The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish Page B

one unblinking eye on Claire, the other buried deep beneath her bangs. “I’m not sure she wants me to say.”
    Silence on the other end of the line, and then, “I understand. Would you be willing to come and see me?”
    “I suppose,” Claire mumbled. She didn’t like it, the feeling of being dragged into their situation. A traumatized kid. That meant drama. Pain. She’d had enough of that already.
    “Hanna’s next appointment is tomorrow at ten. I’ll put you through to Barbara. She’ll give you directions.”
    She waited on the line; the secretary prattled off street names and traffic lights, and Claire pretended to pay attention, giving the appropriate uh-huhs when needed, planning to look the address up on the computer later. She closed the phone and held it out to the woman, who took it, squeezed it.
    Then the woman gathered Hanna against her, arm around the girl’s shoulders, and lifted her from the swing. “C’mon, baby,” she said, leading her away, Hanna’s rigid body propping up her own. She strapped her daughter into the middle seat of a Windstar van, slid the door closed and turned back toward the playground. But she was too far away for Claire to make out her expression, her face a flat, pale thumbprint in the distance.
    “Ready to head out?” Heidi asked, coming up next to Claire and carrying a cranky Landon, dirt crusted around his mouth, one shoe on, the other sticking out from his grandmother’s back pocket. “This one needs a nap.”
    “No bye. No bye,” Landon cried.
    “Let me take him,” Claire said. She lifted the toddler onto her hip; he ground his face in her shoulder, leaving a slimy trail of mucus on her sleeve.
    “Who were you talking to?” Heidi asked.
    She rubbed her thumb against the writing callus on her right ring finger; she held her pen wrong, always had, no matter how many times the nuns whacked her knuckles with their rulers in the Catholic elementary school her devoutgrandmother insisted on sending her to. All she wanted to do was get home, where peace came in little black-and-white boxes, all neat and patterned and numbered. Where she measured her own well-being in clues and obscure words people used only in puzzles. “No one.”

10
    C LAIRE O CTOBER 2002
    She sat in the small waiting room, more a hallway, four antique chairs with rich fabric seats on a floral Oriental rug. The psychologist’s office was in an old Victorian home, long since divided up for offices and apartments, and the thick, white woodwork and paneled doors made the waiting area feel small, as if the walls kept pushing closer and closer together. A small black button surrounded by a brass plate stared at Claire from beside one of the doors, a thimble-sized light bulb above it. When the mother and the girl had arrived—only two minutes ago, even though Claire had been sitting here for the past ten—Susan poked the button with her pointer, and the bulb glowed dull gold in the shadowy hall.
    The girl sat next to her mother, swinging her legs, head down. Susan pinched her eyelashes between her fingers, then sat on her hands. Claire looked at her own hands, scraping at the corners of her fingernails, pushing back the cuticles, pinching away pieces of dead skin, which she flicked ontothe floor. The white flecks settled on the rug, snow on the woven tulips. She turned her head, counted dogs on the toilé wallpaper.
    The doorknob jiggled, and when the door opened the light blinked off. “Ms. Rodriguez, you came. Thank you. I’m Diane Flinchbaugh.” The tall, blocky woman held out a square hand. One of the gold buttons on her polyester suit jacket hung from a single thread and jerked like a yo-yo as she shook Claire’s hand. Her unseasonable linen skirt fell in wrinkles just below her knees, and her slip peeked out from the hemline.
    “Nice to meet you,” Claire said.
    “Good, yes. Why don’t you come in first, and then we’ll join Hanna in the play area, where we usually meet. Hanna, Ashley