Breathing Lessons Part 9

When she risked a sidelong glance she saw the humorous pleat at the corner of his mouth.

"Go ahead and laugh," she told him.

"I'm not laughing."

"Go ahead! Tell me I made a fool of myself."

"Do you hear me laughing?"

They had reached her block now. She could see her house up ahead, part of a string of row houses, the porch glowing orange beneath the bugproof light. This time when she stopped she looked directly into his face, and he returned the look without a hint of a smile, keeping his hands shoved in his pockets. She hadn't expected his eyes to be so narrow. He could have been Asian, rather than Indian.

"Your father must have split his sides," she said.

"No, he was just...he just asked me what it could mean."

She tried to think what words she had used in the letter. Special, she'd written. Oh, Lord. And worse yet: wonderful. She wished she could disappear. Special, she'd written. Oh, Lord. And worse yet: wonderful. She wished she could disappear.

"I remember you from choir practice," Ira said. "You're Josh's sister, right? But I guess we never really knew each other."

"No, of course not," she said. "Goodness! We were total strangers." She tried to sound brusque and sensible.

He studied her a moment. Then he said, "So do you think we might get to know each other now?"

"Well," she said, "I do go out with someone."

"Really? Who?"

"Boris Drumm," she said.

"Oh, yes."

She looked off toward her house. She said, "We'll probably get married."

"I see," he said.

"Well, goodbye," she told him.

He lifted a hand in silence, thought a moment, and then turned and walked away.

That Sunday, though, he came to sing with the choir at the morning service. Maggie felt relieved, almost lightweight with relief, as if she'd been given a second chance, and then her heart sank when he just melted into the crowd again after church. But Thursday night he was at choir practice again and he walked her home when it was over. They talked about trivial subjects-Mrs. Britt's splintery voice, for instance. Maggie grew more comfortable. When they reached her house she saw her neighbor's dog out front, peeing on Maggie's mother's one rosebush, with the neighbor standing there watching; so she called, "Hey, lady! Get your dog out of our yard, you hear?" She was joking; it was the rough style of humor she had picked up from her brothers. But Ira didn't know that and he looked taken aback. Then Mrs. Wright laughed and said, "You and who else going to make me, kid?" and Ira relaxed. But Maggie felt she'd been clumsy once again, and she murmured a hasty good night and went inside. kid?" and Ira relaxed. But Maggie felt she'd been clumsy once again, and she murmured a hasty good night and went inside.

Soon enough it became a pattern-Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. People started to notice. Maggie's mother said, "Maggie? Does Boris know about this new friends.h.i.+p of yours?" and Maggie snapped, "Of course he knows"-a lie, or at best a half-truth. (Maggie's mother thought Boris was G.o.d's gift to women.) But Serena said, "Good for you! High time you dumped Mr. Holier-than-Thou."

"I haven't dumped him!"

"Why not?" Serena asked. "When you compare him to Ira! Ira's so mysterious."

"Well, he is is part Indian, of course," Maggie said. part Indian, of course," Maggie said.

"And you have to admit he's attractive."

Oh, Jesse was not the only one who'd been swayed by a single friend! Certainly Serena had more than a little to do with all that happened afterward.

She asked Maggie and Ira to sing a duet at her wedding, for instance. Out of the blue (for Ira had never been thought to have a particularly striking voice), she took it into her head that they should sing "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" before the exchange of vows. So of course they had to practice; so of course he had to come to her house. They commiserated with each other and they clucked over Serena's musical taste, but it never occurred to them to refuse her. Maggie's mother kept tiptapping in and out with folded laundry that had no business in the living room. "'Once,'" they sang, "'on a high and windy hill,'" and then Maggie sputtered into laughter, but Ira remained sober. Maggie seemed to be turning into someone else, those days-someone giddy and unstable and accident-p.r.o.ne. Sometimes she imagined that that sympathy note had thrown her permanently off balance.

She knew by then that Ira ran his father's frame shop single-handed-Sam's "weak heart" had got to him the day after Ira's high-school graduation-and that he lived above the shop with his father and his two much older sisters, one of whom was a little slow and the other just shy or retiring or something. He wanted to go to college, though, if he could ever sc.r.a.pe together the money. He'd had hopes since childhood of becoming a doctor. He told her this in a neutral tone; he didn't seem discouraged about the way his life was turning out. Then he said maybe she'd like to come home with him sometime and meet his sisters; they didn't get to talk to very many people. But Maggie said, "No!" and then flushed and said, "Oh, I guess I'd better not," and pretended not to notice his amus.e.m.e.nt. She was afraid she'd run into his father. She wondered if his sisters knew about the letter too, but she didn't want to ask.

