Breathing Lessons (10 page)

"Dump salad?" "You take a packet of orange Jell-O powder, a can of crushed pineapple, a carton of Cool Whip ..." Some woman in a bouffant hairdo said hello and the neighbor turned to greet her, leaving Maggie with the gritty feeling of Jell-O powder on her teeth.
Serena was over by the buffet, beneath an oil painting of a dead bird with a basket of olive-drab fruit. Linda and her husband stood next to her. "When all these people leave, Mom," Linda was saying, "we're taking you out to dinner, anyplace your heart desires." She spoke a little above normal volume, as if Serena were hard of hearing. "We're going to buy you a real meal," she said.
"Oh, well, there's so much food right here in the house," Serena said. "And I'm honestly not all that hungry anyhow." Her son-in-law said, "Now, Mother Gill, just tell us your favorite restaurant.'' Jeff, that was it. Maggie couldn't think of his last name.
Serena said, "Um ..." She glanced around, as if hoping for a suggestion. Her eyes brushed Maggie and traveled on. Finally she said, "Oh, well, maybe the Golden Chopsticks. That's a good place." "What kind is it, Chinese?" "Well, yes, but they also have-" "Oh, I just don't care for Chinese food," Linda said. "Not Chinese or Japanese, either one, I'm sorry to say." "Or any other Oriental," Jeff pointed out. "You don't like Thai food either." "No, that's true. Or Filipino or Burmese." Serena said, "But-" "And you can't eat Indian; don't forget Indian," Jeff said.
"No; Indian has those spices." "Spices affect her digestion," Jeff told Serena.
"I guess I'm just sensitive or something," Linda said.
"Same goes for Mexican." "But we don't have any Mexican," Serena said. "We don't have any of those places." Linda said, "What I'd like to know is how the Mexicans themselves can stand all those spicy seasonings." "They can't," Jeff told her. "They come down with this awful condition that coats the insides of their mouths like plates of armor." Serena blinked. "Well," she said, "what kind of restaurant did you two have in mind?" "We thought maybe that steak house off of Route One," Jeff told her.
"MacMann's? Oh." "That is, if it's all right with you." "Well, MacMann's is kind of ... noisy, isn't it?" Serena asked.
"I never thought it was noisy," Linda said.
"I mean it's always so noisy and crowded." "Just take it or leave it, Mom," Linda told her, raising her chin. "We were only trying to be nice, for God's sake." Maggie, standing just outside their little circle, waited for Serena to toss her one of her wry, eye-rolling expressions. But Serena didn't even glance at her. She seemed shrunken, somehow; she had lost her dash..She lifted her drink to her lips and sipped reflectively.
Then Max's brother called, "Serena? You ready for this?" He was gesturing toward a mildewed black leatherette case that stood on the coffee table. It looked familiar; Maggie couldn't think why. Serena brightened. She turned to Maggie and said, "That there is my surprise." "What is it?" Maggie asked.
"We're going to show a movie of my wedding." Of course: a film projector. Maggie hadn't seen one of those in years. She watched as Max's brother unsnapped the silver clasps. Meanwhile Serena moved away to lower the window shades. "We'll use this biggest shade for the screen," she called. "Oh, I hope the film hasn't just disintegrated or bleached out or whatever it is that old film does." "You mean your and Max's wedding?" Maggie asked, following her.
"His uncle Oswald took it." "I don't remember a camera at the wedding." "I was thinking back over the songs last night and I all at once remembered. 'If it's still in one piece,' I said to myself, 'wouldn't it be fun to watch?' " Fun? Maggie wasn't so sure. But she wouldn't have missed it, all the same; so she found herself a seat on the rug. She set down her glass and curled her legs to one side. A very old lady was sitting in a chair next to her, but at this level all Maggie saw were her thick beige cotton anklets melting over the tops of her shoes.
Now the guests had got wind of what was about to take place. Serena's classmates were settling around the projector, while the others started flowing distractedly in different directions, like something under a microscope. A few edged toward the door, mentioning baby-sitters and appointments elsewhere, promising Serena they would keep in touch. Several returned to the bar, and since Michael had deserted, they began mixing their own drinks. Michael was in the living room now, and so was Nat. Ira wasn't anywhere that Maggie could see. Nat was asking Sugar, "Am I in this, do you think?" "You are if you sang at the wedding." "Well, I didn't," he said glumly.
