The Accidental Tourist (11 page)

“You want a dog that bites all your friends? Scars neighbor kids for life? Gets you into lawsuits? You want a dog that hates the whole world? Evil, nasty,
angry
dog? That kills the whole world?”

She slipped out the screen door and closed it behind her. Then she looked through the screen directly into Macon’s eyes. “Why, yes, I guess you do,” she said.

From the hall floor, Edward gave a moan and watched her walk away.

eight

Now the days were shorter and colder, and the trees emptied oceans of leaves on the lawn but remained, somehow, as full as ever, so you’d finish raking and look upward to see a great wash of orange and yellow just waiting to cover the grass again the minute your back was turned. Charles and Porter drove over to Macon’s house and raked there as well, and lit the pilot light in the furnace and repaired the basement window. They reported that everything seemed fine. Macon heard the news without much interest. Next week he’d be out of his cast, but no one asked when he was moving back home.

Each morning he and Edward practiced heeling. They would trudge the length of the block, with Edward matching Macon’s gait so perfectly that he looked crippled himself. When they met passersby now he muttered but he didn’t attack. “See there?” Macon wanted to tell someone. Bikers were another issue, but Macon had confidence they would solve that problem too, eventually.

He would make Edward sit and then he’d draw back, holding out a palm. Edward waited. Oh, he wasn’t such a bad dog! Macon wished he could change the gestures of command—the palm, the pointed finger, all vestiges of that heartless trainer—but he supposed it was too late. He tapped his foot. Edward growled. “Dear one,” Macon said, dropping heavily beside him. “Won’t you please consider lying down?” Edward looked away. Macon stroked the soft wide space between his ears. “Ah, well, maybe tomorrow,” he said.

His family was not so hopeful. “What about when you start traveling again?” Rose said. “You’re not leaving him with me. I wouldn’t know how to handle him.”

Macon told her they would get to that when they got to it.

It was hard for him to imagine resuming his travels. Sometimes he wished he could stay in his cast forever. In fact, he wished it covered him from head to foot. People would thump faintly on his chest. They’d peer through his eyeholes. “Macon? You in there?” Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. No one would ever know.

One evening just after supper, Julian stopped by with a stack of papers. Macon had to slam Edward into the pantry before he opened the door. “Here you are!” Julian said, strolling past him. He wore corduroys and looked rugged and healthy. “I’ve been phoning you for three days straight. That dog sounds awfully close by, don’t you think?”

“He’s in the pantry,” Macon said.

“Well, I’ve brought some materials, Macon—mostly on New York. We’ve got a lot of suggestions for New York.”

Macon groaned. Julian set his papers on the couch and looked around him. “Where are the others?” he asked.

“Oh, here and there,” Macon said vaguely, but just then Rose appeared, and Charles was close behind.

“I hope I’m not interfering with supper,” Julian told them.

“No, no,” Rose said.

“We’ve finished,” Macon said triumphantly.

Julian’s face fell. “Really?” he said. “What time do you eat, anyhow?”

Macon didn’t answer that. (They ate at five-thirty. Julian would laugh.)

Rose said, “But we haven’t had our coffee. Wouldn’t you like some coffee?”

“I’d love some.”

“It seems a little silly,” Macon said, “if you haven’t eaten.”

“Well, yes,” Julian said, “I suppose it does, Macon, to someone like you. But for me, home-brewed coffee is a real treat. All the people in my apartment building eat out, and there’s nothing in any of the kitchens but a couple cans of peanuts and some diet soda.”

“What kind of place
is
that?” Rose asked.

“It’s the Calvert Arms—a singles building. Everybody’s single.”

“Oh! What an interesting idea.”

“Well, not really,” Julian said gloomily. “Not after a while. I started out enjoying it but now I think it’s getting me down. Sometimes I wish for the good old-fashioned way of doing things, with children and families and old people like normal buildings have.”

“Well, of course you do,” Rose told him. “I’m going to get you some nice hot coffee.”

She left, and the others sat down. “So. Are you three all there is?” Julian asked.

Macon refused to answer, but Charles said, “Oh, no, there’s Porter too.”

“Porter? Where is Porter?”

“Um, we’re not too sure.”

“Missing?”

“He went to a hardware store and we think he got lost.”

“A little while before supper.”

“Supper. You mean today.”

“He’s just running an errand,” Macon said. “Not lost in any permanent sense.”

