Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

"Oh, be honest, you thought it was crazy," Serena said. "But you were nice to humor me. Everyone's been so nice!" Her lips took on a blurred look. She drew a knot of Kleenex from her V neckline and pressed it first to one eye and then to the other. "Sorry," she said. "I keep changing moods. I feel like, I don't know, a TV screen in a windstorm. I'm so changeable."

"Most natural thing in the world," Durwood assured her, Serena blew her nose and then tucked the Kleenex away again. "Anyhow," she said. "A neighbor's setting out some refreshments back at the house.

Can you all come? I need to have people around me right now."

"Well, certainly," Maggie told her, and Durwood said, "Wouldn't miss it, Serena," both at the same time. "Just let me get my car," Durwood said.

"Oh, never mind that; we're all walking. It's just over there through the trees, and anyway there's not a lot of parking space."

She took Maggie's elbow, leaning slightly. "It did go well, didn't it?"

she said. She steered her toward the road, while Durwood dropped behind with Sugar Tilgh-man. "I'm so glad I had the idea. Reverend Orbison threw a fit, but I said, 'Isn't this for me? Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?' So he said yes, he guessed it was. And that's not the end of it, either! Wait till you see the surprise I've got up at the house."

"Surprise? What kind?" Maggie asked.

"I'm not telling," Serena said.

Maggie started chewing her lower lip.

They turned onto a smaller street, keeping to the shoulder because there wasn't a sidewalk. The houses here had a distinctly Pennsylvanian air, Maggie thought. They were mostly tall stone rectangles, flat-faced, set close to the road, with a meager supply of narrow windows. She imagined spare wooden furniture inside, no cushions or frills or modern conveniences, which of course was silly because a television antenna was strapped to every chimney.

The other guests were following in a leisurely parade-the women tiptoeing through the gravel in their high heels, the men strolling with their hands in their pockets. Ira brought up the rear between Nat and Jo Ann. He gave no sign of minding this change in plans; or if he had at some earlier point, Maggie had luckily missed it.

"Durwood was wondering if you'd be staying on here," she told Serena.

"Any chance you might move back to Baltimore?"

"Oh," Serena said, "Baltimore seems so far away by now. Who would I know anymore?"

"Me and Ira, for one thing," Maggie said. "Durwood Clegg. The Barley twins."

The Barley twins were walking just behind them, clinging to each other's arms. Both wore clip-on sunglasses over their regular glasses.

"Linda has been after me to move to New Jersey," Serena said. "Get an apartment close to her and Jeff."

"That would be nice."

"Well, I'm not so sure," Serena said. "Seems anytime we spend a few days together I begin to realize we haven't got a thing in common."

"But if you lived close by you wouldn't be spending days together," Maggie said. "You'd be dropping in and out. You'd be leaving when the conversation ran down. And besides, you'd see more of your grandchildren."

"Oh, well, grandchildren. I've never felt they had all that much to do with me."

"You wouldn't say that if someone kept them away from you," Maggie told her.

"How's your grandchild, Maggie?"

"I have no idea," Maggie said. "Nobody tells me a thing. And Fiona's getting married again; I found that out purely by accident."

"Is that so! Well, it'll be good for Larue to have a man around."

"Leroy," Maggie said. "But see, Fiona's true love is still Jesse. She's said as much, in so many words. There's just something gone wrong between them temporarily. It would be a terrible mistake for her to marry someone else! And then poor little Leroy ... oh, I hate to think of all that child has been through. Living in that run-down house, secondhand smoking-"

"Smoking! A six-year-old?"

"Seven-year-old. But it's her grandmother who smokes."

"Well, then," Serena said.

"But it's Leroy's lungs getting coated with tar."

"Oh, Maggie, let her go," Serena said. "Let it all go! That's what I say.

I was watching Linda's boys this morning, climbing our back fence, and first I thought, Oh-oh, better call them in; they're bound to rip those sissy little suits, and then I thought, Nah, forget it. It's not my affair, I thought. Let them go."

"But I don't want to let go," Maggie said. "What kind of talk is that?"

"You don't have any choice," Serena told her. She stepped over a branch that lay across their path. "That's what it comes down to in the end, willy-nilly: just pruning and disposing. Why, you've been doing that all along, right? You start shucking off your children from the day you give birth; that's the whole point. A big, big moment is when you can look at them and say, 'Now if I died they could get along without me. I'm free to die,' you say. 'What a relief!' Discard, discard! Throw out the toys in the basement. Move to a smaller house. Menopause delighted me."

"Menopause!" Maggie said. "You've been through menopause?"

"Gladly," Serena told her.

-"Oh, Serena!" Maggie said, and she stopped short, nearly causing the Barley twins to bump into her.

"Well, goodness," Serena said, "why should that bother you?"

"But I remember when we first got our periods," Maggie said. "Remember how we all waited? Remember," she said, turning to the Barley twins, "how that was once the only thing we talked about? Who had started and who had not? What it must feel like? How on earth we'd keep it secret from our husbands when we married?"

The Barley twins nodded, smiling. Their eyes were invisible behind their dark glasses.

"And now she's gone and stopped," Maggie told them.

"We haven't stopped," Jeannie Barley caroled.

"She's gone through change of life!" Maggie cried.

"Wonderful; announce it to the world," Serena said. She linked arms with Maggie and they resumed walking. "Believe me, I barely gave it a thought.

'Well, good,' I told myself. 'Just one more thing to let go of.' "

Maggie said, "I don't feel I'm letting go; I feel they're taking things away from me. My son's grown up and my daughter's leaving for college and they're talking at the nursing home about laying off some of the workers.

It's something to do with the new state regulations-they're going to hire on more professionals and lay off people like me."

"So? That job was always beneath you anyway," Serena said. "You were a straight-A student, remember? Or near about."

"It is not beneath me, Serena; I love it. You sound just like my mother.

I love that job!"

"Then go back to school and get to be a professional yourself," Serena said.

Maggie gave up on her. She was too tired, all at once, to argue.

They turned in through a little gate, onto a flagstone path. Serena's house was newer than the others-raw brick, one story, modern and compact.

Someone stood at the front window, drawing back a curtain to gaze out, but when the guests approached she dropped the curtain and vanished. She reappeared at the door, a buttressed and corseted woman in a stiff navy dress. "Oh, you poor thing!" she cried to Serena. "You come right on in. Everybody, come in! There's lots to eat and drink. Anyone want to freshen up?"

Maggie did. She followed the woman's directions and passed through the living room, which was filled with heavy furniture in a wagon-wheel motif, and down a short hall to the bedroom. The decor seemed purely Max's doing: a bedspread patterned with multicolored license plates, a beer stein collection lining the bookshelf. On the bureau, a photo of Linda in cap and gown stood next to a bronze cowboy boot stuffed with pencils and gnawed plastic swizzle sticks. But someone had hung guest towels in the bathroom and set out a bowl of rosette-shaped soaps. Maggie washed up, using the bar of Ivory she found in a cabinet beneath the sink. She dried her hands on a grayish bath towel draped behind the shower curtain, and then she peered into the mirror. The walk had not done anything for her appearance. She tried to flatten her bangs down.