Breathing Lessons

by Anne Tyler

  Well, she wasn’t stupid. She realized that what appealed to her was the image he had of her—an image that would have staggered Ira. It would have staggered anyone who knew her. Mr. Gabriel thought she was capable and skillful and efficient. He believed that everything she did was perfect. He said as much, in so many words. And this was during a very unsatisfactory period in her life, when Jesse was just turning adolescent and negative and Maggie seemed to be going through a quarrelsome spell with Ira. But Mr. Gabriel never guessed any of that. Mr. Gabriel saw someone collected, moving serenely around his room straightening his belongings.

  At night she lay awake and concocted dialogues in which Mr. Gabriel confessed that he was besotted with her. He would say he knew that he was too old to attract her physically, but she would interrupt to tell him he was wrong. This was a fact. The mere thought of laying her head against his starched white shoulder could turn her all warm and melting. She would promise to go anywhere with him, anywhere on earth. Should they take Daisy too? (Daisy was five or six at the time.) Of course they couldn’t take Jesse; Jesse was no longer a child. But then Jesse would think she loved Daisy better, and she certainly couldn’t have that. She wandered off on a sidetrack, imagining what would happen if they did take Jesse. He would lag a few steps behind, wearing one of his all-black outfits, laboring under his entire stereo system and a stack of record albums. She started giggling. Ira stirred in his sleep and said, “Hmm?” She sobered and hugged herself—a competent, adventurous woman, with infinite possibilities.

  Star-crossed, that’s what they were; but she seemed to have found a way to be star-crossed differently from anyone else. How would she tend Mr. Gabriel and still go out to a job? He refused to be left alone. And what job would she go to? Her only employment in all her life had been with the Silver Threads Nursing Home. Fat chance they’d give her a letter of reference after she’d absconded with one of their patients.

  Another sidetrack: What if she didn’t abscond, but broke the news to Ira in a civilized manner and calmly made new arrangements? She could move into Mr. Gabriel’s room. She could rise from his bed every morning and be right there at work; no commute. At night when the nurse came around with the pills, she’d find Maggie and Mr. Gabriel stretched out side by side, staring at the ceiling, with their roommate, Abner Scopes, in the bed along the opposite wall.

  Maggie gave another snicker.

  This was turning out all skewed, somehow.

  Like anyone in love, she constantly found reasons to mention his name. She told Ira everything about him—his suits and ties, his gallantry, his stoicism. “I don’t know why you can’t act that keen about my father; he’s family,” Ira said, missing the point entirely. Ira’s father was a whiner, a user. Mr. Gabriel was nothing like him.

  Then one morning the home held another fire drill. The alarm bell jangled and the code blared over the loudspeaker: “Dr. Red in Room Two-twenty.” This happened in the middle of activity hour—an inconvenient time because the patients were so scattered. Those with any manual dexterity were down in the Crafts Room, knotting colored silk flowers. Those too crippled—Mr. Gabriel, for instance—were taking an extra session of P.T. And of course the bedridden were still in their rooms. They were the easy ones.

  The rule was that you cleared the halls of all obstructions, shut stray patients into any room available, and tied red cloths to the doorknobs to show which rooms were occupied. Maggie closed off 201 and 203, where her only bedridden patients lay. She attached red cloths from the broom closet. Then she coaxed one of Joelle Barrett’s wandering old ladies into 202. There was an empty tray cart next to 202 and she set that inside as well, after which she dashed off to seize Lottie Stein, who was inching along in her walker and humming tunelessly. Maggie put her in 201 with Hepzibah Murray. Then Joelle arrived, wheeling Lawrence Dunn and calling, “Oops! Tillie’s out!” Tillie was the one Maggie had just stashed in 202. That was the trouble with these drills. They reminded her of those pocket-sized games where you tried to get all the silver BBs into their nooks at once. She captured Tillie and slammed her back in 202. Disturbing sounds were coming from 201. That would be a fight between Lottie and Hepzibah; Hepzibah hated having outsiders in her room. Maggie should have dealt with it, and she should also have gone to the aid of Joelle, who was having quite a struggle with Lawrence, but there was something more important on her mind. She was thinking, of course, about Mr. Gabriel.

