Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

Serena got an engagement ring with a diamond shaped like a heart. It was dazzling. She began to plan and replan a great involved wedding production scheduled for the eighth of June, a date toward which she moved majestically, like a ship, with all her girlfriends fluttering in her wake. Maggie's mother said it was absurd to make such a fuss about a wedding. She said that people who lived for their weddings experienced a big letdown afterward, and then she said, changing her tone, "That poor, sad child, going to such lengths; I have to say I pity her." Maggie was shocked. (Pity! It seemed to her that Serena was already beginning her life, while she, Maggie, waited on a side rail.) Meanwhile Serena chose an ivory lace wedding dress but then changed her mind and decided white satin would be better, and she selected first an assortment of sacred music and then an assortment of secular music, and she notified all her friends that her kitchen would have a strawberry motif.

Maggie tried to remember what she knew of Ira Moran's family. They must be devastated by their loss. His mother, she seemed to recall, was dead.

His father was a vague, seedy man with Ira's stooped posture, and there had been some sisters-two or three, perhaps. She could point exactly to which pew they'd always occupied in church, but now that she thought to look, she found they weren't there anymore. She watched for them all the resi of February and most of March, but they never showed up.

Boris Drumm came home for spring break and accompanied her to church that Sunday. Maggie stood in the choir section looking down at where he sat, between her father and her brother Elmer, and it occurred to her that he fit in very well. Too well.

Like all the men in her family, he assumed a sort of hangdog expression during hymns and muttered them rather than sang them, or perhaps merely mouthed the words, letting his eyes skate to one side as if hoping not to be noticed. Only Maggie's mother actually sang, jutting her chin forward and enunciating clearly.

After Sunday dinner with her family, Maggie and Boris went out on the porch. Maggie lazily toed the porch swing back and forth while Boris discussed his political aspirations. He said he figured he would start small, maybe just get on the school board or something. Then he would work up to senator. "Hmm," Maggie said. She swallowed a yawn.

Then Boris gave a little cough and asked if she had ever thought of going to nursing school. That might be a good plan, he said, if she was so all fired up about taking care of old people. Probably this too had some connection with his career; senators' wives didn't empty bedpans. She said, "But I don't want to be a nurse."

"You were always so smart at your studies, though," he told her.

"I don't want to stand at a nursing station filling out forms; I want to deal with folks!" Maggie said.

Her voice was sharper than she had intended. He drew away.

"Sorry," she said.

She felt too big. She was taller than he when they were seated, especially when he hunkered down, as he was doing now.

He said, "Is something troubling you, Maggie? You haven't seemed yourself all spring vacation."

"Well, I'm sorry," she said, "but I've had a ... loss. A very close friend of mine has passed away."

She didn't feel she was exaggerating. It did seem, by now, that she and Ira had been close. They just hadn't consciously understood that.

"Well, why didn't you say so?" Boris asked. "Who was it?"

"No one you knew."

"You can't be sure of that! Who was it?"

"Oh, well," she said, "his name was Ira."

"Ira," Boris said. "You mean Ira Moran?"

She nodded, keeping her eyes down.

"Skinny guy? Couple of classes ahead of us?"

She nodded.

"Wasn't he part Indian or something?"

She hadn't been aware of this but it sounded right. It sounded perfect.

"Of course I knew him," Boris said. "Just to say hello to, I mean. I mean, he wasn't actually a friend or anything. I didn't realize he was your friend, either."

Where does she get these characters, his beetled expression was saying.

First Serena Palermo and now a red Indian.

"He was one of my favorite people," she said.

"He was? Oh. Is that right. Well. Well, you have my condolences, Maggie,"

Boris said. "I just wish you'd told me earlier." He considered a minute.

He said, "How did it happen, anyway?"

"It was a training accident," Maggie said.

"Training?"

"In boot camp."

"I didn't even know he'd enlisted," Boris said. "I thought he worked in his father's frame shop. Isn't that where I got our prom photo framed?

Sam's Frame Shop? Seems to me Ira was the one who waited on me."

"Really?" Maggie said, and she thought of Ira behind a counter, another image to add to her small collection.

"Well, he did," she said. "Enlist, I mean. And then he had this accident."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Boris said.

A few minutes later she told him she'd prefer to spend the rest of the day alone, and Boris said that of course he understood.

That night in bed she started crying. Speaking of Ira's death out loud was what had done it. She hadn't mentioned it before, not even to Serena, who would say, "What are you talking about? You barely knew the guy."

She and Serena were growing apart, Maggie realized. She cried harder, blotting her tears on the hem of her sheet.

The next day Boris went back to school. Maggie had the morning off and so she was the one who drove him to the bus station. She felt lonesome after she had said goodbye. It suddenly seemed very sad that he had come all this way just to see her. She wished she had been nicer to him.

At home, her mother was spring cleaning. She had already rolled up the carpets and laid down the sisal mats for summer, and now she stripped the curtains from the windows with a snapping sound. A bleak white light gradually filled the house. Maggie climbed the stairs to her room and flung herself on her bed. For the rest of her life, probably, she was doomed to live on unmarried in this tedious, predictable family.

After a few minutes, she got up and went to her parents' room. She took the yellow pages from under the telephone. Frames, no. Picture frames, yes. Sam's Frame Shop. She had thought she just wanted to see it in print, but eventually she scribbled the address on a memo pad and took it back to her room.

She owned no black-bordered stationery, so she chose the plainest of what she'd been given for graduation-white with a single green fern in one corner. Dear Mr. Moran, she wrote.

/ used to sing in the choir with your son and I had to let you know how sad I am to hear of his death. I'm not writing just out of politeness. I thought Ira was the most wonderful person I've ever met. There was something special about him and I wanted to tell you that as long as I live, I'm going to remember him fondly.

With deepest sympathy, Margaret M. Daley

She sealed and addressed the envelope and then, before she could change her mind, she walked to the corner and dropped it in the mailbox.

At first she didn't think about Mr. Moran's answering, but later on, at work, it occurred to her that he might. Of course: People were supposed to answer sympathy notes. Maybe he would say something personal about Ira that she could store up and treasure. Maybe he would say that Ira had mentioned her name. That wasn't completely impossible. Or, seeing how she had been one of the few who had properly valued his son, he might even send her some little memento-maybe an old photo. She would love a photo.

She wished now she had thought to ask for one.

Since she'd mailed the letter Monday, it would probably reach Ira's father Tuesday. So his answer could come on Thursday. She hurried through her work Thursday morning in a fever of impatience. At lunch hour she phoned home, but her mother said the mail hadn't arrived yet. (She also said, "Why? What are you expecting?" which was the kind of thing that made Maggie long to get married and move out.) At two she phoned again, but her mother said there'd been nothing for her.