The Accidental Tourist (29 page)

“Macon, I think that after a certain age people just don’t have a choice,” Sarah said. “You’re who I’m with. It’s too late for me to change. I’ve used up too much of my life now.”

You mean to tell me you can just use a person up and then move
on?
Muriel had asked.

Evidently so, was the answer. For even if he had stayed with Muriel, then wouldn’t Sarah have been left behind?

“After a certain age,” he told Sarah, “it seems to me you can only choose what to lose.”

“What?” she said.

“I mean there’s going to be something you have to give up, whichever way you cut it.”

“Well, of course,” she said.

He supposed she’d always known that.

They finished their meal but they didn’t order coffee because they were running late. Sarah had her class; she was studying with a sculptor on Saturdays. Macon called for the bill and paid it, self-consciously totaling it first. Then they stepped out into the sunshine. “What a pretty day,” Sarah said. “It makes me want to play hooky.”

“Why don’t you?” Macon asked. If she didn’t go to class, he wouldn’t have to work on his guidebook.

But she said, “I can’t disappoint Mr. Armistead.”

They drove home, and she changed into a sweat suit and set off again. Macon carried in the fertilizer, which Rose had poured into a bucket. It was something shredded that had no smell—or only a harsh, chemical smell, nothing like the truckloads of manure the men used to bring for his grandmother’s camellias. He set it on the pantry floor and then he took the dog out. Then he made himself a cup of coffee to clear his head. He drank it at the kitchen sink, staring into the yard. The cat rubbed against his ankles and purred. The clock over the stove ticked steadily. There was no other sound.

When the telephone rang, he was glad. He let it ring twice before he answered so as not to seem overeager. Then he picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Leary?”

“Yes!”

“This is Mrs. Morton calling, at Merkle Appliance Store. Are you aware that the maintenance policy on your hot water heater expires at the end of the month?”

“No, I hadn’t realized,” Macon said.

“You had a two-year policy at a cost of thirty-nine eighty-eight. Now to renew it for another two years the cost of course would be slightly higher since your hot water heater is older.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Macon said. “Gosh! How old
is
that thing by now?”

“Let’s see. You purchased it three years ago this July.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to keep the maintenance policy.”

“Wonderful. I’ll send you a new contract then, Mr. Leary, and thank you for—”

“And would that still include replacement of the tank?” Macon asked.

“Oh, yes. Every part is covered.”

“And they’d still do the yearly checkups.”

“Why, yes.”

“I’ve always liked that. A lot of the other stores don’t offer it; I remember from when I was shopping around.”

“So I’ll send you the contract, Mr.—”

“But I would have to arrange for the checkup myself, as I recall.”

“Yes, the customer schedules the checkup.”

“Maybe I’ll just schedule it now. Could I do that?”

“That’s a whole different department, Mr. Leary. I’ll mail you out the contract and you can read all about it. Bye bye.”

She hung up.

Macon hung up too.

He thought a while.

He had an urge to go on talking; anyone would do. But he couldn’t think what number to dial. Finally he called the time lady. She answered before the first ring was completed. (
She
had no worries about seeming overeager.) “At the tone,” she said, “the time will be one . . . forty-nine. And ten seconds.” What a voice. So melodious, so well modulated. “At the tone the time will be one . . . forty-nine. And twenty seconds.”

He listened for over a minute, and then the call was cut off. The line clicked and the dial tone started. This made him feel rebuffed, although he knew he was being foolish. He bent to pat the cat. The cat allowed it briefly before walking away.

There was nothing to do but sit down at his typewriter.

He was behind schedule with this guidebook. Next week he was supposed to start on France, and he still hadn’t finished the conclusion to the Canada book. He blamed it on the season. Who could sit alone indoors when everything outside was blooming?
Travelers should be forewarned,
he typed, but then he fell to admiring a spray of white azaleas that trembled on the ledge of his open window. A bee crawled among the blossoms, buzzing. He hadn’t known the bees were out yet. Did Muriel know? Would she recall what a single bee could do to Alexander?

. . . should be forewarned,
he read over, but his concentration was shot now.

