Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [18]
"This was a miscalculation," Maggie told them. She stood up, batting away a towel that draped one shoulder. "Ah, well, I guess I'd better be-" But Sateen said, "Off we goes, girl." "Sateen! No!" Maggie cried.
Sateen and Bertha took hold of the cart, chortling like maniacs, and tore down the hall. Maggie had to hang on tight or she would have toppled backward. She careened along, dodging as she approached the bend, but the women were quicker on their feet than they looked. They swung her around handily and started back the way they'd come. Maggie's bangs lifted off her forehead in the breeze. She felt like a figurehead on a ship. She clutched at the sides of the cart and called, half laughing, "Stop! Please stop!" Bertha, who was overweight, snorted and thudded beside her. Sateen made a sissing sound through her teeth. They rattled toward the P.T. room just as the all-clear bell sounded-a hoarse burr over the loudspeaker. Instantly the doors swung open and Mr. Gabriel emerged in his wheelchair, propelled by Mrs. Inman. Not the physical therapist, not an assistant or a volunteer, but Mrs. Inman herself, the director of nursing for the entire home. Sateen and Bertha pulled up short. Mr. Gabriel's jaw dropped.
Mrs. Inman said, "Ladies?" Maggie laid a hand on Bertha's shoulder and climbed out of the cart. "Honestly," she told the two women. She batted down the hem of her skirt.
"Ladies, are you aware that we've been having a fire drill?" "Yes, ma'am," Maggie said. She had always been scared to death of stern women.
"Are you aware of the seriousness of a fire drill in a nursing home?" Maggie said, "I was just-" "Take Ben to his room, please, Maggie. I'll speak with you in my office later." "Yes, ma'am," Maggie said.
She wheeled Mr. Gabriel toward the elevator. When she leaned forward to press the button, her arm brushed his shoulder, and he jerked away from her. She said, "Excuse me." He didn't respond.
In the elevator he was silent, although that could have been because a doctor happened to be riding with them. But even after they arrived on the second floor and parted company with the doctor, Mr. Gabriel said nothing.
The hall had that hurricane-swept appearance it always took on after a drill. Every door was flung open and patients were roving distractedly and the staff was dragging forth the objects that didn't belong in the rooms. Maggie wheeled Mr. Gabriel into . His roommate hadn't returned yet. She parked the chair. Still he sat silent.
"Oh, land," she said, giving a little laugh.
His eyes slid slowly to her face.
Maybe he could view her as a sort of I Love Lucy type- madcap, fun-loving, full of irrepressible high spirits. That was one way to look at it. Actually, Maggie had never liked / Love Lucy. She thought the plots were so engineered-that dizzy woman's failures just built-in, just guaranteed. But maybe Mr. Gabriel felt differently.
"I came downstairs to find you," she said.
He watched her.
"I was worried," she told him.
So worried you took a joyride in a laundry cart, his glare said plainly.
Then Maggie, stooping to set the brake on his wheel-chair, was struck by the most peculiar thought. It was the lines alongside his mouth that caused it-deep crevices that pulled the corners down. Ira had those lines. On Ira they were fainter, of course. They showed up only when he disapproved of something. (Usually Maggie.) And Ira would give her that same dark, sober, judging gaze.
Why, Mr. Gabriel was just another Ira, was all. He had Ira's craggy face and Ira's dignity, his aloofness, that could still to this day exert a physical pull on her. He was even supporting that unmarried sister, she would bet, just as Ira supported his sisters and his deadbeat father: a sign of a noble nature, some might say. All Mr. Gabriel was, in fact, was Maggie's attempt to find an earlier version of Ira. She'd wanted the version she had known at the start of their marriage, before she'd begun disappointing