  By now, he would be catatonic with fear.

  She left her corridor. (You were never supposed to do that.) She zipped past the nurses’ station, down the stairs, and made a right-angle turn. The P.T. room lay at the far end of the hall. Both of its swinging doors were shut. She raced toward them, rounding first a folding chair and then a canvas laundry cart, neither of which should have been there. But all at once she heard footsteps, the squeak of rubber soles. She stopped and looked around. Mrs. Willis! Almost certainly it was Mrs. Willis, her supervisor; and here Maggie was, miles from her proper station.

  She did the first thing that came to mind. She vaulted into the laundry cart.

  Absurd, she knew it instantly. She was cursing herself even as she sank among the crumpled linens. She might have got away with it, though, except that she’d set the cart to rolling. Somebody grabbed it and drew it to a halt. A growly voice said, “What in the world?”

  Maggie opened her eyes, which she had closed the way small children do in one last desperate attempt to make themselves invisible. Bertha Washington, from the kitchen, stood gaping down at her.

  “Hi, there,” Maggie said.

  “Well, I never!” Bertha said. “Sateen, come look at whoall’s waiting for the laundry man.”

  Sateen Bishop’s face arrived next to Bertha’s, breaking into a smile. “You goofball, Maggie! What will you get up to next? Most folks just takes baths,” she said.

  “This was a miscalculation,” Maggie told them. She stood up, batting away a towel that draped one shoulder. “Ah, well, I guess I’d better be—”

  But Sateen said, “Off we goes, girl.”

  “Sateen! No!” Maggie cried.

  Sateen and Bertha took hold of the cart, chortling like maniacs, and tore down the hall. Maggie had to hang on tight or she would have toppled backward. She careened along, dodging as she approached the bend, but the women were quicker on their feet than they looked. They swung her around handily and started back the way they’d come. Maggie’s bangs lifted off her forehead in the breeze. She felt like a figurehead on a ship. She clutched at the sides of the cart and called, half laughing, “Stop! Please stop!” Bertha, who was overweight, snorted and thudded beside her. Sateen made a sissing sound through her teeth. They rattled toward the P.T. room just as the all-clear bell sounded—a hoarse burr over the loudspeaker. Instantly the doors swung open and Mr. Gabriel emerged in his wheelchair, propelled by Mrs. Inman. Not the physical therapist, not an assistant or a volunteer, but Mrs. Inman herself, the director of nursing for the entire home. Sateen and Bertha pulled up short. Mr. Gabriel’s jaw dropped.

  Mrs. Inman said, “Ladies?”

  Maggie laid a hand on Bertha’s shoulder and climbed out of the cart. “Honestly,” she told the two women. She batted down the hem of her skirt.

  “Ladies, are you aware that we’ve been having a fire drill?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maggie said. She had always been scared to death of stern women.

  “Are you aware of the seriousness of a fire drill in a nursing home?”

  Maggie said, “I was just—”

  “Take Ben to his room, please, Maggie. I’ll speak with you in my office later.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maggie said.

  She wheeled Mr. Gabriel toward the elevator. When she leaned forward to press the button, her arm brushed his shoulder, and he jerked away from her. She said, “Excuse me.” He didn’t respond.

  In the elevator he was silent, although that could have been because a doctor happened to be riding with them. But even after th
ey arrived on the second floor and parted company with the doctor, Mr. Gabriel said nothing.

  The hall had that hurricane-swept appearance it always took on after a drill. Every door was flung open and patients were roving distractedly and the staff was dragging forth the objects that didn’t belong in the rooms. Maggie wheeled Mr. Gabriel into 206. His roommate hadn’t returned yet. She parked the chair. Still he sat silent.

