Andrea Barrett - The Air We Breathe

“What’s between them is private,” she said indignantly, ignoring the first part of his question. “And what does that have to do with—”

“I’m trying to find out the truth, ” he said, interrupting her yet again. “Which is more than I can say for you — you’ve made a fool out of me. Naomi visiting Leo, at his invitation I’m sure; Leo quarreling with her on the very night of the fire. You hid this from me. All of you did.”

“There wasn’t any hiding, ” she said. “It wasn’t your business. And Leo doesn’t care for her. He never has.”

As she spoke, Miles’s new chauffeur appeared at the far end of the hall, his left shoe with its built-up sole clumping heavily. “There’s a message!” Tyler called, his face shining with eagerness.

“Stop,” Miles said. “Wait for me right there.” He turned back to Eudora. “How do you know Leo’s not interested in her?” he asked.

“Because…” It was awful to have to say it out loud, but she couldn’t think how else to turn his attention away from Leo. “Because he’s in love with me.” How had she let everything grow so confused?

“But if that’s true,” he said, “if that’s true…” His fingers moved as if he longed to be holding a pencil, noting on a sheet of paper this new piece of data, which needed to be fitted in among all the others. “Then what was Naomi doing here at movie night?”

“You’d have to ask Naomi that.”

Miles looked at her suspiciously. “You’re still hiding something.”

“I’m not,” Eudora said. “Just saying that what’s private is private.”

Forty feet down the corridor, Tyler bounced in place and gestured at his watch but, obedient to Miles, approached no closer. Before Miles could ask her anything else, Eudora dropped her rag and stalked away, brushing past Tyler as if he were a potted plant. She went home, went straight to bed, and slept for ten hours, comforted only by the knowledge that she had the next day off. In the morning — this was August 1—she opened her closet before she’d even had breakfast and pulled out the drawings that Naomi, over the years, had given her. Her own face, her parents, her brothers; the elegant house with a large front garden that once had been Naomi’s home and now was occupied by strangers; all vibrated with life and none offered a clue as to what had happened to her.

If she could find Naomi, she thought. If Naomi would only call or write, she could apologize. She stared at the drawings for a few minutes longer before carefully packing them up again. Since the time they’d met, Naomi had been threatening to run away; finally she’d carried out what had often seemed like no more than an idle threat. Too clever to signal her intentions, she’d taken only the Model T and the money she’d stolen from Miles and her mother: all she needed, really, to speed her trip. Eudora couldn’t figure out, though, whether she’d meant all along to leave that night and had stopped at Tamarack State to say goodbye to Leo — perhaps even to convince him to come with her? — or whether she’d left on an impulse. When Leo had reached for Eudora’s hand, Naomi had looked as stricken as Miles had yesterday, in the corridor. My fault, Eudora thought: both times. If only Irene were well enough to advise her.

LATE ON THAT afternoon of August 1, Leo sat, propped up by a mound of pillows, looking at the wall. The new infirmary was smaller than the old, as the new beds were shorter, and he was alone in the dark and narrow room. Kathleen, Irene, and Janet had all been released and no one new had come to fill the beds. He’d missed the announcement that intake had been halted, as he’d missed so much else; everything since the fire was hazed by his fever. Vaguely he remembered Eudora’s visits, her beautiful skin obscured behind a mask, and Irene sitting by his bed, silently pressing his hand. Except for them his only company had been Dr. Petrie, who, perhaps sensing his loneliness, had come by almost daily. Lately, as he’d begun to eat again and to recover some of his lost strength, his isolation had felt like actual pain.

Dr. Petrie’s new office was close by and at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall Leo straightened himself against the pillows, hoping the doctor might stop by for a minute. Then he slumped down again: two sets of steps, a disappointment. Orderlies, perhaps. He’d already begun to turn away when Dr. Richards and Miles Fairchild marched into the ward.

Their faces were drawn and Miles’s cheeks were flushed, but Leo had no chance to wonder why. Dr. Richards held out, opened, and then closed again the little tin box that Ephraim had left behind. Leo was so bewildered by his accusations and by Miles, yapping like a dog, that at first he couldn’t understand what either of them were saying.

“We found this in your locker, ” Dr. Richards repeated.

Miles was barking words like “traitor” and “spy” while Dr. Richards, obviously upset, seemed to be weighing two stories. In one, Leo had done everything Miles accused him of doing — plotted cunningly, planned carefully, obtained and concealed a secret weapon, attempted to destroy an institution of the state — while in the other, there was a different explanation for the presence, in his locker, of this box. No point, Leo saw, addressing Miles. He turned toward Dr. Richards.

“The box isn’t mine, and neither is anything in it,” he said. “It was never mine.”

“So how did it get in your locker?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it, registering what he’d glimpsed when Dr. Richards had opened the lid: one of the little fire-wands was missing. Ephraim, he thought at first. In his occasional notes from Ovid, Ephraim had described his daughter’s slow recovery, his own brief relapse, and then, cheerfully, his increasing strength throughout the spring. Perhaps he’d taken one of the pencils before he left — but he couldn’t have, Leo realized then. All three pencils had been in the box when he’d dissected one and made the diagram. Then someone here had nosed around in his locker? Almost he groaned out loud. He’d kept the box when he knew he shouldn’t, he’d left it where anyone might find it; if the missing pencil had anything to do with the fire, then he was at least partially to blame.

“I was taking care of it for someone,” was all he would admit. We give him high marks for this, even though we wish he and Ephraim had told the rest of us, back when it happened, how it got here.

“We found your books,” Miles said. “We know what you’ve been studying, we know you have a background in chemistry.” He reached over, opened the box in Dr. Richards’ hands, and extracted the sketch showing the instrument’s design. “So don’t pretend you don’t understand exactly how these work. Or that you didn’t make this diagram. Isn’t this your handwriting?”

Again Leo sat helplessly. Of course it was. But nothing seemed safe to say; any comment would lead to other questions and then to lies.

And indeed Miles was already saying, as he rattled the paper in his hand, “Are you going to lie right to my face?”

The sun, blazing through the window, cast a bright shaft across the room, truncating Dr. Richards’ legs and cutting Miles in two. Leo let himself slide an inch or two down the bed, and then an inch or two more, into a posture that often bothered him. As he slipped into the pool of sun, he began to cough. At first the racking croaks that had accompanied his pneumonia, and then something deeper, something wet and bubbling he hadn’t felt in months. He coughed and coughed, his face burning, the bed shaking, half lost but still aware of Miles and Dr. Richards stepping back and of their expressions when, after a few minutes, he pressed a napkin to his lips and was able to pull it away spotted with blood.