Breathing Lessons (13 page)

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 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 sophomore 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 Tier rouge. In Max's shirt, 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 shiny 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 damn far away and every time IVe tried to find it I've gotten all turned around and had to ask directions from passing 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 eentsy 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. - N Maggie didn't know how to answer that.
S 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 bumped down the row of folding chairs and hurried through the vestibule. One of her full sleeves caught on the knob 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 classmate 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.
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,vbut they were long blocks and it was a warm June morning. She was damp and breathless when she arrived. She pulled open the plate-glass 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 assumed 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 muffled, 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 shirt, 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.
And sure enough, Sam said, "Me and your little friend here was just discussing you going into the army." "Army?" "Ira couldn't join the army, I told her. He's got us." Ira said, "Well, anyhow, Pop, I ought to be back from this thing in a couple of hours." "You really have to take that long? That's most of the morning!" Sam turned to Maggie and said, "Saturday's our busiest day at work." Maggie wondered why, in that case, the shop was empty. She said, "Yes, well, we should be-" "In fact, if Ira joined the army we'd just have to close this place up," Sam said. "Sell it off lock, stock, and barrel, when it's been in the family for forty-two years come October." "What are you talking about?" Ira asked him. "Why would I want to join the army?" "Your little friend here thought you'd gone into the army and got yourself killed," Sam told him.
"Oh," Ira said. Now the danger must have dawned on him too, for this time it was he who said, "We should be going." "She thought you'd blown yourself up in boot camp," Sam told him. He gave another of his wheezy chuckles. There was something mole-like and relentless about that way he led with his nose, Maggie felt. "Ups and writes me a letter of condolence,'' he said. "Ha!" He told Maggie, ' 'Gave me quite a start. I had this half-second or so where I thought, Wait a minute. Has Ira passed] First I knew of it, if so. And first I'd heard of you. First I'd heard of any girl, matter of fact, in years. I mean it's not like'he has any friends anymore. His chums at school were that brainy crowd that went away to college and by now they've all lost touch with him and he doesn't see a soul his own age. 'Look here!' I told him. 'A girl at last!' After I'd withstood the shock. 'Better grab her while you got the chance,' I told him." "Let's go," Ira said to Maggie.
He lifted a hinged section of the counter and stepped through it, but Sam went on talking. "Trouble is, now you know she can manage fine without you," he said.
Ira paused, still holding up the hinged section.
"She writes a little note of condolence and then continues with her life, as merry as pie," Sam told him.
"What did you expect her to do, throw herself in my grave?" "Well, you got to admit she bore up under her grief mighty well. Writes me a nice little note, sticks a postage stamp in one corner, then carries on with her girlfriend's wedding arrangements.'' "Right," Ira said, and he lowered the counter and came over to Maggie. Was he totally impenetrable? His eyes were flat, and his hand, when he took her arm, was perfectly steady.
"You're wrong," Maggie told Sam.
"Huh?" "I wasn't doing fine without him! I was barely existing." "No need to get all het up about it," Sam said.
"And for your information, there's any number of girls who think he's perfectly wonderful and I am not the only one and also it's ridiculous to say he can't get married. You have no right; anyone can get married if they want to." "He wouldn't dare!" Sam told her. "He's got me and his sisters to think of. You want us all in the poorhouse? Ira? Ira, you wouldn't dare to get married!" "Why not?" Ira asked calmly.
"You've got to think of me and your sisters!" "I'm marrying her anyhow," Ira said.
Then he opened the door and stood back to let Maggie walk through it.
On the stoop outside, they stopped and he put his arms around her and drew her close. She could feel the narrow bones of his chest against her cheek and she heard his heart beating in her ear. His father must have been able to see everything through the plate-glass door, but even so Ira bent his head and kissed her on the lips, a long, warm, searching kiss that turned her knees weak.
Then they started off toward the church, although first there was a minor delay because the hem of her choir robe caught her up short. Ira had to open the door once again (not even glancing at his father) and set her loose.
But to look at Serena's movie, would you guess what had come just before? They seemed an ordinary couple, maybe a bit mismatched as to height. He was too tall and thin and she was too short and plump. Their expressions were grave but they certainly didn't look as if anything earth-shattering had recently taken place. They opened and closed their mouths in silence while the audience sang for them, poking gentle fun, intoning melodramatically. " 'Love is Nature's way of giving, a reason to be living . . .' " Only Maggie knew how Ira's hand had braced the small of her back.
Then the Barley twins leaned into each other and sang the processional, their faces raised like baby birds' faces; and the camera swung from them to Serena all in white. Serena sailed down the aisle with her mother hanging on to her. Funny: From this vantage neither one of them seemed particularly unconventional. Serena stared straight ahead, intent. Anita's makeup was a little too heavy but she could have been anybody's mother, really, anxious-looking and outdated in her tight dress. "Look at you!" someone told Serena, laughing. Meanwhile the audience sang, " 'Though I don't know many words to say . . .' " But then the camera jerked and swooped and there was Max, waiting next to Reverend Connors in front of the altar. One by one, the singers trailed off. Sweet Max, pursing his chapped lips and squinting his blue eyes in an attempt to seem fittingly dignified as he watched Serena approaching. Everything about him had faded except for his freckles, which stood out like metal spangles across his broad cheeks.