  “Oh, land,” she said, giving a little laugh.

  His eyes slid slowly to her face.

  Maybe he could view her as a sort of I Love Lucy type—madcap, fun-loving, full of irrepressible high spirits. That was one way to look at it. Actually, Maggie had never liked I Love Lucy. She thought the plots were so engineered—that dizzy woman’s failures just built-in, just guaranteed. But maybe Mr. Gabriel felt differently.

  “I came downstairs to find you,” she said.

  He watched her.

  “I was worried,” she told him.

  So worried you took a joyride in a laundry cart, his glare said plainly.

  Then Maggie, stooping to set the brake on his wheelchair, was struck by the most peculiar thought. It was the lines alongside his mouth that caused it—deep crevices that pulled the corners down. Ira had those lines. On Ira they were fainter, of course. They showed up only when he disapproved of something. (Usually Maggie.) And Ira would give her that same dark, sober, judging gaze.

  Why, Mr. Gabriel was just another Ira, was all. He had Ira’s craggy face and Ira’s dignity, his aloofness, that could still to this day exert a physical pull on her. He was even supporting that unmarried sister, she would bet, just as Ira supported his sisters and his deadbeat father: a sign of a noble nature, some might say. All Mr. Gabriel was, in fact, was Maggie’s attempt to find an earlier version of Ira. She’d wanted the version she had known at the start of their marriage, before she’d begun disappointing him.

  She hadn’t been courting Mr. Gabriel; she’d been courting Ira.

  Well, she helped Mr. Gabriel out of his wheelchair and into the armchair next to his bed, and then she left to check the other patients, and life went on the same as ever. In fact, Mr. Gabriel still lived at the home, although they didn’t talk as much as they used to. Nowadays he seemed to prefer Joelle. He was perfectly friendly, though. He’d probably forgotten all about Maggie’s ride in the laundry cart.

  But Maggie remembered, and sometimes, feeling the glassy sheet of Ira’s disapproval, she grew numbly, wearily certain that there was no such thing on this earth as real change. You could change husbands, but not the situation. You could change who, but not what. We’re all just spinning here, she thought, and she pictured the world as a little blue teacup, revolving like those rides at Kiddie Land where everyone is pinned to his place by centrifugal force.

  She picked up a box of Fig Newtons and read the nutrition panel on the back. “Sixty calories each,” she said out loud, and Ira said, “Ah, go ahead and splurge.”

  “Stop undermining my diet,” she told him. She replaced the box on the shelf, not turning.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, “care to accompany me to a funeral?”

  She shrugged and didn’t answer, but when he hung an arm around her shoulders she let him lead her out to the car.

  Chapter 2

  To find any place in Deer Lick, you just stopped at the one traffic light and looked in all four directions. Barbershop, two service stations, hardware, grocery, three churches—everything revealed itself at a glance. The buildings were set about as demurely as those in a model-railroad village. Trees were left standing, and the sidewalks ended after three blocks. Peer down any cross street; you’d see greenery and cornfields and even, in one case, a fat brown horse dipping his nose into a pasture.

  Ira parked on the asphalt next to Fenway Memorial Church, a grayish-white frame cube with a stubby little steeple like a witch’s hat. There were no other cars on the lot. He’d guessed right, as it turned out: Continuing on Route One had been quicker, which wasn’t all that fortunate, since it meant they’d arrived in Deer Lick thirty minutes early. Still, Maggie had expected to find some sign of the other mourners.

  “Maybe it’s the wrong day,” she said.

  “It couldn’t be. ‘Tomorrow,’ Serena told you. No way you could mix that up.”

  “You think we should go on in?”

  “Sure, if it’s not locked.”

  When they got out of the car, Maggie’s dress stuck to the back of her legs. She felt shellacked. Her hair was knotted from the wind, and the waistband of her panty hose had folded over on itself so it was cutting into her stomach.

