Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

Yet she could raise her chin sometimes and pierce his mind like a blade. Certain images of her at certain random, insignificant moments would flash before him: Muriel at her kitchen table, ankles twined around her chair rungs, filling out a contest form for an all-expense-paid tour of Hollywood. Muriel telling her mirror, “I look like the wrath of God”—a kind of ritual of leavetaking. Muriel doing the dishes in her big pink rubber gloves with the crimson fingernails, raising a soapy plate and trailing it airily over to the rinse water and belting out one of her favorite songs—“War is Hell on the Home Front Too” or “I Wonder if God Likes Country Music.” (Certainly she liked country music — long, complaining ballads about the rocky road of life, the cold gray walls of prison, the sleazy, greasy heart of a two-faced man.) And Muriel at the hospital window, as he’d never actually seen her, holding a mop and gazing down at the injured coming in.

Then he knew that what mattered was the pattern of her life; that although he did not love her he loved the surprise of her, and also the surprise of himself when he was with her. In the foreign country that was Singleton Street he was an entirely different person. This person had never been suspected of narrowness, never been accused of chilliness; in fact, was mocked for his soft heart. And was anything but orderly.

“Why don’t you come to my folks’ house for Christmas dinner?” she asked him.

Macon was in her kitchen at the time. He was crouched beneath the sink, turning off a valve. For a moment he didn’t answer; then he emerged and said, “Your folks?”

“For Christmas dinner.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” he said.

“Come on, Macon, please say yes! I want you to meet them. Ma thinks I’m making you up. ‘You made him up,’ she says. You know how she is.”

Yes, Macon did know, at least from second hand, and he could just imagine what that dinner would be like. Booby-trapped. Full of hidden digs and hurt feelings. The fact was, he just didn’t want to get involved.

So instead of answering, he turned his attention to Alexander. He was trying to teach Alexander how to fix a faucet. “Now,” he said, “you see I shut the valve off. What did I do that for?”

All he got was a glassy pale stare. This was Macon’s idea, not Alexander’s. Alexander had been hauled away from the TV like a sack of stones, plunked on a kitchen chair, and instructed to watch closely. “Oh,” Muriel said, “I’m not sure about this. He’s not so very strong.”

“You don’t have to be Tarzan to fix a kitchen faucet, Muriel.”

“Well, no, but I don’t know…”

Sometimes Macon wondered if Alexander’s ailments were all in Muriel’s head.

“Why did I shut off the valve, Alexander?” he asked.

Alexander said, “Why.”

“You tell me.”

“You tell me .”

“No, you,” Macon said firmly.

There was a bad moment or two in which it seemed that Alexander might keep up that stare of his forever. He sat C-shaped in his chair, chin on one hand, eyes expressionless. The shins emerging from his trousers were thin as Tinkertoys, and his brown school shoes seemed very large and heavy. Finally he said, “So the water won’t whoosh all over.”

“Right.”

Macon was careful not to make too much of his victory.

“Now, this leak is not from the spout, but from the handle,” he said. “So you want to take the handle apart and replace the packing. First you unscrew the top screw. Let’s see you do it.”

“Me?”

Macon nodded and offered him the screwdriver.

“I don’t want to,” Alexander said.

“Let him just watch,” Muriel suggested.

“If he just watched he won’t know how to fix the one in the bathtub, and I’m going to ask him to manage that without me.”

Alexander took the screwdriver, in one of those small, stingy gestures of his that occupied a minimum of space. He inched off the chair and came over to the sink. Macon pulled another chair up close and Alexander climbed onto it. Then there was the problem of fitting the screwdriver into the slot of the screw. It took him forever. He had tiny fingers, each tipped with a little pink pad above painfully bitten nails. He concentrated, his glasses slipping down on his nose. Always a mouth-breather, he was biting his tongue now and panting slightly.

“Wonderful,” Macon said when the screwdriver finally connected.

At each infinitesimal turn, though, it slipped and had to be repositioned. Macon’s stomach muscles felt tight. Muriel, for once, was silent, and her silence was strained and anxious.

Then, “Ah!” Macon said. The screw had loosened enough so that Alexander could twist it by hand. He managed that part fairly easily. He even removed the faucet without being told. “Very good,” Macon said. “I believe you may have natural talents.”

Muriel relaxed. Leaning back against the counter, she said, “My folks have their Christmas dinner in the daytime. I mean it’s not at noon but it’s not at night either, it’s more like midafternoon, or this year it’s really late afternoon because I’ve got the morning shift at the Meow-Bow and—”

“Look at this,” Macon told Alexander. “See that gunk? That’s old, rotted packing. So take it away. Right. Now here’s the new packing. You wind it around, wind even a little more than you need. Let’s see you wind it around.”

Alexander wrapped the thread. His fingers turned white with the effort. Muriel said, “Usually we have a goose. My daddy brings a goose from the Eastern Shore. Or don’t you care for goose. Would you rather just a turkey? A duck? What are you used to eating, Macon?”

Macon said, “Oh, well…” and was saved by Alexander. Alexander turned, having reassembled the faucet without any help, and said, “Now what?”

“Now make sure the screw is well in.”

Alexander resumed his struggles with the screwdriver. Muriel said, “Maybe you’d rather a good hunk of beef. I know some men are like that. They think poultry is kind of pansy. Is that how you think too? You can tell me! I won’t mind! My folks won’t mind!”

“Oh, um, Muriel…”

“Now what,” Alexander ordered.

“Why, now we turn the water back on and see what kind of job you’ve done.”

Macon crouched beneath the sink and showed him where the valve was. Alexander reached past him and twisted it, grunting. Wasn’t it odd, Macon thought, how little boys all had that same slightly green smell, like a cedar closet. He rose and turned on the faucet. No leak. “Look at that!” he told Alexander. “You’ve solved the problem.”

Alexander fought to hold a grin back.

“Will you know how to do it the next time?”

He nodded.

“Now when you’re grown,” Macon said, “you can fix the faucets for your wife.”

Alexander’s face squinched up with amusement at the thought.

“ ‘Step back, dearie,’ you can say. ‘Just let me see to this.’ ”

Alexander said, “Tssh!”—his face like a little drawstring purse.

“ ‘Let a real man take care of this,’ you can tell her.”

“Tssh! Tssh!”

“Macon? Are you coming to my folks’, or aren’t you?” Muriel asked.

It seemed unreasonable to say he wasn’t. Somehow or other, he had got himself involved already.

Muriel’s parents lived out in Timonium, in a development called Foxhunt Acres. Muriel had to show Macon the way. It was the coldest Christmas Day either of them could remember, but they drove with the windows slightly open so that Alexander, riding in back, would not be bothered by the dog hair. The radio was tuned to Muriel’s favorite station. Connie Francis was singing “Baby’s First Christmas.”