Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

“No, they can’t. You’re right. They can’t,” Macon said.

“I mean this is ridiculous.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“See you, then. Bye.”

“Well, wait!” he said.

But she was gone.

After he hung up, he turned and saw the latest arrivals just heading toward him from the elevator. First came three men, and then three women in long gowns. Behind them was a couple who couldn’t be past their teens. The boy’s wrist bones stuck out of the sleeves of his suit. The girl’s dress was clumsy and touching, her small chin obscured by a monstrous orchid.

Halfway down the corridor, the boy and girl stopped to gaze around them. They looked at the ceiling, and then at the floor. Then they looked at each other. The boy said, “Hoo!” and grabbed both the girl’s hands, and they stood there a moment, laughing, before they went into the restaurant.

Macon followed them. He felt soothed and tired and terribly hungry. It was good to find the waiter just setting his food in place when he sank back into his seat.

"I’ll be honest,” Muriel said, “My baby was not exactly planned for. I mean we weren’t exactly even married yet, if you want to know the truth. If you want to know the truth the baby was the reason we got married in the first place, but I did tell Norman he didn’t have to go through with it if he didn’t want to. It’s not like I pushed him into it or anything.”

She looked past Macon at Edward, who lay prone on the front hall rug. He’d had to be forced into position, but at least he was staying put.

“Notice I let him move around some, as long as he stays down,” she said. “Now I’m going to turn my back, and you watch how he does.”

She wandered into the living room. She lifted a vase from a table and examined its underside. “So anyhow,” she said, “we went ahead and got married, with everybody acting like it was the world’s biggest tragedy. My folks really never got over it. My mom said, ‘Well, I always knew this was going to happen. Back when you were hanging out with Dana Scully and them, one or another of them no-count boys always honking out front for you, didn’t I tell you this was going to happen?’ We had a little bitty wedding at my folks’ church, and we didn’t take a honeymoon trip but went straight to our apartment and next day Norman started work at his uncle’s. He just settled right into being married — shopping with me for groceries and picking out curtains and such. Oh, you know, sometimes I get to thinking what kids we were. It was almost like playing house! It was pretend! The candles I lit at suppertime, flowers on the table, Norman calling me ‘hon’ and bringing his plate to the sink for me to wash. And then all at once it turned serious. Here I’ve got this little boy now, this great big seven-year-old boy with his clompy leather shoes, and it wasn’t playing house after all. It was for real, all along, and we just didn’t know it.”

She sat on the couch and raised one foot in front of her. She turned it admiringly this way and that. Her stockings bagged at the ankle.

“What is Edward up to?” she asked.

Macon said, “He’s still lying down.”

“Pretty soon he’ll do that for three hours straight.”

“Three hours ?”

“Easy.”

“Isn’t that sort of cruel?”

“I thought you promised not to talk like that,” she told him.

“Right. Sorry,” Macon said.

“Maybe tomorrow he’ll lie down on his own.”

“You think so?”

“If you practice. If you don’t give in. If you don’t go all soft-hearted.”

Then she stood up and came over to Macon. She patted his arm. “But never mind,” she told him, “ I think soft-hearted men are sweet.”

Macon backed away. He just missed stepping on Edward.

It was getting close to Thanksgiving, and the Learys were debating as usual about Thanksgiving dinner. The fact was, none of them cared for turkey. Still, Rose said, it didn’t seem right to serve anything else. It would just feel wrong. Her brothers pointed out that she’d have to wake up at five a.m. to put a turkey in the oven. But it was she who’d be doing it, Rose said. It wouldn’t be troubling them any.

Then it began to seem she had had an ulterior motive, for as soon as they settled on turkey she announced that she might just invite Julian Edge. Poor Julian, she said, had no close family nearby, and he and his neighbors gathered forlornly at holidays, each bringing his or her specialty. Thanksgiving dinner last year had been a vegetarian pasta casserole and goat cheese on grape leaves and kiwi tarts. The least she could do was offer him a normal family dinner.

“What!” Macon said, acting surprised and disapproving, but unfortunately, it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Oh, Julian was up to something, all right. But what could it be? Whenever Rose came down the stairs in her best dress and two spots of rouge, whenever she asked Macon to shut Edward in the pantry because Julian would be stopping by to take her this place or that — well, Macon had a very strong urge to let Edward accidentally break loose. He made a point of meeting Julian at the door, eyeing him for a long, silent moment before calling Rose. But Julian behaved; no glint of irony betrayed him. He was respectful with Rose, almost shy, and hovered clumsily when he ushered her out the door. Or was that the irony? His Rose Leary act. Macon didn’t like the looks of this.

Then it turned out that Porter’s children would be coming for Thanksgiving too. They usually came at Christmas instead, but wanted to trade off this year due to some complication with their grandparents on their stepfather’s side. So really, Rose said, wasn’t it good they were having turkey? Children were such traditionalists. She set to work baking pumpkin pies. “We gather together,” she sang, “to ask the Lord’s blessing…” Macon looked up from the sheaf of stolen menus he was spreading across the kitchen table. There was a note of gaiety in her voice that made him uneasy. He wondered if she had any mistaken ideas about Julian — if, for instance, she hoped for some kind of romance. But Rose was so plain and sensible in her long white apron. She reminded him of Emily Dickinson; hadn’t Emily Dickinson also baked for her nieces and nephews? Surely there was no need for concern.

“My son’s name is Alexander,” Muriel said. “Did I tell you that? I named him Alexander because I thought it sounded high-class. He was never an easy baby. For starters something went wrong while I was carrying him and they had to do a Caesarean and take him out early and I got all these complications and can’t ever have any more children. And then Alexander was so teeny he didn’t even look like a human, more like a big-headed newborn kitten, and he had to stay in an incubator forever, just about, and nearly died. Norman said, ‘When’s it going to look like other babies?’ He always called Alexander ‘it.’ I adjusted better; I mean pretty soon it seemed to me that that was what a baby ought to look like, and I hung around the hospital nursery but Norman wouldn’t go near him, he said it made him too nervous.”

Edward whimpered. He was just barely lying down — his haunches braced, his claws digging into the carpet. But Muriel gave no sign she had noticed.

“Maybe you and Alexander should get together some time,” she told Macon.

“Oh, I, ah…” Macon said.

“He doesn’t have enough men in his life.”

“Well, but—”

“He’s supposed to see men a lot; it’s supposed to show him how to act. Maybe the three of us could go to a movie. Don’t you ever go to movies?”

“No, I don’t,” Macon said truthfully. “I haven’t been to a movie in months. I really don’t care for movies. They make everything seem so close up.”