Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [65]
He had a vivid memory of Jesse as he'd looked the night he was arrested, back when he was sixteen. He'd been picked up for public drunkenness with several of his friends-a onetime occurrence, as it turned out, but Ira had wanted to make sure of that and so, intending to be hard on him, he had insisted Maggie stay home while he went down alone to post bail. He had sat on a bench in a public waiting area and finally there came Jesse, walking doubled over between two officers. Evidently his wrists had been handcuffed behind his back and he had attempted, at some point, to step through the circle of his own arms so as to bring his hands in front of him. But he had given up or been interrupted halfway through the maneuver, and so he hobbled out lopsided, twisted like a sideshow freak with his wrists trapped between his legs. Ira had experienced the most complicated mingling of emotions at the sight: anger at his son and anger at the authorities too, for exhibiting Jesse's humiliation, and a wild impulse to laugh and an aching, flooding sense of pity. Jesse's jacket sleeves had been pushed up his forearms in the modem style (something boys never did in Ira's day) and that had made him seem even more vulnerable, and so had his expression, once he was unlocked and could stand upright, although it was a fiercely defiant expression and he wouldn't acknowledge Ira's presence. Now when Ira thought of Jesse he always pictured him as he'd been that night, that same combination of infuriating and pathetic. He wondered how Maggie pictured him. Maybe she delved even farther into the past. Maybe she saw him at age four or age six, a handsome, uncommonly engaging little kid with no more than the average kid's problems. At any rate, she surely didn't view him as he really was.
No, nor their daughter, either, he thought. Maggie saw )aisy as a version of Maggie's mother-accomplished, ficient-and she fluttered around her, looking inade- quate. She had fluttered ever since Daisy was a little girl with an uncannily well-ordered room and a sheaf of color-coded notebooks for her homework. But Daisy was pitiable too, in her way. Ira saw that clearly, even though she was the one he felt closer to. She seemed to be missing out on her own youth-had never even had a boyfriend, so far as Ira could tell. .Whenever Jesse got into mischief as a child Daisy had taken on a pinch-faced expression of disapproval, but Ira would almost rather she had joined in the mischief herself. Wasn't mat how it was supposed to work? Wasn't that how it worked in other families, those jolly, noisy families Ira used to watch wistfully when he was a little boy? Now she was packed for college- had been packed for weeks-and had no clothes left but the throwaways that she wasn't taking with her; and she walked around the house looking bleak and joyless as a nun in her limp, frayed blouses and faded skirts. But, Maggie thought she was admirable. "When I was her age I hadn't even begun to decide what I wanted to be," she said. Daisy wanted to be a quantum physicist. "I'm just so impressed with that," Maggie said, till Ira said, "Maggie, just what is a quantum physicist?"-honestly wanting to know. "Do you have the foggiest inkling?" he asked. Then Maggie thought he was belittling her and she said, "Oh, I admit I'm not scientific! I never said I was scientific! I'm just a geriatric nursing assistant, I admit it!" and Ira said, "All I meant was- Jesus! All I meant was-" and Daisy poked her head in the door