“Where was the store?”

“Someplace on Howard Street,” Charles said. “Rose needed hinges.”

“He got lost on Howard Street.”

Macon stood up. “I’ll go help Rose,” he said.

Rose was setting their grandmother’s clear glass coffee mugs on a silver tray. “I hope he doesn’t take sugar,” she said. “The sugar-bowl is empty and Edward’s in the pantry where I keep the bag.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Maybe you could go to the pantry and get it for me.”

“Oh, just give him his coffee straight and tell him to take it or leave it.”

“Why, Macon! This is your employer!”

“He’s only here because he hopes we’ll do something eccentric,” Macon told her. “He has this one-sided notion of us. I just pray none of us says anything unconventional around him, are you listening?”

“What would we say?” Rose asked. “We’re the most conventional people I know.”

This was perfectly true, and yet in some odd way it wasn’t. Macon couldn’t explain it. He sighed and followed her out of the kitchen.

In the living room, Charles was doggedly debating whether they should answer the phone in case it rang, in case it might be Porter, in case he needed them to consult a map. “Chances are, though, he wouldn’t bother calling,” he decided, “because he knows we wouldn’t answer. Or he thinks we wouldn’t answer. Or I don’t know, maybe he figures we would answer even so, because we’re worried.”

“Do you always give this much thought to your phone calls?” Julian asked.

Macon said, “Have some coffee, Julian. Try it black.”

“Why, thank you,” Julian said. He accepted a mug and studied the inscription that arched across it. “CENTURY OF PROGRESS 1933,” he read off. He grinned and raised the mug in a toast. “To progress,” he said.

“Progress,” Rose and Charles echoed. Macon scowled.

Julian said, “What do you do for a living, Charles?”

“I make bottle caps.”

“Bottle caps! Is that a fact!”

“Oh, well, it’s no big thing,” Charles said. “I mean it’s not half as exciting as it sounds, really.”

“And Rose? Do you work?”

“Yes, I do,” Rose said, in the brave, forthright style of someone being interviewed. “I work at home; I keep house for the boys. Also I take care of a lot of the neighbors. They’re mostly old and they need me to read their prescriptions and repair their plumbing and such.”

“You repair their plumbing?” Julian asked.

The telephone rang. The others stiffened.

“What do you think?” Rose asked Macon.

“Um . . .”

“But he knows we wouldn’t answer,” Charles told them.

“Yes, he’d surely call a neighbor instead.”

“On the other hand . . .” Charles said.

“On the other hand,” Macon said.

It was Julian’s face that decided him—Julian’s pleased, perked expression. Macon reached over to the end table and picked up the receiver. “Leary,” he said.

“Macon?”

It was Sarah.

Macon shot a glance at the others and turned his back to them. “Yes,” he said.

“Well, finally,” she said. Her voice seemed oddly flat and concrete. All at once he saw her clearly: She wore one of his cast-off shirts and she sat hugging her bare knees. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you at home,” she said. “Then it occurred to me you might be having supper with your family.”

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

He was nearly whispering. Maybe Rose understood, from that, who it was, for she suddenly began an animated conversation with the others. Sarah said, “What? I can’t hear you.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Who’s that talking?”

“Julian’s here.”

“Oh, Julian! Give him my love. How’s Sukie?”

“Sukie?”

“His boat, Macon.”

“It’s fine,” he said. Or should he have said “she”? For all he knew,
Sukie
was at the bottom of the Chesapeake.

“I called because I thought we should talk,” Sarah said. “I was hoping we could meet for supper some night.”

“Oh. Well. Yes, we could do that,” Macon said.

“Would tomorrow be all right?”

“Certainly.”

“What restaurant?”

“Well, why not the Old Bay,” Macon said.

“The Old Bay. Of course,” Sarah said. She either sighed or laughed, he wasn’t sure which.

“It’s only because you could walk there,” he told her. “That’s the only reason I suggested it.”

“Yes, well, let’s see. You like to eat early; shall we say six o’clock?”

“Six will be fine,” he said.