Never, not once in all this time, did he act any more than mildly friendly. When necessary he would take her arm-just to steer her through a crowd, say-and his hand felt firm and warm on her bare skin; but as soon as they'd pa.s.sed the crowd he would release her. She wasn't even sure what he thought of her. She wasn't sure what she thought of him, either. And after all, there was Boris to consider. She went on writing Boris regularly-if anything, a little more often than usual.

Serena's wedding rehearsal was a Friday evening. It wasn't a very formal rehearsal. Max's parents, for instance, didn't even bother attending, although Serena's mother showed up with her hair in a million pink rollers. And events happened out of order, with Maggie (standing in for the bride, for good luck) coming down the aisle ahead of all the musical selections because Max had a trainload of relatives to meet in half an hour. She walked alongside Anita, which was one of Serena's more peculiar innovations. "Who else could give me away?" Serena asked. "You surely don't imagine my father would do it." Anita herself, however, didn't seem so happy with this arrangement. She teetered and staggered in her spike-heeled shoes and dug her long red nails into Maggie's wrist in order to keep her balance. At the altar Max slung an arm around Maggie and said, shoot, maybe he'd just settle for her instead; and Serena, sitting in a center pew, called, "That'll be quite enough of that, Max Gill!" Max was the same freckled, friendly, overgrown boy he'd always been. It was hard for Maggie to picture him married. innovations. "Who else could give me away?" Serena asked. "You surely don't imagine my father would do it." Anita herself, however, didn't seem so happy with this arrangement. She teetered and staggered in her spike-heeled shoes and dug her long red nails into Maggie's wrist in order to keep her balance. At the altar Max slung an arm around Maggie and said, shoot, maybe he'd just settle for her instead; and Serena, sitting in a center pew, called, "That'll be quite enough of that, Max Gill!" Max was the same freckled, friendly, overgrown boy he'd always been. It was hard for Maggie to picture him married.

After the vows Max left for Penn Station and the rest of them practiced the music. They all performed in a fairly amateurish style, Maggie thought, which was fine with her because she and Ira didn't sound their best that night. They started off raggedly, and Maggie forgot that they had planned to split up the middle verse. She sailed right into the first two lines along with Ira, then stopped in confusion, then missed her own cue and fell into a fit of giggles. At that moment, the laughter not yet faded from her face, she saw Boris Drumm in the foremost pew. He wore a baffled, rumpled frown, as if someone had just awakened him.

Well, she'd known he was due home for the summer, but he hadn't told her which day. She pretended not to recognize him. She and Ira finished their song, and then she reverted to Serena's role and marched back up the aisle, minus Max, so Sugar could practice the timing on "Born to Be with You." After that Serena clapped her hands and shouted, "Okay, gang!" and they prepared to leave, all talking at once. They were thinking of going out for pizza. They swarmed toward Maggie, who waited at the rear of the church, but Boris stayed where he was, facing forward. He would be expecting Maggie to join him. She studied the back of his head, which was block-like and immobile. Serena handed her her purse and said, "You've got company, I see." Right behind Serena was Ira. He stopped in front of Maggie and looked down at her. He said, "Will you be going for pizza?" block-like and immobile. Serena handed her her purse and said, "You've got company, I see." Right behind Serena was Ira. He stopped in front of Maggie and looked down at her. He said, "Will you be going for pizza?"

Maggie said, "I guess not."

He nodded, blank-faced, and left. But he walked in a different direction from the others, as if he didn't feel they would welcome him without Maggie. Which of course was nonsense.

Maggie went back up the aisle and sat next to Boris, and they kissed. She said, "How was your trip?" and he said, "Who was that you were singing with?" at exactly the same instant. She pretended she hadn't heard. "How was your trip?" she asked again, and he said, "Wasn't that Ira Moran?"

"Who, the one singing?" she asked.

"That was Ira Moran! You told me he was dead!"

"It was a misunderstanding," she said.

"I heard you say it, Maggie."

"I mean I misunderstood that he was dead. He was only, um, wounded."

"Ah," Boris said. He turned that over in his mind.

"It was only a flesh wound, was all," Maggie told him. "A scalp wound." She wondered if the two terms contradicted each other. She riffled quickly through various movies she had seen.

"So then what? He just comes walking in one day?" Boris asked. "I mean he just pops up, like some kind of ghost? How did it happen, exactly?"

"Boris," Maggie said, "I fail to comprehend why you keep dwelling on this in such a tiresome fas.h.i.+on."

"Oh. Well. Sorry," Boris said.

