Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize), Page 2

  Serena used to say Ira was a mystery. That was a compliment, in those days. Maggie wasn't even dating Ira, she was engaged to someone else, but Serena kept saying, "How can you resist him? He's such a mystery. He's so mysterious." "I don't have to resist him. He's not after me," Maggie had said. Although she had wondered. (Serena was right. He was such a mystery.) But Serena herself had chosen the most open-faced boy in the world. Funny old Max! Not a secret in him. "This here is my happiest memory," Max had said once. (He'd been twenty at die time, just finishing his freshman year at UNC.) "Me and these two fraternity brothers, we go out partying. And I have a tad bit too much to drink, so coming home I pass out in the back seat and when I wake up they've driven clear to Carolina 'Beach and left me there on the sand. Big joke on me: Ha-ha. It's six o'clock in the morning and I sit up and all I can see is sky, layers and layers of hazy sky that just kind of turn into sea lower down, without the least dividing line. So I stand up and fling off my clothes and go racing into the surf, all by my lonesome. Happiest day of my life." What if someone had told him then that thirty years later he'd be dead of cancer, with that ocean morning the clearest picture left of him in Maggie's mind? The haze, the feel of warm air on bare skin, the phock of the first cold, briny-smelling breaker-Maggie might as well have been there herself. She was grateful suddenly for the sunlit clutter of billboards jogging past; even for the sticky vinyl upholstery plastered to the backs of her arms.

  Ira said, "Who would she be marrying, I wonder." "What?" Maggie asked. She felt a little dislocated.

  "Fiona." "Oh," Maggie said. "She didn't say." Ira was trying to pass an oil truck. He tilted his head to the left, peering for oncoming traffic. After a moment he said, "I'm surprised she didn't announce that too, while she was at it." "All she said was, she was marrying for security. She said she'd married for love once before and it hadn't worked out." "Love!" Ira said. "She was seventeen years old. She didn't know the first thing about love." Maggie looked over at him. What was the first thing about love? she wanted to ask. But he was muttering at the oil truck now.

  "Maybe this time it's an older man," she said. "Someone sort of fatherly. If she's marrying for security." "This guy knows perfectly well I'm trying to pass and he keeps spreading over into my lane," Ira told her.

  "Maybe she's just getting married so she won't have to go on working." "I didn't know she worked." "She got a job, Ira. You know that! She told us that! She got a job at a beauty parlor when Leroy started nursery school." Ira honked at the oil truck.

  "I don't know why you bother sitting in a room with people if you can't make an effort to listen," she said.

  Ira said, "Maggie, is something wrong with you today?" "What do you mean?" "How come you're acting so irritable?" "I'm not irritable," she said. She pushed her sunglasses higher. She could see her own nose-the small, rounded tip emerging below the nosepiece.

  "It's Serena," he said.

  "Serena?" "You're upset about Serena and that's why you're snapping my head off." "Well, of course I'm upset," Maggie said. "But I'm certainly not snapping your head off." "Yes, you are, and it's also why you're going on and on about Fiona when you haven't given a thought to her in years." "That's not true! How do you know how often I think about Fiona?" Ira swung out around the oil truck at last.

  By now, they had hit real country. Two men were splitting logs in a clearing, watched over by a gleaming black dog. The trees weren't changing color yet, but they had that slightly off look that meant they were just about to.

  Maggie gazed at a weathered wooden fence that girdled a field. Funny how a picture stayed in your mind without your knowing it. Then you see the original and you think, Why! It was there all along, like a dream that comes drifting back in pieces halfway through the morning. That fence, for instance. So far they were retracing the road to Cartwheel and she'd seen that fence on her spy trips and unconsciously made it her own. "Rickrack," she said to Ira.

  "Hmm?" "Don't they call that kind of fence 'rickrack'?" He glanced over, but it was gone.

