Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) - Anne Tyler [99]
Maggie rooted through her purse for a piece of paper to fan herself with. She would have liked to get out of the car, but then where would she stand? Alongside the picketers?
Footsteps approached, a double set, and she glanced up to see Fiona and a slightly older girl, who must have been her sister.
She had worried she wouldn't recognize Fiona, having caught sight of her only the once. But she knew her right off-the long fair hair, the pale face with nothing yet written upon it. She wore jeans and a bright, shrimp-pink T-shirt. As it happened, Maggie had a prejudice against shrimp pink. She thought it was lower-class. (Oh, how strange it was to remember now that she had once viewed Fiona as lower-class! She had imagined there was something cheap and gimcrack about her; she had mistrusted the bland pallor of her face, and she had suspected that her sister's too-heavy makeup concealed the same unhealthy complexion. Pure narrow-mindedness! Maggie could admit that now, having come to see Fiona's good points.) At any rate, she got out of the car. She walked over to them and said, "Fiona?" The sister murmured, "Told you they'd try something." She must have thought Maggie was a picketer. And Fiona walked on, eyelids lowered so they were two white crescents.
"Fiona, I'm Jesse's mother," Maggie said.
Fiona slowed and looked at her. The sister came to a stop.
"I won't interfere if you're certain you know what you're doing," Maggie said, "but, Fiona, have you considered every angle?" "Not all that many to consider," the sister said bluntly. "She's seventeen years old." Fiona allowed herself to be led away then, still gazing at Maggie over her shoulder.
"Have you talked about it with Jesse?" Maggie asked. She ran after them. "Jesse wants this baby! He told me so." The sister called back, "Is he going to bear it? Is he going to walk it at night and change its diapers?" "Yes, he is!" Maggie said. "Well, not bear it, of course ..." They had reached the picketers by now. A woman held out one of the pamphlets. On the front was a color photo of an unborn baby who seemed a good deal past the em- bryo stage, in fact almost ready to be delivered. Fiona shrank away. "Leave her alone," Maggie told the woman. She said, "Fiona, Jesse really cares about you. You have to believe me." "I have seen enough of Jesse Moran to last me a lifetime," the sister said. She shoved past a fat woman with two toddlers and an infant in a sling.
"You're just saying that because you have- him cast in this certain role," Maggie told her, "this rock-band member who got your little sister pregnant. But it's not so simple! It's not so cut-and-dried! He bought a Dr. Spock book-did he mention that, Fiona? He's already researched pacifiers and he thinks you ought to breastfeed." The fat woman said to Fiona, ' 'All the angels in heaven are crying over you." "Listen," Maggie told the woman. "Just because you've got too many children is no reason to wish the same trouble on other people." "The angels call it murder," the woman said.
Fiona flinched. Maggie said, "Can't you see you're upsetting her?" They had reached the door of the clinic now, but the dapper little man was barring their way. "Get out of here," Maggie told him. "Fiona! Just think it over! That's all I ask of you." The man held his ground, which gave Fiona time to turn to Maggie. She looked a little teary. "Jesse doesn't care," she said.
"Of course he cares!" "He says to me, 'Don't worry, Fiona, I won't let you down.' Like I am some kind of obligation! Some chari--table cause!" "He didn't mean it that way. You're misreading him. He honestly wants to marry you." "And live on what money?" the sister asked. She had a braying, unpleasant voice, much deeper than Fiona's. "He