Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

Macon groaned.

“Come into this nice store with her,” the puppet urged.

“Muriel, I think Edward’s getting restless now.”

“There’s lots of things to buy here! Pliers and wrenches and T-squares… There’s a silent hammer.”

“What?”

“A hammer that doesn’t make a sound. You can pound in nails in the dead of night.”

“Listen—” Macon said.

“There’s a magnifying glass all cracked and broken, and when you look at broken things through the lens you’d swear they’d turned whole again.”

“Really, Muriel.”

“I’m not Muriel! I’m Mitchell Mitten! Macon, don’t you know Muriel can always take care of herself?” the puppet asked him. “Don’t you know she could find another job tomorrow, if she wanted? So come inside! Come along! There’s a pocket-knife here with its own whetstone blade.”

“Oh, for Lord’s sake,” Macon said.

But he gave a grudging little laugh.

And went on inside.

Over the next few days she kept bringing up France again and again. She sent him an anonymous letter pasted together from magazine print: Don’t FoRget tO BUY plANe Ticket for MuRiel. (And the telltale magazine — with little blocks clipped out of its pages — still lay on the kitchen table.) She asked him to get her her keys from her purse and when he opened her purse he found photographs, two slick colored squares on thin paper showing Muriel’s eyes at half mast. Passport photos, plainly. She must have meant for him to see them; she was watching him so intently. But all he did was drop her keys in her palm without comment.

He had to admire her. Had he ever known such a fighter? He went grocery shopping with her unusually late one evening, and just as they were crossing a shadowed area a boy stepped forth from a doorway. “Give over all what you have in your purse,” he told Muriel. Macon was caught off guard; the boy was hardly more than a child. He froze, hugging the sack of groceries. But Muriel said, “The hell I will!” and swung her purse around by its strap and clipped the boy in the jaw. He lifted a hand to his face. “You get on home this instant or you’ll be sorry you were ever born,” Muriel told him. He slunk away, looking back at her with a puzzled expression.

When Macon had caught his breath again, he told Muriel she was a fool. “He might have had a gun, for all you knew,” he said. “Anything might have happened! Kids show less mercy than grownups; you can see that any day in the papers.”

“Well, it turned out fine, didn’t it?” Muriel asked. “What are you so mad at?”

He wasn’t sure. He supposed he might be mad at himself. He had done nothing to protect her, nothing strong or chivalrous. He hadn’t thought as fast as she had or thought at all, in fact. While Muriel… why, Muriel hadn’t even seemed surprised. She might have strolled down that street expecting a neighbor here, a stray dog there, a holdup just beyond — all equally part of life. He felt awed by her, and diminished. Muriel just walked on, humming “Great Speckled Bird” as if nothing particular had happened.

“I don’t think Alexander’s getting a proper education,” he said to her one evening.

“Oh, he’s okay.”

“I asked him to figure what change they’d give back when we bought the milk today, and he didn’t have the faintest idea. He didn’t even know he’d have to subtract.”

“Well, he’s only in second grade,” Muriel said.

“I think he ought to switch to a private school.”

“Private schools cost money.”

“So? I’ll pay.”

She stopped flipping the bacon and looked over at him. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“What are you saying, Macon? Are you saying you’re committed?”

Macon cleared his throat. He said, “Committed.”

“Alexander’s got ten more years of school ahead of him. Are you saying you’ll be around for all ten years?”

“Um…”

“I can’t just put him in a school and take him out again with every passing whim of yours.”

He was silent.

“Just tell me this much,” she said. “Do you picture us getting married sometime? I mean when your divorce comes through?”

He said, “Oh, well, marriage, Muriel…”

“You don’t, do you. You don’t know what you want. One minute you like me and the next you don’t. One minute you’re ashamed to be seen with me and the next you think I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

He stared at her. He had never guessed that she read him so clearly.

“You think you can just drift along like this, day by day, no plans,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll be here, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll just go on back to Sarah. Oh yes! I saw you at Rose’s wedding. Don’t think I didn’t see how you and Sarah looked at each other.”

Macon said, “All I’m saying is—”

“All I’m saying,” Muriel told him, “is take care what you promise my son. Don’t go making him promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“But I just want him to learn to subtract!” he said.

She didn’t answer, and so the last word rang in the air for moments afterward. Subtract. A flat, sharp, empty sound that dampened Macon’s spirits.

At supper she was too quiet; even Alexander was quiet, and excused himself the minute he’d finished his BLT. Macon, though, hung around the kitchen. Muriel was running a sinkful of water. He said, “Shall I dry?” Without any sort of warning, she whirled and flung a wet sponge in his face. Macon said, “Muriel?”

“Just get out!” she shouted, tears spiking her lashes, and she turned away again and plunged her hands into water so hot that it steamed. Macon retreated. He went into the living room where Alexander was watching TV, and Alexander moved over on the couch to give him space. He didn’t say anything, but Macon could tell he’d heard from the way he tensed at each clatter in the kitchen. After a while the clatters died down. Macon and Alexander looked at each other. There was a silence; a single murmuring voice. Macon rose and returned to the kitchen, walking more quietly than usual and keeping a weather eye out, the way a cat creeps back after it’s been dumped from someone’s lap.

Muriel was talking on the phone with her mother. Her voice was gay and chirpy but just a shade thicker than usual, as if she were recovering from a cold. “So anyhow,” she said, “I asked what kind of trouble her dog is giving her and the lady’s like, ‘Oh, no trouble,’ so I ask her, ‘Well, what’s his problem, then?’ and the lady’s like, ‘No real problem.’ I say, ‘Ma’am. You must have called me here for some reason.’ She says, ‘Oh. Well. That.’ She says, ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was wondering about when he makes.’ I say, ‘Makes?’ She says, ‘Yes, when he makes number one. He makes like little girl dogs do, he doesn’t lift his leg.’ I say to her, ‘Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. You have called me here to teach your dog to lift his leg when he tinkles.’ ”

Her free hand kept flying out while she talked, as if she imagined her mother could see her. Macon came up behind her and put his arms around her, and she leaned back against him. “Oh, there’s never a dull moment, I tell you,” she said into the phone.

That night he dreamed he was traveling in a foreign country, only it seemed to be a medley of all the countries he’d ever been to and even some he hadn’t. The sterile vast spaces of Charles de Gaulle airport chittered with those tiny birds he’d seen inside the terminal at Brussels; and when he stepped outdoors he was in Julian’s green map of Hawaii with native dancers, oversized, swaying near the dots that marked various tourist attractions. Meanwhile his own voice, neutral and monotonous, murmured steadily: In Germany the commercial traveler must be punctual for all appointments,in Switzerland he should be five minutes early, in Italy delays of several hours are not uncommon…