  She had sat in her parked car some distance from Fiona's mother's house, watching for the teeniest, briefest glimpse of Leroy. Ira would have had a fit if he'd known what she was up to. This was back when Fiona first left, following a scene that Maggie never liked to recall. (She thought of it as That Awful Morning and made it vanish from her mind.) Oh, those days she'd been like a woman possessed; Leroy was not but a baby then, and what did Fiona know about babies? She'd always had Maggie to help her. So Maggie drove to Cartwheel on a free afternoon and parked the car and waited, and soon Fiona stepped forth with Leroy in her arms and set off in the other direction, walking briskly, her long blond hair swinging in sheets and the baby's face a bright little button on her shoulder. Maggie's heart bounded upward, as if she were in love. In a way, she was in love-with Leroy and Fiona both, and even with her own son as he had looked while clumsily cradling his daughter against his black leather jacket. But she didn't dare show herself- not yet, at least. Instead she drove home and told Jesse, "I went to Cartwheel today." His face flew open. His eyes rested on her for one startled, startling instant before he looked away and said, "So?" ."I didn't talk to her, but I could tell she misses you. She was walking all alone with Leroy. Nobody else." "Do you think I care about that?" Jesse asked. "What do you think / care?" The next morning, though, he borrowed the car. Maggie was relieved. (He was a loving, gentle, warmhearted boy, with an uncanny gift for drawing people toward him. This would be settled in no time.) He stayed gone all day-she phoned hourly from work to check-and returned as she was cooking supper. "Well?" she asked.

  "Well, what?" he said, and he climbed the stairs and shut himself in his room.

  She realized then that it would take a little longer than she had expected.

  Three times-on Leroy's first three birthdays-she and Ira had made conventional visits, prearranged grandparent visits with presents; but in Maggie's mind the real visits were her spy trips, which continued without her planning them as if long, invisible threads were pulling her northward. She would think she was heading to the supermarket but she'd find herself on Route One instead, already clutching her coat collar close around her face so as not to be recognized. She would hang out in Cartwheel's one playground, idly inspecting her fingernails next to the sandbox. She would lurk in the alley, wearing Ira's sister Junie's bright-red wig. At moments she imagined growing Qld at this. Maybe she would hire on as a crossing guard when Leroy started school. Maybe she'd pose as a Girl Scout leader, renting a little Girl Scout of her own if that was what was required. Maybe she'd serve as a chaperon for Leroy's senior prom. Well. No"point in getting carried .away. She knew from Jesse's dark silences, from the listlessness with which Fiona pushed the baby swing in the playground, that they surely couldn't stay apart much longer. Could they?

  Then one afternoon she shadowed Fiona's mother as she wheeled Leroy's stroller up to Main Street. Mrs. Stuckey was a slatternly, shapeless woman who smoked cigarettes. Maggie didn't trust her as far as she could throw her, and rightly so, for look at what she did: parked Leroy outside the Cure-Boy Pharmacy and left her there while she went in. Maggie was horrified. Leroy could be kidnapped! She could be kidnapped by any passerby. Maggie approached the stroller and squatted down in front of it. "Honey?" she said. "Want to come away with your granny?" The child stared at her. She was, oh, eighteen months or so by then, and her face had seemed surprisingly grown up. Her legs had lost their infant chubbiness. Her eyes were the same milky blue as Fiona's and slightly flat, blank, as if she didn't know who Maggie was. "It's Grandma," Maggie said, but Leroy began squirming and craning all around. "Mom-Mom?" she said. Unmistakably, she was looking toward the door where Mrs. Stuckey had disappeared. Maggie stood up and walked away quickly. The rejection felt like a physical pain, like an actual wound to the chest. She didn't make any more spy trips.

  When she'd driven along here in springtime, the woods had been dotted with white dogwood blossoms. They had lightened the green hills th
e way a sprinkle of baby's breath lightens a bouquet. And once she'd seen a small animal that was something other than the usual-not a rabbit or a raccoon but something slimmer, sleeker-and she had braked sharply and adjusted the rearview mirror to study it as she left it behind. But it had already darted into the underbrush.

  "Depend on Serena to make things difficult," Ira was saying now. "She could have phoned as soon as Max died, but no, she waits until the very last minute. He dies on Wednesday, she calls late Friday night. Too late to contact Triple A about auto routes." He frowned at the road ahead of him. "Urn," he said. "You don't suppose she wants me to be a pallbearer or something, do you?" "She didn't mention it." "But she told you she needed our help." "I think she meant moral support," Maggie said.

