Breathing Room
Breathing Room
The air-conditioner stopped working somewhere just north of the Oklahoma state line. As the overflowing station wagon continued south, the dust blowing in through the windows coated everyone as indiscriminately as it coated the assorted suitcases, pillows and sleeping bags.
Mother checked her watch and turned to the backseat: “So kids, you getting hungry? I think it’s about time to break out the sandwiches. Don’t you think so, Bill?”
“Sure, honey,” said Dad.
“Janie, hand out the sandwiches, and Joe, why don’t you get some drinks out of the cooler in back,” said Mother.
The black mist of revolution crept into my ears and pressed against the backs of my eyes. Only a mother could be so irritating. “Can’t we stop and eat, Daddy? Why do we always have to eat in the car? It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Now, Janie honey, if we want to get to the next motel on your father’s list, we have to keep driving. Then maybe we’ll have time for a swim before dinner. And if you start to feel sick after your sandwich, you can come sit up here between us,” Mother said.
I sighed as loud as I could and closed the notebook I’d been using as a diary.
“What d’ya want to drink, Dad? There’s three Mountain Dews and two Dr Peppers,” yelled Joey from the back.
“Mountain Dew,” said Dad.
“I think I’ll have a Dr Pepper,” said Mother. “How about you, Janie? Tell your brother what you want to drink.”
“A Mountain Dew—thanks, Joey,” I said. “And here’s your sandwich.” I handed a sandwich to Joey and then to Dad and selected one for myself. Then I handed the entire paper bag to Mother. “Here.”
Joey clambered back over the suitcases and the cat’s litter box to his place next to me. He leaned his back against the door of the car and tucked his dirty socks under my thigh, wiggling his toes to anchor his feet well underneath. He gently rolled back the plastic baggie around his sandwich and took a bite of the exposed part. “Want some chips?” he said around the wad of baloney and cheese in his cheek.
“Thanks,” I said, digging into the bag.
Mother was chewing slowly, rhythmically. She turned sideways, her elbow resting on the back of her seat. “Joey, your father says that the base commander has a son ready to start the ninth grade same as you.”
“Yeah?” said Joey.
“He also has an older boy just your age, Janie.”
“So.” I looked at Joey around my can of soda. He rolled his eyes.
“Well, maybe you can ask him to show you around the base once we get settled.”
“Mother!”
“What?”
“We’re not even there yet, and you expect me to forget all about Andy. I never wanted to move in the first place, and now you’re trying to break me and Andy up. I can’t believe it. You just want me to be miserable.”
“I’m just trying to get you to look on the bright side. Try not to be so selfish, honey. This move is good for your father’s career. And you never know, you might actually like San Antonio. Just think, you and Joey will be able to swim practically all year round. Right, Bill?”
“Right,” said Dad.
Joey nudged me with his foot and I turned to see pieces of half-chewed sandwich extended on his tongue. I slapped his knee lightly, pretending to be disgusted, and tried to keep from smiling.
The car grew silent. Each pair of eyes was turned to the gray ribbon of road up ahead. The sun marked time across the interior of the car, disturbing the cat, moving her from shady spot to shady spot.
It was a relief when Joey stopped wiggling his toes under my leg and fell asleep against the car door. I whispered to Dad to reach back and lock the door. Joey’s face was flushed. The white scar under his lower lip smiled at me knowingly as his expression slid into sleep. He was hardly conscious of the scar now; he seemed more interested in counting the downy hairs on his chin in the morning mirror. But I remember, and Mother does too.
It happened when Joey was five and I was seven. Mom was in the kitchen. Joey and I were playing in my room. I was practicing my ghost walk because I’d decided I was going to be a ghost for Halloween that year. I’d gotten a quilt from the end of Mom’s bed. It was white with tiny pale blue and yellow flowers. The stitches that divided the cloth into puffy diamonds had come loose here and there, making patterns of larger diamonds. I put the quilt over my head and held out my arms like a sleepwalker so I could see my feet. Then Joey wanted to try; he wanted to scare Mommy.
I helped him put the quilt over his head and showed him how to hold his arms out in front. He started out down the slippery hallway toward the kitchen, but he didn’t turn when he was supposed to. He kept right on going, bouncing down the thirteen hard wooden stairs that led to the cold cement floor in the basement. I ran to the top of the stairs. At the bottom was the deflated quilt. I was sure Joey had melted away just like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I waited. Joey began to wail, the dog barked and Mom came running. She threw herself down to the basement, her feet never seeming to touch a single step. I stood at the top of the stairs, four fingers of one hand wedged into my mouth. She carried Joey up the stairs, blood dripping from his chin. I followed them down the hall to the bathroom, but she closed the door behind her.
Even after they brought him home from the hospital, I never said I was sorry. When Joey showed me the ugly black Xs they had sewn over the teeth marks that marched along under his lip, I saw behind my eyelids the bright red drops of blood among the blue and yellow flowers.
Joey turned slightly in his sleep toward the back of the car seat. His toes loosened their grip on the lumpy vinyl under my leg. The deeper he slept, the louder his breathing became. I used to wake up nights to go to the bathroom and I’d hear the air whistling through his nose. The sound was comforting; the steady rhythm eased me back to sleep.
