Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [86]
The voice said, "Who's that you got with you, Leroy?" And then, "Why, Mr. Moran." What Ira answered, Maggie had no idea. All that filtered through the Venetian blinds was a brief rumble.
"My, my," Mrs. Stuckey said. "Isn't this . . ." something or other.
"It's Mom," Fiona told Maggie.
"Oh, how nice; we'll get to see her after all," Maggie said unhappily.
"She is going to have a fit." "A fit?" "She would kill me if I was to go and visit you." Maggie didn't like the uncertain sound of that verb construction.
The screen door opened and Mrs. Stuckey plodded in- a gray, scratchy-haired woman wearing a ruffled sundress. She was lugging two beige plastic shopping bags, and a cigarette drooped from her colorless, cracked lips. Oh, Maggie had never understood how such a woman could have given birth to Fiona-finespun Fiona. Mrs. Stuckey set the bags in the center of the shag rug. Even then, she didn't glance up. "One thing I despise," she said, removing her cigarette, "is these new-style plastic grocery bags with the handles that cut your fingers in half." "How are you, Mrs. Stuckey?" Maggie asked.
"Also they fall over in the car trunk and spill their guts out," Mrs. Stuckey said. "I'm all right, I suppose." "We just stopped by for a second," Maggie said. "We had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick." "Hmm," Mrs. Stuckey said. She took a drag of her cigarette. She held it like a foreigner, pinched between her thumb and her index finger. If she had calculated outright, she could not have chosen a more unbecoming dress. It completely exposed her upper arms, which were splotched and doughy.
Maggie waited for Fiona to mention the trip to Baltimore, but Fiona was fiddling with her largest turquoise ring. She slid it up past her first knuckle, twisted it, and slid it down again. So Maggie had to be the one. She said, "I've been trying to talk Fiona into coming home with us for a visit." "Fat chance of that," Mrs. Stuckey said.
Maggie looked over at Fiona. Fiona went on fiddling with her ring.
"Well, she's thinking she might do it," Maggie said finally.
Mrs. Stuckey drew back from her cigarette to glare at the long tube of ash at its tip. Then she stubbed it out in the rowboat, perilously close to the yellow sponge. A strand of smoke wound toward Maggie.
"Me and Leroy might go just for the weekend," Fiona said faintly.
"For the what?" "For the weekend." Mrs. Stuckey stooped for the grocery bags and started wading out of the room, bending slightly at the knees so her arms looked too long for her body. At the door she said, "I'd sooner see you lying in your casket." "But, Mom!" Fiona was on her feet now, following her into the hallway. She said, "Mom, the weekend's half finished anyhow. We're talking about just one single night! One night at Leroy's grandparents' house." "And Jesse Moran would be nowhere about, I suppose," Mrs. Stuckey said at a distance. There was a crash-presumably the grocery bags being dumped on a counter.
"Oh, Jesse might be around maybe, but-" "Yah, yah," Mrs. Stuckey said on an outward breath.
"Besides, so what if he is? Don't you think Leroy should get to knew her daddy?" Mrs. Stuckey's answer to that was just a mutter, but Maggie heard it clearly. "Anyone whose daddy is Jesse Moran is better off staying strangers." Well! Maggie felt her face grow hot. She had half a mind to march out to the kitchen and give Mrs. Stuckey what for. "Listen," she would say. "You think there haven't been times I've cursed your daughter? She hurt my son to the bone. There were times I could have