Breathing Lessons

  “He’s too soft,” she’d said, and they had repeated the word and passed it among themselves for consideration. “Soft,” they’d murmured tentatively.

  He was too pliant, she meant; too supplicating. She failed to see the appeal. For if Serena had made her resolutions about who not to be, why, so had Maggie; and in order not to be her mother, she planned to avoid any man remotely like her father—the person she loved best in the world. No one mild and clumsy for Maggie, thank you; no one bumbling and well-meaning and sentimental, who would force her to play the heavy. You’d never find her sitting icily erect while her husband, flushed with merriment, sang nonsense songs at the dinner table.

  So Maggie had refused Durwood Clegg and had watched with no regrets as he went on to date Lu Beth Parsons instead. She could see Lu Beth as clear as day this very minute, clearer than Peg, whom he’d ended up marrying. She could see Durwood’s khaki trousers with the Ivy League buckle in back buckled up (“attached,” that signified; “going steady”) and his button-down shirt and natty brown loafers decorated with bobbing leather acorns. But of course this morning he was wearing a suit—baggy and unfashionable, inexpensive, husbandly. For a moment he shifted back and forth like those trick portraits that change expression according to where you’re standing: the old lady-killer Durwood meaningfully lingering on darling, you’re all that I’m living for, with his eyebrows quirked, but then the present-day, shabby Durwood searching for the next stanza on Maggie’s shampoo coupon, which he held at arm’s length, with his forehead wrinkled, as he tried to make out the words.

  The blond children in front were tittering. They probably found this whole event hilarious. Maggie had an urge to slam the nearest one flat over the head with a hymnbook.

  When Durwood finished singing, someone mistakenly clapped—just two sharp explosions—and Durwood nodded in a grimly relieved way and returned to his seat. He settled next to Maggie with a sigh. His face was filmed with sweat and he fanned himself with the coupon. Would it seem mercenary if she asked for it back? Twenty-five cents off, at double-coupon rates …

  Jo Ann Dermott stepped up to the pulpit with a small book covered in tooled leather. She had been a gawky girl, but middle age had filled out her corners or something. Now she was willowy and attractive in a fluid, pastel dress and subtle makeup. “At Max’s and Serena’s wedding,” she announced, “I read Kahlil Gibran on marriage. Today, at this sadder occasion, I’ll read what he says about death.”

  At the wedding, she had pronounced Gibran with a hard G. Today the G was soft. Maggie had no idea which was correct.

  Jo Ann started reading in a level, teacher-like voice, and immediately Maggie was overcome by nervousness. It took her a moment to realize why: She and Ira were next on the program. Just the cadence of The Prophet had reminded her.

  At the wedding they’d sat on folding chairs behind the altar, and Jo Ann had sat in front of the altar with Reverend Connors. When Jo Ann began reading, Maggie had felt that breathless flutter high in her chest that foretold stage fright. She had taken a deep, trembly breath, and then Ira had unobtrusively set a hand at the small of her back. That had steadied her. When it was time for them to sing, they had begun at the same split second, on exactly the same note, as if they were meant for each other. Or so Maggie had viewed it at the time.

  Jo Ann closed her book and returned to her pew. Sissy flipped pages of sheet music, the puffed flesh swinging from her valentine elbows. She flounced a bit on the bench, and then she played the opening bars of “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.”

  Maybe if Maggie and Ira stayed seated, Sissy would just go on playing. She would cover for them as she had covered for the chorus.

  But the piano notes died away and Sissy glanced back toward the congregation. Her hands remained on the keys. Serena turned too and, knowing exactly where to find Maggie, gave her a fond, expectant look in which there was not the slightest suspicion that Maggie would let her down.

  Maggie stood up. Ira just sat there. He might be anyone—a total stranger, someone who merely happened to have chosen the same pew.

  So Maggie, who had never sung a solo in her life, clutched the seat ahead of her and called out, “ ‘Love!’ ”

  A bit squeakily.

  The piano sailed into it. The blond children pivoted and stared up into her face.