She was so careless, so unthinking; how could he have put up with her? That unsanitary habit she had of licking her finger before she turned a magazine page; her tendency to use the word “enormity” as if it referred to size. There wasn’t a chance in this world that she’d remember about bee stings.

He reached for the phone on his desk and dialed her number. “Muriel?”

“What,” she said flatly.

“This is Macon.”

“Yes, I know.”

He paused. He said, “Um, it’s bee season, Muriel.”

“So?”

“I wasn’t sure you were aware. I mean summer just creeps up,
I
know how summer creeps up, and I was wondering if you’d thought about Alexander’s shots.”

“Don’t you believe I can manage that much for myself?” she screeched.

“Oh. Well.”

“What do you think I am, some sort of ninny? Don’t you think I know the simplest dumbest thing?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure, you see, that—”

“A fine one you are! Ditch that child without a word of farewell and then call me up on the telephone to see if I’m raising him right!”

“I just wanted to—”

“Criticize, criticize! Tell me Oodles of Noodles is not a balanced meal and then go off and desert him and then have the nerve to call me up and tell me I’m not a good mother!”

“No, wait, Muriel—”

“Dominick is dead,” she said.

“What?”

“Not that you would care. He died.”

Macon noticed how the sounds in the room had stopped. “Dominick Saddler?” he asked.

“It was his night to take my car and he went to a party in Cockeysville and coming home he crashed into a guardrail.”

“Oh, no.”

“The girl he had with him didn’t get so much as a scratch.”

“But Dominick . . .” Macon said, because he didn’t believe it yet.

“But Dominick died instantly.”

“Oh, my Lord.”

He saw Dominick on the couch with Alexander, holding aloft a can of paste wax.

“Want to hear something awful? My car will be just fine,” Muriel said. “Straighten the front end and it’ll run good as ever.”

Macon rested his head in his hand.

“I have to go now and sit with Mrs. Saddler in the funeral home,” she said.

“Is there something I can do?”

“No,” she said, and then spitefully, “How could
you
be any help?”

“I could stay with Alexander, maybe.”

“Alexander’s got people of our own to stay with him,” she said.

The doorbell rang, and Edward started barking. Macon heard him in the front hall.

“Well, I’ll say good-bye now,” Muriel said. “Sounds like you have company.”

“Never mind that.”

“I’ll let you get back to your
life
,” she said. “So long.”

He kept the receiver to his ear for a moment, but she had hung up.

He went out to the hall and tapped his foot at Edward. “Down!” he said. Edward lay down, the hump on his back still bristling. Macon opened the door and found a boy with a clipboard.

“Modern Housewares,” the boy told him.

“Oh. The couch.”

While the couch was being unloaded, Macon shut Edward in the kitchen. Then he returned to the hall and watched the couch lumbering toward him, borne by the first boy and another, just slightly older, who had an eagle tattooed on his forearm. Macon thought of Dominick Saddler’s muscular, corded arms grappling beneath the hood of Muriel’s car. The first boy spat as he approached the house, but Macon saw how young and benign his face was. “Aw, man,” the second one said, stumbling over the doorstep.

Macon said, “That’s all right,” and gave them each a five-dollar bill when they’d placed the couch where he directed.

After they’d gone he sat down on the couch, which still had some sort of cellophane covering. He rubbed his hands on his knees. Edward barked in the kitchen. Helen padded in softly, stopped still, eyed the couch, and continued through the room with an offended air. Macon went on sitting.

When Ethan died, the police had asked Macon to identify the body. But Sarah, they suggested, might prefer to wait outside. Yes, Sarah had said; she would. She had taken a seat on a molded beige chair in the hallway. Then she’d looked up at Macon and said, “Can you do this?”

“Yes,” he’d told her, evenly. He had felt he was barely breathing; he was keeping himself very level, with most of the air emptied out of his lungs.

