Breathing Lessons (15 page)

She was riffling through her purse now. She said, "Hmm?" "How do you know the honeymoon will last a week, Maggie?" "Well, I don't know. Maybe it's two weeks. Maybe even a month, I don't know." He wondered, all at once, if this whole wedding was a myth-something she'd invented for her own peculiar reasons. He wouldn't put it past her.
"And besides!" he said. "We could never stay away that long. We've got jobs." "Not away: in Baltimore. We'd take her back down to Baltimore." "But then she'd be missing school," he said.
"Oh, that's no problem. We'll let her go to school near us," Maggie said. "Second grade is second grade, after all, the same all over." Ira had so many different arguments against that that he was struck speechless.
Now she dumped her purse upside down in her lap. "Oh, dear," she said, studying her billfold, her lipstick, her comb, and her pack of Kleenex. "I wish I'd brought that map from home." It was another form of wastefulness, Ira thought, to search yet again through a purse whose contents she already knew by heart. Even Ira knew those contents by heart. And it was wasteful to continue caring about Fiona when Fiona obviously had no feeling for them, when she had made it very clear that she just wanted to get on with her life. Hadn't she stated that, even? "I just want to get on with my life"-it had a familiar ring. Maybe she had shouted it during that scene before she left, or maybe later during one of those pathetic visits they used to pay after the divorce, with Leroy bashful and strange and Mrs. Stuckey a single accusatory eye glaring around the edge of the living room door. Ira winced. Waste, waste, and more waste, all for nothing. The long drive and the forced conversation and the long drive home again, for absolutely nothing.
And it was wasteful to devote your working life to people who forgot you the instant you left their bedsides, as Ira was forever pointing out. Oh, it was also admirably selfless, he supposed. But he didn't know how Maggie endured the impermanence, the lack of permanent results-those feeble, senile patients who confused her with a long-dead mother or a sister who'd insulted them back in .
It was wasteful too to fret so over'the children. (Who were no longer children anyhow-not even Daisy.) Consider, for instance, the cigarette papers that Maggie had found last spring on Daisy's bureau. She had picked them up while she was dusting and come running to Ira. "What'll we do? What are we going to do?" she had wailed. "Our daughter's smoking marijuana; this is one of the telltale clues they mention in that pamphlet that the school gives out." She'd got Ira all involved and distressed; that happened more often than he liked to admit. Together they had sat up far into the night, discussing ways of dealing with the problem. "Where did we go wrong?" Maggie cried, and Ira hugged her and said, "There now, dear heart. I promise you we'll see this thing through." All for nothing yet again, it turned out. Turned out the cigarette papers were for Daisy's flute. You slid them under the keys whenever they started sticking, Daisy explained offhandedly. She hadn't even bothered to take umbrage.
Ira had felt ridiculous. He'd felt he had spent something scarce and real-hard currency.
Then he thought of how a thief had once stolen Maggie's pocketbook, marched right into the kitchen where she was shelving groceries and stolen it off the counter as bold-faced as you please; and she took after him. She could have been killed! (The efficient, the streamlined thing to do was to shrug and decide she was better off without that pocketbook-had never cared for it anyhow, and surely could spare the few limp dollars in the billfold.) It was February and the sidewalks were sheets of glare ice, so running was impossible. Ira, returning from work, had been astonished to see a young boy shuffling toward him at a snail's pace with Maggie's red pocket-book dangling from his shoulder, and behind him Maggie herself came jogging along inch by inch with her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on her footing. The two of them had resembled those mimes who can portray a speedy stride while making no progress at all. In fact, it had looked sort of comical, Ira reflected now. His lips twitched. He smiled.
"What," Maggie ordered.
"You ^vere crazy to go after that pocketbook thief," he told her.
"Honestly, Ira. How does your mind work?" Exactly the question he might have asked her.
"Anyhow, I did get it back," she said.
"Only by chance. What if he'd been armed? Or a little bigger? What if he hadn't panicked when he saw me?" "You know, come to think of it, I believe I dreamed about that boy just a couple of nights ago," Maggie said. "He was sitting in this kitchen that was kind of our kitchen and kind of not our kitchen, if you know what I mean. . . ." Ira wished she wouldn't keep telling her dreams. It made him feel fidgety and restless.
