Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [52]
"Well," Ira said finally, "we certainly livened up that little gathering." "I feel just terrible," Maggie said.
"Oh, it'll blow over," Ira told her. "You know how she is." Then he gave a snort and said, "Just look on the bright side. As class reunions go-" "But it wasn't a class reunion; it was a funeral," Maggie said. "A memorial service. I went and ruined a memorial service! She probably thinks we were showing off or something, taunting her now that she's a widow. I feel terrible." "She'll forgive us," he told her.
A car swished by and he changed places with her, setting her to the inside away from the traffic. Now they walked slightly apart, not touching. They were back to their normal selves. Or almost back. Not entirely. Some trick of light or heat blurred Maggie's vision, and the stony old house they were passing seemed to shimmer for a moment. It dissolved in a gentle, radiant haze, and then it regrouped itself and grew solid again.
For the past several months now, Ira had been noticing the human race's wastefulness. People were squandering their lives, it seemed to him. They were splurging their energies on petty jealousies or vain ambitions or longstanding, bitter grudges. It was a theme that emerged wherever he turned, as if someone were trying to tell him something. Not that he needed to be told. Didn't he know well enough all he himself had wasted?
He was fifty years old and had never accomplished one single act of consequence. Once he had planned to find a cure for some major disease and now he was framing petit point instead.
His son, who couldn't carry a tune, had dropped out of high school in hopes of becoming a rock star. His daughter was one of those people who fritter themselves away on unnecessary worries; she chewed her fingernails to nubbins and developed blinding headaches before exams and agonized so over hr grades that their doctor had warned of ulcers.
And-his wife! He loved her, but he couldn't stand how she refused to take her own life seriously. She seemed to believe it was a sort of practice life, something she could afford to play around with as if they offered second and third chances to get Jt right. She was always making clumsy, impetuous rushes toward nowhere in particular-side trips, random detours.
Like today, for instance: this Fiona business. Fiona was no longer any relation, not their daughter-in-law and not even an acquaintance, in Ira's opinion. But here Maggie sat, trailing a hand out the window as they whizzed down Route One toward home, and what did she return to (just when he was hoping she'd forgotten) but her whim to pay Fiona a visit. Bad enough they'd lost their Saturday to Max Gill's funeral-a kind of side trip in itself-but now she wanted to plunge off in a whole new direction. She wanted to swing by Cartwheel, Pennsylvania, just so she could offer to baby-sit while Fiona went on her honeymoon. A completely pointless proposal; for Fiona did have a mother, didn't she, who'd been tending Leroy all along and surely could be counted on for the next little bit as well. Ira pointed that out. He said, "What's the matter with what's-her-name? Mrs. Stuckey?" "Oh, Mrs. Stuckey," Maggie said, as if that were answer enough. She brought in her hand and rolled up the window. Her face glowed in the sunlight, round and pretty and intense. The breeze had ruffled her hair so it stood out in loops all over her head. It was a hot, gasoline-smelling breeze and Ira wasn't sorry to have lost it. However, this constant opening and shutting of the window was getting on his nerves. She operated from second to second, he thought. She never looked any distance ahead. A spasm of irritation darted raggedly through his temples.
Here was a woman who had once let