Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) Read online

  Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania. Maggie's girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deer Lick lay on a narrow country road some ninety miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for ten-thirty Saturday morning; so Ira figured they should start around eight. This made him grumpy. (He was not an early-morning kind of man.) Also Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs and Saturday morning at opening time, eight o'clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Ira said maybe they'd just better not go, but Maggie said they had to. She and Serena had been friends forever. Or nearly forever: forty-two years, beginning with Miss Kimmel's first grade.

  They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie must have set the alarm wrong and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush through breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed off for the store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie walked to the body shop. She was wearing her best dress-blue and white sprigged, with cape sleeves-and crisp black pumps, on account of the funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled but slowed her down some anyway; she was more used to crepe soles.

  Another problem was that the crotch of her panty hose had somehow slipped to about the middle of her thighs, so she had to take shortened, unnaturally level steps like a chunky little windup toy wheeling along the sidewalk.

  Luckily, the body shop was only a few blocks away. (In this part of town things were intermingled-small frame houses like theirs sitting among portrait photographers' studios, one-woman beauty parlors, driving schools, and podiatry clinics.) And the weather was perfect-a warm, sunny day in September, with just enough breeze to cool her face. She patted down her bangs where they tended to frizz out like a forelock. She hugged her dress-up purse under her arm. She turned left at the corner and there was Harbor Body and Fender, with the peeling green garage doors already hoisted up and the cavernous interior smelling of some sharp-scented paint that made her think of nail polish.

  She had her check all ready and the manager said the keys were in the car, so in no time she was free to go. The car was parked toward the rear of the shop, an elderly gray-blue Dodge. It looked better than it had in years. They had straightened the rear bumper, replaced the mangled trunk lid, ironed out a half-dozen crimps here and there, and covered over the dapples of rust on the doors. Ira was right: no need to buy a new car after all. She slid behind the wheel. When she turned the ignition key, the radio came on-Mel Spruce's AM Baltimore, a call-in talk show. She let it run, for the moment. She adjusted the seat, which had been moved back for someone taller, and she tilted the rearview mirror downward. Her own face flashed toward her, round and slightly shiny, her blue eyes quirked at the inner corners as if she were worried about something when in fact she was only straining to see in the gloom. She shifted gears and sailed smoothly toward the front of the shop, where the manager stood frowning at a clipboard just outside his office door.

  Today's question on AM Baltimore was: "What Makes an Ideal Marriage?" A woman was phoning in to say it was common interests. "Like if you both watch the same kind of programs on TV," she explained. Maggie couldn't care less what made an ideal marriage. (She'd been married twenty-eight years.) She rolled down her window and called, "Bye now!" and the manager glanced up from his clipboard. She glided past him-a woman in charge of herself, for once, lipsticked and medium-heeled and driving an undented car.

  A soft voice on the radio said, "Well, I'm about to remarry? The first time was purely for love? It was genuine, true love and it didn't work at all. Next Saturday I'm marrying for security." Maggie looked over at the dial and said, "Fiona?" She meant to brake, but accelerated instead and shot out of the garage and directly into the street. A Pepsi truck approaching from the left smashed into her left front fender-the only spot that had never, up till now, had the slightest thing go wrong with it.

  Back when Maggie played baseball with her brothers, she used to get hurt but say she was fine, for fear they would make her quit. She'd pick herself up and run on without a limp, even if her knee was killing her. Now she was reminded of that, for when the manager rushed over, shouting, "What the . . . ? Are you all right?" she stared straight ahead in a dignified way and told him, "Certainly. Why do you ask?" and drove on before the Pepsi driver could climb out of his truck, which was probably just as well considering the look on his face. But in fact her fender was making a very upsetting noise, something like a piece of tin dragging over gravel, so as soon as she'd turned the corner and the two men-one scratching his head, one waving his arms-had disappeared from her rearview mirror, she came to a stop. Fiona was not on the radio anymore. Instead a woman with a raspy tenor was comparing her five husbands. Maggie cut the motor and got out. She could see what was causing the trouble. The fender was crumpled inward so the tire was hitting against it; she was surprised the wheel could turn, even. She squatted on the curb, grasped the rim of the fender in both hands, and tugged. (She remembered hunkering low in the tall grass of the outfield and stealthily, winc-ingly peeling her jeans leg away from the patch of blood on her knee.) Flakes of gray-blue paint fell into her lap. Someone passed on the sidewalk behind her but she pretended not to notice and tugged again. This time the fender moved, not far but enough to clear the tire, and she stood up and dusted off her hands. Then she climbed back inside the car but for a minute simply sat there. "Fiona!" she said again. When she restarted the engine, the radio was advertising bank loans and she switched it off.

