The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (41 page)

“Serena, Ira. Who have we been talking about here?”

“Sure, if you like,” he said.

“But suppose she hangs up on me?”

“Then think of all you’ll save on the phone bill.”

She made a face at him.

She took the telephone from the nightstand and set it in her lap. Pondered it for a moment. Lifted the receiver. Tactfully, Ira bent lower over his cards and started whistling. (He was so polite about privacy, although as Maggie knew from experience you could overhear quite a lot while pretending to be absorbed in your song.) She punched in Serena’s number very slowly and deliberately, as if that would help their conversation.

Serena’s telephone gave two short rings instead of one long. Maggie thought of that as rural and slightly backward.
Breep-breep
, it said.
Breep-breep
.

Serena said, “Hello?”

“Serena?”

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, hi.”

Maybe she hadn’t realized yet who “me” was. Maggie cleared her throat. She said, “It’s Maggie.”

“Hi, Maggie.”

Maggie relaxed against her pillow and stretched her legs out. She said, “I called to see how you were doing.”

“Just fine!” Serena said. “Or, well, I don’t know. Not so hot, to tell the truth. I keep walking up and down, walking from one room to another. Can’t seem to stay in one place.”

“Isn’t Linda there?”

“I sent her away.”

“What for?”

“She got on my nerves.”

“On your nerves! How?”

“Oh, this way and that. I forget. They took me out to dinner and … I admit it was partly my fault. I was acting sort of contrary. I didn’t like the restaurant and I couldn’t stand the people who were eating there. I kept thinking how good it would feel to be alone, to have the house to myself. But now here I am and it’s so quiet. It’s like I’m wrapped in cotton or something. I was thrilled to hear the phone ring.”

“I wish you lived closer,” Maggie said.

Serena said, “I don’t have anyone to tell about the trivia, what the plumbing’s up to and how the red ants have come back in the kitchen.”

“You can tell
me
,” Maggie said.

“Well, but they’re not your red ants too, don’t you see? I mean you and I are not in this together.”

“Oh,” Maggie said.

There was a pause.

What was it Ira was whistling? Something from that record Leroy had played this evening; the lyrics were on
the tip of Maggie’s tongue. He scooped up a run of diamonds and shifted them to a king.

“You know,” Serena said, “whenever Max went on a business trip we’d have so much to tell each other when he came home. He would talk and talk, and
I
would talk and talk, and then, you know what we’d do?”

“What?”

“We’d have a great big horrible fight.”

Maggie laughed.

“And then we’d patch it up, and then we’d go to bed together,” Serena said. “Crazy, wasn’t it? And now I keep thinking: If Max were resurrected this minute, hale and hearty, would we still have our horrible fight just the same?”

“Well, I guess you would,” Maggie said.

She wondered how it would feel to know she had seen Ira for the very last time on this earth. She supposed she would have trouble believing it. For several months, maybe, she would half expect him to come sauntering in again just as he had sauntered into choir practice that first spring evening thirty years ago.

“Um, also, Serena,” she said, “I want to apologize for what happened after the funeral.”

“Oh, forget it.”

“No, really, both of us feel just terrible.”

She hoped Serena couldn’t hear Ira in the background; it made her apology seem insincere.
Lately it occurs to me
, he was whistling cheerily,
what a long, strange trip it’s been …

“Forget it; I flew off the handle,” Serena told her. “Widow’s nerves, or something. Pure silliness. I’m past the stage now where I can discard old friends without a thought; I can’t afford it.”

“Oh, don’t say that!”

“What, you
want
me to discard you?”

“No, no …”

“Just joking,” Serena told her. “Maggie, thanks for calling. I mean it. It was good to hear your voice.”

“Anytime,” Maggie said.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Serena hung up. A moment later, so did Maggie.

This ice cream wasn’t even edible anymore. She had let it turn to soup. Also she was feeling overstuffed. She looked down at herself—at the bodice of her slip stretched tight across her breasts. “I’m an elephant,” she told Ira.

He said, “Not again.”

“Seriously.”

He tapped his upper lip with a forefinger and studied his cards.

Well. She rose and went into the bathroom, stripping as she walked, and took her nightgown from its hook. When she dropped it over her head it shook itself out around her, loose and cool and weightless. “Whew!” she said. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. A trail of underclothes led from bedroom to bathroom; she picked them up and stuffed them into the hamper.

Sometimes, after an especially trying day, she felt an urge to burn everything she had worn.

Then while she was arranging her dress on a hanger, she was struck by a thought. She looked over at Ira. She looked away. She hung the dress in her closet, next to her one silk blouse.

“Goodness,” she said, turning toward him again. “Wasn’t Cartwheel dinky.”

“Mm.”

“I’d forgotten how dinky,” she said.

“Mmhmm.”

“I bet their school is dinky too.”

No response.

“Do you suppose the Cartwheel school offers a good education?”

“I really couldn’t say,” Ira said.

She closed the closet door firmly. “Well,
I
can say,” she told him. “It must be a full year behind the schools in Baltimore. Maybe two.”

“And naturally Baltimore’s schools are superb,” Ira said.

“Well, at least they’re better than Cartwheel’s.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I mean most likely,” Maggie said.

He picked up a card, moved it onto another, then changed his mind and moved it back again.

“Here’s what we could do,” Maggie said. “Write and ask Fiona if she’s given any thought to Leroy’s education. Offer to enroll her down here in Baltimore and let Leroy live with us nine months of the year.”

“No,” Ira said.

“Or even twelve months, if it works out that way. You know how attached children get to their classmates and such. She might not want to leave.”