  “ ‘… is a many splendored thing,’ ” she quavered.

  She felt like an orphaned, abandoned child, with her back held very straight and her round-toed pumps set resolutely together.

  Then there was a stirring at her side, not her right side, where Ira sat, but her left, where Durwood sat. Durwood hastily unfolded himself as if all at once reminded of something. “ ‘It’s the April rose,’ ” he sang, “ ‘that only grows …’ ” This near, his voice had a resonant sound. She thought of sheets of vibrating metal.

  “ ‘Love is Nature’s way of giving …’ ” they sang together.

  They knew all the words straight through, which Maggie found surprising, because earlier she had forgotten what it was that makes a man a king. “ ‘It’s the golden crown,’ ” she sang confidently. You had to sort of step forth, she decided, and trust that the words would follow. Durwood carried the melody and Maggie went along with it, less quavery now although she could have used a little more volume. It was true that her voice had once been compared to a bell. She had sung in the choir for years, at least till the children came along and things got complicated; and she had taken real joy in rounding out a note just right, like a pearl or a piece of fruit that hung in the air a moment before it fell away. Though age had certainly not helped. Did anyone else hear the thread of a crack running through her high notes? Hard to tell; the congregation faced decorously forward, except for those confounded little blonds.

  She thought time had gone into one of its long, slow, taffy-like stretches. She was acutely conscious of each detail of her surroundings. She felt the fabric of Durwood’s sleeve just brushing her arm, and she heard Ira absent-mindedly twanging a rubber band. She saw how accepting and uninterested her audience was, taking it for granted that this song would of course be sung and then some other song after that. “ ‘Then your fingers touched my silent heart,’ ” she sang, and she remembered how she and Serena had giggled over that line when they sang it themselves—oh, long before that fateful Harvest Home Ball—because where else was your heart but in your chest? Weren’t they saying the lover had touched their chests? Serena was facing the pulpit but her head had a listening stillness to it. Her tail of hair was gathered into one of those elastic arrangements secured by two red plastic marbles, the kind of thing very young girls wore. Like a very young girl, she had summoned all her high-school friends around her—no one from a later time, no one from the dozen small towns Max had lugged her to during their marriage, for they hadn’t stayed in any of those places long enough. Maggie decided that that was the saddest thing about this whole event.

  The song came to an end. Maggie and Durwood sat down.

  Sissy Parton moved directly into “Friendly Persuasion,” but the Barley twins, who used to harmonize as closely as the Lennon Sisters, stayed seated. Serena seemed resigned by now; she didn’t even give them a look. Sissy played just one stanza, and then the minister rose and said, “We are gathered here today to mourn a grievous loss.”

  Maggie felt she had turned to liquid. She was so exhausted that her knees were shaking.

  The minister had a lot to say about Max’s work for the Furnace Fund. He didn’t seem to know him personally, however. Or maybe that was all Max had amounted to, in the end: a walking business suit, a firm handshake. Maggie switched her attention to Ira. She wondered how he could sit there, so impervious. He’d have let her slog through that entire song alone; she knew that. She could have stumbled and stuttered and broken down; he would have watched as coolly as if she had nothing to do with him. Why not? he would say. What obligated him to sing some corny fifties song at a semi-stranger’s funeral? As usual, he??
?d be right. As usual, he’d be forcing Maggie to do the giving in.

  She made up her mind that when the funeral was over, she would stride off in her own direction. She would certainly not drive back with him to Baltimore. Maybe she’d hitch a ride with Durwood. Gratitude rushed over her at the thought of Durwood’s kindness. Not many people would have done what he had done. He was a gentle, sympathetic, softhearted man, as she should have realized from the start.

  Why, if she had accepted that date with Durwood she’d be a whole different person now. It was all a matter of comparison. Compared to Ira she looked silly and emotional; anybody would have. Compared to Ira she talked too much and laughed too much and cried too much. Even ate too much! Drank too much! Behaved so sloppily and mawkishly!

  She’d been so intent on not turning into her mother, she had gone and turned into her father.