  Ira was waiting in front of his store, unfamiliar and oddly dashing in his navy suit. A shock of ropy black, gray-threaded hair hung over his forehead. Above him a metal sign swung in the breeze: SAM'S FRAME SHOP. PICTURE FRAMING. MATTING. YOUR NEEDLEWORK PROFESSIONALLY DISPLAYED. Sam was Ira's father, who had not had a thing to do with the business since coming down with a "weak heart" thirty years before. Maggie always put "weak heart" in quotation marks. She made a point of ignoring the apartment windows above the shop, where Sam spent his cramped, idle, querulous days with Ira's two sisters. He would probably be standing there watching. She parked next to the curb and slid over to the passenger seat.

  Ira's expression was a study as he approached the car. Starting out pleased and approving, he rounded the hood and drew up short when he came upon the left fender. His long, bony, olive face grew longer. His eyes, already so narrow you couldn't be sure if they were black or merely dark brown, turned to puzzled, downward-slanting slits. He opened the door and got in and gave her a sorrowful stare.

  "There was an unexpected situation," Maggie told him.

  "Just between here and the body shop?" "I heard Fiona on the radio." "That's five blocks! Just five or six blocks." "Ira, Fiona's getting married." He gave up thinking of the car, she was relieved to see. Something cleared on his forehead. He looked at her a moment and then said, "Fiona who?" "Fiona your daughter-in-law, Ira. How many Fionas do we know? Fiona the mother of your only grandchild, and now she's up and marrying some total stranger purely for security." Ira slid the seat farther back and then pulled away from the curb. He seemed to be listening for something- perhaps for the sound of the wheel hitting. But evidently her tug on the fender had done the trick. He said, "Where'd you hear this?" "On the radio while I was driving." "They'd announce a thing like that on the radio?" "She telephoned it in." "That seems kind of ... self-important, if you want my honest opinion," Ira said.

  ' 'No, she was just-and she said that Jesse was the only one she'd ever truly loved." "She said this on the radio!" "It was a talk show, Ira." "Well, I don't know why everyone has to go spilling their guts in pu
blic these days," Ira said.

  "Do you suppose Jesse could have been listening?" Maggie asked. The thought had just occurred to her.

  "Jesse? At this hour? He's doing well if he's up before noon." Maggie didn't argue with that, although she could have. The fact was that Jesse was an early riser, and anyhow, he worked on Saturdays. What Ira was implying was that he was shiftless. (Ira was much harder on their son than Maggie was. He didn't see half as many good points to him.) She faced forward and watched the shops and houses sliding past, the few pedestrians out with their dogs. This had been the driest summer in memory and the sidewalks had a chalky look. The air hung like gauze. A boy in front of Poor Man's Grocery was tenderly dusting his bicycle spokes with a cloth.

  "So you started out on Empry Street," Ira said.

  "Hmm?" "Where the body shop is." "Yes, Empry Street." "And then cut over to Daimler . . ." He was back on the subject of the fender. She said, "I did it driving out of the garage." "You mean right there? Right at the body shop?" "I went to hit the brake but I hit the gas instead." "How could that happen?" "Well, Fiona came on the radio and I was startled." "I mean the brake isn't something you have to think about, Maggie. You've been driving since you were sixteen years old. How could you mix up the brake with the gas pedal?" "I just did, Ira. All right? I just got startled and I did. So let's drop it." "I mean a brake is more or less reflex." "If it means so much to you I'll pay for it out of my salary." Now it was his turn to hold his tongue. She saw him start to speak and then change his mind. (Her salary was laughable. She tended old folks in a nursing home.) If they'd had more warning, she thought, she would have cleaned the car's interior before they set out. The dashboard was littered with parking-lot stubs. Soft-drink cups and paper napkins covered the floor at her feet. Also there were loops of black and red wire sagging beneath the glove compartment; nudge them accidentally as you crossed your legs and you'd disconnect the radio. She considered that to be Ira's doing. Men just generated wires and cords and electrical tape everywhere they went, somehow. They might not even be aware of it.