I started having my “Joey” dream around the time they took out his stitches and threw away the bandage. Mother had forgiven me by then. She was always with me in the dream. We’re walking down a long street, it’s painted black with high green trees arching over our heads. We’re following Joey, who is only a little way ahead. Then suddenly he disappears, falling through a square black hole in the street. Mother and I scream and run toward the edge of the hole. But before we get there, Joey’s head, grown to the size of a giant baby’s head, rises up out of it. Giant baby tears are rolling down his face. And that’s when I wake up listening for the sound of Joey’s breathing.
Some days I can even tell when I’m going to have the dream. Like the time we were playing flashlight tag in the cul-de-sac at night. Joey was still pretty small and couldn’t run as fast as the rest of us. One of the other kids tagged him “it” and Joey started to cry. So I pulled him behind a tree and lectured him about how really big boys aren’t supposed to cry and that the others would make fun of him if they saw his eyes all watery. I made him blow his nose on the bottom of my shirt. Then Joey was “it,” and after a while I let him catch me. I’m pretty sure I had the dream that night.
We had trouble at the Best Western where Dad had made reservations. He’d requested two adjoining rooms with two double beds each, but only one room was left in the entire motel because of a convention or something. Dad came back to the car with only one room key in his hand.
“There were plenty of motels in Dallas, honey,” Mother said when she heard.
“I don’t want to turn around and go back into Dallas,” said Dad. “And if we keep driving south, who knows how far we’ll have to drive in this godforsaken state to find a decent place. Besides, the kids want to get some exercise in the pool tonight, right?” He turned to look at us. Joey and I nodded in unison. “So fine, we’ll drive around to our room and dig out our swimsuits,” said Dad.
We were the only ones at the pool. The sun was just setting. It hesitated above the giant “B” in the Best Western sign. “B” as in big. Big as in Texas. Joey and I had finished our laps and were sitting side by side on the cement lip of the pool. We each had a skimpy towel, taken from the bathroom, hanging limply around our shoulders. The air was beginning to cool, and a breeze rolled a stray wad of paper across the deck. Beyond the gray chain-link fence enclosing the pool, a great expanse of brown, dried landscape spread flat as a carpet.
“So this is Texas,” said Joey.
“Yeah,” I said.
We continued to sit on the edge of the pool, our legs moving like slow-motion eggbeaters in the bright blue water. I heard the flip-flop of Dad’s sandals as he came down the sidewalk to the pool entrance. He sat down in the green and white plastic lounge chair just behind us. The elastic slats that connected the frame of the chair stretched when he sat down, until his bottom was only inches from the deck. “How’s the water, guys?” he said.
“Warm, like bath water,” I said.
“Yeah?” Silence. And then, “Your mother and I decided that it’s going to be girls against boys tonight.”
“Huh?” said Joey.
“You’re going to share a bed with me tonight, pal, and Janie and your mother will take the other bed,” said Dad.
“Why?” said Joey.
“It’s better this way.”
Joey turned to look directly at him. “Are you and Mom having problems?”
“Uh, no son, that’s not it.” Dad scratched the back of his neck.
“Then I don’t understand. Me and Janie always slept in the same bed on other trips. What’s the big deal?” Joey took the towel from his shoulders and folded it in half, and then in half again. He laid it on his lap and all three of us watched his hands smoothing the nap first in one direction and then another.
“That was when you were younger. Why do you think I got two rooms in Oklahoma last night?” said Dad.
“I dunno. I guess I thought we could afford two rooms with your promotion and all,” said Joey.
“That’s part of it,” said Dad.
“So what’s the rest?” Joey rolled the towel into a tube shape and twisted it tightly, wringing imaginary water.
Dad began to rub his sandpaper chin. “Well, it’s just that you and your sister are almost grown up now.” He cleared his throat. “You both just need a little more privacy. You’re becoming a man and your sister is already a woman.” He flapped a hand in my direction.
I started feeling self-conscious and wished my tiny towel covered up more of me. My modest Speedo suit seemed to shrink as the conversation continued.
Joey jumped up from the side of the pool in a shower of fluorescent drops. “Jesus, Dad, what do you think I’m gonna do, molest my own sister? That’s incest! That’s disgusting!”
Joey looked at me, and suddenly my very flat chest swelled to the size of twin watermelons.
“Look, son,” said Dad. “I’m not saying that I think that could happen. It never even crossed my mind. It’s your mother’s idea. She just doesn’t think it’s proper for two kids your age to be sleeping in the same bed.”
“But she’s my sister.” Joey’s voice squeaked, the muscles of his neck and shoulders straining against his freckled skin. He snapped the towel to its full length and hooked it around his neck. “I’m going back to the room.”
I turned to look up at Dad. There were lines engraved deep in his brown-spotted forehead. Swollen blood vessels criss-crossed his eyes and the skin underneath sagged. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I threw off my towel and slid into the pool and down to the bottom. Through the rippling surface I watched Dad struggle out of the chair and move away from the edge of the pool. I blew bubbles until all of the oxygen was out of my lungs and I could lie flat on the slick, painted bottom. I almost felt as if I could filter the water through my skin and extract oxygen the way fish do. As long as I didn’t think about taking a breath, as long as I didn’t think about anything, I could stay down here on the bottom and nothing would change.
The next morning we began our last leg of the journey. By Dad’s calculations it would take us only four hours to reach San Antonio, as long as we didn’t stop. Then we’d check into the visiting officers’ quarters and wait for the movers to arrive.
Joey slept most of the way, curled up into a tight ball against the door of the car. I told him he could put his feet in my lap if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t. “Do you want to lean your pillow against my shoulder? It might be more comfortable,” I said.
“No thanks.”
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