Breathing Lessons (35 page)

The dishes in the draining rack were dry by now and she stacked them and put them in the cupboard. Then she fixed herself a big bowl of ice cream. She wished they had bought mint chocolate chip. Fudge ripple was too white-tasting. She climbed the stairs, digging her spoon in. At the door to Daisy's room, she paused. Daisy was kneeling on the floor, fitting books into a carton. "Want some ice cream?" Maggie asked her.
Daisy glanced up and said, "No, thanks." "All you had for supper was a drumstick." "I'm not hungry," Daisy said, and she pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. She was wearing clothes that she wouldn't be taking with her-baggy jeans and a blouse with a torn buttonhole. Her room already seemed uninhabited; the knickknacks that usually sat on her shelves had been packed for weeks.
"Where are your stuffed animals?" Maggie said.
"In my suitcase." "I thought you were leaving them home." "I was, but I changed my mind," Daisy said.
She had been quiet all through supper. Maggie could tell she was anxious about tomorrow. It was like her not to talk about it, though. You had to read the signs-her lack of appetite and her decision to bring her stuffed animals after all. Maggie said, "Well, honey," you let me know if you want any help." "Thanks, Mom." Maggie went on down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Ira. Ira was sitting tailor-fashion on the bed, laying out a game of solitaire. He had taken off his shoes and rolled his shirt sleeves up. "Care for some ice cream?" Maggie asked him.
"No, thanks." "I shouldn't have any, either," she said. "But travel is such a strain, somehow. I feel I've burned a million calories just sitting in that car." In the mirror above the bureau, though, she was positively obese. She set her ice cream on the dresser scarf and leaned forward to study her face, sucking in her cheeks to give herself a hollow look. It didn't work. She sighed and moved away. She went into the bathroom for her nightgown. "Ira," she called, her voice echoing off the tiles, "do you suppose Serena is still mad at us?" She had to peer around the door to catch Ms answer: a shrug.
"I was thinking I might phone to see how she's doing," she told him, "but I'd hate for her to hang up on me." She unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head and tossed it onto the toilet lid. Then she stepped out of her shoes. "Remember when I helped her put her mother in the nursing home?" she asked. "Tiat time, she didn't speak for months and whenever I tried to call she'd bang the receiver down. hated when she did that. That thunk on die other end of the line. It made me feel so small. It made me fed we were back in third grade." "That's because she was behaving like a third-grader," Ira said.
Maggie came out in her slip to take another spoonful of ice cream. "And I don't even know why she got so upset," she told Ira^s reflection in the mirror. "It was a perfectly honest mistake! I had the best intentions in die world! I said to her mother, 'Listen,' I said, 'you want to make a hit with the other residents? Want to show the "taff right off that you're not just another bland old la%T I mean this was Anita! Who used to wear the red toreador pants! I couldn't have them underestimating her, could I? That's why I told Serena we shouldn't take her in till Sunday evening, Halloween, and that's why I sewed that clown suit on my own machine and went all the way out Eastern Avenue to a what-do-you-call-it. What's it called?" "Theatrical supply house," Ira said, dealing out another row of cards.
"Theatrical supply house, for white greasepaint. How was I to know they'd thrown the costume party on Saturday that year?" She brought her ice cream over to the bed and settled down, propping her pillow against the headboard. Ira was frowning at his layout. "You would think I had deliberately plotted to make her a laughingstock," Maggie told him, "the way Serena carried on." Whom she was picturing in her mind, though, was not Serena just then but Anita: her painted face, her red yarn hair, the triangles Maggie had lipsticked beneath her eyes which made them seem unnaturally bright or even teary, just like a real circus clown's. And then her chin quivering and denting inward as she sat in her wheelchair, watching Maggie leave.