  They were traveling north on Belair Road now. The scenery grew choppy. Stretches of playgrounds and cemeteries were broken suddenly by clumps of small businesses-liquor stores, pizza parlors, dark little bars and taverns dwarfed by the giant dish antennas on their roofs. Then another playground would open out. And the traffic was heavier by the minute. Everyone else was going somewhere festive and Saturday-morningish, Maggie was certain. Most of the back seats were stuffed with children. It was the hour for gymnastics lessons and baseball practice.

  "The other day," Maggie told Ira, "I forgot how to say 'car pool.' " "Why would you need to remember?" Ira asked.

  "Well, that's my point." "Pardon?" "It shows you how time has passed, is what I'm saying. I wanted to tell one of my patients her daughter wouldn't be visiting. I said, 'Today's her day for, um,' and I couldn't think of the words. I could not think of 'car pool.' But it seems like just last week that Jesse had a game or hockey camp, Daisy had a Brownie meeting . . . Why, I used to spend all Saturday behind the wheel!" "Speaking of which," Ira said, "was it another vehicle you hit? Or just a telephone pole?" Maggie dug in her purse for her sunglasses. "It was a truck," she said.

  "Good grief. You do it any damage?" "I didn't notice." "You didn't notice." "I didn't stop to look." She put on her sunglasses and blinked. Everything turned muted and more elegant.

  "You left the scene of an accident, Maggie?" "It wasn't an accident! It was only one of those little, like, kind of things that just happen. Why make such a big deal of it?" "Let me see if I've got this straight," Ira said. "You zoomed out of the body shop, slammed into a truck, and kept on going." "No, the truck slammed into me." "But you were the one at fault." "Well, yes, I suppose I was, if you insist on holding someone to blame." "And so then you just drove on away." "Right." He was silent. Not a good silence.

  "It was a great big huge Pepsi truck," Maggie said. "It was practically an armored tank! I bet I didn't so much as scratch it." "But you never checked to make sure." "I was worried I'd be late," Maggie said. "You're the one who insisted on allowing extra travel time." "You realize the body-shop people have your name and address, don't you? All that driver has to do is ask them. We're going to find a policeman waiting for us on our doorstep." "Ira, will you drop it?" Maggie asked. "Don't you see I have a lof on my mind? I'm heading toward the funeral of my oldest, dearest friend's husband; no telling what Serena's dealing with right now, and here I am, a whole state away. And then on top of that I have to hear it on the radio that Fiona's getting married, when it's plain as the nose on your face she and Jesse still love each other. They've always loved each other; they never stopped; it's just that they can't, oh, connect, somehow. And besides that, my one and only grandchild is all at once going to have to adjust to a brand-new stepfather. I feel like we're just flying apart! All my friends and relatives just flying off from me like the ... expanding universe or something! Now we'll never see that child, do you realize that!" "We never see her anyhow," Ira said mildly. He braked for a red light.

  "For all we know, this new husband could be a mo-lester," Maggie said.

  "I'm sure Fiona would choose better than that, Maggie." ~She. shot him a look. (It wasn't like him to say anything good about Fiona.) He was peering up at the traffic light. Squint lines radiated from the corners of his eyes. "Well, of course she would try to choose well," Maggie said carefully, "but even the most sensible person on God's earth can't predict every single problem, can she? Maybe he's somebody smooth and suave. Maybe he'll treat Leroy s just fine till he's settled into the family." The light changed. Ira drove on.

  "Leroy," Maggie said reflectively. "Do you think we'll ever get used to that name? Sounds like a boy's name. Sounds like a football player. And the way they pronounce it: Lee-ray. Country." "Did you bring that map I set out on the breakfast table?" Ira asked.

  "Sometimes I think we should just start pronouncing it our way," Maggie said. "Le-roy." She considered.

