Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [70]
But the view was nothing but opaque white sheets and a fuzzy-edged U.S.S. Constellation riding on a cloud, and Harborplace was a hulking, silent concentration of vapors.
Well, the whole trip ended in disaster, of course. Junie said everything had looked better on TV, and Ira's father said his heart was flapping in his chest, and then Dorrie somehow got her feelings hurt and started crying and had to be taken home before they'd set foot inside a pavilion. Ira couldn't remember now what had hurt her feelings, but what he did remember, so vividly that it darkened even this glaringly sunlit Texaco, was the sensation that had come over him as he stood there between his two sisters. He'd felt suffocated. The fog had made a tiny room surrounding them, an airless, steamy room such as those that house indoor swimming pools. It had muffled every sound but his family's close, oppressively familiar voices. It had wrapped them together, locked them in, while his sisters' hands dragged him down the way drowning victims drag down whoever tries to rescue them. And Ira had thought, Ah, God, I have been trapped with these people all my life and I am never going to be free. And he had known then what a failure he'd been, ever since the day he took over his father's business.
Was it any wonder he was so sensitive to waste? He had given up the only serious dream he'd ever had. You can't get more wasteful than that.
"Lamont!" Maggie said.
She was looking toward a revolving yellow light over by the gas pumps-a tow truck, towing nothing. It stopped with a painful screeching sound and the engine died. A black man in a denim jacket swung out of the cab.
"That's him, all right," Mr. Otis said, rising by inches from his seat.
Lamont walked to the rear of the truck and examined something. He kicked a tire and then started toward the cab. He was not as young as Ira had expected-no mere boy but a solidly built, glowering man with plum-black skin and a heavy way of walking.
"Well, hey there!" Mr. Otis called.
Lamont halted and looked over at him. "Uncle Daniel?" he said.
"How you been, son?" "What you .doing here?" Lamont asked, approaching.
When he reached the wall, Maggie and Ira stood up, but Lament didn't glance in their direction. "Ain't you gone back to Aunt Duluth yet?" he asked Mr. Otis.
"Lamont, I'm going to need that truck of yourn," Mr. Otis said.
"What for?" "Believe my left front wheel is loose." "What? Where's it at?" "Out on Route One. This here fellow kindly give me a lift." Lamont briefly skimmed Ira with his eyes.
"We just happened to be driving past," Ira told him.
"Hmm," Lamont said in an unfriendly tone, and then, turning again to his uncle, "Now let's see what you telling me. Your car is out on the highway someplace ..." "It was Mrs. here caught on to it," Mr. Otis said, and he gestured toward Maggie, who beamed up at Lamont trustfully. A slender thread of soft-drink foam traced her upper lip; it'made Ira feel protective.
"I won't offer you my hand," she told Lamont. "This Pepsi has just fizzed all over me." Lamont merely studied her, with the corners of his mouth pulled down.
"She lean out her window and call, 'Your wheel!' " Mr. Otis said. " 'Your front wheel is falling off!' " "Really that was a fabrication," Maggie told Lamont. "I made it up." Sweet Jesus.
Lamont said, "Say what?" "I fibbed," Maggie said blithely. "We admitted as much to your uncle, but I don't know, it was kind of hard to convince him." "You saying you told him a lie?" Lamont asked.
"Right." Mr. Otis smiled self-consciously down at his shoes.
"Well, actually-" Ira began.
"It was after he almost stopped dead in front of us," Maggie said. "We had to veer off the road, and I was so mad that as soon as we caught up with him I said that about his wheel. But I didn't know he was old! I didn't know he was helpless!" "Helpless?" Mr. Otis asked, his smile growing less