"I was a coward," Maggie said suddenly, setting down her bowl. "I should have stayed and helped Serena get her changed. But I felt so foolish; I felt I'd made such a mess of things. I just said, 'Bye now!' and walked out, and the last I saw of her she was sitting there in a fright wig like somebody . . . inappropriate and senile and pathetic, with everyone around her dressed in normal cloth-ing." "Oh, honey, she adjusted to the place just fine, in the end," Ira said. "Why make such a big deal of it?" "Because you didn't see how she looked, Ira. And also she was wearing one of those Poseys, you know? One of those Posey restraining devices because she couldn't sit upright on her own anymore. A clown suit and a Posey! I was dumb, \ tell you." She was hoping Ira would continue contradicting her, but all he did was lay a jack of clubs on a queen.
"I don't know why I kid myself that I'm going to heaven," Maggie told him.
Silence.
"So shall I call her, or not?" "Call who?" "Serena, Ira. Who have we been talking about here?" "Sure, if you like," he said.
"But suppose she hangs up on me?" "Then think of all you'll save on the phone bill." She made a face at him.
She took the telephone from the nightstand and set it in her lap. Pondered it for a moment. Lifted the receiver. Tactfully, Ira bent lower over his cards and started whistling. (He was so polite about privacy, although as Maggie knew from experience you could overhear quite a lot while pretending to be absorbed in your song.) She punched in Serena's number very slowly and deliberately, as if that would help their conversation'.
Serena's telephone gave two short rings instead of one long. Maggie thought of that as rural and slightly backward. Breep-breep, it said. Breep-breep.
Serena said, "Hello?" "Serena?" "Yes?" "It's me." "Oh, hi." Maybe she hadn't realized yet who "me" was. Maggie cleared her throat. She said, "It's Maggie." "Hi, Maggie." Maggie relaxed against her pillow and stretched her legs out. She said, "I called to see how you were doing." "Just fine!" Serena said. "Or, well, I don't know. Not so hot, to tell the troth. I keep walking up and down, walking from one room to another. Can't seem to stay in one place." "Isn't Linda there?" "I sent her away." "What for?" "She got on my nerves." "On your nerves! How?" "Oh, this way and that, I forget. They took me out to dinner and ... I admit it was partly my fault. I was acting sort of contrary. I didn't like the restaurant and I couldn't stand the people who were eating there. I kept thinking how good it would feel to be alone, to have the house to myself. But now here I am and it's so quiet. It's like Fm wrapped in cotton or something. I was thrilled to hear the phone ring." "I wish you lived closer," Maggie said.
Serena said, "I don't have anyone to tell about the trivia, what the plumbing's up to and how the red ants have come back in the kitchen." "You can tell me," Maggie said.
"Well, but they're not your red ants too, don't you see? I mean you and I are not in this together." "Oh," Maggie said.
There was a pause.
What was it Ira was whistling? Something from that record Leroy had played this evening; the lyrics were on the tip of Maggie's tongue. He scooped up a run of diamonds and shifted them to a king.
"Yotr know," Serena said, "whenever Max went on " business trip we'd have so much to tell each other when he came home. He would talk and talk, and / would talk and talk, and then, you know what we'd do?" "What?" "We'd have a great big horrible fight." Maggie laughed.
"And then we'd patch it up, and then we'd go to bed together," Serena said. "Crazy, wasn't it? And now I keep thinking: If Max were resurrected this minute, hale and hearty, would we still have our horrible fight just the same?" "Well, I guess you would," Maggie said.
She wondered how it would feel to know she had seen Ira for the very last time on this earth. She supposed she would have trouble believing it. For several months, maybe, she would half expect him to come sauntering in again just as he had sauntered into choir practice that first spring evening thirty years ago.
"Um, also, Serena," she said, "I want to apologize for what happened after the funeral." "Oh, forget it." "No, really, both of us feel just terrible." She hoped Serena couldn't hear Ira in the background; It made her apology seem insincere. Lately it occurs to me, he was whistling cheerily, what a long, strange trip it's been ... * "Forget it; I flew off the handle," Serena told her. "Widow's nerves, or something. Pure silliness. I'm past the stage now where I can discard old friends without a thought; I can't afford it." "Oh, don't say that}" "What, you want me to discard you?** "No, no . . ." "Just joking," Serena told her. "Maggie, thanks for calling, I mean it. It was good to hear your voice." "Anytime," Maggie said.