With just a little stretch of the imagination, Maggie thought, this could be Mr. Alden's civics class. (You had to overlook the old lady, who had remained contentedly seated with her tinkling cup of tea.) She glanced around and saw a semicircle of graying men and women, and there was something so worn down about them, so benign and unassuming, that she felt at that moment they were as close to her as family. She wondered how she could have failed to realize that they would have been aging along with her all these years, going through more or less the same stages-rearing their children and saying goodbye to them, marveling at the wrinkles they discovered in the mirror, watching their parents turn fragile and uncertain. Somehow, she had pictured them still fretting over Prom Night.
Even the sound of the projector came straight from Mr. Alden's class-the clickety-click as the reels started spinning and a square of flawed, crackled light was cast upon the window shade. What would Mr. Alden say if he could see them all together again? He was probably dead by now. And anyway, this movie wasn't showing how democracy worked or how laws were born, but- Why, Sissy! Sissy Parton! Young and slender and prim, wearing a tight chignon encircled with artificial daisies like a French maid's frill. She was playing the piano, her wrists so gracefully arched that you could believe it was only the delicacy of her touch that caused the film to remain soundless. Above the white choir robe, the Peter Pan collar of her blouse was just visible, a pale salmon pink (in real life a deep rose, Maggie recalled). She lifted her head and looked purposefully toward a certain point, and the camera followed her gaze and the screen was suddenly filled with a double row of ridiculously clean-cut young people in pleated robes. They sang silently, their mouths perfect ovals. They resembled the carolers on a Christmas card. It was Serena who identified the tune. " 'True love,' " she sang, " 'true-' " And then she broke off to say, "Oh! Would you look? Mary Jean Bennett! I never even thought to invite her. I forgot all about her. Does anybody know where Mary Jean lives now?" No one answered, although several, hi low, dreamy murmurs, carried on with " "... for you and I have a guardian angel . . .' " "There's Nick Bourne, the rat," Serena said. "He claimed it was too far to come to the funeral." She was sitting on the arm of a chair, craning her neck toward the movie. In profile she looked commanding, almost glorious, Maggie thought, with that silver line of light from the screen running down her large, straight nose and the curve of her lips.
Maggie herself stood in the front row of the chorus, next to Sugar Tilghman. Her hair was in tiny squiggles all over her head; it made her face look too big. Oh, this was humiliating. But no doubt the others felt the same way. She distinctly heard Sugar groan. And when the camera switched to Durwood, with his wet, black, towering pompadour like the crest on the top of a Dairy Queen cone, he gave a sharp bark of laughter. This younger Durwood strode over to the piano with his robe flapping behind him. He assumed his position and paused importantly. Then he embarked on a silent "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" with his eyes closed more often than open, his left arm gesturing so passionately that once he swatted a lily in a papier-mach vase. Maggie wanted to laugh but she held it in. So did everyone else, although the old lady said, "Well! My goodness," and rattled her teacup. A couple of people were humming along with this song too, which Maggie thought was charitable of them.
Next the camera swung dizzyingly to Jo Ann Dermott at the front of the church. She gripped the edges of the pulpit and read from a book that the audience couldn't see. Since she wasn't in the chorus, her dress was completely exposed-stiff, square-shouldered, full-skirted, more matronly than anything she would ever wear again. Her lowered eyes looked naked. No one could hum along with The Prophet, so the reading just went on and on in total silence. Out in the dining alcove the other guests talked and laughed and clinked ice cubes. "Good Lord, fast-forward it, someone," Jo Ann said, but evidently Max's brother didn't know how (if you could fast-forward these old films), and so they had to sit through it.
Then the camera swooped again and there was Sissy playing the piano, with one damp curl plastered to her forehead. Maggie and Ira, side by side, stood watching Sissy gravely. (Ira was a boy, a mere child.) They drew a breath. They started singing. Maggie Was slightly bunchy in her robe-she'd been fighting her extra ten pounds even then-and Ira had a plucked, fledgling look. Had he really worn his hair that short? In those days, he'd seemed totally unreadable. His unreadability was his greatest attraction. He'd reminded her of those math ge- niuses who don't need to write out the process but simply arrive at the answer.
