The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (36 page)

She straightened in her seat and peered through the
windshield, looking for the others. They should be about ready by now. Yes, here came Leroy, just backing out of the house with a suitcase bigger than she was. Ira thudded among things in the trunk and whistled a cheerful tune. “King of the Road,” that’s what he was whistling. Maggie got out to open the rear door. It seemed to her now that unknowingly, she’d been aiming ever since she woke up this morning toward this single purpose: bringing Leroy and Fiona home at last.

Chapter 3
 

T
he way Mrs. Stuckey’s car was parked behind theirs, they had just enough room to maneuver around it. Or so Ira claimed. Maggie thought he was wrong. “You could manage if the mailbox wasn’t there,” she said, “but it is there, and you are going to hit it when you veer out.”

“Only if I were deaf, dumb, and blind,” Ira said.

In the back seat, Fiona gave a small sigh.

“Look,” Ira told Maggie. “You go stand beside the mailbox. Let me know when I come close. All I have to do is swing into the yard a few feet, take a sharp right back onto the driveway—”

“I’m not going to be responsible for that! You’ll hit the mailbox and blame me.”

“Maybe we should just ask Mom to move the Maverick,” Fiona suggested.

Maggie said, “Oh, well,” and Ira said, “No, I’m sure we can make it.”

Neither one of them wanted Mrs. Stuckey marching out all put-upon.

“All right, then you get behind the wheel,” Ira told Maggie, “and I’ll direct you.”

“Then I’ll be the one to hit the mailbox, and I’ll still get blamed.”

“Maggie. There’s a good ten feet between the mailbox and the Maverick. So once you’re past the Maverick you
just nip back onto the driveway and you’re free and clear. I’ll tell you when.”

Maggie thought that over. She said, “Promise you won’t yell if I hit the mailbox?”

“You won’t hit the mailbox.”

“Promise, Ira.”

“Lord above! Fine, I promise.”

“And you won’t look up at the heavens, or make that hissing noise through your teeth—”

“Maybe I should just go get Mom,” Fiona said.

“No, no, this is a cinch,” Ira told her. “Any imbecile could handle it; believe me.”

Maggie didn’t like the sound of that.

Ira climbed out of the car and went to stand by the mailbox. Maggie slid over on the seat. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and checked the rearview mirror. It was angled wrong, set for Ira’s height instead of hers, and she reached up to adjust it. The top of Leroy’s head flashed toward her, gleaming dully like the back of a watch case, followed by Ira’s lean figure with his elbows cocked and his hands jammed into his rear pockets. The mailbox was a little Quonset hut beside him.

The driver’s seat had been set for Ira also, way too far back, but Maggie figured it wouldn’t matter for such a short distance. She shifted into reverse. Ira called, “Okay, bring her hard to your left …”

How come he always referred to difficult tasks as feminine? This car was not a she until it had to perform some complicated maneuver. It was the same for stubborn screws and tight jar lids, and for bulky pieces of furniture as they were being moved.

She swung onto the packed dirt yard and around the Maverick, proceeding perhaps a bit too fast but still in control. Then she reached with her foot for the brake. There wasn’t one. Or there was, but it was positioned
wrong, closer than she had expected, considering that the seat was moved back. Her foot hit the shaft instead of the pedal and the car raced on unimpeded. Ira shouted, “What the—?” Maggie, with her gaze still fixed on the rearview mirror, saw the blur as he dove for cover.
Whap!
the mailbox said when she hit it. Leroy said, “Golly,” in an awed tone of voice.

Maggie shifted into Park and poked her head out the window. Ira was hauling himself up from the dirt. He dusted off his hands. He said, “You just had to prove you were right about that mailbox, Maggie, didn’t you.”

“You promised, Ira!”

“Left taillight is smashed all to hell,” he said, bending to examine it. He prodded something. There was a clinking sound. Maggie pulled her head in and faced forward.

“He promised he wouldn’t say a word,” she told Fiona and Leroy. “Watch how he goes back on that.”

Fiona absently patted Leroy’s bare knee.

