Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

On the return trip, Edward kept close to Muriel’s left side. “I think he’s got the hang of it,” she called. She arrived in front of Macon and offered him the leash. “Now you.”

He attempted to slap his hip — which was difficult, on crutches. Then he set off. He was agonizingly slow and Edward kept pulling ahead. “Yank that leash!” Muriel said, clicking along behind. “He knows what he’s supposed to do. Contrary thing.”

Edward fell into step, finally, although he gazed off in a bored, lofty way. “Don’t forget to cluck,” Muriel said. “Every little minute, you have to praise him.” Her heels made a scraping sound behind them. “Once I worked with this dog that had never in her life been housebroken. Two years old and not one bit housebroken and the owners were losing their minds. First I can’t figure it out; then it comes to me. That dog thought she wasn’t supposed to piddle any place, not indoors or outdoors, either one. See, no one had ever praised her when she did it right. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I had to catch her peeing outdoors which wasn’t easy, believe me, because she was all the time ashamed and trying to hide it, and then I praised her to bits and after a while she caught on.”

They reached the corner. “Now, when you stop, he has to sit,” she said.

“But how will I practice?” Macon asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on these crutches.”

“So? It’s good exercise for your leg,” she said. She didn’t ask how the leg had been broken. Come to think of it, there was something impervious about her, in spite of all her interest in his private life. She said, “Practice lots, ten minutes a session.”

“Ten minutes!”

“Now let’s start back.”

She led the way, her angular, sashaying walk broken by the jolt of her sharp heels. Macon and Edward followed. When they reached the house, she asked what time it was. “Eight fifty,” Macon said severely. He mistrusted women who wore no watches.

“I have to get going. That will be five dollars, please, and the four cents you owe me from yesterday.”

He gave her the money and she stuffed it in her raincoat pocket. “Next time, I’ll stay longer and talk,” she said. “That’s a promise.” She trilled her fingers at him, and then she clicked off toward a car that was parked down the street — an aged, gray, boat-like sedan polished to a high shine. When she slid in and slammed the door behind her, there was a sound like falling beer cans. The engine twanged and rattled before it took hold. Macon shook his head, and he and Edward returned to the house.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, Macon spent what seemed a lifetime struggling up and down Dempsey Road beside Edward. His armpits developed a permanent ache. There was a vertical seam of pain in his thigh. This made no sense; it should have been in the shin. He wondered if something had gone wrong — if the break had been set improperly, for instance, so that some unusual strain was being placed upon the thighbone. Maybe he’d have to go back to the hospital and get his leg rebroken, probably under general anesthesia with all its horrifying complications; and then he’d spend months in traction and perhaps walk the rest of his life with a limp. He imagined himself tilting across intersections with a grotesque, lopsided gait. Sarah, driving past, would screech to a halt. “Macon?” She would roll down her window. “Macon, what happened ?”

He would raise one arm and let it flop and totter away from her.

Or tell her, “I’m surprised you care enough to inquire.”

No, just totter away.

Most likely these little spells of self-pity (an emotion he despised ordinarily) were caused by sheer physical exhaustion. How had he got himself into this? Slapping his haunch was the first problem; then summoning his balance to jerk the leash when Edward fell out of step, and staying constantly alert for any squirrel or pedestrian. “Sss!” he kept saying, and “Cluck-cluck!” and “Sss!” again. He supposed passersby must think he was crazy. Edward loped beside him, occasionally yawning, looking everywhere for bikers. Bikers were his special delight. Whenever he saw one, the hair between his shoulders stood on end and he lunged forward. Macon felt like a man on a tightrope that was suddenly set swinging.

At this uneven, lurching pace, he saw much more than he would have otherwise. He had a lengthy view of every bush and desiccated flower bed. He memorized eruptions in the sidewalk that might trip him. It was an old people’s street, and not in the best of repair. The neighbors spent their days telephoning back and forth among themselves, checking to see that no one had suffered a stroke alone on the stairs or a heart attack in the bathroom, a broken hip, blocked windpipe, dizzy spell over the stove with every burner alight. Some would set out for a walk and find themselves hours later in the middle of the street, wondering where they’d been headed. Some would start fixing a bite to eat at noon, a soft-boiled egg or a cup of tea, and by sundown would still be puttering in their kitchen, fumbling for the salt and forgetting how the toaster worked. Macon knew all this through his sister, who was called upon by neighbors in distress. “Rose, dear! Rose, dear!” they would quaver, and they’d stumble into her yard waving an overdue bill, an alarming letter, a bottle of pills with a childproof top.

In the evening, taking Edward for his last walk, Macon glanced in windows and saw people slumped in flowered armchairs, lit blue and shivery by their TV sets. The Orioles were winning the second game of the World Series, but these people seemed to be staring at their own thoughts instead. Macon imagined they were somehow dragging him down, causing him to walk heavily, to slouch, to grow short of breath. Even the dog seemed plodding and discouraged.

And when he returned to the house, the others were suffering one of their fits of indecisiveness. Was it better to lower the thermostat at night, or not? Wouldn’t the furnace have to work harder if it were lowered? Hadn’t Porter read that someplace? They debated back and forth, settling it and then beginning again. Why! Macon thought. They were not so very different from their neighbors. They were growing old themselves. He’d been putting in his own two bits (by all means, lower the thermostat), but now his voice trailed off, and he said no more.

That night, he dreamed he was parked near Lake Roland in his grandfather’s ’57 Buick. He was sitting in the dark and some girl was sitting next to him. He didn’t know her, but the bitter smell of her perfume seemed familiar, and the rustle of her skirt when she moved closer. He turned and looked at her. It was Muriel. He drew a breath to ask what she was doing here, but she put a finger to his lips and stopped him. She moved closer still. She took his keys from him and set them on the dashboard. Gazing steadily into his face, she unbuckled his belt and slipped a cool, knowing hand down inside his trousers.

He woke astonished and embarrassed, and sat bolt upright in his bed.

“Everybody always asks me, ‘What is your dog like?’ ” Muriel said. “ ‘I bet he’s a model of good behavior,’ they tell me. But you want to hear something funny? I don’t own a dog. In fact, the one time I had one around, he ran off. That was Norman’s dog, Spook. My ex-husband’s. First night we were married, Spook ran off to Norman’s mom’s. I think he hated me.”

“Oh, surely not,” Macon said.

“He hated me. I could tell.”

They were outdoors again, preparing to put Edward through his paces. By now, Macon had adjusted to the rhythm of these lessons. He waited, gripping Edward’s leash. Muriel said, “It was just like one of those Walt Disney movies. You know: where the dog walks all the way to the Yukon or something. Except Spook only walked to Timonium. Me and Norman had him downtown in our apartment, and Spook took off and traveled the whole however many miles it was back to Norman’s mom’s house in Timonium. His mom calls up: ‘When did you drop Spook off?’ ‘What’re you talking about?’ Norman asks her.”