Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

Exactly. Max hanging on to the sight of me and following me with his eyes around the room. When he had to go to the hospital finally, he begged me not to leave him and so I stayed there day and night. But I started feeling mad at him. I remembered how I'd always been after him to exercise and take better care of his health, and he'd said exercise was nothing but a fad. Claimed jogging gave people coronaries. To hear him talk, the sidewalks were just littered with the piled-up corpses of joggers. I'd look at him in his bed and I'd say, 'Well, which do you prefer, Max: sudden death in a snazzy red warm-up suit or lying here stuck full of needles and tubes?' I said that, right out loud! I acted horrible to him."

"Oh, well," Maggie said unhappily, "I'm sure you didn't intend-"

"I intended every word," Serena said. "Why do you always have to gloss things over, Maggie? I acted horrible. Then he died."

"Oh, dear," Maggie said.

"It was nighttime, Wednesday night. I felt someone had lifted a weight off my chest, and I went home and slept twelve hours straight. Then Thursday Linda came down from New Jersey and that was nice; her and our son-in-law and the kids. But I kept feeling I ought to be doing something. There was something I was forgetting. I ought to be over at the hospital; that was it. I felt so restless. It was like that trick we used to try as children, remember? Where we'd stand in a doorway and press the backs of both hands against the frame and then when we stepped forward our hands floated up on their own as if all that pressure had been, oh, stored for future use; operating retroactively. And then Linda's kids started teasing the cat. They dressed the cat in their teddy bear's pajamas and Linda didn't even notice. She's never kept them properly in line. Max and I used to bite our tongues not to point that out. Anytime they'd come we wouldn't say a word but we'd give each other this look across the room: just trade a look, you know how you do? And all at once I had no one to trade looks with. It was the first I'd understood that I'd truly lost him."

She drew her tail of hair over one shoulder and examined it. The skin beneath her eyes was shiny. In fact, she was crying, but she didn't seem to realize that. "So I drank a whole bottle of wine," she said, "and then I phoned everyone I ever used to know, all the friends we had when Max and I were courting. You, and Sissy Par-ton, and the Barley twins-"

"The Barley twins! Are they coming?"

"Sure, and Jo Ann Dermott and Nat Abrams, whom she finally did end up marrying, you'll be interested to hear-"

"I haven't thought of Jo Ann in years!"

"She's going to read from The Prophet. You and Ira are singing."

"We're what?"

"You're singing 'Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.' "

"Oh, have mercy, Serena! Not 'Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.' "

"You sang it at our wedding, didn't you?"

"Yes, but-"

"That was what they were playing when Max first told me how he felt about me," Serena said. She lifted a corner of her shawl and delicately blotted the shiny places beneath her eyes. "October twenty-second, nineteen fifty-five. Remember? The Harvest Home Ball. I came with Terry Simpson, but Max cut in."

"But this is a funeral!" Maggie said.

"So?"

"It's not a ... request program," Maggie said.

Over their heads, a piano began thrumming the floorboards. Chord, chord, chord was plunked forth like so many place settings. Serena flung her shawl across her bosom and said, "We'd better get back up there."

"Serena," Maggie said, following her out of the bathroom, "Ira and I haven't sung in public since your wedding!"

"That's all right. I don't expect anything professional," Serena said.

"All I want is a kind of rerun, like people sometimes have on their golden anniversaries. I thought it would make a nice touch."

"Nice touch! But you know how songs, well, age," Maggie said, winding after her among the tables. "Why not just some consoling hymns? Doesn't your church have a choir?"

At the foot of the stairs, Serena turned. "Look," she said. "All I'm asking is the smallest, simplest favor, from the closest friend I've had in this world. Why, you and I have been through everything together! Our weddings and our babies! You helped me put my mother in the nursing home.

I sat up with you that time that Jesse got arrested."

"Yes, but-"

"Last night I started thinking and I said to myself, 'What am I holding this funeral for? Hardly anyone will come; we haven't lived here long enough. Why, we're not even burying him; I'm flinging his ashes on the Chesapeake next summer. We're not even going to have his casket at the service. What's the point of sitting in that church,' I said, 'listening to Mrs. Filbert tinkle out gospel hymns on the piano? "Stumbling up the Path of Righteousness" and "Death Is Like a Good Night's Sleep." I don't even know Mrs. Filbert! I'd rather have Sissy Par-ton. I'd rather have "My Prayer" as played by Sissy Parton at our wedding.' So then I thought, Why not all of it? Kahlil Gibran? 'Love Is a Many Splendored Thing'?"

"Not everyone would understand, though," Maggie said. "People who weren't at the wedding, for instance."

Or even the people who were at the wedding, she thought privately. Some of those guests had worn fairly puzzled expressions.

"Let them wonder, then," Serena said. "It's not for them I'm doing it."

And she spun away and started up the stairs.

"Also there's Ira," Maggie called, following her. The fringe of Serena's shawl swatted her in the face. "Of course I'd move the earth for you, Serena, but I don't think Ira would feel comfortable singing that song."

"Ira has a nice tenor voice," Serena said. She turned at the top of the stairs. "And yours is like a silver bell; remember how people always told you that? High time you stopped keeping it a secret.''

Maggie sighed and followed her up the aisle. No use pointing out, she supposed, that that bell was nearly half a century old by now.

Several other guests had arrived in Maggie's absence. They dotted the pews here and there. Serena bent to speak to a hatted woman in a slim black suit. "Sugar?" she said.

Maggie stopped short behind her and said, "Sugar Tilghman?"

Sugar turned. She had been the class beauty and was beautiful still, Maggie supposed, although it was hard to tell through the heavy black veil descending from her hat. She looked more like a widow than the widow herself. Well, she always had viewed clothes as costumes. "There you are!" she said. She rose to press her cheek against Serena's. "I am so, so'sorry for your loss," she said. "Except they call me Elizabeth now."

"Sugar, you remember Maggie," Serena said.

"Maggie Daley! What a surprise."

Sugar's cheek was smooth and taut beneath the veil. It felt like one of those netted onions in a grocery store.

"If this is not the saddest thing," she said. "Robert would have come with me but he had a meeting in Houston. He said to send you his condolences, though. He said, 'Seems like only yesterday we were trying to find our way to their wedding reception.' "

"Yes, well, that's what I want to discuss with you," Serena said.

"Remember at our wedding? Where you sang a solo after the vows?"

" 'Born to Be with You,' " Sugar said. She laughed. "You two marched out to it; I can see you still. The march took longer than the song, and at the finish all we heard was your high heels."

"Well," Serena said, "I'd like you to sing it again today."

Shock made Sugar's face appear to emerge from the .netting. She was older-looking than Maggie had first realized. "Do what?" she said.

"Sing."

Sugar raised her eyebrows at Maggie. Maggie looked away, refusing to conspire. It was true the pianist was playing "My Prayer." But that couldn't be Sissy Parton, could it? That plump-backed woman with dimpled elbows like upside-down valentines? Why, she resembled any ordinary church lady.