The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer by Anne Tyler, Monica McInerney Read Free Book Online

black lusterless eyes. But the look he gave her was veiled and impassive, as haughty as Daisy’s. Neither one of them had any further need of her.
    She replaced everything in her purse and snapped it shut. When she started walking again her shoes felt stiff and uncomfortable, as if her feet had changed shape while she was standing. Maybe they’d swollen; it was a very warm day. But even the weather suited her purposes. This way, she could camp out if she had to. She could sleep in a haystack. Providing haystacks still existed.
    Tonight she’d phone Serena and apologize for missing the funeral. She would reverse the charges; she could do that, with Serena. Serena might not want to accept the call at first because Maggie had let her down—Serena was always so quick to take offense—but eventually she’d give in and Maggie would explain. “Listen,” she would say, “right now I wouldn’t mind going to
Ira’s
funeral.” Or maybe that was tactless, in view of the circumstances.
    The café lay just ahead, and beyond that was a low cinderblock building of some sort and beyond that, she guessed, at least a semblance of a town. It would be one of those scrappy little Route One towns, with much attention given to the requirements of auto travel. She would register at a no-frills motel, the room scarcely larger than the bed, which she pictured, with some enjoyment, as sunken in the middle and covered with a worn chenille spread. She would shop at Nell’s Grocery for foods that didn’t need cooking. One thing most people failed to realize was that many varieties of canned soup could be eaten cold straight from the tin, and they made a fairly balanced meal, too. (A can opener: She mustn’t forget to buy one at the grocery.)
    As for employment, she didn’t have much hope of finding a nursing home in such a town. Maybe something clerical, then. She knew how to type and keep books, although she wasn’t wonderful at it. She’d had a little experience at the frame shop. Maybe an auto-parts store could use her, or she could be one of those women behind the grille at a service station, embossing credit card bills and handing people their keys. If worse came to worst she could punch a cash register. She could wait tables. She could scrub floors, for heaven’s sake. She was only forty-eight and her health was perfect, and in spite of what some people might think, she was capable of anything she set her mind to.
    She bent to pick a chicory flower. She stuck it in the curls above her left ear.
    Ira thought she was a klutz. Everybody did. She had developed a sort of clownish, pratfalling reputation, somehow. In the nursing home once, there’d been a crash and a tinkle of glass, and the charge nurse had said, “Maggie?” Just like that! Not even checking first to make sure! And Maggie hadn’t been anywhere near; it was someone else entirely. But that just went to show how people viewed her.
    She had assumed when she married Ira that he would always look at her the way he’d looked at her that first night, when she stood in front of him in her trousseau negligee and the only light in the room was the filmy shaded lamp by the bed. She had unbuttoned her top button and then her next-to-top button, just enough to let the negligee slip from her shoulders and hesitate and fall around her ankles. He had looked directly into her eyes, and it seemed he wasn’t even breathing. She had assumed that would go on forever.
    In the parking lot in front of Nell’s Grocery & Café two men stood next to a pickup, talking. One was fat and ham-faced and the other was thin and white and wilted. They were discussing someone named Doug who had come out all over in swelters. Maggie wondered what a swelter was. She pictured it as a combination of a sweat and a welt. She knew she must make an odd sight, arriving on foot out of nowhere so dressed up and citified. “Hello!” she cried, sounding like her mother. The men stopped talking and stared at her.