Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [55]
"Goose Bump." "I would just like to remind you," he said, "about those other visits. Remember how they turned out? Le-roy's second birthday, when you phoned ahead to arrange things, telephoned, and still Fiona somehow forgot you were coming. They went off to Hershey Park and we had to wait on the doorstep forever and finally turn around and come home." Carrying Leroy's gift, he didn't say: a gigantic, blankly smiling Raggedy Ann that broke his'heart.
"And her third birthday, when you brought*her that kitten unannounced even though I warned you to check with Fiona beforehand, and Leroy started sneezing and Fiona said she couldn't keep it. Leroy cried all afternoon, remember? When we left, she was still crying." "She could have taken shots for that," Maggie said, stubbornly missing the point. "Lots of children take allergy shots and they have whole housefuls of pets." "Yes, but Fiona didn't want her to. She didn't want us interfering, and she really didn't want us visiting, either, which is why I said we shouldn't go there anymore." Maggie cut her eyes over at him in a quick, surmising way. Probably she was wondering if he knew about those other trips, the ones she had made on her own. But if she had cared about keeping them secret you'd think she would have filled the gas tank afterward.
"What I'm saying is-" he said.
"I know what you're saying!" she cried. "You don't have to keep hammering at it!" He drove in silence for a while. A row of dotted lines stitched down the highway ahead of him. Dozens of tiny birds billowed up from a grove of trees and turned the blue sky cindery, and he watched them till they disappeared.
"My Grandma Daley used to have a picture in her parlor," Maggie said. "A little scene carved in something yellowish like ivory, or more likely celluloid. It showed this old couple sitting by the fireplace in their rocking chairs, and the title was etched across the bottom of the frame: 'Old Folks at Home.' The woman was knitting and the man was reading an enormous book that you just knew was the Bible. And you knew there must be grown children away someplace; I mean that was the whole idea, that the old folks were left at home while the children went away. But they were so extremely old! They had those withered-apple faces and potato-sack bodies; they were people you would classify in an instant and dismiss. I never imagined that I would be an Old Folk at Home." "You're plotting to have that child come live with us," Ira said. It hit him with a thump, as clearly as if she had spoken the words. "That's what you've been leading to. Now that you're losing Daisy you're plotting for Leroy to come and fill her place." "I have no such intention!" Maggie said-too quickly, it seemed to him.
"Don't think I don't see through you," he told her. "I suspected all along there was something fishy about this baby-sitting business. You're counting on Fiona to agree to it, now that she's all caught up with a brand-new husband." "Well, that just shows how little you know, then, because I have no earthly intention of keeping Leroy for good. All I want to do is drop in on them this afternoon and make my offer, which might just incidentally cause Fiona to reconsider a bit about Jesse." "Jesse?" "Jesse our son, Ira." "Yes, Maggie, I know Jesse's our son, but I can't imagine what you think she could reconsider. They're finished. She walked out on him. Her lawyer sent him those papers to sign and he signed them every one and sent them back." "And has never, ever been the same since," Maggie said. "He or Fiona, either. But anytime he makes a move to reconcile, she is passing through a stage where she won't speak to him, and then when she makes a move he has slammed off somewhere with hurt feelings and doesn't know she's trying. It's like some awful kind of dance, some