He had followed a man into a room. It was not as bad as it could have been because someone had folded a wad of toweling under the back of Ethan’s head to hide the damage. Also it wasn’t Ethan. Not the real Ethan. Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him. This was simply an untenanted shell, although it bore a distant resemblance to Ethan—the same groove down the upper lip, same cowlick over the forehead. Macon had a sensation like pressing against a blank wall, willing with all his being something that could never happen:
Please, please come back inside.
But finally he said, “Yes. That is my son.”

He’d returned to Sarah and given her a nod. Sarah had risen and put her arms around him. Later, when they were alone in their motel, she’d asked him what he had seen. “Not really much of anything, sweetheart,” he had told her. She kept at him. Was Ethan . . . well, hurt-looking? Scared? He said, “No, he was nothing.” He said, “Let me get you some tea.”

“I don’t want tea, I want to hear!” she’d said. “What are you hiding?” He had the impression she was blaming him for something. Over the next few weeks it seemed she grew to hold him responsible, like a bearer of bad tidings—the only one who could say for a fact that Ethan had truly died. She made several references to Macon’s chilliness, to his appalling calm that night in the hospital morgue. Twice she expressed some doubt as to whether, in fact, he was really capable of distinguishing Ethan from some similar boy. In fact, that may not have been Ethan at all. It may have been somebody else who had died. She should have ascertained for herself. She was the mother, after all; she knew her child far better; what did Macon know?

Macon said, “Sarah. Listen. I will tell you as much as I can. He was very pale and still. You wouldn’t believe how still. He didn’t have any expression. His eyes were closed. There was nothing bloody or gruesome, just a sense of . . . futility. I mean I wondered what the purpose had been. His arms were down by his sides and I thought about last spring when he started lifting weights. I thought, ‘Is this what it comes to? Lift weights and take vitamins and build yourself up and then—nothing?’ ”

He hadn’t been prepared for Sarah’s response. “So what are you saying?” she asked him. “We die in the end, so why bother living in the first place? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No—” he said.

“It all comes down to a question of economy?” she asked.

“No, Sarah. Wait,” he had said.

Thinking back on that conversation now, he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up—could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.

Lord knows how long he sat there.

Edward had been barking in the kitchen all this time, but now he went into a frenzy. Somebody must have knocked. Macon rose and went to the front of the house, where he found Julian standing on the porch with a file folder. “Oh. It’s you,” Macon said.

“What’s all that barking I hear?”

“Don’t worry, he’s shut in the kitchen. Come on in.”

He held the screen door open and Julian stepped inside. “Thought I’d bring you the material for Paris,” Julian said.

“I see,” Macon said. But he suspected he was really here for some other reason. Probably hoping to hurry the Canada book. “Well, I was just this minute touching up my conclusion,” he said, leading the way to the living room. And then, hastily, “Few details here and there I’m not entirely happy with; may be a little while yet . . .”

Julian didn’t seem to be listening. He sat down on the cellophane that covered the couch. He tossed the folder aside and said, “Have you seen Rose lately?”

“Yes, we were over there just this morning.”

“Do you think she’s not coming back?”

Macon hadn’t expected him to be so direct. In fact, Rose’s situation had begun to look like one of those permanent irregularities that couples never refer to. “Oh, well,” he told Julian, “you know how it is. She’s worried about the boys. They’re eating glop or something.”

“Those are not boys, Macon. They’re men in their forties.”

Macon stroked his chin.

“I’m afraid she’s left me,” Julian said.

“Oh, now, you can’t be sure of that.”

“And not even for a decent reason!” Julian said. “Or for any reason. I mean our marriage was working out fine; that much I can swear to. But she’d worn herself a groove or something in that house of hers, and she couldn’t help swerving back into it. At least, I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Well, it sounds about right,” Macon told him.

“I went to see her two days ago,” Julian said, “but she was out. I was standing in the yard wondering where she’d got to when who should drive past but Rose in person, with her car stuffed full of old ladies. All the windows packed with these little old faces and feathered hats. I shouted after her, I said, ‘Rose! Wait!’ but she didn’t hear me and she drove on by. Then just at the last minute she caught sight of me, I guess, and she turned and stared, and I got the funniest feeling, like the car was driving
her
—like she was just gliding past helpless and couldn’t do a thing but send me one long look before she disappeared.”