“Maggie, look at me.”

She faced him, hands on her hips.

“No,” he said.

There were a lot of arguments she could have mentioned. All kinds of arguments!

But she didn’t, somehow. She dropped her hands and wandered over to the window.

It was a warm, deep, quiet night, with just enough breeze to set the shade-pull swinging. She raised the shade higher and leaned out, pressing her forehead against the gritty screen. The air smelled of rubber tires and grass. Snatches of adventure music drifted up from
the Lockes’ TV next door. Across the street, the Simmonses were climbing their front steps, the husband jingling his house keys.
They
would not be going to bed yet; no chance of that. They were one of those happily childless young couples with eyes for only each other, and no doubt they were returning from dinner in a restaurant and now would … do what? Put on some romantic music, maybe something with violins, and sit conversing graciously on their spotless white love seat, each raising a wineglass made of that thin, extra-breakable crystal that doesn’t even have a lip around the rim. Or maybe they would dance. She had seen them dancing on their front porch once—the wife in spike heels, with her hair swept up in an igloo shape, the husband holding her slightly apart in a formal, admiring way.

Maggie spun around and returned to the bed. “Oh, Ira,” she said, dropping down beside him, “what are we two going to live for, all the rest of our lives?”

She had dislodged a stack of his cards, but he kindly refrained from straightening them and instead reached out one arm and drew her in. “There, now, sweetheart,” he said, and he settled her next to him. Still holding her close, he transferred a four of spades to a five, and Maggie rested her head against his chest and watched. He had arrived at the interesting part of the game by now, she saw. He had passed that early, superficial stage when any number of moves seemed possible, and now his choices were narrower and he had to show real skill and judgment. She felt a little stir of something that came over her like a flush, a sort of inner buoyancy, and she lifted her face to kiss the warm blade of his cheekbone. Then she slipped free and moved to her side of the bed, because tomorrow they had a long car trip to make and she knew she would need a good night’s sleep before they started.

Permissions Acknowledgments
 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

ALFRED PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.: Excerpts from “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. Copyright © 1955 (renewed 1983) by Twentieth Century Music Corp. All rights administered by EMI Miller Catalog, Inc., (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. Excerpts from “Tonight You Belong to Me” by Billy Rose and Lee David. Copyright © 1926 (renewed) by Chappell & Co. & C&J David Music Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

DON ROBERTSON MUSIC CORPORATION: Excerpts from “Born to Be with You,” words and music by Don Robertson. Copyright © 1956 by Don Robertson Music Corporation. Copyright © 1956, 1984 by Donald Irwin Robertson. International copyright secured. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Original publisher: E. H. Morris & Co.

HAL LEONARD CORPORATION: Excerpts from “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” words by Maurice Mysels, music by Ira Kosloff. Copyright © 1956 by Elvis Presley Music, Inc. Copyright renewed and assigned to Gladys Music. All rights administered by Cherry Lane Music Publishing Company, Inc., and Chrysalis Music. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

ICE NINE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.: Excerpt from “The Golden Road,” words and music by Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron McKeman, and Bob Weir. Copyright © 1968 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. Excerpts from “Truckin’,” words by Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh. Copyright © 1971 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

JAY LIVINGSTON MUSIC AND ST. ANGELO MUSIC: Excerpts from “Que Sera Sera,” words and music by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Copyright renewed 1984 by Jay Livingston Music and St. Angelo Music. Reprinted by permission of Jay Livingston Music (ASCAP) and St. Angelo Music (ASCAP).

MUSIC SALES CORPORATION & G. SCHIRMER, INC., AND HAL LEONARD CORPORATION: Excerpts from “On the Road Again,” words and music by Floyd Jones, Willie Nelson, and Alan C. Wilson. Copyright © 1968 (renewed) by Embassy Music Corporation (BMI) and EMI Unart Catalog, Inc. Copyright © 1980 by Full Nelson Music, Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Longitude Music. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING: Excerpt from “Friendly Persuasion” by Dimitri Tiomkin. Copyright © 1956 by Volta Music Corporation. Copyright © 1954, 1984 by Webster Music Co./Universal. All rights administered by Universal Music Corp./ASCAP. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

WRITERS NIGHT MUSIC: Excerpts from “The Gambler” written by Don Schlitz. Copyright © 1977 by Writers Night Music (ASCAP). International copyright secured. Used by permission.

T
he strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.

We were strolling through Belvedere Square, for instance, on an early-spring afternoon when we met our old next-door neighbor, Jim Rust. “Well, what do you know,” he said to me. “Aaron!” Then he noticed Dorothy beside me. She stood peering up at him with one hand shielding her forehead from the sun. His eyes widened and he turned to me again.

I said, “How’s it going, Jim?”

Visibly, he pulled himself together. “Oh … great,” he said. “I mean … or, rather … but of course we miss you. Neighborhood is not the same without you!”

He was focusing on me alone—specifically, on my mouth, as if I were the one who was talking. He wouldn’t look at Dorothy. He had pivoted a few inches so as to exclude her from his line of vision.

I took pity on him. I said, “Well, tell everybody hello,” and we walked on. Beside me, Dorothy gave one of her dry chuckles.

Other people pretended not to recognize either one of us. They would catch sight of us from a distance, and this sort of jolt would alter their expressions and they would all at once dart down a side street, busy-busy, much to accomplish, very important concerns on their minds. I didn’t hold it against them. I knew this was a lot to adjust to. In their position, I might have behaved the same way. I like to think I wouldn’t, but I might have.