When he hung up, he found Rose embarked on a discussion of the English language. She pretended not to notice he had rejoined them. It was shocking, she was saying, how sloppy everyday speech had become. How the world seemed bound and determined to say “
the
hoi polloi,” a clear redundancy in view of the fact that “hoi” was an article. How “chauvinist” had come to be a shorthand term for “male chauvinist,” its original meaning sadly lost to common knowledge. It was incredible, Charles chimed in, that a female movie star traveled “incognito” when any fool should know she was “incognita” instead. Julian appeared to share their indignation. It was more incredible still, he said, how everyone slung around the word “incredible” when really there was very little on earth that truly defied credibility. “Credence,” Macon corrected him, but Rose rushed in as if Macon hadn’t spoken. “Oh, I know just what you mean,” she told Julian. “Words are getting devalued, isn’t that right?” She tugged handfuls of her gray tube skirt over her knees in a childlike gesture. You would think she had never been warned that outsiders were not to be trusted.

To enter the Old Bay Restaurant, Macon had to climb a set of steps. Before he broke his leg he hadn’t even noticed those steps existed—let alone that they were made of smooth, unblemished marble, so that his crutches kept threatening to slide out from under him. Then he had to fight the heavy front door, hurrying a bit because Rose had taken a wrong turn driving him down and it was already five after six.

The foyer was dark as night. The dining room beyond was only slightly brighter, lit by netted candles on the tables. Macon peered into the gloom. “I’m meeting someone,” he told the hostess. “Is she here yet?”

“Not as I know of, hon.”

She led him past a tankful of sluggish lobsters, past two old ladies in churchy hats sipping pale pink drinks, past a whole field of empty tables. It was too early for anyone else to be eating; all the other customers were still in the bar. The tables stood very close together, their linens brushing the floor, and Macon had visions of catching a crutch on a tablecloth and dragging the whole thing after him, candle included. The maroon floral carpet would burst into flames. His grandfather’s favorite restaurant—his greatgrandfather’s too, quite possibly—would be reduced to a heap of charred metal crab pots. “Miss! Slow down!” he called, but the hostess strode on, muscular and athletic in her off-the-shoulder square-dance dress and sturdy white crepe-soled shoes.

She put him in a corner, which was lucky because it gave him a place to lean his crutches. But just as he was matching them up and preparing to set them aside, she said, “I’ll take those for you, darlin’.”

“Oh, they’ll be fine here.”

“I need to check them up front, sweetheart. It’s a rule.”

“You have a rule about crutches?”

“They might trip the other customers, honeybunch.”

This was unlikely, since the two other customers were clear across the room, but Macon handed his crutches over. Come to think of it, he might be better off without them. Then Sarah wouldn’t get the impression (at least at first glance) that he’d fallen apart in her absence.

As soon as he was alone he tugged each shirt cuff till a quarter-inch of white showed. He was wearing his gray tweed suit coat with gray flannel trousers—an old pair of trousers, so it hadn’t mattered if he cut one leg off. Charles had fetched them from home and Rose had hemmed them, and she’d also trimmed his hair. Porter had lent him his best striped tie. They had all been so discreetly helpful that Macon had felt sad, for some reason.

The hostess reappeared in the doorway, followed by Sarah. Macon had an instant of stunned recognition; it was something like accidentally glimpsing his own reflection in a mirror. Her halo of curls, the way her coat fell around her in soft folds, her firm, springy walk in trim pumps with wineglass heels—how had he forgotten all that?

He half stood. Would she kiss him? Or just, God forbid, coolly shake hands. But no, she did neither; she did something much worse. She came around the table and pressed her cheek to his briefly, as if they were mere acquaintances meeting at a cocktail party.

“Hello, Macon,” she said.

He waved her speechlessly into the chair across from his. He sat again, with some effort.

“What happened to your leg?” she asked.

“I had a kind of . . . fall.”

“Is it broken?”

He nodded.

“And what did you do to your hand?”

He held it up to examine. “Well, it’s a sort of dog bite. But it’s nearly healed by now.”

“I meant the other one.”

The other one had a band of gauze around the knuckles. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s just a scrape. I’ve been helping Rose build a cat door.”

She studied him.

“But I’m all right!” he told her. “In fact the cast is almost comfortable. Almost familiar! I’m wondering if I broke a leg once before in some previous incarnation.”

Their waitress asked, “Can I bring you something from the bar?”

She was standing over them, pad and pencil poised. Sarah started flipping hastily through the menu, so Macon said, “A dry sherry, please.” Then he and the waitress turned back to Sarah. “Oh, my,” Sarah said. “Let me see. Well, how about a Rob Roy. Yes, a Rob Roy would be nice, with extra cherries.”