Breathing Lessons

by Anne Tyler

  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, stippled 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.1 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.

  “Huh?”

  “Slow down! I’m not sure we’re going to make it. See, here the seven comes, rolling up, up … and where’s the sign? Where’s the sign? Come on, sign! We’re losing! We’re too far ahead! We’re—”

  The sign popped into view. “Ah,” she said. The seven settled into place at exactly the same instant, so precisely that she almost heard it click.

  “Whew!” she said. She sank back in her seat. “That was too close for comfort.”

  “They do set all our gauges at the factory, you know,” Ira said.

  “Sure, years and years ago,” she told him. “I’m exhausted.”

  Ira said, “I wonder how long we should keep to Route One?”

  “I feel I’ve been wrung through a wringer,” Maggie said.

  She made little plucking motions at the front of her dress.

  Now collections of parked trucks and RVs appeared in clearings at random intervals—no humans around, no visible explanation for anybody’s stopping there. Maggie had noticed this on her earlier trips and never understood it. Were the drivers off fishing, or hunting, or what? Did country people have some kind of secret life?

  “Another thing is their banks,” she told Ira. “All these towns have banks that look like itty-bitty brick houses, have you noticed? With yards around them, and flower beds. Would you put your faith in such a bank?”

  “No reason not to.”

  “I just wouldn’t feel my money was secure.”

  “Your vast wealth,” Ira teased her.

  “I mean it doesn’t seem professional.”

  “Now, according to the map,” he said, “we could stay on Route One a good deal farther up than Oxford. Serena had us cutting off at Oxford, if I heard you right, but … Check it for me, will you?”

  Maggie took the map from the seat between them and opened it, one square at a time. She was hoping not to have to spread it out completely. Ira would get after her for refolding it wrong. “Oxford,” she said. “Is that in Maryland or Pennsylvania?”

  “It’s in Pennsylvania, Maggie. Where Highway Ten leads off to the north.”

  “Well, then! I distinctly remember she told us to take Highway Ten.”

  “Yes, but if we … Have you been listening to a word I say? If we stayed on Route One, see, we could make better time, and I think there’s a cutoff further up that would bring us directly to Deer Lick.”

  “Well, she must have had a reason, Ira, for telling us Highway Ten.”

  “A reason? Serena? Serena Gill have a reason?”

  She shook out the map with a crackle. He always talked like that about her girlfriends. He acted downright jealous of them. She suspected he thought women got together on the sly and gossiped about their husbands. Typical: He was so self-centered. Although sometimes it did happen, of course.

  “Did that service station have a snack machine?” she asked him.

  “Just candy bars. Stuff you don’t like.”

  “I’m dying of hunger.”

  “I could have got you a candy bar, but I thought you wouldn’t eat it.”

  “Didn’t they have potato chips or anything? I’m starving.”

  “Baby Ruths, Fifth Avenues …”

  She made a face and went back to the map.

  “Well, I would say take Highway Ten,” she told him.

  “I could swear I saw a later cutoff.”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Not really? What does that mean? Either there’s a cutoff or there isn’t.”

  “Well,” she said, “to tell the truth, I haven’t quite located Deer Lick yet.”

  He flicked on his turn signal. “We’ll find you someplace to eat and I’ll take another look at the map,” he said.

  “Eat? I don’t want to eat!”

  “You just said you were starving to death.”

  “Yes, but I’m on a diet! All I want is a snack!”

  “Fine. We’ll get you a snack, then,” he said.

  “Really, Ira, I hate how you always try to undermine my diets.”

  “Then order a cup of coffee or something. I need to look at the map.”

  He was driving down a paved road that was lined with identical new ranch houses, each with a metal toolshed out back in the shape of a tiny red barn trimmed in white. Maggie wouldn’t have thought there’d be any place to eat in such a neighborhood, but sure enough, around the next bend they found a frame building with a few cars parked in front of it. A dusty neon sign glowed in the window: NELL’S GROCERY & CAFE. Ira parked next to a Jeep with a Judas Priest sticker on the bumper. Maggie opened her door and stepped out, surreptitiously hitching up the crotch of her panty hose.

  The grocery smelled of store bread and waxed paper. It reminded her of a grade-school lunchroom. Here and there women stood gazing at canned goods. The café lay at the rear—one long counter, with faded color photos of orange scrambled eggs and beige link sausages lining the wall behind it. Maggie and Ira settled on adjacent stools and Ira flattened his map on the counter. Maggie watched the waitress cleaning a griddle. She sprayed it with something, scraped up thick gunk with a spatula, and sprayed again. From behind she was a large white rectangle, her gray bun tacked down with black bobby pins. “What you going to order?” she asked finally, not turning around.

