Free Into Thin Air by Caroline Leavitt Page A

Lee.
    Janet kept away from Lee. She didn’t work, but she didn’t stay home, either. She’d wake and breakfast with Frank and then go off shopping for elaborate dinner ingredients or for dresses she hung carefully in her closet. She was the one Frank sometimes took to scout empty houses, not Lee. She wasn’t there when Lee got up in the morning; she wasn’t there when Lee came home, and when she spoke to Lee it was always in relation to Frank. She wanted to know if Lee would pick up Frank’s shirts from the Chinese laundry, if Lee knew whether Frank liked Mexican food. “I like it,” Lee said, but that night they had spaghetti.
    Upstairs, in her room, Lee wept. She missed Claire, and what was worse, she couldn’t help missing Frank, Every time she heard the house creak, she was certain he was coming to find her, to make amends, but instead he seemed more and more removed.
    She wandered the neighborhood evenings. She joined the Future Teachers of America club at school, not because she had any real urge to teach, but because she somehow felt it was a connection to Claire. For two hours every week she sat in a room full of girls in pleated skirts and listened to them talk about motivation and lesson plans until she was so bored that she had to pinch her thigh to keep from sleeping. In groups of ten they trooped to elementary schools to monitor afternoon classes; tirelessly they critiqued their own high school studies. Still, afterward, one of the future teachers would always ask Lee to go shopping or to have a malt. Lee always said yes.
    To fill her evenings, she began running. The new neighborhood was dark and heavily wooded, and she had to watch for the more raucous of the dogs, for the occasionally thuggy kid who jettisoned a rock at her moving target, Sometimes, when she was running the hardest, glazed with sweat, she felt Claire right behind her, just out of view. Her breath stitched up. Huh huh huh. She sprinted ahead, faster. She heard whispering, and the more speed she picked up, the clearer the sound. Claire’s voice wrapped around her, telling Lee something. Something important. Lee whipped around, panting. The black gleaming road stretched behind her. In the distance a dog barked hysterically. She ran home, her face wet, intently listening. Her shoes slapped on the pavement.
    The next evening she came downstairs in black sweats like Claire used to wear, her hair pulled back the way Claire’s used to be, fastened with the torn-off ribbing from an old sweat sock. Frank was in the living room, watching a TV movie with Janet, and when he saw her he started. “Want to run with me?” Lee said. Janet arched her feet in high silvery heels.
    â€œI’ll let you beat me,” Lee said.
    He was silent for a moment. Janet rubbed his shoulder. “Tell you what,” he said. “You go run, and when you get back, maybe we’ll make some popcorn.”
    Ripping through neighbors’ hedges, kicking up flower beds, Lee ran. Moving the anger out, was what Claire used to call it. She cited hospital studies where depressed inmates benefited from a fierce run. Lee ran four miles, tensed for Claire’s presence, waiting for her fury to weaken. She looped back around, her face damp, her shirt glued to her body, skimming the lawn to the house.
    The driveway was empty. The house silent. The heater clicked on, making the sound of footsteps, “Hello?” Lee called. In the kitchen she gulped water so icy, it tightened her throat, On the table was a note, “Went to get ice cream. Be right back.”
    She wandered upstairs to their bedroom, Peach wallpaper with a thin silver stripe. A white goosedown comforter on a brass bed. She opened the top drawer of Janet’s oak dresser and pulled out a blue chiffon scarf, drifting it around her sweaty neck. On top of the dresser was a crystal falcon of White Shoulders, and she opened that, too, daubing it on the back of