Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [45]
Serena's wedding rehearsal was a Friday evening. It wasn't a very formal rehearsal. Max's parents, for instance, didn't even bother attending, although Serena's mother showed up with her hair in a million pink rollers. And events happened out of order, with Maggie (standing in for the bride, for good luck) coming down the aisle ahead of all the musical selections because Max had a trainload of relatives to meet in half an hour. She walked alongside Anita, which was one of Serena's more peculiar innovations. "Who else could give me away?" Serena asked. "You surely don't imagine my father would do it." Anita herself, however, didn't seem so happy with this arrangement. She teetered and staggered in her spike-heeled shoes and dug her long red nails into Maggie's wrist in order to keep her balance. At the altar Max slung an arm around Maggie and said, shoot, maybe he'd just settle for her instead; and Serena, sitting in a center pew, called, "That'll be quite enough of that, Max Gill!" Max was the same freckled, friendly, overgrown boy he'd always been. It was hard for Maggie to picture him married.
After the vows Max left for Penn Station and the rest of them practiced the music. They all performed in a fairly amateurish style, Maggie thought, which was fine with her because she and Ira didn't sound their best that night. They started off raggedly, and Maggie forgot that they had planned to split up the middle verse. She sailed right into the first two lines along with Ira, then stopped in confusion, then missed her own cue and fell into a fit .of giggles. At that moment, the laughter not yet faded from her face, she saw Boris Drumm in the foremost pew. He wore a baffled, rumpled frown, as if someone had just awakened him.
Well, she'd known he was due home for the summer, but he hadn't told her which day. She pretended not to recognize him. She and Ira finished their song, and then she reverted to Serena's role and marched back up the aisle, minus Max, so Sugar could practice the timing on "Born to Be with You." After that Serena clapped her hands and shouted, "Okay, gang!" and they prepared to leave, all talking at once. They were thinking of going out for pizza. They swarmed toward Maggie, who waited at the rear of the church, but Boris stayed where he was, facing forward. He would be expecting Maggie to join him. She studied the back of his head, which was blocklike and immobile. Serena handed her her purse and said, "You've got company, I see." Right behind Serena was Ira. He stopped in front of Maggie and looked down at her. He said, "Will you be going for pizza?" Maggie said, "I guess not." He nodded, blank-faced, and left. But he walked in a different direction from the others, as if he didn't feel they would welcome him without Maggie. Which of course was nonsense.
Maggie went back up the aisle and sat next to Boris, and they kissed. She said, "How was your trip?" and he said, "Who was that you were singing with?" at exactly the same instant. She pretended she hadn't heard. "How was your trip?" she asked again, and he said, "Wasn't that Ira Moran?" "Who, the one singing?" she asked.
"That was Ira Moran! You told me he was dead!" "It was a misunderstanding," she said.
"I heard you say it, Maggie." "I mean I misunderstood that he was dead. He was only, um, wounded." "Ah," Boris said. He turned that over in his mind.
"It was only a flesh wound, was all," Maggie told him. "A scalp wound." She wondered if the two terms contradicted each other. She riffled quickly through various movies she had seen.
"So then what? He just comes walking in one day?" Boris asked. "I mean he just pops up, like some kind of ghost? How did it happen, exactly?" "Boris," Maggie said, "I fail to comprehend why you keep dwelling on this in such a tiresome fashion." "Oh. Well. Sorry," Boris said.
(Had she really sounded so authoritative? She found it hard to imagine, looking back.) On the morning of the wedding, Maggie got up early and walked to Serena's apartment-the second floor of a formstone row