Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

The trouble was, he decided, Julian had never had anything happen to him. His ruddy, cheerful face was unscarred by anything but sunburn; his only interest was a ridiculously inefficient form of transportation. His brief marriage had ended amicably. He had no children. Macon didn’t want to sound prejudiced, but he couldn’t help feeling that people who had no children had never truly grown up. They weren’t entirely… real, he felt.

Unexpectedly, he pictured Muriel after the Doberman had knocked her off the porch. Her arm hung lifeless; he knew the leaden look a broken limb takes on. But Muriel ignored it; she didn’t even glance at it. Smudged and disheveled and battered, she held her other hand up. “Absolutely not,” she said.

She arrived the next morning with a gauzy bouffant scarf swelling over her hair, her hands thrust deep in her coat pockets. Edward danced around her. She pointed to his rump. He sat, and she bent to pick up his leash.

“How’s your little boy?” Macon asked her.

She looked over at him. “What?” she said.

“Wasn’t he sick?”

“Who told you that?”

“Someone at the vet’s, when I phoned.”

She went on looking at him.

“What was it? The flu?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, probably,” she said after a moment. “Some little stomach thing.”

“It’s that time of year, I guess.”

“How come you phoned?” she asked him.

“I wanted to know why Edward wouldn’t lie down.”

She turned her gaze toward Edward. She wound the leash around her hand and considered him.

“I tap my foot but he never obeys me,” Macon said. “Something’s wrong.”

“I told you he’d be stubborn about it.”

“Yes, but I’ve been practicing two days now and he’s not making any—”

“What do you expect? You think I’m magical or something? Why blame me?”

“Oh, I’m not blaming—”

“You most certainly are. You tell me something’s wrong, you call me on the phone—”

“I just wanted to—”

“You think it’s weird I didn’t mention Alexander, don’t you?”

“Alexander?”

“You think I’m some kind of unnatural mother.”

“What? No, wait a minute—”

“You’re not going to give me another thought, are you, now you know I’ve got a kid. You’re like, ‘Oh, forget it, no point getting involved in that ,’ and then you wonder why I didn’t tell you about him right off. Well, isn’t it obvious? Don’t you see what happens when I do?”

Macon wasn’t quite following her logic, perhaps because he was distracted by Edward. The shriller Muriel’s voice grew, the stiffer Edward’s hair stood up on the back of his neck. A bad sign. A very bad sign. Edward’s lip was slowly curling. Gradually, at first almost soundlessly, he began a low growl.

Muriel glanced at him and stopped speaking. She didn’t seem alarmed. She merely tapped her foot twice. But Edward not only failed to lie down; he rose from his sitting position. Now he had a distinct, electrified hump between his shoulders. He seemed to have altered his basic shape. His ears were flattened against his skull.

“Down,” Muriel said levelly.

With a bellow, Edward sprang straight at her face. Every tooth was bare and gleaming. His lips were drawn back in a horrible grimace and flecks of white foam flew from his mouth. Muriel instantly raised the leash. She jerked it upward with both fists and lifted Edward completely off the floor. He stopped barking. He started making gargling sounds.

“He’s choking,” Macon said.

Edward’s throat gave an odd sort of click.

“Stop it. It’s enough! You’re choking him!”

Still, she let him hang. Now Edward’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. Macon grabbed at Muriel’s shoulder but found himself with a handful of coat, bobbled and irregular like something alive. He shook it, anyhow. Muriel lowered Edward to the floor. He landed in a boneless heap, his legs crumpling beneath him and his head flopping over. Macon crouched at his side. “Edward? Edward? Oh, God, he’s dead!”

Edward raised his head and feebly licked his lips.

“See that? When they lick their lips it’s a sign they’re giving in,” Muriel said cheerfully. “Doggie, Do taught me that.”

Macon stood up. He was shaking.

“When they lick their lips it’s good but when they put a foot on top of your foot it’s bad,” Muriel said. “Sounds like a secret language, just about, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again,” Macon told her.

“Huh?”

“In fact, don’t even bother coming again.”

There was a startled silence.

“Well, fine,” Muriel said, tightening her scarf. “If that’s the way you feel, just fine and dandy.” She stepped neatly around Edward and opened the front door. “You want a dog you can’t handle? Fine with me.”

“I’d rather a barking dog than a damaged, timid dog,” Macon said.

“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.

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?”