Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [127]
"I'm going to call Jesse," she told Fiona suddenly.
She went over to the wall telephone and lifted the receiver. There wasn't any dial tone. Instead she heard a ringing at the other end. "Ira must be using the extension," she said, and she hung up again. "Well, so anyhow. Vegetables. Which vegetables will Leroy eat?" "She likes tossed salad," Fiona said.
"Oh, dear, I should've bought lettuce." "Maggie," Ira said, entering the kitchen, "what did you do to my answering machine?" "Me? I didn't do anything." "You most certainly did." "I did not! I already told you about that little mishap last evening, but then I put a new message on." He crooked his finger, beckoning her to the telephone. "Try it," he told her.
"What for?" "Try dialing the shop." She shrugged and came over to the phone. After she dialed, the phone at the other end rang three times. Something clicked. "Well, here goes," Maggie's own voice said, faraway and tinny. "Let's see: Press Button A, wait for the red . . . oh, shoot." Maggie blinked.
"I must be doing something wrong," her voice continued. Then, in the falsetto she often used when she was clowning around with her children: "Who, me? Do something wrong? Little old perfect me? I'm shocked at the very suggestion!" There was a ribbony shriek, like a tape on fast forward, followed by a beep. Maggie hung up. She said, "Well ... um ..." "God knows what my customers thought," Ira told her.
"Maybe no one called," she said hopefully.
' 'I don't even know how you managed it! That machine is supposed to be foolproof." "Well, it only goes to show: You can't trust the .simplest product nowadays," she told him. She lifted the receiver again and started dialing Jesse's number. While his telephone rang and tang, she twined the cord nervously between her fingers. She was conscious of Fiona watching them, seated at the table with her chin resting on her cupped hand.
"Who're you calling?" Ira asked.
She pretended not to hear.
"Who's she calling, Fiona?" "Well, Jesse, I flunk," Fiona told him, "Did you forget his phone won't ring?" Maggie looked up at him, "Ohl" she said.
She replaced the receiver and then gazed at it regretfully.
"Oh, well," Fiona said, "maybe he's on his way. It's Saturday night, after all; how late does he work?" "Tfot late at afl," Ira told her.
Anne Tyter "Where does he work, come to think of it?" "Chick's Cycle Shop. He sells motorcycles." "Wouldn't they be closed by now?" "Of course they're closed. They close at five." "Then why bother calling?" "No, no, she was calling his apartment," Ira said.
Fiona said, "His-" Maggie went back to the bowl of chicken. She stirred it around in the buttermilk. She took a flattened brown paper bag from one of the drawers and poured some flour into it., "Jesse has an apartment?" Fiona asked Ira.
"Why, yes." Maggie measured in baking powder, salt, and pepper.
"An apartment away from here?" "Up on Calvert Street." Fiona thought that over.
Maggie said, "Here's something I always wanted to ask you, Fiona!" Her voice had somehow taken on that chirpy tone again. "Remember just a few months after you left?" she asked. "When Jesse phoned you and said you'd phoned him first and you said you hadn't? Well, had you, or hadn't you? Was it you who phoned our house and I said, 'Fiona?' and you hung up?" "Oh, goodness . . .'' Fiona said vaguely.
"I mean it had to be, or why else would the person hang up when I said your name?'' "I really don't recollect," Fiona said, and then she reached for her purse and rose. Walking in an~ airy, aimless way, as if she hardly noticed she was leaving, she wandered out of the kitchen, calling, "Leroy? Where'd