Maybe if he hadn't gotten married. Or at least had not had children. But that was too great a price to pay; even in his darkest moods he realized that. Well, if he had put his sister Dome in an institution, then-something state-run that wouldn't cost too much. And told his father, "I will no longer provide your support. Weak heart or not, take over this goddamn shop of yours and let me get on with my original plan if I can cast my mind back far enough to remember what it was." And made his other sister venture into the world to find employment. "You think we're not all scared?" he would ask her. "But we go out anyway and earn our keep, and so will you." But she would die of terror.
He used to lie in bed at night when he was a little boy and pretend he was seeing patients. His drawn-up knees were his desk and he'd look across his desk and ask, kindly, "What seems to be the trouble, Mrs. Brown?" At one point he had figured he might be an orthopedist, because bonesetting was so immediate. Like furniture repair, he had thought. He had imagined that the bone would make a clicking sound as it returned to its rightful place, and the patient's pain would vanish utterly in that very instant.
"Hoosegow," Maggie said.
"Pardon?" She scooped up her belongings and poured them back in her purse. She set the purse on the floor at her feet. "The cutoff to Cartwheel," she told him. "Wasn't it something like Hoosegow?" "I wouldn't have the faintest idea." "Moose Cow. Moose Lump." "I'm not going there, whatever it's called," Ira told her.
"Goose Bump." "I would just like to remind you," he said, "about those other visits. Remember how they turned out? Le-roy's second birthday, when you phoned ahead to arrange things, telephoned, and still Fiona somehow forgot you were coming. They went off to Hershey Park and we had to wait on the doorstep forever and finally turn around and come home." Carrying Leroy's gift, he didn't say: a gigantic, blankly smiling Raggedy Ann that broke his'heart.
"And her third birthday, when you brought*her that kitten unannounced even though I warned you to check with Fiona beforehand, and Leroy started sneezing and Fiona said she couldn't keep it. Leroy cried all afternoon, remember? When we left, she was still crying." "She could have taken shots for that," Maggie said, stubbornly missing the point. "Lots of children take allergy shots and they have whole housefuls of pets." "Yes, but Fiona didn't want her to. She didn't want us interfering, and she really didn't want us visiting, either, which is why I said we shouldn't go there anymore." Maggie cut her eyes over at him in a quick, surmising way. Probably she was wondering if he knew about those other trips, the ones she had made on her own. But if she had cared about keeping them secret you'd think she would have filled the gas tank afterward.
"What I'm saying is-" he said.
"I know what you're saying!" she cried. "You don't have to keep hammering at it!" He drove in silence for a while. A row of dotted lines stitched down the highway ahead of him. Dozens of tiny birds billowed up from a grove of trees and turned the blue sky cindery, and he watched them till they disappeared.
"My Grandma Daley used to have a picture in her parlor," Maggie said. "A little scene carved in something yellowish like ivory, or more likely celluloid. It showed this old couple sitting by the fireplace in their rocking chairs, and the title was etched across the bottom of the frame: 'Old Folks at Home.' The woman was knitting and the man was reading an enormous book that you just knew was the Bible. And you knew there must be grown children away someplace; I mean that was the whole idea, that the old folks were left at home while the children went away. But they were so extremely old! They had those withered-apple faces and potato-sack bodies; they were people you would classify in an instant and dismiss. I never imagined that I would be an Old Folk at Home." "You're plotting to have that child come live with us," Ira said. It hit him with a thump, as clearly as if she had spoken the words. "That's what you've been leading to. Now that you're losing Daisy you're plotting for Leroy to come and fill her place." "I have no such intention!" Maggie said-too quickly, it seemed to him.