(Had she really sounded so authoritative? She found it hard to imagine, looking back.) On the morning of the wedding, Maggie got up early and walked to Serena's apartment-the second floor of a formstone row house-to help her dress. Serena seemed unruffled but her mother was all in a dither. Anita's habit when she was nervous was to speak very fast and with practically no punctuation, like someone in a hard-sell commercial. "Why she won't roll her hair like everybody else when I told her way last week I said hon n.o.body wears long hair anymore you ought to go to the beauty shop and get you a nice little flip to peek out under your veil..." She was rus.h.i.+ng around the shabby, spa.r.s.ely equipped kitchen in a dirty pink satin bathrobe, with a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was making a great clatter but not much was getting accomplished. Serena, lazy and nonchalant in one of Max's big s.h.i.+rts, said, "Take it easy, Mom, will you?" She told Maggie, "Mom thinks we ought to change the whole ceremony."

"Change it how?" Maggie asked.

"She doesn't have any bridesmaids!" Anita said. "She doesn't have a maid of honor even and what's worse there's no kind of masculine person to walk her down the aisle!"

"She's upset she has to walk me down the aisle," Serena told Maggie.

"Oh if only your uncle Maynard would come and do it instead!" Anita cried. "Maybe we should move the wedding up a week and give him another chance because the way you have it now is all c.o.c.keyed it's too oddball I can just picture how those hoity-toity Gills will be scrupulizing me and smirking amongst themselves and besides that last perm I got scorched the tip-ends of my hair I I can't walk down the aisle." can't walk down the aisle."

"Let's go get me dressed," Serena told Maggie, and she led her away.

In Serena's room, which was really just half of Anita's room curtained off with a draggled aqua bed sheet, Serena sat down at her vanity table. She said, "I thought of giving her a belt of whiskey, but I worried it might backfire."

Maggie said, "Serena, are you sure you ought to be marrying Max?"

Serena squawked and wheeled to face her. She said, "Maggie Daley, don't you start with me! I've already got my wedding cake frosted."

"But I mean how do you know? How can you be certain you chose the right man?"

"I can be certain because I've come to the end of the line," Serena said, turning back to the mirror. Her voice was at normal level now. She patted on liquid foundation, expertly dotting her chin and forehead and cheeks. "It's just time time to marry, that's all," she said. "I'm so tired of dating! I'm so tired of keeping up a good front! I want to sit on the couch with a regular, normal husband and watch TV for a thousand years. It's going to be like getting out of a girdle; that's exactly how I picture it." to marry, that's all," she said. "I'm so tired of dating! I'm so tired of keeping up a good front! I want to sit on the couch with a regular, normal husband and watch TV for a thousand years. It's going to be like getting out of a girdle; that's exactly how I picture it."

"What are you saying?" Maggie asked. She was almost afraid of the answer. "Are you telling me you don't really love Max?"

"Of course I love him," Serena said. She blended the dots into her skin. "But I've loved other people as much. I loved Terry Simpson our soph.o.m.ore year-remember him? But it wasn't time to get married then, so Terry is not the one I'm marrying."

Maggie didn't know what to think. Did everybody feel that way? Had the grownups been spreading fairy tales? "The minute I saw Eleanor," her oldest brother had told her once, "I said, 'That girl is going to be my wife someday.'" It hadn't occurred to Maggie that he might simply have been ready for a wife, and therefore had his eye out for the likeliest prospect.

So there again, Serena had managed to color Maggie's view of things. "We're not in the hands of fate after all," she seemed to be saying. "Or if we are, we can wrest ourselves free anytime we care to."

Maggie sat down on the bed and watched Serena applying her rouge. In Max's s.h.i.+rt, Serena looked casual and sporty, like anybody's girl next door. "When this is over," she told Maggie, "I'm going to dye my wedding dress purple. Might as well get some use out of it."

Maggie gazed at her thoughtfully.

The wedding was due to start at eleven, but Anita wanted to get to the church much earlier, she said, in case of mishaps. Maggie rode with them in Anita's ancient Chevrolet. Serena drove because Anita said she was too nervous, and since Serena's skirt billowed over so much of the seat, Maggie and Anita sat in back. Anita was talking nonstop and sprinkling cigarette ashes across the lap of her s.h.i.+ny peach mother-of-the-bride dress. "Now that I think of it Serena I can't imagine why you're holding your reception in the Angels of Charity building which is so d.a.m.n far away and every time I've tried to find it I've gotten all turned around and had to ask directions from pa.s.sing strangers..."

They came to the Alluring Lingerie Shop, and Serena double-parked and heaved her cascades of satin out of the car in order to go model her dress for Mrs. Knowlton, her employer. While they waited for her, Anita said, "Honestly you'd suppose if you can rent a man to come tend your bar or fix your toilet or check on why your door won't lock it wouldn't be any problem at all to engage one for the five teensy minutes it takes to walk your daughter down the aisle don't you agree?"

"Yes, ma'am," Maggie said, and she dug absently into a hole in the vinyl seat and pulled out a wad of cotton batting.

"Sometimes I think she's trying to show me up," Anita said.

Maggie didn't know how to answer that.

