Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons

"Maggie," Ira said, entering the kitchen, "what did you do to my answering machine?"

"Me? I didn't do anything."

"You most certainly did."

"I did not! I already told you about that little mishap last evening, but then I put a new message on."

He crooked his finger, beckoning her to the telephone. "Try it," he told her.

"What for?"

"Try dialing the shop."

She shrugged and came over to the phone. After she dialed, the phone at the other end rang three times. Something clicked.

"Well, here goes," Maggie's own voice said, faraway and tinny. "Let's see: Press Button A, wait for the red . . . oh, shoot."

Maggie blinked.

"I must be doing something wrong," her voice continued. Then, in the falsetto she often used when she was clowning around with her children:

"Who, me? Do something wrong? Little old perfect me? I'm shocked at the very suggestion!"

There was a ribbony shriek, like a tape on fast forward, followed by a beep. Maggie hung up. She said, "Well ... um ..."

"God knows what my customers thought," Ira told her.

"Maybe no one called," she said hopefully.

' 'I don't even know how you managed it! That machine is supposed to be foolproof."

"Well, it only goes to show: You can't trust the .simplest product nowadays," she told him. She lifted the receiver again and started dialing Jesse's number. While his telephone rang and tang, she twined the cord nervously between her fingers. She was conscious of Fiona watching them, seated at the table with her chin resting on her cupped hand.

"Who're you calling?" Ira asked.

She pretended not to hear.

"Who's she calling, Fiona?"

"Well, Jesse, I flunk," Fiona told him, "Did you forget his phone won't ring?"

Maggie looked up at him, "Oh" she said.

She replaced the receiver and then gazed at it regretfully.

"Oh, well," Fiona said, "maybe he's on his way. It's Saturday night, after all; how late does he work?"

"Not late at all," Ira told her.

"Where does he work, come to think of it?"

"Chick's Cycle Shop. He sells motorcycles."

"Wouldn't they be closed by now?"

"Of course they're closed. They close at five."

"Then why bother calling?"

"No, no, she was calling his apartment," Ira said.

Fiona said, "His-"

Maggie went back to the bowl of chicken. She stirred it around in the buttermilk. She took a flattened brown paper bag from one of the drawers and poured some flour into it., "Jesse has an apartment?" Fiona asked Ira.

"Why, yes."

Maggie measured in baking powder, salt, and pepper.

"An apartment away from here?"

"Up on Calvert Street."

Fiona thought that over.

Maggie said, "Here's something I always wanted to ask you, Fiona!" Her voice had somehow taken on that chirpy tone again. "Remember just a few months after you left?" she asked. "When Jesse phoned you and said you'd phoned him first and you said you hadn't? Well, had you, or hadn't you?

Was it you who phoned our house and I said, 'Fiona?' and you hung up?"

"Oh, goodness . . .'' Fiona said vaguely.

"I mean it had to be, or why else would the person hang up when I said your name?''

"I really don't recollect," Fiona said, and then she reached for her purse and rose. Walking in an airy, aimless way, as if she hardly noticed she was leaving, she wandered out of the kitchen, calling, "Leroy? Where'd you get to?"

"See there?" Maggie told Ira.

"Hmm?"

"It was her. I knew it all along."

"She didn't say it was."

"Oh, Ira, you are so obtuse sometimes," she said.

She closed the brown paper bag and shook it, mixing the seasonings. You can't have things both ways, she should have told Fiona. You can't laugh at him for staying the same and also object when he changes. Why, of course he had moved! Did Fiona imagine he had sat here waiting for her all these years?

And yet Maggie knew how she felt, somehow. You have this picture of a person; you have him tucked away in your mind in this certain fixed position.

She looked again at the band photo on the table. They had all been so enthusiastic once, she thought. So much energy had been invested. She remembered those early rehearsals in Lorimer's parents' garage, and the months and months when they'd been thrilled to perform for free, even, and the night that Jesse had come home triumphantly waving a ten-dollar bill-his share of their first paycheck.

"Is that Daisy?" Ira asked.

"What?"

"I thought I heard the front door."

"Oh!" Maggie said. "Maybe it's Jesse."

"Don't count on it," he told her.

But only Jesse would sling the door back against the bookcase that way.

Maggie dusted off her hands. "Jesse?" she called.

"Here I am."

She hurried out to the hall, and Ira followed more slowly. Jesse stood just inside the door. He was looking toward the living room, where Leroy was poised like some startled small animal with her hands pressed together in front of her and one foot drawn up behind her. Jesse said, "Well, hi."

"Hi," Leroy said, "How're you doing?"

"I'm okay."

He looked over at Maggie. Maggie said, "Hasn't she grown?"

His long black eyes returned to Leroy.

Now Maggie moved toward him, willing him further into the house. (He always seemed on the verge of leaving.) She took his arm and said, "I'm frying up some chicken; it'll be a few more minutes. You two can sit hi here and get acquainted."

But he had never been easily led. He was wearing a knitted jersey, and beneath the thin cloth she felt his resistance-the steely muscle above his elbow. His boots remained rooted to the floor. He was going to take his own sweet time at this.

"So what're you listening to?" he asked Leroy.

"Oh, just some record."

"You a Dead fan?"

"Dead? Urn, sure."

"You want some better album, then," he said. "This one here is too popular with the masses."

"Oh, yeah, well," she said. "I was just thinking that myself."

He glanced at Maggie again. He was holding his face in a way that caused his chin to lengthen, just as Ira always did when he was trying to keep back a smile.

"She's athletic too," Maggie told him. "Brought along her baseball glove."

"That so?" he asked Leroy.

She nodded. The toe of her raised foot pointed daintily dawnward-ballet style.

Then something clattered upstairs and Fiona called, "Maggie, where-?"

She arrived on the landing. They all looked at her.

"Oh," she said.

And she began to descend the stairs very smoothly and quietly, with one hand trailing along: the banister. The only sound was the slapping of her sandals against her bare heels.

Jesse said, "Good to see you, Fiona."

She reached the hall and looked up at him. "It's good to see you too," she said.

"Done something new to your hair, haven't you?"

She lifted a hand, with her eyes still on his face, and touched the ends of her hair. "Oh! Maybe so," she told him.

Maggie said, "Well, I guess I'd better get back to-"

And Ira said, "Need help in the kitchen, Maggie?"

"Yes, please!" she sang out happily.

Fiona told Jesse, "I was just upstairs hunting my soapbox."

Maggie -hesitated.

"Soapbox?" Jesse asked.

"I tried your bureau drawer, but it's empty. All I found was mothballs.

Did you take my soapbox with you when you moved to your apartment?"

"What soapbox are you talking about?"

"My tortoiseshell soapbox! The one you kept."

Jesse looked over at Maggie. Maggie said, "You remember -her soapbox.'

"Well, no, I can't say as I do," Jesse said, and lie grabbed hold of his forelock die way he always did when he was puzzled.

"?ba kept it after she left," Maggie told him. "I saw you with it. There was a bar of soap inside, remember? That dear kind of soap you can see through."