Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

She sighed and drank some more of her rum.

“Nobody talks about him,” Macon said. “None of you mentions his name.”

“We do when you’re not around,” Susan said.

“You do?”

“We talk about what he’d think, you know. Like when Danny got his license, or when I had a date for the Halloween Ball. I mean we used to make so much fun of the grown-ups. And Ethan was the funniest one; he could always get us to laugh. Then here we are, growing up ourselves. We wonder what Ethan would think of us, if he could come back and see us. We wonder if he’d laugh at us . Or if he’d feel… left out. Like we moved on and left him behind.”

The woman in the Colonial gown came to show them to their table. Macon brought his drink; Susan had already finished hers. She was a bit unsteady on her feet. When their waitress asked them if they’d like a wine list, Susan gave Macon a bright-eyed look but Macon said, “No,” very firmly. “I think we ought to start with soup,” he said. He had some idea soup was sobering.

But Susan talked in a reckless, headlong way all through the soup course, and the main course, and the two desserts she hadn’t been able to decide between, and the strong black coffee that he pressed upon her afterward. She talked about a boy she liked who either liked her back or else preferred someone named Sissy Pace. She talked about the Halloween Ball where this really juvenile eighth-grader had thrown up all over the stereo. She said that when Danny was eighteen, the three of them were moving to their own apartment because now that their mother was expecting (which Macon hadn’t known), she wouldn’t even realize they were gone. “That’s not true,” Macon told her. “Your mother would feel terrible if you left.” Susan propped her cheek on her fist in a sort of slipshod manner and said that she wasn’t born yesterday. Her hair had grown wilder through the evening, giving her an electrified appearance. Macon found it difficult to stuff her into her jacket, and he had to hold her up more or less by the back of her collar while they were waiting for a taxi.

In the railroad station she got a confused, squinty look, and once they were on the train she fell asleep with her head against the window. In Baltimore, when he woke her, she said, “You don’t think he’s mad at us, do you, Uncle Macon?”

“Who’s that?”

“You think he’s mad we’re starting to forget him?”

“Oh, no, honey. I’m sure he’s not.”

She slept in the car all the way from the station, and he drove very gently so as not to wake her. When they got home, Rose said it looked as if he’d worn the poor child right down to a frazzle.

“You want your dog to mind you in every situation,” Muriel said. “Even out in public. You want to leave him outside a public place and come back to find him waiting. That’s what we’ll work on this morning. We’ll start with him waiting right on your own front porch. Then next lesson we’ll go on to shops and things.”

She picked up the leash and they stepped out the door. It was raining, but the porch roof kept them dry. Macon said, “Hold on a minute, I want to show you something.”

“What’s that?”

He tapped his foot twice. Edward looked uncomfortable; he gazed off toward the street and gave a sort of cough. Then slowly, slowly, one forepaw crumpled. Then the other. He lowered himself by degrees until he was lying down.

“Well! Good dog!” Muriel said. She clucked her tongue.

Edward flattened his ears back for a pat.

“I worked on him most of yesterday,” Macon said. “It was Sunday and I had nothing to do. And then my brother’s kids were getting ready to leave and Edward was growling the way he usually does; so I tapped my foot and down he went.”

“I’m proud of both of you.”

She told Edward, “Stay,” holding out a hand. She backed into the house again. “Now, Macon, you come in too.”

They closed the front door. Muriel tweaked the lace curtain and peered out. “Well, he’s staying so far,” she announced.

She turned her back to the door. She checked her fingernails and said, “Tsk!” Tiny beads of rain trickled down her raincoat, and her hair — reacting to the damp — stood out in corkscrews. “Someday I’m going to get me a professional manicure,” she said.

Macon tried to see around her; he wasn’t sure that Edward would stay put.

“Have you ever been to a manicurist?” she asked.

“Me? Goodness, no.”

“Well, some men go.”

“Not me.”

“I’d like just once to get everything done professional. Nails, skin… My girlfriend goes to this place where they vacuum your skin. They just vacuum all your pores, she says. I’d like to go there sometime. And I’d like to have my colors done. What colors look good on me? What don’t? What brings out the best in me?”

She looked up at him. All at once, Macon got the feeling she had not been talking about colors at all but something else. It seemed she used words as a sort of background music. He took a step away from her. She said, “You didn’t have to apologize, the other day.”

“Apologize?”

Although he knew exactly what she was referring to.

She seemed to guess that. She didn’t explain herself.

“Um, I don’t remember if I ever made this clear,” Macon said, “but I’m not even legally divorced yet.”

“So?”

“I’m just, what do you call. Separated.”

“Well? So?”

He wanted to say, Muriel, forgive me, but since my son died, sex has… turned. (As milk turns; that was how he thought of it. As milk will alter its basic nature and turn sour.) I really don’t think of it anymore. I honestly don’t. I can’t imagine anymore what all that fuss was about. Now it seems pathetic.

But what he said was, “I’m worried the mailman’s going to come.” She looked at him for a moment longer, and then she opened the door for Edward.

Rose was knitting Julian a pullover sweater for Christmas. “Already?” Macon asked. “We’ve barely got past Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, but this is a really hard pattern and I want to do it right.”

Macon watched her needles flashing. “Actually,” he said, “have you ever noticed that Julian wears cardigans?”

“Yes, I guess he does,” she said.

But she went on knitting her pullover.

It was a heathery gray wool, what he believed they called Ragg wool. Macon and both his brothers had sweaters that color. But Julian wore crayon colors or navy blue. Julian dressed like a golfer. “He tends toward the V-necked look,” Macon said to Rose.

“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t wear a crew neck if he had one.”

“Look,” Macon said. “I guess what I’m getting at—”

Rose’s needles clicked serenely.

“He’s really kind of a playboy,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize that. And besides, he’s younger.”

“Two years,” she said.

“But he’s got a younger, I don’t know, style of living. Singles and apartments and so on.”

“He says he’s tired of all that.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“He says he likes homeyness. He appreciates my cooking. He can’t believe I’m knitting him a sweater.”

“No, I guess not,” Macon said grimly.

“Don’t try to spoil this, Macon.”

“Sweetheart, I only want to protect you. It’s wrong, you know, what you said at Thanksgiving. Love is not what it’s all about. There are other things to consider besides, all kinds of other issues.”

“He ate my turkey and did not get sick. Two big helpings,” Rose said.

Macon groaned and tore at a handful of his hair.

“First we try him on a real quiet street,” Muriel said. “Someplace public, but not too busy. Some out-of-the-way little store or something.”