Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [109]
Maybe her own downhill slide was deliberate. If so, she owed Jesse an apology. Maybe he was just carrying out her secret scheme for revolution, and would otherwise-who knows?-have gone on to be a lawyer like Mrs. Daley's father.
Well, too late now.
Leroy learned to crawl and she crawled right out of her bureau drawer, and the next day Ira came home with a crib. He assembled it, without comment, in his and Maggie's bedroom. Without comment, Fiona watched from the doorway. The skin beneath her eyes had a sallow, soiled look.
On a Saturday in September, they celebrated Ira's father's birthday. Maggie had made it a tradition to spend his birthday at the Pimlico Race Track-all of them together, even though it meant closing the frame shop. They would take a huge picnic lunch and a ten-dollar bill for each person to bet with. In times past the whole family had squeezed into Ira's car, but of course that was no longer possible. This year they had Jesse and Fiona (who had been away on their honeymoon the year before), and Leroy too, and even Ira's sister Junie decided she might brave the trip. So Jesse borrowed the van that his band used to transport their instruments, SPIN THE CAT was lettered across its side, the S and the C striped like tigers' tails. They loaded the back with picnic hampers and baby supplies, and then they drove to the shop to pick up Ira's father and sisters. Junie wore her usual going-out costume, everything cut on the bias, and carried a parasol that wouldn't collapse, which caused some trouble when she climbed in. And Dorrie was hugging her Hutzler's coat box, which caused even more trouble. But everyone acted good-natured about it-even Ira's father, who always said he was way too old to make a fuss over birthdays.
It was a beautiful day, the kind that starts out cool until sunlight gently warms your outer layers and then your inner layers. Daisy was trying to get them to sing "Camp-town Races," and Ira's father wore a grudging, self-conscious smile. This was how families ought to be, Maggie thought. And in the bus that carried them in from the parking lot-a bus they half filled, if you counted the picnic hampers balanced on empty seats and the diaper bag and folded stroller blocking the aisle-she felt sorry for their fellow passengers who sat alone or in pairs. Most of them had a workaday attitude. They wore sensible clothes and stern, purposeful expressions, and they were here to win. The Morans were here to celebrate.
They spread out over one whole row of bleachers, parking Leroy alongside in her stroller. Then Mr. Moran, who prided himself on his knowledge of horseflesh, went off to the paddocks to size things up, and Ira went too, to keep him company. Jesse found a couple he knew-a man in motorcycle gear and a slip of a girl in fringed buckskin pants-and disappeared with them; he wasn't much of a gambler. The women settled down to select their horses by the ring of their names, which was a method that seemed to work about as well as any other. Maggie favored one called Infinite Mercy, but Junie disagreed. She said that didn't sound to her like a horse with enough fight to it.
Because of the baby, who was teething or something and acted a little fretful, they staggered their trips to the betting window. Fiona went first with Ira's sisters, while Maggie stayed behind with Leroy and Daisy. Then the others came back and Maggie and Daisy went, Daisy bristling with good advice. "What you do," she said, "is put two dollars to show. That's safest." But Maggie said, "If I'd wanted safe I'd be sitting at home," and bet all ten dollars on Number Four to win. (In the past she'd argued for the family to pool every bit of their money and head straight for the fifty-dollar-minimum window, a dangerous and exciting spot she'd never so much as approached, but she knew by now not to bother