Breathe

Everyone agreed that the wedding was rushed. It happened on a breezy day, when leaves danced in the air, and the branches of the trees shivered in the bright fall sun.

Not everyone agreed on how they felt about the wedding being rushed. The parents of the bride thought that their little girl Emily (even though she was twenty-three and not so little after all) was getting hastily wed to a man they didn’t quite know well enough and that might not have prospects.

The friends of the couple, what few there were left (for couplehood sometimes means getting a whole new set of friends) thought it a hurried but inevitable end to a whirlwind romance. For them, this wedding on this breezy day was just a reaffirmation of the natural order of things.

And Emily herself, the bride shivering in the white dress, now that the wedding was over and the gifts opened and the cake cut–well, she just thought that the hurry was Love, it was Romance. She thought that she and Jack were dreadfully happy and ready to begin a life like a fairytale. If only the day had not been as blustery and sharp as this one, with the wind chasing the leaves and the leaves chasing each other into the sky and down the streets.

Emily was thinking these happy thoughts when the mother of the groom approached her. Her name was Nesbitt, and now so was Emily’s. How odd, Emily thought, the two Mrs. Nesbitts. But the thought actually made her feel warm inside, like hot chocolate on a winter’s day.

“Hello, Mother,” said the younger Mrs Nesbitt.

The elder Mrs Nesbitt had a kindly face, but there was worry etched across it, and a bit of a strange discomfort. As if she had to tell her daughter-in-law something somewhat unpleasant. She said, “You take care of my Jack, Emily.”

“Of course, Mother Nesbitt,” Emily said, soothingly, thinking that Mother Nesbitt was just engaging in the typical sort of wedding jitters.

Mother Nesbitt looked at her sharply. She had small, sharp eyes under a fold of wrinkles, but the face was lined with the sort of wrinkles that come from joy and laughter. “He’s a generous boy,” Mrs Nesbitt said. “He might give too much of himself.”

Emily nodded. “It’s part of why I love him. We’re going to be so happy!”

Mother Nesbitt shook her head. “Emily, you listen to me. Don’t let him give too much of himself. You could lose him that way. It’s how I lost his father. You have to keep up your end of things. As long as you realize that life is not a fairytale and that there are tradeoffs to be made…”

“I thought that Mr Nesbitt had died in an accident?” Emily said, confused.

Mother Nesbitt just shook her head, and patted Emily on the shoulder. There was a curious kind of regret in her eyes. “Never you mind, child. You’ll find out what I mean.”

And Emily forgot about the curious conversation that day at the wedding, when she was full of her happiness for her and Jack, and full of the breath of sharp fall air that made the world seem full of possibility.

But married life is full of rough patches. Not every day can seem as clean and clear as autumn winds. It was not long before the young couple had financial woes. The washing machine began to spit water across a clean floor. The stove had to be replaced… Jack worked long hours to make the money to pay for these things, and there also came a day when Emily had to stop working herself, because she was pregnant.

They had a fight the day she told him the news. About money.

Jack was never the sort ot fight very openly. He resigned himself, it seemed. “We can’t really afford it,” he said, grimacing. “Emily, you know how much I wish we had a child… but how are we going to pay for it?”

Emily was crying, sitting on the couch. “I don’t know, Jack, but make it happen. You have to make it happen.”

He sat beside her, took her chin in his hands, and looked her in the eyes. “You can’t keep working,” he said. “You have to stay home with the baby. It’s what is best for the family.”

She nodded. “And you have to do something, Jack! You drift through life, blowing this way and that… you have to buckle down. You have to settle down and get a better job…”

Jack smiled as if at some private joke, some joke that pained him even as it made him laugh. “Yes, Emily, I can do that,” he said. And he hugged her tight, and all was well for a while.

As Emily held him, she realized that she had the most wonderful marriage in the world, because she had a husband who was so willing to give of himself for the good of the family.

The baby was born of a February, when a storm was coming from the north. She was born with eyes like slate-gray clouds, and they never changed in color, the way some babies’ eyes do. They named her Julie, and she was the center of both their lives. Jack was working two jobs to pay for her clothes and her toys. He unstintingly got up in the nights to change her diapers or quiet her screaming. Emily half-awake heard him making susurrating noises, the white noise of wind, to calm her when she cried.

Emily and Jack were happy, though Jack was more attenuated, more drawn, tired to his bone. As they made love, she’d slide her hands over his hips an feel that he had lost weight, and she’d worry. He began to walk with a hitch in his step. When she rubbed the hip to soothe the aches he complained of, she felt a hollowness where once there was solidity.

“I’m OK,” Jack said, dismissing it with a wistful grin. “I’m fine. Soon we’ll be past this time and it will be easier. Maybe when the baby is old enough for school…” And he’d wink at her with those great big blue eyes of his, the ones she loved so much that were like the empty sky, blue forever.

And all seemed well.

Julie grew like a weed, willowy and smart. She sang like an angel–even as a toddler, she hit every note she heard on the radio, and her voice was pure and lovely. Her favorite thing in the world was to fly a kite along the river. She loved to feel the wind tugging at her hands.

