Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [44]
"Well, goodbye," she told him.
He lifted a hand in silence, thought a moment, and then turned and walked away.
That Sunday, though, he came to sing with the choir at the morning service. Maggie felt relieved, almost lightweight with relief, as if she'd been given a second chance, and then her heart sank when he just melted into the crowd again after church. But Thursday night he was at choir practice again and he walked her home when it was over. They talked about trivial subjects-Mrs. Britt's splintery voice, for instance. Maggie grew more comfortable. When they reached her house she saw her neighbor's dog out front, peeing on Maggie's mother's one rosebush, with the neighbor standing there watching; so she called, "Hey, lady! Get your dog out of our yard, you hear?" She was joking; it was the rough style of humor she had picked up from her brothers. But Ira didn't know that and he looked taken aback. Then Mrs. Wright laughed and said, '^You and who else going to make me, kid?" and Ira relaxed. But Maggie felt she'd been clumsy once again, and she murmured a hasty good night and went inside.
Soon enough it became a pattern-Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. People started to notice. Maggie's mother said, "Maggie? Does Boris know about this new friendship of yours?" and Maggie snapped, "Of course he knows"-a lie, or at best a half-truth. (Maggie's mother thought Boris was God's gift to women.) But Se-rena said, "Good for you! High time you dumped Mr. Holier-than-Thou." "I haven't dumped him!" "Why not?" Serena asked. "When you compare him to Ira! Ira's so mysterious." "Well, he is part Indian, of course," Maggie said.
"And you have to admit he's attractive." Oh, Jesse was not the only one who'd been swayed by a single friend! Certainly Serena had more than a little to do with all that happened afterward.
She asked Maggie and Ira to sing a duet at her wedding, for instance. Out of the blue (for Ira had never been thought to have a particularly striking voice), she took it into her head that they should sing "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" before the exchange of vows. So of course they had to practice; so of course he had to come to her house. They commiserated with each other and they clucked over Serena's musical taste, but it never occurred to them to refuse her. Maggie's mother kept tip-tapping in and out with folded laundry that had no business in the living room. " 'Once,' " they sang, " 'on a high and windy hill,' " and then Maggie sputtered into laughter, but Ira remained sober. Maggie seemed to be turning into someone else, those days-someone giddy and unstable and accident-prone. Sometimes she imag- \ ined that that sympathy note had thrown her permanently off balance.
She knew by then that Ira ran his father's frame shop single-handed-Sam's "weak heart" had got to him the day after Ira's high-school graduation-and that he lived above the shop with his father and his two much older sisters, one of whom was a little slow and the other just shy or retiring or something. He wanted to go to college, though, if he could ever scrape together the money. He'd had hopes since childhood, of becoming a doctor. He told her this in a neutral tone; he didn't seem discouraged about the way his life was turning out. Then he said maybe she'd like to come home with him sometime and meet his sisters; they didn't get to talk to very many people. But Maggie said, "No!" and then flushed and said, "Oh, I guess I'd better not," and pretended not to notice his amusement. She was afraid she'd run into his father. She wondered if his sisters knew about the letter too, but she didn't want to ask.
Never, not once in all this time, did he act any more than mildly friendly. When necessary he would take her arm-just to steer her through a crowd, say-and his hand felt firm and warm on her bare skin; but as soon as they'd passed the crowd he would release her. She wasn't even sure what he thought of her. She wasn't sure what she thought of him, either. And after all, there was Boris to consider. She went on writing Boris regularly-if