Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

"This kid is wearing me out," Fiona said when Maggie got back. Leroy evidently didn't want to be carried and she kept straining toward the ground, which was littered with beer-can tabs and cigarette butts.

Dorrie, who was supposed to be helping, had opened her coat box instead and was laying an orderly row of marshmallows from one end of the bleacher to the other. Maggie said, "Here, I'll take her, poor lamb," and she bore Leroy off to the railing to admire the horses, which were just assembling at the starting gate with skittery, mincing steps. "What do horses say?" Maggie asked. "Nicker-nicker-nicker!" she supplied. Ira and his father returned, still arguing. Their subject now was the sheet of racing tips that Mr. Moran had purchased from a man with no teeth. "Which ones did you vote for?" Maggie asked them.

"You don't vote, Maggie," Ira told her. The horses took off, looking somehow quaint and toylike. They galloped past with a sound that reminded her of a flag ruffling in the wind. Then, just like that, the race was finished. "So soon!" Maggie lamented. She never could get over how quickly it all happened; there was hardly anything to watch. "Really baseball gives a better sense of time," she told the baby.

The results lit up the electric billboard: Number Four was nowhere to be seen. That struck Maggie as a relief, in a way. She wouldn't need to make any more choices. In fact, the only person who came out ahead was Mr. Moran. He had won six dollars on Number Eight, a horse his tip sheet had recommended. "See there?" he asked Ira.

Daisy hadn't bet at all; she was saving for a race she felt surer of.

Maggie gave the baby to Daisy and started unpacking their lunch. "There's ham on rye, turkey on white, roast beef on whole wheat," she announced.

"There's chicken salad, deviled eggs, potato salad, and coleslaw.

Peaches, fresh strawberries, and melon balls. Don't forget to save room for the birthday cake." The people nearby were munching on junk food bought right there at the track. They stared curiously at the hampers, each one of which Daisy lined with a starched checkered cloth tucked into little pleats around the edges. Maggie passed out napkins. " Where's Jesse?" she asked, searching the crowd.

"I have no idea," Fiona said. Somehow, she had ended up with Leroy again.

She jiggled her sharply against her shoulder, while Leroy screwed up her face and made fussing noises. Well, Maggie could have predicted as much.

You don't use such a rapid rhythm with a baby; shouldn't Fiona have learned that by now? Wouldn't simple instinct have informed her? Maggie felt an edgy little poke of irritation in the small of her back. To be fair, it wasn't Fiona who annoyed her so much as the fussing-Leroy's jagged "eh, eh." If Maggie weren't loading paper plates she could have taken over herself, but as it was, all she could do was make suggestions.

"Try putting her in the stroller, Fiona. Maybe she'll fall asleep."

"She won't fall asleep; she'll just climb out again," Fiona said. "Oh, where is Jesse?"

"Daisy, go look for your brother," Maggie commanded.

"I can't; I'm eating."

"Go anyway. For goodness' sake, I can't do everything."

"Is it my fault he went off with his dumb friends somewhere?" Daisy asked. "I just got started on my sandwich."

"Now listen, young lady . . . Ira?"

But Ira and his father had left again for the betting windows. Maggie said, "Oh for-Dorrie, could you please go and hunt Jesse for me?''

"Well, but I am dealing out these here marshmallows," Dorrie said.

The marshmallows traveled in a perfect, unbroken row the length of their bleacher, like a dotted line. As a result, none of them could sit down.

People kept pausing at the far end, meaning to take a seat, but then they saw the marshmallows and moved on. Maggie sighed. Behind her back, a bugle call floated on the clear, still air, but Maggie, facing the bleachers, went on searching the crowd for Jesse. Then Junie nudged a few of Dome's marsh-mallows out of line and sat down very suddenly, clutching her parasol with both hands. "Maggie," she murmured, "I am feeling just so, I don't know, all at once. ..."

"Take a deep breath," Maggie said briskly. This happened, from time to time. "Remind yourself you're here as someone else."

"I believe I'm going to faint," Junie said, and without warning she swung her spike-heeled sandals up and lay down flat upon the bleacher. The parasol remained in both her hands, rising from her chest as if planted there. Dorrie rushed distractedly around her, trying to retrieve as many marshmallows as possible.

"Daisy, is that your brother up there with those people?" Maggie asked.

Daisy said, "Where?" but Fiona was quicker. She wheeled and said, "It most certainly is." Then she shrieked, "Jesse Moran! You get your ass on down here!"

Her voice was that stringy, piercing kind. Everybody stared. Maggie said, "Oh, well, I wouldn't-"

"Your hear me?" Fiona shrieked, and Leroy started crying in earnest.

"There's no need to shout, Fiona," Maggie said.

Fiona said, "What?"

She glared at Maggie, ignoring the squalling baby. It was one of those moments when Maggie just wanted to back up and start over. (She had always felt paralyzed in the presence of an angry woman.) Meanwhile Jesse, who couldn't have missed hearing his name, began to thread his way toward them. Maggie said, "Oh, here he comes!"

"You're telling me not to shout at my own husband?" Fiona asked.

She was shouting even now. She had to, over the cries of the baby.

Leroy's face was red, and spikes of damp hair were plastered to her forehead. She looked sort of homely, to be frank. Maggie felt an urge to walk off from this group, pretend they had nothing to do with her; but instead she made her voice go light and she said, "No, I only meant he wasn't that far from us, you see-"

"You meant nothing of the sort," Fiona said, squeezing the baby too tightly. "You're trying to run us, just like always; trying to run our lives."

"No, really, Fiona-"

"What's up?" Jesse asked breezily, arriving among them.

"Ma and Fiona are having a fight," Daisy said. She took a dainty nibble from her sandwich.

"We are not!" Maggie cried. "I merely suggested-"

"A fight?" Ira said. "What?"

He and Mr. Moran were all at once standing in the aisle behind Jesse.

"What's going on here?" he asked above Leroy's cries.

Maggie told him, "Nothing's going on! For Lord's sake, all I said was-"

"Can't you folks be left to your own devices for even a minute?" Ira asked. "And why is Junie lying down like that? How do these things happen so fast."

Unfair, unfair. To hear him talk, you would think they had such scenes every day. You would think that Ira himself was in line for the Nobel Peace Prize. "For your information," Maggie told him, "I was just standing here minding my own business-"

"You have never once in all the time I've known you managed to mind your own business," Fiona said.

"Now cool it, Fiona," Jesse said.

"And you!" Fiona screeched, turning on him. "You think this baby is just mine? How come I always get stuck with her while you go off with your buddies, answer me that!"

"Those weren't my buddies; they were only-"

"He was drinking with them too," Daisy murmured, with her eyes on her sandwich.

"Well, big deal," Jesse told her.

"Drinking from this silver flat kind of bottle that belonged to that girl."

"So what if I was, Miss Goody-Goody?"

"Now listen," Ira said. "Let's just all sit down a minute and get a hold of ourselves. We're blocking people's view."

He sat, setting an example. Then he looked behind him.

"My marshmallows!" Dorrie squawked.

"You can't leave your marshmallows here, Dorrie. No one has room to sit."

"You messed up my marshmallows!"