Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [111]
"Daisy, is that your brother up there with those people?" Maggie asked.
Daisy said, "Where?" but Fiona was quicker. She wheeled and said, "It most certainly is." Then she shrieked, "Jesse Moran! You get your ass on down here!" Her voice was that stringy, piercing kind. Everybody stared. Maggie said, "Oh, well, I wouldn't-" "Your hear me?" Fiona shrieked, and Leroy started crying in earnest.
"There's no need to shout, Fiona," Maggie said.
Fiona said, "What?" She glared at Maggie, ignoring the squalling baby. It was one of those moments when Maggie just wanted to back up and start over. (She had always felt paralyzed in the presence of an angry woman.) Meanwhile Jesse, who couldn't have missed hearing his name, began to thread his way toward them. Maggie said, "Oh, here he comes!" "You're telling me not to shout at my own husband?" Fiona asked.
She was shouting even now. She had to, over the cries of the baby. Leroy's face was red, and spikes of damp hair were plastered to her forehead. She looked sort of homely, to be frank. Maggie felt an urge to walk off from this group, pretend they had nothing to do with her; but instead she made her voice go light and she said, "No, I only meant he wasn't that far from us, you see-" "You meant nothing of the sort," Fiona said, squeezing the baby too tightly. "You're trying to run us, just like always; trying to run our lives." "No, really, Fiona-" "What's up?" Jesse asked breezily, arriving among them.
"Ma and Fiona are having a fight," Daisy said. She took a dainty nibble from her sandwich.
"We are not!" Maggie cried. "I merely suggested-" "A fight?" Ira said. "What?" He and Mr. Moran were all at once standing in the aisle behind Jesse. "What's going on here?" he asked above Leroy's cries.
Maggie told him, "Nothing's going on! For Lord's sake, all I said was-" "Can't you folks be left to your own devices for even a minute?" Ira asked. "And why is Junie lying down like that? How do these things happen so fasti" Unfair, unfair. To hear him talk, you would think they had such scenes every day. You would think that Ira himself was in line for the Nobel Peace Prize. "For your information," Maggie told him, "I was just standing here minding my own business-" "You have never once in all the time I've known you managed to mind your own business," Fiona said.
"Now cool it, Fiona," Jesse said.
"And you!" Fiona screeched, turning on him. "You think this baby is just mine? How come I always get stuck with her while you go off with your buddies, answer me that!" "Those weren't my buddies; they were only-" "He was drinking with them too," Daisy murmured, with her eyes on her sandwich.
"Well, big deal," Jesse told her.
"Drinking from this silver flat kind of bottle that belonged to that girl." "So what if I was, Miss Goody-Goody?" "Now listen," Ira said. "Let's just all sit down a minute and get ahold of ourselves. We're blocking people's view." He sat, setting an example. Then he looked behind him.
"My marshmallows!" Dorrie squawked.
"You can't leave your marshmallows here, Dorrie. No one has room to sit." "You messed up my marshmallows!" "I believe I'm going to be ill," Junie said, speaking upward into the spokes of her parasol.
Leroy's crying had reached the stage