Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

"Oh, if you had seen what I have seen," Maggie said. "People in the nursing home where I work just knotted over; don't I know it." She had a tendency to fall into other people's rhythms of speech while she was talking to them. Close your eyes and you could almost fancy she was black herself, Ira thought.

"It's a evil, mean-spirited ailment; no two ways about it," Mr. Otis said. "This here is the dairy farm, mister. You want to take your next right."

Ira slowed down. They passed a small clump of cows moonily chomping and staring, and then they turned onto a road not two full lanes wide. The pavement was patchy, with hand-painted signs tilting off the grassy embankment: DANGER LIVESTOCK MAY BE LOOSE and SLOW THIS MEANS YOU and HOUNDS AND HORSES CROSSING.

Now Mr. Otis was explaining how arthritis had forced him to retire. He used to be a roofer, he said, down home in North Carolina. He used to walk those ridgepoles as nimble as a squirrel and now he couldn't manage the lowest rung of a ladder.

Maggie made a clucking sound.

Ira wondered why Maggie always had to be inviting other people into their lives. She didn't feel a mere husband was enough, he suspected. Two was not a satisfactory number for her. He remembered all the strays she had welcomed over the years-her brother who spent a winter on their couch when his wife fell in love with her dentist, and Serena that time that Max was in Virginia hunting work, and of course Fiona with her baby and her mountains of baby equipment, her stroller and her playpen and her wind-up infant swing. In his present mood, Ira thought he might include their own children as well, for weren't Jesse and Daisy also outsiders-interrupting their most private moments, wedging between the two of them? (Hard to believe that some people had children to hold a marriage together.) And neither one had been planned for, at least not quite so soon. In the days before Jesse was born, Ira had still had hopes of going back to school. It was supposed to be the next thing in line, after paying off his sister's medical bills and his father's new furnace.

Maggie would keep on working full time. But then she found out she was pregnant, and she had to take leave from her job. And after that Ira's sister developed a whole new symptom, some kind of seizures that required hospitalization; and a moving van crashed into the shop one Christmas Eve and damaged the building. Then Maggie got pregnant with Daisy, another surprise. (Had it been unwise, perhaps, to leave matters of contraception to someone so accident-prone?) But that was eight years after Jesse, and Ira had more or less abandoned his plans by then anyhow.

Sometimes-on a day like today, say, this long, hot day in this dusty car-he experienced the most crushing kind of tiredness. It was an actual weight on his head, as if the ceiling had been lowered. But he supposed that everybody felt that way, now and again.

Maggie was telling Mr. Otis the purpose of their trip. "My oldest, closest friend just lost her husband," she was saying, "and we had to go to his funeral. It was the saddest occasion.''

"Oh, gracious. Well, now, I want to offer my sincere condolences," Mr.

Otis said.

Ira slowed behind a round-shouldered, humble-looking car from the forties, driven by an old lady so hunched that her head was barely visible above the steering wheel. Route One, the nursing home of highways. Then he remembered that this wasn't Route One anymore, that they had drifted sideward or maybe even backward, and he had a dreamy, floating sensation. It was like that old spell during a change of seasons when you momentarily forge> what stage the year is going through. Is it spring, or is it fall? Is the summer just beginning, or is it coming to an end?

They passed a modern, split-level house with two plaster statues in the yard: a Dutch boy and girl bobbing delicately toward each other so their lips were almost touching. Then a trailer park and assorted signs for churches, civic organizations, Al's Lawn and Patio Furnishings. Mr. Otis sat forward with a grunt, clutching the back of the seat. "Right up-air is the Texaco," he said. "See it?"

Ira saw it: a small white rectangle set very close to the road. Mylar balloons hovered high above the pumps-three to each pump, red, silver, and blue, twining lazily about one another.

He turned onto the concrete apron, carefully avoiding the signal cord that stretched across it, and braked and looked back at Mr. Otis. But Mr.

Otis stayed where he was; it was Maggie who got out. She opened the rear door and set a hand beneath the old man's elbow while he uncurled himself. "Now, just where is your nephew?" she asked.

Mr. Otis said, "Somewheres about."

"Are you sure of that? What if he's not working today?"

"Why, he must be working. Ain't he?"

Oh, Lord, they were going to prolong this situation forever. Ira cut the engine and watched the two of them walking across the apron.

Over by the full-service island, a white boy with a stringy brown ponytail listened to what they asked and then shook his head. He said something, waving an arm vaguely eastward. Ira groaned and slid down lower in his seat.

Then here came Maggie, clicking along, and Ira took heart; but, when she reached the car all she did was lean in through the passenger window. "We have to wait a minute," she told him.

"What for?"

"His nephew's out on a call but he's expected back in no time."

"Then why can't we just leave?" Ira asked.

"I couldn't do that! I wouldn't rest easy. I wouldn't know how it came out."

"What do you mean, how it came out? His wheel is perfectly fine, remember?"

"It wobbled, Ira. I saw it wobble."

He sighed.

"And maybe his nephew won't show up for some reason," she said, "so Mr.Otis will be stranded here. Or maybe it will cost money. I want to make sure he's not out any money."

'' Look here, Maggie-''

"Why don't you fill the tank? Surely we could use some gas."

"We don't have a Texaco credit card," he told her.

"Pay cash. Fill the tank and by then I bet Lamont will be pulling into the station."

"Lamont," already. Next thing you knew, she'd have adopted the boy.

He restarted the engine, muttering, and drew up next to the self-serve island and got out. They had an older style of pump here that Baltimore no longer used-printed flip-over numerals instead of LED, and a simple pivot arrangement to trip the switch. Ira had to readjust, cast his mind back a couple of years in order to get the thing going. Then while the gas flowed into the tank he watched Maggie settle Mr. Otis on a low, whitewashed wall that separated the Texaco from someone's vegetable garden. Mr. Otis had his hat back on and he was hunkered under it like a cat under a table, peering forth reflectively, chewing on a mouthful of air, as old men were known to do.

He was ancient, and yet probably not so many years older than Ira himself. It was a thought to give you pause. Ira heard the jolt as the gas cut off, and he turned back to the car. Overhead, the balloons rustled against each other with a sound that made him think of raincoats.

While he was paying inside the station he noticed a snack machine, so he walked over to the others to see if they wanted something. They were deep in conversation, Mr. Otis going on and on about someone named Duluth.

"Maggie, they've got potato chips," Ira said. "The kind you like: barbecue.''

Maggie waved a hand at him. "I think you were absolutely justified," she told Mr. Otis.

"And bacon rinds!" Ira said. "You hardly ever find bacon rinds these days." .

She gave him a distant, abstracted look and said, "Have you forgotten I'm on a diet?"

"How about you, then; Mr. Otis?"

"Oh, why, no, thank you, sir; thank you kindly, sir," Mr. Otis said. He turned to Maggie and went on: "So anyways, I axes her, 'Duluth, how can you hold me to count for that, woman?' "