched. The train headed into the tunnel.

“You did it,” Brian said.

“I did it.” She kissed him. “Wow.”

The car lurched again, this time as it maneuvered into a turn, the wheels screech-clacking. They were fifty feet underground traveling twenty-five miles an hour in a metal can along tracks that were over a hundred years old.

I am down here in the deep dark, she thought.

She looked at her husband. He was looking up at one of the ads above the doors, his strong chin tilted up with his gaze.

And I am less afraid than I would have imagined .

They rode the train to Lechmere, the last stop. They walked in the mist into East Cambridge and had lunch at a chain restaurant on the ground floor of the Galleria Mall. She hadn’t been in a mall for as long as she hadn’t been on the subway, and as they waited for the check, she realized the mall wasn’t an accident.

“You want me to stroll through this mall?” she said.

He was all innocent surprise. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Uh-huh. This mall of all malls? It’ll be filled with teenagers and noise.”

“Yup.” He handed the waiter his credit card on the small black tray.

“Oh dear,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“And if I said the subway was enough daredevil shit for one day?” she asked.

“Then I would respect that.”

And he would, she knew. He would. If asked what she loved most about her husband, she might have to say his patience. It appeared, at least when it came to her affliction, bottomless. For the first couple of months after her last attack, the one on the elevator, she took the stairs up to their apartment on the fifteenth floor. And when he was in town, Brian wouldn’t hear of her doing it alone. He’d huff and puff up those stairs with her.

“On the bright side,” he said once, when they paused to rest between ten and eleven, their faces sheened with perspiration, “we almost bought that unit on the twenty-second floor in that place on Huntington.” He lowered his head, took a deep breath. “I don’t know if it would have led to divorce, but we’d definitely be in mediation.”