Breath

Bruce never gets to see Eva’s baby, although they’re in the same hospital at the same time—Eva delivering her baby, and Bruce visiting his father, who has gone comatose from a freak accident at the sawmill and dies shortly thereafter. Bruce feels chastised by his father’s death and refuses to take stupid risks the way he used to, newly aware of the omnipresence of death.

Bruce largely gives up surfing and gets serious about school, but not passionate. He nevertheless goes off to college. Still reeling emotionally from his father’s death, Bruce makes an effort to strengthen his relationship with his mother, calling and visiting her often. However, there remains an insurmountable distance between them, despite their mutual affection. After a long hiatus from surfing, at age 20, Bruce surfs the Indonesian break Loonie once told him about. Out of shape, he injures himself and suffers a mental breakdown of sorts, gradually piecing himself back together.

Bruce marries Grace Andrews, a teacher at the university where he works as a technician. At the time, he is ecstatic. They have two beautiful daughters. When Grace is pregnant, Bruce’s obvious attraction to her creeps her out. Jumping forward in time, Bruce notes how, long after their divorce, Grace remains disturbed by his weird inclinations, despite his harmlessness. Bruce doesn’t understand how he came to be thought of as “creepy,” but he responds by withdrawing and taking no risks around others. Privately, however, he begins electrically shocking himself for the thrill.

At some point in his marriage, Bruce stumbles on a magazine profiling Sando, a successful sporting apparel entrepreneur now, along with Eva and their baby. A later article reports how Eva was found dead, hanging from a hotel door. Bruce struggles with his unique insight into why she died. When Grace finds the article clipping, he can’t muster an explanation, further creeping her out.

Grace leaves Bruce, and he checks himself into a ward, leaving it only to attend his mother’s funeral. Grace and the girls also attend, but the scene is fraught due to Bruce’s evident pill intoxication. Back in the ward, another patient named Desmond tells Bruce that fantasizing about adultery is as bad as doing it. He says that Bruce has no moral compass and is a captive of evil, infuriating Bruce.

Loonie dies in Mexico in a drug deal gone bad, a fitting end to the tough lifestyle he had apparently carved out for himself in the years since Bruce last saw him. Bruce wonders in retrospect whether Sando might’ve been involved in crime as well and was initiating Loonie during their trips without Bruce. The news of Loonie’s death pains Bruce.

Bruce ends up sobering up for six months with a defrocked priest near a salt lake. The priest is a former alcoholic who imparts mysterious advice. Eventually, Bruce finds stability in a job as a paramedic, which provides him the “fast and filthy” adrenaline rush he craves.

Bruce watches the incessant replays of a skier injuring herself at an airport lounge. He meditates on his past and on the presence of fear in human life. He’s proud of his work as a paramedic, but scenes like the boy’s accidental suffocation last night still disturb him with echoes of his past. He continues to blow his didjeridu on his balcony.

Bruce occasionally drives back to Sawyer intending to fix up his old family home. The town’s industry has disappeared and been replaced with quaint tourist attractions. The old Brewer surfboard from Sando still sits in the shed. Bruce never actually gets much time to do repairs, since he always prioritizes surfing when he’s home. Though middle-aged and not the surfer he used to be, he feels he has regained a grace that initially drew him to the sport. Sometimes his daughters come to Sawyer and watch him surf, and it’s important to him that they know their father is a man capable of the pointless and self-explanatory beauty that his surfing displays.