Andrea Barrett - The Air We Breathe

EDITH WEINSTEIN, b. 1881 in Brooklyn, New York. Daughter of Israel and Ida Weinstein; stepdaughter of Helen Graber Weinstein (first) and Louise Rubin Weinstein (second); beloved sister of Helena, Shmuel, Louis, Yudele, Esther, Leike, David, and Gabriel. First employed at age fourteen as a buttonhole-maker, Edith continued work in the garment industry until 1913, when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a short stay at Bellevue Hospital and a period living in a roof-tent, she arrived at Tamarack State in March of 1915. An avid moving-picture fan, her reviews in The Kill-Gloom Gazette were much appreciated by those too ill to attend movie nights. She entered the infirmary only a week before the fire, after the onset of intractable intestinal symptoms, and on the night of her death had delegated two assistants to take notes as she was unable to attend herself. Her skill with a needle was legendary and many of us benefited from the alterations she made, without charge, to our clothes. Among her many friends here she is particularly missed by Hazel, Rosika, and Belle.

DENIS KRAJCOVIC, b. 1890 in Bukovina. Parents unknown; brother of Simon and others unknown; beloved husband of Karin and father of Thomas and Stephen. Immigrated to New York in 1902. First worked as a telegraph delivery boy; later as a pushcart vendor; then entered employment with a building firm where he specialized in the installation of ironwork, especially cornices and skylights. After a three-story fall, during which he broke a rib, Denis failed to recover as expected and was diagnosed eight months later with tuberculosis. In July of 1913 he was sent to Tamarack State and seemed through December of 1916 to be making a slow but steady recovery. In February of 1917 he suffered a series of hemorrhages and was confined to the infirmary. He is particularly missed by his former roommate Frank Turner; by his close friend David Yavarkorsky; and by Lydia Lasky.

MORRIS VIOLA, b. 1896 in Utica, New York. Only son of Sadie and Joseph Viola. In high school Morris was notable as a champion debater, two-time winner of the central New York spelling bee, and outstanding thespian, best remembered for his role as Brutus during his senior year. After graduating from high school in 1914 he enrolled at Cornell University but was taken ill before the end of his first semester. His father having suffered an accident at the slaughterhouse that year, and his mother much occupied in caring for his father, he was sent to Tamarack State in February of 1915. Released in April of 1916, he was sent back in July after a relapse; from November of that year until his death he was confined to the infirmary. Not well known among us generally, he was a particular favorite of Dr. Petrie’s.

WE DON’T HAVE funerals here. When we die our bodies are taken away at night, to the village for an autopsy or directly to the undertaker’s, returned either way in a plain pine box and buried quietly. The cemetery is a mile north of our central buildings, in a clearing on the other side of the hill, hidden by a border of white pines, never shown to visitors and not mentioned in our rule book. We learn where it is from each other. When, during an afternoon walk, one person shows another the clearing for the first time, it usually signals a new stage in the relationship. After that, we think differently about how long we’ve been here and what time we might have left.

Twice since the fire, all of us involved in the Wednesday gatherings have gone to the clearing as a group, to visit the three who, although they didn’t join in those afternoons, were still tied to us. The hospital commission gives us modest grave markers rather than headstones, low oblongs twelve by four inches, set almost flush with the ground. Morris, Edith, and Denis lie at the western edge of an area about the size of a swimming pool, neatly paved.

EARLIER ON THE night of the fire, before anyone was dead, Miles had indeed made Naomi drive him to his meeting. They hadn’t spoken during the journey. Beside him the hills slanted up and down, trees giving way to fields, but instead of enjoying the view he’d been looking at his notes, his concentration interrupted by Naomi’s low, tuneless humming. When he asked her to stop she frowned, obeyed, and then a few seconds later started tapping her thumbs against the steering wheel, increasing the speed as they pulled up at the meeting place. As she jolted to a stop he said, “Please come back at ten o’clock.” Then he stepped down from the car, one hand still on the door, and found himself surprised by the clear, soft, twilit sky.

He could hear but not see a flock of geese moving high overhead. The leaves in the trees, just opening, were small and sharp, lovely in this light, and for an instant he recognized that he should be outside, walking around the lake or lying on his porch, watching the stars appear in the darkening sky. Instead he was five miles west of Tamarack Lake and seven miles from us, about to enter the limestone hall where league members from across the county were meeting to discuss their most recent cases. He turned back to Naomi, who was smoothing the front of her dress — a new dress, he thought — and who said, “Whatever you’d like.” Her voice was peculiarly flat.

“That’s what I’d like,” he said. “Ten it is, then.” He peered in through the open window but her face revealed nothing.

“Naomi?” They’d argued over every drive this week.

“What would you do if I just stopped doing this?” she asked.

Cars were drawing up to the building in twos and threes; men, streaming up the steps, were nodding seriously. Miles said, “Please.”

“You’d find someone else,” Naomi said calmly. “In a day. It’s not like I’m the only person capable of driving you, it’s just that you want to make me miserable, you like forcing me.”

“You offered …”

“Months ago. And I offered something different.”

A Cadillac pulled up, disgorging three men in dark suits — all strangers to Miles but all, he saw with embarrassment, looking at him and Naomi; without meaning to, he’d opened the door of the Model T, craned his head inside, and raised his voice. Carefully he closed the door and stepped back. “Let’s not have this argument again,” he said. “I will expect you later.”

Naomi drove off without answering him. Throughout the meeting, which was long and complicated, only the mass of business kept him from dwelling on her. Each of the sixteen lieutenants had reports from their operatives to present, and two cases had to be discussed in detail. A man known to be a dues-paying Socialist had been overheard in a library talking about the Socialist meeting held in St. Louis. The proclamation signed there had deemed participation in the war to be a capitalist ploy, both dishonorable and unjustifiable — and the man’s tone, the agent reported, suggested that he approved and would have signed himself if he’d had the chance.

Miles’s attention fluctuated during the discussion that followed, but he was alert enough to hear the motion delegating an agent to befriend the suspect and try to determine his true attitudes. The motion passed. Someone who worked for the electric company next volunteered to enter the suspect’s house under the pretext of reading his electric meter, and to look through his mail and his private papers. That motion passed as well. Then it was Miles’s turn to present the case of the Baums.

The Baums, he said — Sidonie and Martin — had in the nineties immigrated to Tamarack Lake from Germany and had long been solid citizens. Children took piano lessons from Mrs. Baum, who taught in the music studio attached to the back of their house. “You, Charles,” he said to a man on his left, “—didn’t you study with her?”