Finally Serena returned to the car, bearing a wrapped gift. "Mrs. Knowlton told me not to open this till our wedding night," she said. Maggie blushed and slid her eyes toward Anita. Anita merely gazed out the window, sending two long streamers of smoke from her nostrils.

In the church, Reverend Connors led Serena and her mother to a side room. Maggie went to wait for the other singers. Mary Jean was already there, and soon Sissy arrived with her husband and her mother-in-law. No Ira, though. Well, there was plenty of time. Maggie took her long white choir robe from its hanger and slipped it over her head, losing herself in its folds, and then of course she emerged all tousled and had to go off to comb her hair. But even when she returned, Ira was not to be seen.

The first of the guests had arrived. Boris sat in one of the pews, uncomfortably close. He was listening to a lady in a spotted veil and he was nodding intelligently, respectfully, but Maggie felt there was something tense about the set of his head. She looked toward the entrance. Other people were straggling in now, her parents and the Wrights next door and Serena's old baton teacher. No sign of the long, dark shape that was Ira Moran.

After she had let him walk off alone the night before, he must have decided to vanish altogether.

"Excuse me," she said. She b.u.mped down the row of folding chairs and hurried through the vestibule. One of her full sleeves caught on the k.n.o.b of the open door and yanked her up short in a foolish way, but she shook herself loose before anybody noticed, she thought. She paused on the front steps. "Well, hi!" an old cla.s.smate said. "Um..." Maggie murmured, and she shaded her eyes and looked up and down the street. All she saw were more guests. She felt a moment's impatience with them; they seemed so frivolous. They were smiling and greeting each other in that gracious style they used only at church, and the women turned their toes out fastidiously as they walked, and their white gloves glinted in the sunlight. were more guests. She felt a moment's impatience with them; they seemed so frivolous. They were smiling and greeting each other in that gracious style they used only at church, and the women turned their toes out fastidiously as they walked, and their white gloves glinted in the sunlight.

In the doorway, Boris said, "Maggie?"

She didn't turn around. She ran down the steps with her robe flowing behind her. The steps were the wide, exceptionally shallow sort unsuited for any normal human stride; she was forced to adopt a limping, uneven rhythm. "Maggie!" Boris cried, so she had to run on after reaching the sidewalk. She shouldered her way between guests and then was past them, skimming down the street, ballooning white linen like a sailboat in a wind.

Sam's Frame Shop was only two blocks from the church, but they were long blocks and it was a warm June morning. She was damp and breathless when she arrived. She pulled open the plate-gla.s.s door and stepped into a close, cheerless interior with a worn linoleum floor. L-shaped samples of moldings hung from hooks on a yellowing pegboard wall, and the counter was painted a thick, cold gray. Behind this counter stood a bent old man in a visor, with shocks of white hair poking every which way. Ira's father.

She was surprised to find him there. The way she'd heard it, he never set foot in the shop anymore. She hesitated, and he said, "Can I help you, miss?"

She had always thought Ira had the darkest eyes she'd ever seen, but this man's eyes were darker. She couldn't even tell where they were focused; she had the fleeting notion that he might be blind.

"I was looking for Ira," she told him.

"Ira's not working today. He's got some kind of event."

"Yes, a wedding; he's singing at a wedding," she said. "But he hasn't shown up yet, so I came to get him."

"Oh?" Sam said. He moved his head closer to her, leading with his nose, not lessening in the least his impression of a blind man. "You wouldn't be Margaret, would you?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she said.

He thought that over. He gave an abrupt, wheezy chuckle.

"Margaret M. Daley," he said.

She stood her ground.

"So you a.s.sumed Ira was dead," he said.

"Is he here?" she asked.

"He's upstairs, dressing."

"Could you call him, please?"

"How did you suppose he'd died?" he asked her.

"I mistook him for someone else. Monty Rand," she said, mumbling the words. "Monty got killed in boot camp."

"Boot camp!"

"Could you call Ira for me, please?"

"You'd never find Ira in boot camp," Sam told her. "Ira's got dependents, just as much as if he was married. Not that he ever could be married in view of our situation. My heart has been acting up on me for years and one of his sisters is not quite right in the head. Why, I don't believe the army would have him even if he volunteered! Then me and the girls would have to go on welfare; we'd be a burden on the government. 'Get along with you,' those army folks would tell him. 'Go on back to them that need you. We've got no use for you here.'"

Maggie heard feet running down a set of stairs somewhere-a m.u.f.fled, drumming sound. A door opened in the pegboard wall behind the counter and Ira said, "Pop-"

He stopped and looked at her. He wore a dark, ill-fitting suit and a stiff white s.h.i.+rt, with a navy tie dangling unknotted from his collar.

"We'll be late for the wedding," she told him.

He shot back a cuff and checked his watch.

"Come on!" she said. It wasn't only the wedding she was thinking of. She felt there was something dangerous about staying around Ira's father.