  The minister sat down with an audible groan. There was a rustle of linen a few pews back and then here came Sugar Tilghman, bearing her black straw hat as smoothly as a loaded tray. She tip-tapped up front to Sissy and bent over her, conferring. They murmured together. Then Sugar straightened and took a stance beside the piano with her hands held just the way their choir leader used to insist—loosely clasped at waist level, no higher—and Sissy played a bar of music that Maggie couldn’t immediately name. An usher approached Serena and she rose and accepted his arm and let him escort her down the aisle, eyes lowered.

  Sugar sang, “ ‘When I was just a little girl …’ ”

  Another usher crooked his arm toward Serena’s daughter, and one by one the family members filed out. Up front, Sugar gathered heart and swung gustily into the chorus:

  Que sera sera,

  Whatever will be will be.

  The future’s not ours to see,

  Que sera sera.

  Chapter 3

  When they stepped out of the church it was like stepping out of a daytime movie—that sudden shock of sunshine and birdsong and ordinary life that had been going on without them. Serena was hugging Linda. Linda’s husband stood awkwardly by with the children, looking like a visitor who hoped to be invited in. And all around the churchyard, members of the class of ’56 were recognizing each other. “Is that you?” they asked. And, “How long has it been?” And, “Can you believe this?” The Barley twins told Maggie she hadn’t changed a bit. Jo Ann Dermott announced that everyone had changed, but only for the better. Wasn’t it odd, she said, how much younger they were than their parents had been at the very same age. Then Sugar Tilghman appeared in the doorway and asked the crowd at large what other song she possibly could have sung. “I mean I know it wasn’t perfect,” she said, “but look what I had to choose from! Was it just too absolutely inappropriate?”

  They all swore it wasn’t.

  Maggie said, “Durwood, I owe you the world for coming to my rescue.”

  “My pleasure,” he told her. “Here’s your coupon, by the way. None the worse for wear.”

  This wasn’t quite true; it was limp around the edges and slightly damp. Maggie dropped it into her purse.

  Ira stood near the parking lot with Nat Abrams. He and Nat had been a couple of classes ahead of the others; they were the outsiders. Not that Ira seemed to mind. He looked perfectly at ease, in fact. He was discussing auto routes. Maggie overheard snatches of “Triple A” and “Highway Ten.” You would think the man was obsessed.

  “Funny little place, isn’t it?” Durwood said, gazing around him.

  “Funny?”

  “You couldn’t even call it a town.”

  “Well, it is kind of small,” Maggie said.

  “I wonder if Serena will be staying on here.”

  They both looked over at Serena, who seemed to be trying to put her daughter back together. Linda’s face was streaming with tears, and Serena had set her at a distance and was patting down various parts of her clothes. “Doesn’t she still have relatives in Baltimore?” Durwood asked.

  “None that claim her,” Maggie said.

  “I thought she had that mother.”

  “Her mother died a few years ago.”

  “Aw, really?” Durwood said.

  “She got one of those diseases, some muscular something.”

  “Us boys were all just, like, fixated on her, once upon a time,” Durwood said.

  This startled Maggie, but before she could comment she saw Serena heading toward them. She had her shawl clasped tightly around her. “I want to thank you both for singing,” she said. “It meant a lot to me.”

  “That Ira is just so stubborn I could spit,” Maggie said, and Durwood said, “Beautiful service, Serena.”

  “Oh, be honest, you thought it was crazy,” Serena said. “But you were nice to humor me. Everyone’s been so nice!” Her lips took on a blurred look. She drew a knot of Kleenex from her V neckline and pressed it first to one eye and then to the other. “Sorry,” she said. “I keep changing moods. I feel like, I don’t know, a TV screen in a windstorm. I’m so changeable.”

  “Most natural thing in the world,” Durwood assured her.

  Serena blew her nose and then tucked the Kleenex away again. “Anyhow,” she said. “A neighbor’s setting out some refreshments back at the house. Can you all come? I need to have people around me right now.”

  “Well, certainly,” Maggie told her, and Durwood said, “Wouldn’t miss it, Serena,” both at the same time. “Just let me get my car,” Durwood said.