  They climbed a set of wooden steps and tried the door. It swung open with a grudging sound. Immediately inside lay a long, dim room, uncarpeted, the raftered ceiling towering above dark pews. Massive floral arrangements stood on either side of the pulpit, which Maggie found reassuring. Only weddings and funerals called for such artificial-looking bouquets.

  “Hello?” Ira tried.

  His voice rang back.

  They tiptoed up the aisle, creaking the floorboards. “Do you suppose there’s a … side or something?” Maggie whispered.

  “Side?”

  “I mean a groom’s side and a bride’s side? Or rather—” Her mistake sent her into a little fit of giggles. To tell the truth, she hadn’t had much experience with funerals. No one really close to her had died yet, knock on wood. “I mean,” she said, “does it make any difference where we sit?”

  “Just not in the front row,” Ira told her.

  “Well, of course not, Ira. I’m not a total fool.”

  She dropped into a right-hand pew midway up the aisle and slid over to make room for him. “You’d think at least some kind of music would be playing,” she said.

  Ira checked his watch.

  Maggie said, “Maybe next time you should follow Serena’s directions.”

  “What, and wander some cow path half the morning?”

  “It’s better than being the first people here.”

  “I don’t mind being first,” Ira said.

  He reached into the left pocket of his suit coat. He brought out a deck of cards secured with a rubber band.

  “Ira Moran! You’re not playing cards in a house of worship!”

  He reached into his right pocket and brought out another deck.

  “What if someone comes?” Maggie asked.

  “Don’t worry; I have lightning reflexes,” he told her.

  He removed the rubber bands and shuffled the two decks together. They rattled like machine-gun fire.

  “Well,” Maggie said, “I’m just going to pretend that I don’t know you.” She gathered the straps of her purse and slid out the other end of the pew.

  Ira laid down cards where she’d been sitting.

  She walked over to a stained-glass window. IN MEMORY OF VIVIAN DEWEY, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER, a plaque beneath it read. A husband named Vivian! She stifled a laugh. She was reminded of a thought she’d often had back in the sixties when the young men wore their hair so long: Wouldn’t it feel creepy to run your fingers through your lover’s soft, trailing tresses?

  Churches always put the most unseemly notions in her head.

  She continued toward the front, her heels clicking sharply as if she knew where she was going. She stood on tiptoe beside the pulpit to smell a waxy white flower she couldn’t identify. It didn’t have any scent at all, and it gave off a definite chill. In fact, she was feeling a little chilly herself. She turned and walked back down the center aisle toward Ira.

  Ira had his cards spread across half the length of the pew. He was shifting them around and whistling between his teeth. “The Gambler,” that was the name of the song. Disappointingly obvious. You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them … The form of solitaire he played was so involved it could last for hours, but it started simply and he was rearranging the cards almost without hesitation. “This is the part that’s dull,” he told Maggie. “I ought to have an am
ateur work this part, the way the old masters had their students fill in the backgrounds of their paintings.”

  She shot him a glance; she hadn’t known they’d done that. It sounded to her like cheating. “Can’t you put that five on the six?” she asked.

  “Butt out, Maggie.”

  She wandered on down the aisle, swinging her purse loosely from her fingers.

  What kind of church was this? The sign outside hadn’t said. Maggie and Serena had grown up Methodist, but Max was some other denomination and after they married, Serena had switched over. She was married Methodist, though. Maggie had sung at her wedding; she’d sung a duet with Ira. (They were just starting to date then.) The wedding had been one of Serena’s wilder inventions, a mishmash of popular songs and Kahlil Gibran in an era when everyone else was still clinging to “O Promise Me.” Well, Serena had always been ahead of her time. No telling what kind of funeral she would put on.

  Maggie pivoted at the door and walked back toward Ira. He had left his pew and was leaning over it from the pew behind so he could study the full array of cards. He must have reached the interesting stage by now. Even his whistling was slower. You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table … From here he looked like a scarecrow: coat-hanger shoulders, spriggy black cowlick, his arms set at wiry angles.