“Smashed to smithereens,” Ira called.

“You promised you wouldn’t make a fuss!”

He grunted; she saw that he was righting the mailbox. From here, it didn’t even look dented. “I don’t suppose we need to tell your mother about this,” Maggie said to Fiona.

“She already knows,” Leroy said. “She’s watching from the house.”

It was true there was a suspicious slant to one of the venetian blind slats. Maggie said, “Oh, this day has seemed just so … I don’t know …” and she slid down in her seat till she was more or less sitting on her shoulder blades.

Then Ira appeared in the window. “Try your lights,” he told her.

“Hmm?”

“Your lights. I want to see if she works or not.”

There he went with that “she” again. Maggie reached out wearily, not bothering to sit up straight, and pulled the knob.

“Just as I thought,” Ira called from the rear. “No left taillight.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Maggie told the ceiling.

Ira reappeared at the window and motioned for her to move over. “We’ll be ticketed for this—what do you bet?” he said, opening the door and getting in.

“I really couldn’t care less,” she said.

“Late as we’re running now,” he said (another reproach), “it’ll be dark before we’re halfway home, and the state police are going to nail us for driving without a taillight.”

“Stop off and get it fixed, then,” Maggie said.

“Oh, well, you know those highway service stations,” Ira told her. He shifted gears, pulled forward a little, and then backed smoothly out of the driveway. It didn’t seem to cause him any difficulty whatsoever. “They charge an arm and a leg for something I could pick up almost free at Rudy’s Auto Supply,” he said. “I’m going to take my chances.”

“You could always explain that your wife was a blithering idiot.”

He didn’t argue with that.

As they started down the road, Maggie glanced at the mailbox, which was standing at a slight tilt but otherwise seemed fine. She twisted in her seat till she was looking at Fiona and Leroy—their pale, staring faces unsettlingly alike. “You two all right?” she asked them.

“Sure,” Leroy answered for both of them. She was hugging her baseball glove to her chest.

Ira said, “Bet you didn’t expect us to have a wreck before we’d left your driveway, did you?”

“Didn’t expect you to go asking for a wreck, either,” Fiona told him.

Ira glanced over at Maggie with his eyebrows raised.

By now the sun had dropped out of sight and the sky had lost its color. All the pastures were turning up their undersides in a sudden breeze. Leroy said, “How long is this trip going to take us anyhow?”

“Just an hour or so,” Fiona told her. “You remember how far it is to Baltimore.”

Maggie said, “Leroy remembers Baltimore?”

“From visiting my sister.”

“Oh. Of course,” Maggie said.

She watched the scenery for a while. Something about the fading light gave the little houses a meek, defeated look. Finally she forced herself to ask, “How
is
your sister, Fiona?”

“She’s fine, considering,” Fiona said. “You knew she lost her husband.”

“I didn’t realize she was married, even.”

“Well, no, I guess you wouldn’t,” Fiona said. “She married her boyfriend? Avery? And he died not six weeks later in a construction accident.”

“Oh, poor Crystal,” Maggie said. “What is happening here? Everyone’s losing their husbands. Did I tell you we’ve just come from Max Gill’s funeral?”

“Yes, but I don’t think I knew him,” Fiona said.

“You must have known him! He was married to my friend Serena that I went to school with. The Gills. I’m positive you met them.”

“Well, those people were old, though,” Fiona said. “Or not old, maybe, but you know. Crystal and Avery, there were barely back from their honeymoon. When you’ve been married only six weeks everything is still perfect.”

And later it is not
, was her implication. Which Maggie couldn’t argue with. Still, it saddened her to realize they all took such a thing for granted.

A stop sign loomed ahead and Ira slowed and then turned onto Route One. After the country roads they had been traveling, Route One seemed more impressive. Trucks were streaming toward them, a few with their headlights already on. Someone had set a hand-lettered signboard on the porch of a little café:
SUPPER NOW BEING SERVED
. Good farm food, no doubt—corn on the cob and biscuits. Maggie said, “I suppose we should stop for groceries on the way home. Leroy, are you starved?”

