Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [10]
"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 cafe 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