"Bye." "Bye." Serena hung up, A moment later, so did Maggie.
This ice cream wasn't even edible anymore. She had Jet it turn to soup. Also she was feeling overstaffed. She Anne Tyter looked down at herself-at the bodice of her slip stretched tight across her breasts. "I'm an elephant," she told Ira.
He said, "Not again." "Seriously." He tapped his upper lip with a forefinger and studied his cards.
Well. She rose and went into the bathroom, stripping as she walked, and took her nightgown from its hook. When she dropped it over her head it shook itself out around her, loose and cool and weightless. "Whew!" she said. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. A trail of underclothes led from bedroom to bathroom; she picked them up and stuffed them into the hamper.
Sometimes, after an especially trying day, she felt an urge to burn everything she had worn.
Then while she was arranging her dress on a hanger, she was struck by a thought. She looked over at Ira. She looked away. She hung the dress in her closet, next to her one silk blouse.
"Goodness," she said, turning toward him again. "Wasn't Cartwheel dinky." "Mm." "I'd forgotten how dinky," she said.
"Mmhmm." "I bet their school is dinky too." No response.
"Do you suppose the Cartwheel school offers a good education?" "I really couldn't say," Ira said.
She closed the closet door firmly. "Well, I can say," she told him. "It must be a full year behind the schools in Baltimore. Maybe two." "And naturally Baltimore's schools are superb," Ira said.
"Well, at least they're better than Cartwheel's." He raised an eyebrow at her.
"I mean most likely," Maggie said.
He picked up a card, moved it onto another, then changed his mind and moved it back again.
"Here's what we could do," Maggie said. "Write and ask Fiona if she's given any thought to Leroy's education. Offer to enroll her down here in Baltimore and let Leroy live with us nine months of the year." "No," Ira said.
"Or even twelve months, if it works out that way. You know how attached children get to their classmates and such. She might not want to leave." "Maggie, look at me." She faced him, hands on her hips.
"No," he said.
There were a lot of arguments she could have mentioned. All kinds of arguments! But she didn't, somehow. She dropped her hands and wandered over to the window.
It was a warm, deep, quiet night, with just enough breeze to set the shade-pull swinging. She raised the shade higher and leaned out, pressing her forehead against the gritty screen. The air smelled of rubber tires and grass. Snatches of adventure music drifted up from the Lockes' TV next door. Across the street, the Simmonses were climbing their front steps, the husband jingling his house keys. They would not be going to bed yet; no chance of that. They were one of those happily childless young couples with eyes for only each other, and no doubt they were returning from dinner in a restaurant and now would . . . do what? Put on some romantic music, maybe something with violins, and sit conversing graciously on their spotless white love seat, each raising a wineglass made of that thin, extra-breakable crystal that doesn't even have a lip around the rim. Or maybe they would dance. She had seen them dancing on their front porch once-the wife in spike heels, with her hair swept up in an igloo shape, the husband holding her slightly apart in a formal, admiring way.
Maggie spun around and returned to the bed. "Oh, Ira," she said, dropping down beside him, "what are we two going to live for, all the rest of our lives?" She had dislodged a stack of his cards, but he kindly refrained from straightening them and instead reached out one arm and drew her in. "There, now, sweetheart," he said, and he settled her next to him. Still holding her close, he transferred a four of spades to a five, and Maggie rested her head against his chest and watched. He had arrived at the interesting part of the game by now, she saw. He had passed that early, superficial stage when any number of moves seemed possible, and now his choices were narrower and he had to show real skill and judgment. She felt a little stir of something that came over her like a flush, a sort of inner buoyancy, and she lifted her face to kiss the warm blade of his cheekbone. Then she slipped free and moved to her side of the bed, because tomorrow they had a long car trip to make and she knew she would need a good night's sleep before they started.