Leroy nodded emphatically.

“I haven’t had a thing but chips and pretzels since morning,” Maggie said.

“That and a beer in broad daylight,” Ira reminded her.

Maggie pretended not to hear him. “Leroy,” she said, “tell me what your favorite food is.”

Leroy said, “Oh, I don’t know.”

“There must be something.”

Leroy poked a fist into the palm of her baseball glove.

“Hamburgers? Hot dogs?” Maggie asked. “Charcoaled steaks? Or how about crabs?”

Leroy said, “Crabs in their shells, you mean? Ick!”

Maggie felt suddenly at a loss.

“She’s partial to fried chicken,” Fiona said. “She asks Mom to fix that all the time. Don’t you, Leroy?”

“Fried chicken! Perfect,” Maggie said. “We’ll pick up the makings on our way into town. Won’t that be nice?”

Leroy remained silent, and no wonder; Maggie knew how chirpy and artificial she sounded. An old person, trying too hard. But if only Leroy could see that Maggie was still young underneath, just peering out from behind an older face mask!

Now all at once Ira cleared his throat. Maggie tensed.
Ira said, “Um, Fiona, Leroy … you heard we’re taking Daisy to college tomorrow.”

“Yes, Maggie told me,” Fiona said. “I can’t believe it: eentsy little Daisy.”

“I mean, we two are going to be driving her. We’re starting early in the morning.”

“Not
that
early,” Maggie said quickly.

“Well, eight or nine o’clock, Maggie.”

“What’s your point?” Fiona asked Ira. “You don’t think we ought to be visiting?”

Maggie said, “Good heavens, no! He didn’t mean that at all.”

“Well, it sounded to me like he did,” Fiona said.

Ira said, “I just wanted to be sure you knew what you were getting into. That it would have to be such a short stay, I mean.”

“That’s no problem, Ira,” Maggie told him. “If she wants she can go on over to her sister’s in the morning.”

“Well, fine then, but it’s getting dark and we’re not even halfway home. I would think—”

“Maybe we better just stop right here and go back where we came from,” Fiona said.

“Oh, no, Fiona!” Maggie cried. “We had this all settled!”

“I can’t remember now why I said we’d come in the first place,” Fiona said. “Lord! What must I have been thinking of?”

Maggie unbuckled her seat belt and twisted around so she was facing Fiona. “Fiona, please,” she said. “It’s only for a little while, and it’s been so long since we’ve seen Leroy. I’ve got all these things I want to show her. I want her to meet Daisy and I was planning to take her by the Larkin sisters’; they won’t believe how she’s grown.”

“Who’re the Larkin sisters?” Leroy asked.

“These two old ladies; they used to set out their rocking horse for you to ride on.”

Fiona said, “I don’t remember that.”

“We’d pass by their porch and it would be empty, and then when we turned around to come home the horse would be sitting there waiting.”

“I don’t remember a thing about it,” Fiona said.

Leroy said, “Me neither.”

“Well of course
you
wouldn’t,” Fiona told her. “You were just a baby. You didn’t live there hardly any time at all.”

This struck Maggie as unfair. She said, “Well, goodness, she was nearly a year old when you left, Fiona.”

“She was not! She was barely seven months.”

“That’s not right; she had to have been, oh, eight months at least. If you left in September—”

“Seven months, eight months, what’s the difference?” Ira asked. “Why make a federal case of it?” He found Leroy’s face in the mirror and said, “I bet you don’t remember how your grandma tried to teach you to say ‘Daddy,’ either.”

“I did?” Maggie asked.

“It was going to be a surprise for his birthday,” Ira told Leroy. “She would clap her hands and you were supposed to say ‘Daddy’ on cue. But when she clapped her hands all you’d do was laugh. You thought it was some kind of game.”

Maggie tried to picture that. Why did her memories never coincide with Ira’s? Instead they seemed to dovetail—one moment his to recall and the next hers, as if they had agreed to split their joint life between them. (Illogically, she always worried about whether she had behaved right during those moments she had forgotten.)

“So did it work, or not?” Leroy was asking Ira.