Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [7]
"Maybe pallbearing is moral support." "Wouldn't that be physical support?" "Well, maybe," Ira said.
They sailed through a small town where groups of little shops broke up the pastures. Several women stood next to a mailbox, talking. Maggie turned her head to watch them. She had a left-out, covetous feeling, as if they were people she knew.
"If she wants me to be a pallbearer I'm not dressed right," Ira said.
"Certainly you're dressed right." "I'm not wearing a black suit," he said.
"You don't own a black suit." "I'm in navy." "Navy's fine." "Also I've got that trick back." She glanced at him.
"And it's not as if I was ever very close to him," he said.
Maggie reached over to the steering wheel and laid a hand on his. "Never mind," she told him. "I bet anything she wants us just to be sitting there." He gave her a rueful grin, really no more than a tuck of the cheek.
How peculiar he was about death! He couldn't handle even minor illness and had found reasons to stay away from the hospital the time she had her appendix out; he claimed he'd caught a cold and might infect her. Whenever one of the children fell sick he'd pretended it wasn't happening. He'd told her she was imagining things. Any hint that he wouldn't live forever-when he had to deal with life insurance, for instance-made him grow set-faced and stubborn and resentful. Maggie, on the other hand, worried she would live forever-maybe because of all she'd seen at the home.
And if she were the one to die first, he would probably pretend that that hadn't happened, either. He would probably just go on about his business, whistling a tune the same as always.
What tune would he be whistling?
They were crossing the Susquehanna River now and the lacy, Victorian-looking superstructure of the Conowingo power plant soared on their right. Maggie rolled down her window and leaned out. She could hear the distant rush of water; she was almost breathing water, drinking in the spray that rose like smoke from far below the bridge.
"You know what just occurred to me," Ira said, raising his voice. "That artist woman, what's-her-name. She was bringing a bunch of paintings to the shop this morning." Maggie closed her window again. She said, "Didn't you turn on your answering machine?" "What good would that do? She'd already arranged to come in." "Maybe we could stop off somewhere and phone her." "I don't have her number with me," Ira said. Then he said, "Maybe we could phone Daisy and ask her to do it." "Daisy would be at work by now," Maggie told him.
"Shoot." Daisy floated into Maggie's mind, trim and pretty, with Ira's dark coloring and Maggie's small bones. "Oh, dear," Maggie said. "I hate to miss her last day at home." "She isn't home anyhow; you just told me so." "She will be later on, though." "You'll see plenty of her tomorrow," Ira pointed out. "Good and plenty." Tomorrow they were driving Daisy to college-her freshman year, her first year away. Ira said, "All day cooped up in a car, you'll be sick to death of her." "No, I won't! I would never get sick of Daisy!" "Tell me that tomorrow," Ira said.
"Here's a thought," Maggie said. "Skip the reception." "What reception?" "Or whatever they call it when you go to somebody's house after the funeral." "Fine with me," Ira said.
"That way we could still get home early even if we stopped off at Fiona's." "Lord God, Maggie, are you still on that Fiona crap?" "If the funeral were over by noon, say, and we went straight from there to Cartwheel-" Ira swerved to the right, careening onto the gravel. For a moment she thought it was some kind of tantrum. (She often had a sense of inching