  “Oh, never mind that; we’re all walking. It’s just over there through the trees, and anyway there’s not a lot of parking space.”

  She took Maggie’s elbow, leaning slightly. “It did go well, didn’t it?” she said. She steered her toward the road, while Durwood dropped behind with Sugar Tilghman. “I’m so glad I had the idea. Reverend Orbison threw a fit, but I said, ‘Isn’t this for me? Isn’t a memorial service meant to comfort the living?’ So he said yes, he guessed it was. And that’s not the end of it, either! Wait till you see the surprise I’ve got up at the house.”

  “Surprise? What kind?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m not telling,” Serena said.

  Maggie started chewing her lower lip.

  They turned onto a smaller street, keeping to the shoulder because there wasn’t a sidewalk. The houses here had a distinctly Pennsylvanian air, Maggie thought. They were mostly tall stone rectangles, flat-faced, set close to the road, with a meager supply of narrow windows. She imagined spare wooden furniture inside, no cushions or frills or modern conveniences, which of course was silly because a television antenna was strapped to every chimney.

  The other guests were following in a leisurely parade—the women tiptoeing through the gravel in their high heels, the men strolling with their hands in their pockets. Ira brought up the rear between Nat and Jo Ann. He gave no sign of minding this change in plans; or if he had at some earlier point, Maggie had luckily missed it.

  “Durwood was wondering if you’d be staying on here,” she told Serena. “Any chance you might move back to Baltimore?”

  “Oh,” Serena said, “Baltimore seems so far away by now. Who would I know anymore?”

  “Me and Ira, for one thing,” Maggie said. “Durwood Clegg. The Barley twins.”

  The Barley twins were walking just behind them, clinging to each other’s arms. Both wore clip-on sunglasses over their regular glasses.

  “Linda has been after me to move to New Jersey,” Serena said. “Get an apartment close to her and Jeff.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure,” Serena said. “Seems anytime we spend a few days together I begin to realize we haven’t got a thing in common.”

  “But if you lived close by you wouldn’t be spending days together,” Maggie said. “You’d be dropping in and out. You’d be leaving when the conversation ran down. And besides, you’d see more of your grandchildren.”

  “Oh, well, grandchildren. I’ve never felt they had all that much to do with me.”

  “Yo
u wouldn’t say that if someone kept them away from you,” Maggie told her.

  “How’s your grandchild, Maggie?”

  “I have no idea,” Maggie said. “Nobody tells me a thing. And Fiona’s getting married again; I found that out purely by accident.”

  “Is that so! Well, it’ll be good for Larue to have a man around.”

  “Leroy,” Maggie said. “But see, Fiona’s true love is still Jesse. She’s said as much, in so many words. There’s just something gone wrong between them temporarily. It would be a terrible mistake for her to marry someone else! And then poor little Leroy … oh, I hate to think of all that child has been through. Living in that run-down house, secondhand smoking—”

  “Smoking! A six-year-old?”

  “Seven-year-old. But it’s her grandmother who smokes.”

  “Well, then,” Serena said.

  “But it’s Leroy’s lungs getting coated with tar.”

  “Oh, Maggie, let her go,” Serena said. “Let it all go! That’s what I say. I was watching Linda’s boys this morning, climbing our back fence, and first I thought, Oh-oh, better call them in; they’re bound to rip those sissy little suits, and then I thought, Nah, forget it. It’s not my affair, I thought. Let them go.”

  “But I don’t want to let go,” Maggie said. “What kind of talk is that?”

  “You don’t have any choice,” Serena told her. She stepped over a branch that lay across their path. “That’s what it comes down to in the end, willy-nilly: just pruning and disposing. Why, you’ve been doing that all along, right? You start shucking off your children from the day you give birth; that’s the whole point. A big, big moment is when you can look at them and say, ‘Now if I died they could get along without me. I’m free to die,’ you say. ‘What a relief!’ Discard, discard! Throw out the toys in the basement. Move to a smaller house. Menopause delighted me.”