  "Maybe pallbearing is moral support." "Wouldn't that be physical support?" "Well, maybe," Ira said.

  They sailed through a small town where groups of little shops broke up the pastures. Several women stood next to a mailbox, talking. Maggie turned her head to watch them. She had a left-out, covetous feeling, as if they were people she knew.

  "If she wants me to be a pallbearer I'm not dressed right," Ira said.

  "Certainly you're dressed right." "I'm not wearing a black suit," he said.

  "You don't own a black suit." "I'm in navy." "Navy's fine." "Also I've got that trick back." She glanced at him.

  "And it's not as if I was ever very close to him," he said.

  Maggie reached over to the steering wheel and laid a hand on his. "Never mind," she told him. "I bet anything she wants us just to be sitting there." He gave her a rueful grin, really no more than a tuck of the cheek.

  How peculiar he was about death! He couldn't handle even minor illness and had found reasons to stay away from the hospital the time she had her appendix out; he claimed he'd caught a cold and might infect her. Whenever one of the children fell sick he'd pretended it wasn't happening. He'd told her she was imagining things. Any hint that he wouldn't live forever-when he had to deal with life insurance, for instance-made him grow set-faced and stubborn and resentful. Maggie, on the other hand, worried she would live forever-maybe because of all she'd seen at the home.

  And if she were the one to die first, he would probably pretend that that hadn't happened, either. He would probably just go on about his business, whistling a tune the same as always.

  What tune would he be whistling?

  They were crossing the Susquehanna River now and the lacy, Victorian-looking superstructure of the Conowingo power plant soared on their right. Maggie rolled down her window and leaned out. She could hear the distant rush of water; she was almost breathing water, drinking in the spray that rose like smoke from far below the bridge.

  "You know what just occurred to me," Ira said, raising his voice. "That artist woman, what's-her-name. She was bringing a bunch of paintings to the shop this morning." Maggie closed her window again. She said, "Didn't you turn on your answering machine?" "What good would that do? She'd already arranged to come in." "Maybe we could stop off somewhere and phone her." "I don't have her number with me," Ira said. Then he said, "Maybe we could phone Daisy and ask her to do it." "Daisy would be at work by now," Maggie told him.

  "Shoot." Daisy floated into Maggie's mind, trim and pretty, with Ira's dark coloring and Maggie's small bones. "Oh, dear," Maggie said. "I hate to miss her last day at home." "She isn't home anyhow; you just told me so." "She will be later on, though." "You'll see plenty of her tomorrow," Ira pointed out. "Good and plenty." Tomorrow they were driving Daisy to college-her freshman year, her first year away. Ira said, "All day cooped up in a car, you'll be sick to death of her." "No, I won't! I would never get sick of Daisy!" "Tell me that tomorrow," Ira said.

  "Here's a thought," Maggie said. "Skip the reception." "What reception?" "Or whatever they call it when you go to somebody's house after the funeral." "Fine with me," Ira said.

  "That way we could still get home early even if we stopped off at Fiona's." "Lord God, Maggie, are you still on that Fiona crap?" "If the funeral were over by noon, say, and we went straight from there to Cartwheel-" Ira swerved to the right, careening onto the gravel. For a moment she thought it was some kind of tantrum. (She often had a sense of inching closer and closer to the edge of his temper.) But no, he'd pulled up at a gas station, an old-fashioned kind of place, white clapboard, with two men in overalls sitting on a bench in front. "Map," he said briefly, getting out of the car.

  Maggie rolled down her window and called after him, "See if they have a snack machine, will you?" He waved and walked toward the bench.

  Now that the car was stopped, the heat flowed through the roof like melting butter. She felt the top of her head grow hot; she imagined her hair turning from brown to some metallic color, brass or copper. She let her fingers dangle lazily out the window.

  If she could just get Ira to Fiona's, the rest was easy. He was not immune, after all. He had held that child on his knee. He had answered Leroy's dovelike infant coos in the same respectful tone he'd used with his own babies, "Is that so. You don't say. Well, I believe now that you mention it I did hear something of the sort." Till Maggie (always so gullible) had had to ask, "What? What did she tell you?" Then he'd give her one of his wry, quizzical looks; and so would the baby, Maggie sometimes fancied.

