Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

But summer stretched into fall, and first the university granted him a semester's postponement and then a year's postponement, and then after a while the subject no longer came up.

Well, face it, there were worse careers than cutting forty-five-degree angles in strips of gilded molding. And he did have Maggie, eventually-dropping into his lap like a wonderful gift out of nowhere. He did have two normal, healthy children. Maybe his life wasn't exactly what he had pictured when he was eighteen, but whose was? That was how things worked, most often.

Although he knew that Jesse didn't see it that way.

No compromises for Jesse Moran, no, sir. No modifications, no lowering of sights for Jesse. "I refuse to believe that I will die unknown," he had said to Ira once, and Ira, instead of smiling tolerantly as he should have, had felt slapped in the face.

Unknown.

Maggie said, "Ira, did you happen to notice a soft-drink machine inside the station?"

He looked at her.

"Ira?"

, .

He pulled himself together and said, "Why, yes, I think so."

"With diet soft drinks?"

"Urn . . ."

"I'll go check," Maggie said. "Those pretzels made me thirsty. Mr. Otis?

Want something to drink?"

"Oh, no, I'm doing all right," Mr. Otis told her.

She tripped off toward the building, her skirt swinging. Both men watched her go.

"A fine, fine lady," Mr. Otis said.

Ira let his eyes close briefly and rubbed the ache in his forehead.

"A real angel of mercy," Mr. Otis said.

In stores sometimes Maggie would bring her selections to a clerk and say, ' 'I suppose you expect me to pay for these," in the fake-tough tone that her brothers used when they were joking. Ira always worried she had overstepped, but the clerk would laugh and say something like: "Well, that thought had occurred to me." So the world was not as Ira had perceived it, evidently. It was more the way Maggie perceived it. She was the one who got along in it better, collecting strays who stuck to her like lint and falling into heart-to-heart talks with total strangers.

This Mr. Otis, for instance: his face alight with enthusiasm, his eyes stretched into crepe-edged triangles. "She puts me in mind of the lady with the chimney," he was telling Ira. "I knew it was someone; just couldn't think who."

"Chimney?"

"White lady I did not know from Adam," Mr. Otis said. "She was leaking round her chimney she say and she call me to come give a estimate. But I misstepped somehow and fell right off her roof while I was walking about.

Only knocked the wind out as it happened, but Lordy, for a while there I thought I was a goner, laid there on the ground not able to catch my breath, and this lady she insist on driving me to the hospital. On the way, though, my breath come back to me and so I say, 'Mrs., let's not go after all, they'll only take my life savings to say I got nothing wrong with me,' so she say fine but then has to buy me a cup of coffee and some hash browns at McDonald's, which happen to lie next to a Toys R Us, so she axes would I mind if we run in afterwards and bought a little red wagon for her nephew whose birthday it was tomorrow?

And I say no and in fact she buy two, one for my niece's son Elbert also, and next to that is this gardening place-"

"Yes, that is Maggie, all right," Ira said.

"Not a straight-line kind of person."

"No indeedy," Ira said.

That seemed to use up all their topics of conversation. They fell silent and focused on Maggie, who was returning with a soft-drink can held at arm's length. "Darn thing just bubbled up all over me," she called cheerfully. "Ira? Want a sip?"

"No, thanks."

"Mr. Otis?"

"Oh, why, no, I don't believe I do, thanks anyhow."

She settled between them and tipped her head back for a long, noisy swig.

Ira started wishing for a game of solitaire. All this idleness was getting to him. Judging from the way those balloons were bobbing about, though, he guessed his cards might blow away, and so he tucked his hands in his armpits and slouched lower on the wall.

They sold balloons like that at Harborplace, or next to it. Lone, grim men stood on street corners with trees of Mylar lozenges floating overhead. He remembered how entranced his sister Junie had been when she first saw them. Poor Junie: in a way more seriously handicapped than Dorrie, even-more limited, more imprisoned. Her fears confounded them all, because nothing very dreadful had ever befallen her in the outside world, at least not so far as anyone knew. In the beginning they tried to point that out. They said useless things like: "What's the worst that could happen?" and "I'll be with you." Then gradually they stopped.

They gave up on her and let her stay where she was.

Except for Maggie, that is. Maggie was too obstinate to give up. And after years of failed attempts, one day she conceived the notion that Junie might be persuaded to go out if she could go in costume. She bought Junie a bright-red wig and a skin-tight dress covered with poppies and a pair of spike-heeled patent-leather shoes with ankle straps. She plastered Junie's face with heavy makeup. To everyone's astonishment, it worked. Giggling in a terrified, unhappy way, Junie allowed Maggie and Ira to lead her to the front stoop. The next day, slightly farther. Then finally to the end of the block. Never without Ira, though. She wouldn't do it with just Maggie; Maggie was not a blood relation. (Ira's father, in fact, wouldn't even call Maggie by name but referred to her as

"Madam." "Will Madam be coming too, Ira?"-a title that exactly reflected the mocking, skeptical attitude he had assumed toward her from the start.)

"You see what's at work here," Maggie said of Junie. "When she's in costume it's not she who's going out; it's someone else. Her real self is safe at home."

Evidently she was right. Clinging to Ira's arm with both hands, Junie walked to the pharmacy and requested a copy of Soap Opera Digest. She walked to the grocery store and placed an order for chicken livers in an imperious, brazen manner as if she were another kind of woman entirely-a flamboyant, maybe even trampish woman who didn't care what people thought of her. Then she collapsed into giggles again and asked Ira how she was doing. Well, Ira was pleased at her progress, of course, but after a while the whole thing got to be a nuisance. She wanted to venture this place and that, and always it was such a production-the preparations, the dress and the makeup, the assurances he was forced to offer. And those ridiculous heels hampered her so. She walked like someone navigating a freshly mopped floor. Really it would have been simpler if she'd gone on staying home, he reflected. But he was ashamed of himself for the thought.

Then she got this urge to visit Harborplace. She had watched on TV when Harborplace first opened and she had somehow come to the conclusion that it was one of the wonders of the world. So naturally, after she'd gained some confidence, nothing would do but that she must see it in person.

Only Ira didn't want to take her. To put it mildly, he was not a fan of Harborplace. He felt it was un-Baltimorean-in fact, a glorified shopping mall. And parking would be bound to cost an arm and a leg. Couldn't she settle for somewhere else? No, she couldn't, she said. Couldn't just Maggie take her, then? No, she needed Ira. He knew she needed him; how could he suggest otherwise? And then their father wanted to come too, and then Dome, who was so excited that she already had her "suitcase" (a Hutzler's coat box) packed for the occasion. Ira had to set his teeth and agree to it.

They scheduled the trip for a Sunday-Ira's only day off. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a misty, lukewarm morning, with showers predicted for afternoon. Ira suggested a postponement but no one would hear of it, not even Maggie, who had become as fired up as the others. So he drove them all downtown, where by some miracle he found a parking spot on the street, and they got out and started walking. It was so foggy that buildings just a Jew yards away were invisible. When they reached the corner of Pratt and Light streets and looked across to Harborplace they couldn't even see the pavilions; they were merely dense patches of gray.