"Don't think I don't see through you," he told her. "I suspected all along there was something fishy about this baby-sitting business. You're counting on Fiona to agree to it, now that she's all caught up with a brand-new husband." "Well, that just shows how little you know, then, because I have no earthly intention of keeping Leroy for good. All I want to do is drop in on them this afternoon and make my offer, which might just incidentally cause Fiona to reconsider a bit about Jesse." "Jesse?" "Jesse our son, Ira." "Yes, Maggie, I know Jesse's our son, but I can't imagine what you think she could reconsider. They're finished. She walked out on him. Her lawyer sent him those papers to sign and he signed them every one and sent them back." "And has never, ever been the same since," Maggie said. "He or Fiona, either. But anytime he makes a move to reconcile, she is passing through a stage where she won't speak to him, and then when she makes a move he has slammed off somewhere with hurt feelings and doesn't know she's trying. It's like some awful kind of dance, some out-of-sync dance where every step's a mistake." "Well? So?" Ira said. "I would think that ought to tell you something." "Tell me what?" "Tell you those two are a lost cause, Maggie." "Oh, Ira, you just don't give enough credit to luck," Maggie said. "Good luck or bad luck, either one. Watch out for that car in front of you." She meant the red Chevy-an outdated model, big as a barge, its finish worn down to the color of a dull red rubber eraser. Ira was already watching it. He didn't like the way it kept drifting from side to side and changing speeds.
"Honk," Maggie instructed him.
Ira said, "Oh, I'll just-" He would just get past the fellow, he was going to say. Some incompetent idiot; best to put such people far behind you. He pressed the accelerator and checked the rearview mirror, but at the same time Maggie reached over to jab his horn. The long, insistent blare startled him. He seized Maggie's hand and returned it firmly to her lap. Only then did he realize that the Chevy driver, no doubt equally startled, had slowed sharply just feet ahead. Maggie made a grab for the dashboard. Ira had no choice; he swerved right and plowed off the side of the road.
Dust rose around them like smoke. The Chevy picked up speed and rounded a curve and vanished.
"Jesus," Ira said.
Somehow their car had come to a stop, although he couldn't recall braking. In fact, the engine had died. Ira was still gripping the wheel, and the keys were still swinging from the ignition, softly jingling against each other.
"You just had to butt in, Maggie, didn't you," he said.
"Me? You're blaming this on me? What did I do?" "Oh, nothing. Only honked the horn when I was the one driving. Only scared that fellow so he lost what last few wits he had. Just once in your life, Maggie, I wish you would manage not to stick your nose in what doesn't concern you." "And if I didn't, who would?" she asked him. "And how can you say it doesn't concern me when here I sit in what's known far and wide as the death seat? And also, it wasn't my honking that caused the trouble; it was that crazy driver, slowing down for no apparent reason." Ira sighed. "Anyway," he said. "Are you all right?" "I could just strangle him!" she said.
He supposed that meant she was fine.
He restarted the engine. It coughed a couple of times and then took hold. He checked for traffic and pulled out onto the highway again. After the gravelly roadside, the pavement felt too frictionless, too easy. He noticed how his hands were shaking on the steering wheel.
"That man was a maniac," Maggie said.
"Good thing wejhad our seat belts fastened." "We ought to report him." "Oh, well. So long as no one was hurt." "Go faster, will you., Ira?" He glanced over at her.
"I want to get his license number," she said. Her tangled curls gave her the look of a wild woman.
Ira said, "Now, Maggie. When you think about it, it was really as much our doing as his." "How can you say that? When he was driving by fits and starts and wandering every which way; have you forgotten?" Where did she find the energy? he wondered. How come she had so much to expend? He was hot and his left shoulder ached where he'd slammed against his seat belt. He shifted position, relieving the pressure of the belt across his chest.
"You don't want him causing a serious accident, do you?" Maggie asked.
"Well, no." "Probably he's been drinking. Remember that public-service message on TV? We have a civic duty to report him. Speed up, Ira." He obeyed, mostly out of exhaustion.
They passed an electrician's van that had passed them earlier and then, as they crested a hill, they caught sight of the Chevy just ahead. It was whipping right along as if nothing had happened. Ira was surprised by a flash of anger. Damn fool driver. And who said it had to be a man? More likely a woman, strewing chaos everywhere without a thought. He pressed harder on the accelerator. Maggie said, "Good," and rolled down her window.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Go faster." "What did you open your window for?" "Hurry, Ira! We're losing him." "Be funny if we got a ticket for this," Ira said.