Read Online The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer by Anne Tyler, Monica McInerney - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne Tyler, Monica McInerney
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whisker and she asks, ‘Is he yours?’ But I said yes. Turns out this woman found him wandering Dunmore Road with a pair of pruning shears, and he didn’t seem to know where he was headed. She asked if she could help and all he said was: ‘I’m not certain. I’m not certain.’ But he recognized me when he saw me. His face lit up and he told her, ‘There’s Serena.’ So I took him inside and sat him down. I asked him what had happened and he said it was the oddest feeling. He said that out of the blue, he just seemed to be walking on Dunmore Road. Then when the woman turned him back toward where he’d come from he said he saw our house, and he knew it was ours, but at the time it was like it had nothing to do with him. He said it was like he had stepped outside his own life for a minute.”
MARCY + DAVE , read the chalked words above the toilet paper dispenser. SUE HARDY WEARS A PADDED BRA . Maggie tried to adjust to this new version of Max—vague and bewildered and buckling at the knees, no doubt, like one of her patients at the home. But what she came up with was the Max she’d always known, a hefty football-player type with a prickle of glinting blond hair and a broad, good-natured, freckled face; the Max who’d run naked into the surf at Carolina Beach. She’d seen him only a few times in the past ten years, after all; he was not the world’s best at holding down a job and had moved his family often. But he had struck her as the type who stays boyish forever. It was hard to imagine him aging.
She flushed the toilet and emerged to find Serena considering one of her sandals, twisting her foot this way and that. “Have you ever done such a thing?” Serena asked her. “Stepped outside your own life?”
Maggie said, “Well, not that I can recall,” and turned on the hot water.
“What would it be like, I wonder,” Serena said. “Just to look around you one day and have it all amaze you—where you’d arrived at, who you’d married, what kind of person you’d grown into. Say you suddenly came to while you were—oh, say, out shopping with your daughter—but it was your seven- or eight-year-old self observing all you did. ‘Why!’ you’d say. ‘Can this be me? Driving a car? Taking charge? Nagging some young woman like I knew what I was doing?’ You’d walk into your house and say, ‘Well, I don’t think all that much of my taste.’ You’d go to a mirror and say, ‘Goodness, my chin is starting to slope just the way my mother’s did.’ I mean you’d be looking at things without their curtains. You’d say, ‘My husband isn’t any Einstein, is he?’ You’d say, ‘My daughter certainly could stand to lose some weight.’ ”
Maggie cleared her throat. (All those observations were disconcertingly true. Serena’s daughter, for instance, could stand to lose a
lot
of weight.) She reached for a paper towel and said, “I thought on the phone you said he died of cancer.”
“He did,” Serena said. “But it was everywhere before we knew about it. Every part of him, even his brain.”
“Oh, Serena.”
“One day he was out selling radio ads the same as always and next day he was flat on his back. Couldn’t walk right, couldn’t see right; everything he did was one-sided. He kept saying he smelled cookies. He’d say, ‘Serena, when will those cookies be done?’ I haven’t baked cookies in years! He’d say, ‘Bring me one, Serena, as soon as they’re out of the oven.’ So I would make a batch and then he’d look surprised and tell me he wasn’t hungry.”
“I wish you’d called me,” Maggie said.
“What could you have done?”
Well, nothing, really, Maggie thought. She couldn’t even say for certain that she knew what Serena was going through. Every stage of their lives, it seemed, Serena had experienced slightly ahead of Maggie; and every stage she’d reported on in her truthful, startling, bald-faced way, like some foreigner who didn’t know the etiquette.
MARCY + DAVE , read the chalked words above the toilet paper dispenser. SUE HARDY WEARS A PADDED BRA . Maggie tried to adjust to this new version of Max—vague and bewildered and buckling at the knees, no doubt, like one of her patients at the home. But what she came up with was the Max she’d always known, a hefty football-player type with a prickle of glinting blond hair and a broad, good-natured, freckled face; the Max who’d run naked into the surf at Carolina Beach. She’d seen him only a few times in the past ten years, after all; he was not the world’s best at holding down a job and had moved his family often. But he had struck her as the type who stays boyish forever. It was hard to imagine him aging.
She flushed the toilet and emerged to find Serena considering one of her sandals, twisting her foot this way and that. “Have you ever done such a thing?” Serena asked her. “Stepped outside your own life?”
Maggie said, “Well, not that I can recall,” and turned on the hot water.
“What would it be like, I wonder,” Serena said. “Just to look around you one day and have it all amaze you—where you’d arrived at, who you’d married, what kind of person you’d grown into. Say you suddenly came to while you were—oh, say, out shopping with your daughter—but it was your seven- or eight-year-old self observing all you did. ‘Why!’ you’d say. ‘Can this be me? Driving a car? Taking charge? Nagging some young woman like I knew what I was doing?’ You’d walk into your house and say, ‘Well, I don’t think all that much of my taste.’ You’d go to a mirror and say, ‘Goodness, my chin is starting to slope just the way my mother’s did.’ I mean you’d be looking at things without their curtains. You’d say, ‘My husband isn’t any Einstein, is he?’ You’d say, ‘My daughter certainly could stand to lose some weight.’ ”
Maggie cleared her throat. (All those observations were disconcertingly true. Serena’s daughter, for instance, could stand to lose a
lot
of weight.) She reached for a paper towel and said, “I thought on the phone you said he died of cancer.”
“He did,” Serena said. “But it was everywhere before we knew about it. Every part of him, even his brain.”
“Oh, Serena.”
“One day he was out selling radio ads the same as always and next day he was flat on his back. Couldn’t walk right, couldn’t see right; everything he did was one-sided. He kept saying he smelled cookies. He’d say, ‘Serena, when will those cookies be done?’ I haven’t baked cookies in years! He’d say, ‘Bring me one, Serena, as soon as they’re out of the oven.’ So I would make a batch and then he’d look surprised and tell me he wasn’t hungry.”
“I wish you’d called me,” Maggie said.
“What could you have done?”
Well, nothing, really, Maggie thought. She couldn’t even say for certain that she knew what Serena was going through. Every stage of their lives, it seemed, Serena had experienced slightly ahead of Maggie; and every stage she’d reported on in her truthful, startling, bald-faced way, like some foreigner who didn’t know the etiquette.
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