Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [61]
Maybe it was the dubious expression on his face, or maybe it was the pajamas themselves-crinkled and withered, trailing a frazzled drawstring-but at any rate, Ira all at once gave in. "Oh, what the hell," he said. "Let's just go to the Texaco." "Thank you, Ira," Maggie told him sweetly.
And Mr. Otis said, "Well, if you sure it ain't too much trouble." "No, no . . ." Ira passed a hand across his forehead. "So I guess we'd better lock up the Chevy," he said.
Maggie said, "What Chevy?" "That's what kind of car this is, Maggie." "Ain't hardly no point locking it with a wheel about to fly off," Mr. Otis said.
Ira had a brief moment when he wondered if this whole situation might be Mr. Otis's particularly passive, devilish way of getting even.
He turned and walked back to his own car. Behind him he heard the Chevy's trunk lid clanging shut and the sound of their feet on the gravel, but he didn't wait for them to catch up.
Now the Dodge was as hot as the Chevy, and the chrome shaft of the gearshift burned his fingers. He sat there with the_motor idling while Maggie helped Mr. Otis settle in the back seat. She seemed to know by instinct that he would require assistance; he had to be folded across the middle in some complicated fashion. The last of him to enter was his feet, which he gathered to him by lifting both knees with his hands. Then he let out a sigh and took his hat off. In the mirror Ira saw a bony, plated-looking scalp, with two cottony puffs of white hair snarling above his ears.
"I surely do appreciate this," Mr. Otis said.
"Oh, no trouble!" Maggie told him, flouncing onto the front seat.
Speak for yourself, Ira thought sourly.
He waited for a cavalcade of motorcyclists to pass (all male, unhelmeted, swooping by in long S-curves, as free as birds), and then he pulled onto the highway. "So whereabouts are we headed?" he asked.
"Oh, why, you just drive on past the dairy farm and make a right," Mr. Otis told him. "It ain't but three, four miles." Maggie craned around in her seat and said, "You must live in this area." "Back-air a ways on Dead Crow Road," Mr. Otis told her. "Or used to, till last week. Lately I been staying with my sister Lurene." Then he started telling her about his sister Lurene, who worked off and on at the K Mart when her arthritis wasn't too bad; and that of course led to a discussion of Mr. Otis's own arthritis, the sneaky slow manner it had crept up on him and the other things he had thought it was first and how the doctor had marveled and made over his condition when Mr. Otis finally thought to consult him.
"Oh, if you had seen what I have seen," Maggie said. "People in the nursing home where I work just knotted over; don't I know it." She had a tendency to fall into other people's rhythms of speech while she was talking to them. Close your eyes and you could almost fancy she was black herself, Ira thought.
"It's a evil, mean-spirited ailment; no two ways about it," Mr. Otis said. "This here is the dairy farm, mister. You want to take your next right." Ira slowed down. They passed a small clump of cows moonily chomping and staring, and then they turned onto a road not two full lanes wide. The pavement was patchy, with hand-painted signs tilting off the grassy embankment: DANGER LIVESTOCK MAY BE LOOSE and SLOW THIS MEANS YOU and HOUNDS AND HORSES CROSSING.
Now Mr. Otis was explaining how arthritis had forced him to retire. He used to be a roofer, he said, down home in North Carolina. He used to walk those ridgepoles as nimble as a squirrel and now he couldn't manage the lowest rung of a ladder.
Maggie made a clucking sound.
Ira wondered why Maggie always had to be inviting other