He was twenty-one when that movie was filmed. Maggie was nineteen. Where they'd met, she had no idea, because at the time it hadn't mattered. They had probably passed each other in the halls in high school, maybe even elementary school. He might have visited her house, hanging out with her brothers. (He and her brother Josh were nearly the same age.) Certainly he'd sung with her at church; she knew that much. His family were members there, and Mr. Nichols, always short on male voices, had somehow talked Ira into joining the choir. But he hadn't lasted long. About the time he graduated from high school, he quit. Or maybe it was the year after. Maggie hadn't noticed exactly when it was he'd stopped appearing.
Her boyfriend in high school had been a classmate named Boris Drumm. He was short and dark, with rough skin and a frizz of cropped black hair-manly even at that age, everything she'd been looking for. It was Boris who taught Maggie to drive, and one of his exercises involved her speeding alone across the Sears, Roebuck parking lot till he loomed suddenly in front of the car to test her braking skills. Her clearest picture of him, to this day, was the determined stance he had taken in her path: arms straight out, feet wide apart, jaw set. Rock-hard, he'd seemed. Indestructible. She had had the feeling she could run him over, even, and he'd have bobbed up again untouched, like one of those plastic toy men weighted with lead at the base.
He planned on attending a college in the Midwest after graduation, but it was understood that as soon as he got his degree he and Maggie would marry. Meanwhile Maggie would live at home and go to Goucher. She wasn't much looking forward to it; it was her mother's idea. Her mother, who had taught English before she married, filled out all the application forms and even wrote Maggie's essay for her. It was very important to her that her children should rise in the world. (Maggie's father installed garage doors and had not had any college at all.) So Maggie resigned herself to four years at Goucher. In the meantime, to help with tuition, she took a summer job washing windows.
This was at the Silver Threads Nursing Home, which hadn't yet officially opened. It was a brand-new, modern building off Erdman -Avenue, with three long wings and one hundred and eighty-two windows. Each of the larger windows had twelve panes of glass; the smaller windows /had six. And in the left-hand corner of each pane was a white paper snowflake reading KRYSTAL KLEER MFG. co. These snowflakes clung to the glass with a force that Maggie had never seen before or since. Whatever substance held them on, she thought later, should have been adopted by NASA. If you peeled off the top layer of paper a lower, fuzzy layer remained, and if you soaked that in hot water and then scraped it with a razor blade there were still gray shreds of rubbery glue, and after those were gone the whole pane, of course, was a mess, fingerprinted and streaky, so it had to be sprayed with Win-dex and buffed with a chamois skin. For one whole summer, from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, Maggie scraped and soaked and scraped again. The tips of her fingers were continually sore. She felt her nails had been driven back into their roots. She didn't have anyone to talk to while she worked, because she was the only window-washer they'd hired. Her sole company was the radio, playing "Moonglow" and "I Almost Lost My Mind." In August the home started admitting a few patients, although not all the work was finished yet. Of course they were settled in those rooms where the windows were fully scraped, but Maggie got in the habit of taking a break from time to time and going visiting. She would stop at one bed or another to see how people were doing. "Could you move my water pitcher a little closer, doll?" a woman would ask, or, "Would you mind pulling that curtain?" While performing these tasks, Maggie felt valuable and competent. She began attracting a following of those patients who were mobile. Someone in a wheelchair would discover which room she was working in and suddenly there'd be three or four patients sitting around her talking. Their style of conversation was to ignore her presence and argue heatedly among themselves. (Was it the blizzard of ' or the blizzard of '? And which number counted more in the blood pressure reading?) But they conveyed an acute awareness of their audience; she knew it was all for lier benefit. She would laugh at appropriate moments or make sounds of sympathy, and the old people would take on gratified expressions.
No one in her family understood when she announced that she wanted to forget about college and become an aide in the nursing home instead. Why, an aide was no better than a servant, her mother pointed out; no better than a chambermaid. And here Maggie had such a fine mind and had graduated at the top of her class. Did she want to be just ordinary? Her brothers, who had made the same kind of choice themselves (three were involved in some phase of the construction business, while the fourth welded locomotives at the Mount Clare railyards), claimed they had been looking to her to go further. Even her father wondered half audibly whether she knew what she was doing. But Maggie remained firm. What did she want with college? What did she want with those pointless, high-flown bits of information like the ones she'd learned in high school-Ontogeny recapitulates phytogeny and Synecdoche is the use of the part to symbolize the whole? She enrolled in a Red Cross training program, which in those days was all that was needed, and took a job at Silver Threads.