She was just three when they took the boat ride. They thought she would love to feel the waves beneath her as they went down the river and saw the woods outside of town, the animals and birds… All three of them bundled up in late fall clothes. The charter boat was old, but it was what they could afford. A birthday gift for their girl.

Emily and Jack stood arm in arm, watching Julie stand on the prow, eagerly looking at the rills and waves. “She’s so beautiful,” Jack said with a catch in his voice.

Emily smiled and kissed him. “Yes, she is. Thank you.”

Jack grinned in his way, and said, “Would you like another?”

Emily’s jaw dropped. “We can’t afford–Jack–did the job come through?”

It had, Jack said, grinning hugely. “A son this time?” he said teasingly.

That is when they hit. Emily never did find out what it was–a sandbar, a snag, a rock the charter boat should have scraped over but didn’t. She didn’t have time to think about it, tumbling from Jack’s arms and over the rail.

The water was freezing cold, and her heavy winter clothes were immediately heavy and waterlogged. They bound her and trapped her as she flailed. The water rushed by in bubbles and swirls, and ran up her nose and into her ears. It was dark and muddy, frothy and silty. On her lips it felt like cold mud, on her hair like hands dragging her down. And she couldn’t breathe. It filled her mouth like lead, tasting like metal, aching and cracking her teeth with cold. She reached in the direction she thought was upwards, and found nothing–reached around, kicked and couldn’t seem to get moving.

And then she felt what seemed like hands. On her wrist, firm and tight. And air, sweet air, a breath pressed against her lips. She felt like she was drowned, but floating there in a cocoon of air, enough to breathe, enough to live. It was a peaceful place. She almost let go.

But Jack whispered in her ear — “Emily” he said — how, she did not know, were they not under water? “Emily” — she heard it, “Emily.”

And she took a great dragging breath, and kicked for the surface. Hands pulled her onto the deck, a crowd of concerned voices. She saw Jack there, shivering with cold, his arms wrapped around himself, his hands buried under the arms… She went to him, and he held out his arms to her–his hands translucent. They were fading already. She watched as the fingernails became pale, then clear, then were gone, the fingertips erasing themselves in little eddies of wind. Then the hands, and the wrists… they just dissolved into air. She saw, but didn’t think about it, she just held him, realizing that he had given her life, giving of himself.

Then fear stabbed her.

“Julie.”

She looked frantically around, but could not see her. “She was on the railing… she must have…”

The others on the boat immediately started peering into the water. But not Jack. He just looked at her. His voice was ragged and his eyes were that clear blue, with clouds floating in them. She could even see a bird or two wheeling within…

Jack kissed her like a benediction on the forehead. “I’ll get her,” he said.

“No, Jack,” Emily said, suddenly fearful. “I don’t want to lose you…”

Jack smiled wistfully as he always did. He looked even more attenuated than ever. His hands were already gone, and for a moment she saw through him. His voice was ragged as he said, “You won’t lose me, Emily. Not ever.”

Then he dove over the side, and as he dove, his clothes caught on the surface of the water, and floated there empty. Bubbles rose from the depths. Just one, then two.

Then a rush of them, and borne in the middle of them, a limp little girl, and a swirl of wind and air, of water mist.

They hauled Julie onto the deck. She was not breathing, but the mist was heavy on her, and it rushed in and rushed out, and her little mouth opened, and it was like the sweetest song she ever sang. That was what Emily always said thereafter. The sweetest song–hearing the breath of her little girl.

And Jack–he was gone. They couldn’t tell where he was. Nothing was ever found.

But when Emily sat alone on the dock with her little girl asleep in her lap, under foul-smelling blankets the captain had provided, she saw him. He stood there, made of wind and air, for just a moment.

“You gave too much of yourself,” Emily said to him, sadly.

Jack nodded. “But I have one more thing I can give,” he said. He walked towards her, all air, nothing but wind, just the sky distilled, and she felt him like trembling breeze. Then she inhaled, and felt him rush into her, the smell of sharp fall breezes and autumn leaves, the scent of summers and sun landing and sparkling on lakes, the smell of winter and fires crackling. The last hint was flowers in the spring, and then she was left embracing nothing but the wind that he had always been.

It was almost twenty years later, that she attended a wedding. This time she was the elder Mrs Nesbitt. And her son–the son who was born nine months after that fateful day on the boat–was wedding a pretty girl who didn’t know what marriage meant, and what she was getting into. It hurt to see it happen, because when she saw her son’s eyes, those blue eyes, and saw that face, in every way identical to her lost Jack, she knew what was bound to happen. This is what wedding the wind will get you, she thought to herself. She gave her daughter-in-law the message she had received–to be careful, because the wind is generous and will give more of itself than can really stay with you.

The wedding was once again on a blustery fall day. She knew this meant that all of Jack’s relatives were in attendance. Maybe Jack himself, catching leaves and playing with them in the branches. Maybe that was him blowing the leaves down the road. She caught her daughter’s eyes in the crowd and smiled at her. Then she hugged herself.

And she just breathed, cradled by the wind. Breathed in and out. Breathed him in and out.

Just breathed.