Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [73]
"Spruce Gum," Maggie said.
"Pardon?" She was twisted around in her seat, gazing behind her. She said, "Spruce Gum! That was the cutoff to Fiona's! We just now passed it." "Oh, yes, Spruce Gum," he said. It did ring a bell.
"Ira," Maggie said.
"Hmm?" "It's not so far out of the way." He glanced at her. She had her hands pressed together, her face set toward him, her mouth bunched up a little as if she were willing certain words from him (the way she used to will the right answer out of Jesse when she was drilling him on his multiplication tables).
"Is it?" she said.
"No," he said.
She misunderstood him; she drew in a breath to start arguing. But he said, "No, I guess it's not." "What: You mean you'll take me there?" "Well," he said. And then he said, "Oh, well, we've already pretty much shot the day, right?" And he flicked his blinker on and looked for a place to turn the car around.
"Thank you, Ira," she told him, and she slid over as far as her seat belt allowed and planted a little brush stroke of a kiss below his ear.
Ira said, "Hmf," but he sounded more grudging than he really felt.
After he'd reversed the car in a lumberyard, he headed back up Route One and took a left onto Spruce Gum Road. They were facing into the sun now. Dusty shafts of light filmed the windshield. Maggie pushed her glasses higher on her nose, and Ira flipped his visor down.
Was it the haze on the windshield that made him think again of their trip to Harborplace? At any rate, for some reason he suddenly remembered why Dorrie had started crying that day.
Standing at the water's edge, hemmed in by fog, she had been moved to open her suitcase and show him its contents. None of what she'd brought was much different from any other time. There were the usual two or three comic books, he recalled, and probably a snack for her sweet tooth-a squashed Hostess cupcake perhaps, with the frosting smashed into the cellophane-and of course the rhinestone hatband that had once belonged to their mother. And finally her greatest treasure: a fan magazine with Elvis Presley on the cover. King of Rock, the title read. Dorrie worshiped Elvis Presley. Ordinarily Ira humored her, even bought her posters whenever he came across them, but on that particular morning he was feeling so burdened, he just hadn't had the patience. "Elvis," Dorrie said happily, and Ira said, "For God's sake, Dorrie, don't you know the guy is dead and buried?" Then she had stopped smiling and her eyes had filled with tears, and Ira had felt pierced. Everything about her all at once saddened him-her skimpy haircut and her chapped lips and her thin face that was so homely and so sweet, if only people would see. He put an arm around her. He hugged her bony little body close and gazed over her head at the Constellation floating in the fog. The tops of the masts had dwindled away and the ropes and chains had dissolved and the old ship had looked its age for once, swathed in clouds of mist you could mistake for the blurring of time. And Junie had pressed close to his other side and Maggie and Sam had watched steadfastly, waiting for him to say what to do next. He had known then what the true waste was; Lord, yes. It was not his having to support these people but his failure to notice how he loved them. He loved even his worn-down, defeated father, even the memory of his poor mother who had always been so pretty and never realized it because anytime she approached a mirror she had her mouth drawn up lopsided with shyness.
But then the feeling had faded (probably the very next instant, when Junie started begging to leave) and he forgot what he had learned. And no doubt he would