  "The map, Maggie. Did you bring it?" "It's in my purse. Le Rwah," she said, gargling the R like a Frenchman.

  "It's not as if we still had anything to do with her," Ira said.

  "We could, though, Ira. We could visit her this very afternoon." "Huh?" "Look at where they live: Cartwheel, Pennsylvania. It's practically on the road to Deer Lick. What we could do," she said, digging through her purse, "is go to the funeral, see, and . . . Oh, where is that map? Go to the funeral and then head back down Route One to ... You know, I don't think I brought that map after all." "Great, Maggie." "I think I left it on the table." "I asked you when we were setting out, remember? I said, 'Are you going to bring the map, or am I?' You said, 'I am. I'll just stick it in my purse.' " "Well, I don't know why you're making such a fuss about it," Maggie said. "All we've got to do is watch the road signs; anyone could manage that much." "It's a little more complicated than that," Ira said.

  "Besides, we have those directions Serena gave me over the phone." "Maggie. Do you honestly believe any directions of Serena's could get us where we'd care to go? Ha! We'd find ourselves in Canada someplace. We'd be off in Arizona!" "Well, you don't have to get so excited about it." "We would never see home again," Ira said.

  Maggie shook her billfold and a pack of Kleenex from her purse.

  "Serena's the one who made us late for her own wedding reception, remember that?" Ira said. "At that crazy little banquet hall we spent an hour locating." "Really, Ira. You always act like women are such flibbertigibbets," Maggie said. She gave up searching through her purse; evidently she had mislaid Serena's directions as well. She said, "It's Fiona's own good I'm thinking of. She'll need us to baby-sit." "Baby-sit?" "During the honeymoon." He gave her a look that she couldn't quite read.

  "She's getting married next Saturday," Maggie said. "You can't take a seven-year-old on a honeymoon." He still said nothing.

  They were out beyond the city limits now and the houses had thinned. They passed a used-car lot, a
scratchy bit of woods, a shopping mall with a few scattered early-bird cars parked on a concrete wasteland. Ira started whistling. Maggie stopped fiddling with her purse straps and grew still.

  There were times when Ira didn't say a dozen words all day, and even when he did talk you couldn't guess what he was feeling. He was a closed-in, isolated man- his most serious flaw. But what he failed to realize was, his whistling could tell the whole story. For instance-an unsettling example-after a terrible fight in the early days of their marriage they had more or less smoothed things over, patted them into place again, and then he'd gone off to work whistling a song she couldn't identify. It wasn't till later that the words occurred to her. / wonder if I care as much, was the way they went, as I did before. . . .

  But often the association was something trivial, something circumstantial-"This Old House" while he tackled a minor repair job, or "The Wichita Lineman" whenever he helped bring in the laundry.. Do, do that voodoo . . . he whistled unknowingly, five minutes after circling a pile of dog do on the sidewalk. And of course there were times when Maggie had no idea what he was whistling. This piece right now, say: something sort of croony, something they might play on WLIF. Well, maybe he'd merely heard it while shaving, in which case it meant nothing at all.

  A Patsy Cline song; that's what it was. Patsy Cline's "Crazy." She sat up sharply and said, "Perfectly sane people baby-sit their grandchildren, Ira Moran." He looked startled.

  "They keep them for months. Whole summers," she told him.

  He said, "They don't pay drop-in visits, though." "Certainly they do!" "Ann Landers claims drop-in visits are inconsiderate," he said.

  Ann Landers, his personal heroine.

  "And it's not like we're blood relatives," he said. "We're not even Fiona's in-laws anymore." "We're Leroy's grandparents till the day we die," Maggie told him.

  He didn't have any answer for that.

  This stretch of road was such a mess. Things had been allowed to just happen-a barbecue joint sprouting here, a swim-pool display room there. A pickup parked on the shoulder overflowed with pumpkins: ALL u CAN CARRY $., the hand-lettered sign read. The pumpkins reminded Maggie of fall, but in fact it was so warm now that a line of moisture stood out on her upper lip. She rolled down her window, recoiled from the hot air, and rolled it up again. Anyway, enough of a breeze came from Ira's side. He drove one-handed, with his left elbow jutting over the sill. The sleeves of his suit had rucked up to show his wristbones.