Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [51]
"That Sunday we invited Max and Serena to dinner, remember? Our very first guests. We rearranged the furniture five times before they got there," she said. "I'd go out in the kitchen and come back to find you'd shifted all the chairs into corners, and I'd say, 'What have you doneV and shift them all some other way, and by the time the Gills arrived, the coffee table was upside down on the couch and you and I were having a shouting quarrel." "We were scared to death, is what it was," Ira said. He had his arms around her now; she felt his amused, dry voice vibrating through his chest. "We were trying to act like grownups but we didn't know if we could pull it off." "And then our first anniversary," Maggie said. "What a fiasco! Mother's etiquette book said it was either the paper anniversary or the clock anniversary, whichever I preferred. So I got this bright idea to construct your gift from a kit I saw advertised in a magazine: a working clock made out of paper." "I don't remember that." "That's because I never gave it to you," Maggie said.
"What happened to it?" "Well, I must have put it together wrong," Maggie said. "I mean I followed all the directions, but it never really acted like it was supposed to. It dragged, it stopped and started, one edge curled over, there was a ripple under the twelve where I'd used too much glue. It was . . . makeshift, amateur. I was so ashamed of it, I threw it in the trash." "Why, sweetheart," he said.
"I was afraid it was a symbol or something, I mean a symbol of our marriage. We were makeshift ourselves, is what I was afraid of." lie said, "Shoot, we were just learning back then. We didn't know what to do with each other." "We know now," she whispered. Then she pressed her mouth into one of her favorite places, that nice warm nook where his jaw met his neck.
Meanwhile her fingers started traveling down to his belt buckle.
Ira said, "Maggie?" but he made no move to stop her. She straightened up to loosen his belt and unzip his fly.
"We can sit right here in this chair," she whispered. "No one will ever guess." Ira groaned and pulled her againsfhim. When he kissed her his lips felt smooth and very firm. She thought she could hear her own blood flooding through her veins; it made a rushing sound, like a seashell.
"Maggie Daley!" Serena said.
Ira started violently and Maggie jumped up from his lap. Serena stood frozen with one hand on the doorknob. She was gaping at Ira, at his open zipper and his shirttail flaring out.
Well, it could have gone in either direction, Maggie figured. You never knew with Se*rena. Serena could have just laughed it off. But maybe the funeral had been too much for her, or the movie afterward, or just widowhood in general. At any rate, she said, "I don't believe this, I do not believe it." Maggie said, "Serena-" "In my own house! My bedroom!" "I'm sorry; please, we're both so sorry . . ." Maggie said, and Ira, hastily righting his clothes, said, "Yes, we honestly didn't-" "You always were impossible," Serena told Maggie. "I suspect it's deliberate. No one could act so goofy purely by chance. I haven't forgotten what happened with my mother at the nursing home. And now this! At a funeral gathering! In the bedroom I shared with my husband!" "It was an accident, Serena. We never meant to-" "An accident!" Serena said. "Oh, just go." "What?" "Just leave," she said, and she wheeled and walked away.
Maggie picked up her purse, not looking at Ira. Ira collected his cards. She went through the doorway ahead of him and they walked down the hall to the living room.
People stood back a little to let them pass. She had no idea how much they had heard. Probably everything; there was something hushed and thrilled about them. She opened the front door and then turned around