  Ira said, “Just coffee for me, please,” without looking up from his map. Maggie had more trouble deciding. She took off her sunglasses and peered at the color photos. “Well, coffee too, I guess,” she said, “and also, let me think, I ought to have a salad or something, but—”

  “We don’t serve any salads,” the waitress said. She set aside her spray bottle and came over to Maggie, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes, netted with wrinkles, were an eerie light green, like old beach glass. “The onliest thing I could offer is the lettuce and tomato from a sandwich.”

  “Well, maybe just a sack of those taco chips from the rack, then,” Maggie said happily. “Though I know I shouldn’t.” She watched the waitress pour two mugs of coffee. “I’m trying to lose ten pounds by Thanksgiving. I’ve been working on the same ten pounds forever, but this time I’m determined.”

  “Shoot! You don’t need to lose weight,” the woman said, setting the mugs in front of them. The red stitching across her breast pocket read Mabel, a name Maggie had not heard since her childhood. What had become of all the Mabels? She tried to picture giving a new little baby that name. Meanwhile the woman was telling her, “I despise how everybody tries to look like a toothpick nowadays.”

  “That’s what Ira says; he likes me the weight I am now,” Maggie said. She glanced over at Ira but he was deep in his map, or else just pretending to be. It always embarrassed him when she took up with outsiders. “But then anytime I go to buy a dress it hangs wrong, you know? Like they don’t expect me to have a bustline. I lack willpower is the problem. I crave salty things. Pickly things. Hot spices.” She accepted the sack of taco chips and held it up, demonstrating.

  “How about me?” Mabel asked. “Doctor says I’m so overweight my legs are going.”

  “Oh, you are not! Show me where you’re overweight!”

  “He says it wouldn’t be so bad if I was in some other job but waitressing; it gets to my veins.”

  “Our daughter’s been working as a waitress,” Maggie said. She tore open the sack of taco chips and bit into one. “Sometimes she’s on her feet for eight hours straight without a break. She started out in sandals but switched to crepe soles soon enough, I can tell you, even though she swore she wouldn’t.”

  “You are surely not old enough to have a daughter that grown up,” Mabel said.

  “Oh, she’s still a teenager; this was just a summer job. Tomorrow she leaves for college.”

  “College! A smarty,” Mabel said.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know,” Maggie said. “She did get a full scholarship, though.” She held out the sack. “You want some?”

  Mabel took a handful. “Mine are all boys,” sh
e told Maggie. “Studying came about as natural to them as flying.”

  “Yes, our boy was that way.”

  “ ‘Why aren’t you doing your homework?’ I’d ask them. They’d have a dozen excuses. Most often they claimed the teacher didn’t assign them any, which of course was an out-and-out story.”

  “That’s just exactly like Jesse,” Maggie said.

  “And their daddy!” Mabel said. “He was forever taking up for them. Seemed they were all in cahoots and I was left out in the cold. What I wouldn’t give for a daughter, I tell you!”

  “Well, daughters have their drawbacks too,” Maggie said. She could see that Ira wanted to break in with a question (he’d placed a finger on the map and was looking at Mabel expectantly), but once he got his answer he’d be ready to leave, so she made him hold off a bit. “For instance, daughters have more secrets. I mean you think they’re talking to you, but it’s small talk. Daisy, for instance: She’s always been so quiet and obedient. Then up she pops with this scheme to go away to school. I had no idea she was plotting that! I said, ‘Daisy? Aren’t you happy here at home?’ I mean of course I knew she was planning on college, but I notice University of Maryland is good enough for other people’s children. ‘What’s wrong with closer to Baltimore?’ I asked her, but she said, ‘Oh, Mom, you knew all along I was aiming for someplace Ivy League.’ I knew no such thing! I had no idea! And since she got the scholarship, why, she’s changed past recognition. Isn’t that so, Ira. Ira says—” she said, rushing on (having regretted giving him the opening), “Ira says she’s just growing up. He says it’s just growing pains that make her so picky and critical, and only a fool would take it to heart so. But it’s difficult! It’s so difficult! It’s like all at once, every little thing we do is wrong; like she’s hunting up good reasons not to miss us when she goes. My hair’s too curly and I talk too much and I eat too many fried foods. And Ira’s suit is cut poorly and he doesn’t know how to do business.”

  Mabel was nodding, all sympathy, but Ira of course thought Maggie was acting overemotional. He didn’t say so, but he shifted in his seat; that was how she knew. She ignored him. “You know what she told me the other day?” she asked Mabel. “I was testing out this tuna casserole. I served it up for supper and I said, ‘Isn’t it delicious? Tell me honestly what you think.’ And Daisy said—”