Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

"I believe I'm going to be ill," Junie said, speaking upward into the spokes of her parasol.

Leroy's crying had reached the stage where she had to fight for each breath.

Ira stood up again, dusting off the seat of his pants. He said, "Now listen, folks-"

"Will you stop calling us/o/fa?" Fiona demanded.

Ira halted, looking startled.

Maggie felt a tug on her sleeve and turned. It was Mr. Moran, who had at some point worked around behind her. He held up a ticket. "What?" she asked.

"I won."

"Won what?"

"I won that last race! My horse came in first."

"Oh, the race," she said. "Well, isn't that ..."

But her attention veered toward Fiona, who was reeling off a list of wrongs that she seemed to have been saving up for Jesse all these months.

"... knew from the start I'd be a fool to marry you; didn't I say so? But you were so gung-ho, you and your pacifiers and your Dr. Spock . . ."

The people in the bleachers behind them were gazing pointedly in different directions, but they sent each other meaningful glances and small, secret smiles. The Morans had turned into spectacles. Maggie couldn't bear it. She said, "Please! Can't we just sit down?"

"You and your famous cradle," Fiona told Jesse, "that you didn't build one stick of after you promised, you swore to me-"

"I never swore to you! Where do you keep coming up with this cradle business from?"

"You swore on the Bible," Fiona told him.

"Well, good God Almighty! I mean, maybe it crossed my mind once to build one, but I'd have had to be crazy to go through with it, I can see it now: Dad standing there criticizing every little hammer blow, letting me know what a hopeless clod I am, and you'd be agreeing with him just like always, I bet, by the time I was finished. No way would I let myself in for that!"

"Well, you bought the wood, didn't you?"

"What wood?"

"You bought those long wooden rods."

"Rods? For a cradle? I never bought any rods."

"You mother told me-"

"How would I use rods to build a cradle?"

"Spindles, she told me."

They both looked at Maggie. Coincidentally, the baby paused just then for a deep, hiccuping breath. A bass voice rumbled over the loudspeaker, announcing that Misappropriation had been scratched.

Ira cleared his throat and said, "Are you talking about doweling rods?

Those were mine."

"Ira, no," Maggie wailed, because there was still a chance they could smooth things over, if only he wouldn't insist on spelling out every boring little fact. "They were the spindles for your cradle," she told Jesse. "You already had the blueprints. Right?"

"What blueprints? All I said was-"

"If I remember correctly," Ira interrupted in his stuffy way, "those rods were purchased for the drying rack I built on the back porch. You've all seen that drying rack."

"Drying rack," Fiona said. She continued looking at Maggie.

"Oh, well," Maggie said, "this cradle business is so silly, isn't it? I mean, it's like the dime-store necklace that relatives start quarreling over after the funeral. It's just a ... And besides, Leroy couldn't even use a cradle anymore! She's got that nice crib Ira bought."

Leroy remained quiet, still hiccuping, gazing at Maggie intently.

"I married you for that cradle," Fiona told Jesse.

"Well, that's plain ridiculous!" Maggie said. "For a cradle! I never heard such a-"

"Maggie, enough," Ira said.

She stopped, with her mouth open.

"If you married Jesse for a cradle," Ira told Fiona, "you were sadly mistaken."

"Oh, Ira!" Maggie cried.

"Shut up, Maggie. She had no business telling you that," Ira said to Fiona. "It's Maggie's weakness: She believes it's all right to alter people's lives. She thinks the people she loves are better than they really are, and so then she starts changing things around to suit her view of them."

"That's not one bit true," Maggie said.

"But the fact is," Ira told Fiona calmly, "Jesse is not capable of following through with anything, not even a simple cradle. He's got some lack; I know he's my son, but he's got some lack, and you might as well face up to it. He's not a persevering kind of person. He lost that job of his a month ago and he hangs out every day with his pals instead of looking for work.''

Maggie and Fiona, together, said, "What?"

"They found out he wasn't a high school graduate," Ira told them. And then, as an afterthought: "He's seeing another girl too."

Jesse said, "What are you talking about? That girl is just a friend."

"I don't know her name," Ira said, "but she belongs to a rock group called Babies in Trouble."

"We're just good friends, I tell you! That girl is Dave's girl!"

Fiona seemed to be made of china. Her face was dead white and still; her pupils were black pinpoints.

"If you knew this all along," Maggie demanded of Ira, "why didn't you say something?"

"I didn't feel right about it. I for one don't hold with changing people's worlds around," Ira said. And then (just as Maggie was getting ready to hate him) his face sagged and he dropped wearily onto the bleacher. "I shouldn't have done it now, either," he said.

He had dislodged a whole section of marshmallows, but Dorrie, who could be sensitive to atmospheres, merely bent in silence to collect them.

Fiona held out her palm. "Give me the keys," she told Jesse.

"Huh?"

"The keys to the van. Hand them over."

"Where are you going?" Jesse asked her.

"I don't know! How would I know? I just have to get out of here."

"Fiona, I only ever talked to that girl because she didn't think I was some kind of clod like everyone else seems to do. You've got to believe me, Fiona."

"The keys," Fiona said.

Ira said, "Let her have them, Jesse."

"But-"

"We'll take a bus."

. Jesse reached into the rear pocket of his jeans. He brought out a cluster of keys attached to a miniature black rubber gym shoe. "So will you be at the house? Or what," he said.

"I have no idea," Fiona told him, and she snapped the keys out of his grasp.

"Well, where will you be? At your sister's?"

"Anywhere. None of your business. / don't know where. I just want to get on with my life," she said.

And she hoisted the baby higher on her hip and stalked off, leaving behind the diaper bag and the stroller and her paper plate of lunch with the potato salad turning a pathetic shade of ivory.

"She'll come around," Maggie told Jesse. Then she said, "I will never forgive you for this, Ira Moran."

She felt another tug on her sleeve and she turned. Ira's father was still holding up his ticket. ' 'I was right to buy that tip sheet," he said.

"What does Ira know about tip sheets?"

"Nothing," Maggie said furiously, and she started re-wrapping Fiona's sandwich.

All around her she heard murmuring, like ripples widening across a pond:

"What'd he say?"

"Tip sheet."

"What'd she say?"

"Nothing."

"She did say something, I saw her lips move."

"She said, 'Nothing.' "

"But I thought I saw-"

Maggie straightened and faced the rows of people on the bleachers. "I said, 'Nothing,' is what I said," she called out clearly.

Somebody sucked in a breath. They all looked elsewhere.

It was amazing, Ira often said, how people fooled themselves into believing what they wanted to. (How Maggie fooled herself, he meant.) He said it when Maggie threatened to sue the Police Department that time they charged Jesse with Drunk and Disorderly. He said it when she swore that Spin the Cat sounded better than the Beatles. And he said it again when she refused to accept that Fiona was gone for good.

That evening after the races Maggie sat up late with Jesse, pretending to be knitting although she ripped out as much as she added. Jesse drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Can't you sit still for once?"