  No, he wasn't immune, and he would set eyes on Leroy and remember instantly how they were connected. People had to be reminded, that was all. The way the world was going now, it was so easy to forget. Fiona must have forgotten how much in love she had been at the start, how she had trailed after Jesse and that rock band of his. She must have put it out of her mind on purpose, for she was no more immune than Ira. Maggie had seen the way her face fell when they arrived for Leroy's first birthday and Jesse turned out not to be with them. It was pride at work now; injured pride. "But remember?" Maggie would ask her. "Remember those early days when all you cared about was being near each other? Remember how you'd walk everywhere together, each with a hand in the rear pocket of the other's jeans?" That had seemed sort of tacky at the time, but now it made her eyes fill with tears.

  Oh, this whole day was so terribly sad, the kind of day when you realize that everyone eventually got lost from everyone else; and she had not written to Serena for over a year or even heard her voice till Serena phoned last night crying so hard she was garbling half her words. At this moment (letting a breeze ripple through her fingers like warm water), Maggie felt that the entire business of time's passing was more than she could bear. Serena, she wanted to say, just think: all those things we used to promise ourselves we'd never, ever do when we grew up. We promised we wouldn't mince when we walked barefoot. We promised we wouldn't lie out on the beach tanning instead of swimming, or swimming with our chins high so we wouldn't wet our hairdos. We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands; remember that? How long since you saved the dishes till morning so you could be with Max? How long since Max even noticed that you didn't?

  Ira came toward her, opening out a map. Maggie removed her sunglasses and blotted her eyes on her sleeves. "Find what you wanted?" she called, and he said, "Oh ..." and disappeared behind the map, still walking. The back of the paper was covered with photos of scenic attractions. He reached his side of the car, refolded the map, and got in. "Wish I could've called Triple A," he told her. He started the engine.

  "Well, I wouldn't worry," she said. "We've got loads of extra time." "Not really, Maggie. And look how the traffic is picking up. Every little old lady taking her weekend drive." A ridiculous remark; the traffic was mostly trucks. They pulled out in front of a moving van, behind a Buick and another oil truck, or perhaps the same truck they had passed a while back. Maggie replaced her sunglasses.

  TRY JESUS, YOU WON'T REGRET IT, a billboard read. And BUBBA MCDUFF'S SCHOOL OF COSMETOLOGY. They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the same old scabby, stippl
ed surface. The views were long and curved and green-a small child's drawing of farm country. Distinct black cows grazed on the hillsides. BEGIN ODOMETER TEST, Maggie read. She sat up straighter. Almost immediately a tiny sign flashed by: o. i MI. She glanced at their odometer. "Point eight exactly," she told Ira.

  "Hmm?" "I'm testing our odometer." Ira loosened the knot of his tie.

  Two tenths of a mile. Three tenths. At four tenths, she felt they were falling behind. Maybe she was imagining things, but it seemed to her that the numeral lagged somewhat as it rolled upward. At five tenths, she was almost sure of it. "How long since you had this checked?" she asked Ira.

  "Had what checked?" "The odometer." "Well, never," he said.

  "Never! Not once? And you accuse me of poor auto maintenance!" "Look at that," Ira said. "Some ninety-year-old lady they've let out loose on the highway. Can't even see above her steering wheel." He veered around the Buick, which meant that he completely bypassed one of the mileage signs. "Darn," Maggie said. "You made me miss it." He didn't respond. He didn't even look sorry. She pinned her eyes far ahead, preparing for the seven tenths marker. When it appeared she glanced at the odometer and the numeral was just creeping up. It made her feel itchy and edgy. Oddly enough, though, the next numeral came more quickly. It might even have been too quick. Maggie said, "Oh, oh." "What's the matter?" "This is making me a nervous wreck," she said. She was watching for the road sign and monitoring the odometer dial, both at once. The six rolled up on the dial several seconds ahead of the sign, she could swear. She' tsked. Ira looked over at her. "Slow down," she told him.