Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [101]
Inside, the rooms were cool and dark. Maggie climbed the stairs to Jesse's room and knocked on his door. She poked her head in. "Jesse?" she said.
"Mmf." His window shades were lowered so she could barely make out the shapes of the furniture. His bed was a tangle of twisted sheets. "Jesse, I've brought Fiona," she said. "Could you come down to the porch?" "Huh?" "Could you come down to the porch and talk with Fiona?" He stirred a little and raised his head, so she knew she could leave him. She went back downstairs and into the kitchen, where she poured a glass of iced tea from a pitcher in the refrigerator. She put the glass on a china plate, encircled it with saltine crackers, and carried it out to Fiona. "Here," she said. "Take little bites of these saltines. Take tiny sips of tea." Fiona was already looking better, sitting upright now in her chair, and she said, "Thank you," when Maggie laid the plate on her knees. She nibbled at a corner of a cracker. Maggie settled in a rocker next to her.
"When I was expecting Daisy," Maggie said, "I lived on tea and saltines for two solid months. It's a wonder we didn't both get malnutrition. I was so sick with Daisy I thought I would die, but with Jesse I never had a moment's discomfort. Isn't that funny? You'd think it would have been the other way around." Fiona set down her cracker. ' 'I shouldVe stayed at the clinic," she said.
"Oh, honey," Maggie said. She felt suddenly depressed. She had an instantaneous, chillingly clear vision of how Ira's face would look when he learned what she had done. "Fiona, it's not too late," she said. "You're only here to discuss it all, right? You're not committed to a thing." Although even as she spoke she saw the clinic receding steadily. This was something like rushing toward a jump rope, she imagined. Miss that split second where entry is possible and you've flubbed up everything. She reached out and touched Fiona's arm. "And after all," she said, "you do love each other, don't you? Don't you love each other?" "Yes, but maybe if we got married he would start to hold it against me," Fiona said. "I mean, he's a lead singer! He'll probably want to go to England or Australia or some such after he gets famous. And meanwhile, his band has just barely started earning any money. Where would we live? How would we work this?" "At first you could live here with us," Maggie said.
' 'Then in November you can move to an apartment Jesse knows about in Waverly. Jesse has it all figured out." Fiona stared toward the street. "If I had stayed on at the clinic everything would be over by now," she said after a minute.
"Oh, Fiona. Please. Oh, tell me I didn't do wrong!" Maggie said. She looked around for Jesse. What was keeping him? It shouldn't be up to her to carry on this courtship. "Wait here," she said. She got up and hurried into the house. "Jesse!" she cried. But he didn't answer, and she heard the shower running. That boy would insist on showering first if the house were on fire, she thought. She ran upstairs and pounded on the bathroom door. "Jesse, are you coming?" she called.
He cut the water off. "What?" he said.
"Come out, I tell you!" No answer. But she heard the shower curtain screech across the rod.
She went into his bedroom and snapped up both window shades. She wanted to find his Dr. Spock book. It would serve as a kind of selling point till he came downstairs; or at least it would provide a topic of conversation. But she couldn't find it-just dirty clothes, French-fry cartons, records left out of their jackets. She looked for the cradle plans then. What would they be-blueprints? Not a sign of them. Well, of course, he'd have taken them to the basement, where Ira kept his tools. She tore back down the stairs, calling toward the porch as she passed, "He's on his way!" (She could picture