Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

“Maybe we should put on the sheets, now that we’ve got it open,” Sarah said. She brought the sack of linens from the front hall. With Macon positioned at the other side of the couch, she floated a sheet about the mattress and then bustled up and down, tucking it in. Macon helped, but he wasn’t as fast as Sarah. The clay dust or whatever it was had worked itself into the seams of her knuckles, he saw. There was something appealing about her small, brown, creased hands against the white percale. He said, “Let’s give the bed a trial run.”

Sarah didn’t understand at first. She looked up from unfolding the second sheet and said, “Trial run?”

But she allowed him to take the sheet away and slip her sweat shirt over her head.

Making love to Sarah was comfortable and soothing. After all their years together, her body was so well known to him that he couldn’t always tell the difference between what he was feeling and what she was feeling. But wasn’t it sad that they hadn’t the slightest uneasiness about anyone walking in on them? They were so alone. He nestled his face in her warm, dusty neck and wondered if she shared that feeling as well — if she sensed all the empty air in the house. But he would never ask.

While Sarah took a shower, he shaved. They were supposed to go to Bob and Sue Carney’s for supper. When he came out of the bathroom Sarah was standing in front of the bureau, screwing on little gold earrings. (She was the only woman Macon knew of who didn’t have pierced ears.) He thought Renoir could have painted her: Sarah in her slip with her head cocked slightly, plump tanned arms upraised. “I’m really not in the mood to go out,” she said.

“Me neither,” Macon said, opening his closet door.

“I’d be just as content to stay home with a book.”

He pulled a shirt off a hanger.

“Macon,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“You never asked me if I slept with anyone while we were separated.”

Macon paused, halfway into one sleeve.

“Don’t you want to know?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

He put on the shirt and buttoned the cuffs.

“I would think you’d wonder.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said.

“The trouble with you is, Macon—”

It was astonishing, the instantaneous flare of anger he felt. “Sarah,” he said, “don’t even start. By God, if that doesn’t sum up every single thing that’s wrong with being married. ‘The trouble with you is, Macon—’ and, ‘I know you better than you know yourself, Macon—’ ”

“The trouble with you is,” she continued steadily, “you think people should stay in their own sealed packages. You don’t believe in opening up. You don’t believe in trading back and forth.”

“I certainly don’t,” Macon said, buttoning his shirt front.

“You know what you remind me of? The telegram Harpo Marx sent his brothers: No message. Harpo. ”

That made him grin. Sarah said, “You would think it was funny.”

“Well? Isn’t it?”

“It isn’t at all! It’s sad! It’s infuriating! It would be infuriating to go to your door and sign for that telegram and tear it open and find no message!”

He took a tie from the rack in his closet.

“For your information,” she said, “I didn’t sleep with anyone the whole entire time.”

He felt like she’d won some kind of contest. He pretended he hadn’t heard her.

Bob and Sue had invited just neighbors — the Bidwells and a new young couple Macon hadn’t met before. Macon stuck mainly to the new couple because with them, he had no history. When they asked if he had children, he said, “No.” He asked if they had any children.

“No,” Brad Frederick said.

“Ah.”

Brad’s wife was in transit between girlhood and womanhood. She wore her stiff navy blue dress and large white shoes as if they belonged to her mother. Brad himself was still a boy. When they all went out back to watch the barbecue, Brad found a Frisbee in the bushes and flung it to little Delilah Carney. His white polo shirt pulled loose from his trousers. Dominick Saddler came to Macon’s mind like a deep, hard punch. He remembered how, after his grandfather died, the sight of any old person could make his eyes fill with tears. Lord, if he wasn’t careful he could end up feeling sorry for the whole human race. “Throw that thing here,” he said briskly to Delilah, and he set aside his sherry and held out a hand for the Frisbee. Before long they had a real game going — all the guests joining in except Brad’s wife, who was still too close to childhood to risk getting stuck there on a visit back.

At supper, Sue Carney seated Macon at her right. She put a hand on his and said it was wonderful that he and Sarah had worked things out. “Well, thank you,” Macon said. “Gosh you make a really good salad, Sue.”

“We all have our ups and downs,” she said. For a second he thought she meant her salads weren’t consistently successful. “I’ll be honest,” she told him, “there’ve been times when I have wondered if Bob and I would make it. There’s times I feel we’re just hanging in there, you know what I mean? Times I say, ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ but inside I’m feeling like a Gold Star mother.”

Macon turned the stem of his glass and tried to think what step he’d missed in her logic.

“Like someone who’s suffered a loss in a war,” she said, “and then forever afterward she has to go on supporting the war; she has to support it louder than anyone else, because otherwise she’d be admitting the loss was for no purpose.”

“Um…”

“But that’s just a passing mood,” she said.

“Well, naturally,” Macon said.

He and Sarah walked home through air as heavy as water. It was eleven o’clock and the teenagers who had eleven o’clock curfews were just returning. These were the youngest ones, most of them too young to drive, and so they were chauffeured by grownups. They jumped out of cars shouting, “See you! Thanks! Call me tomorrow, hear?” Keys jingled. Front doors blinked open and blinked shut again. The cars moved on.

Sarah’s skirt had the same whispery sound as the Tuckers’ lawn sprinkler, which was still revolving slowly in a patch of ivy.

When they reached the house, Macon let Edward out for one last run. He tried to get the cat to come in, but she stayed hunched on the kitchen window ledge glaring down at him, owlish and stubborn; so he let her be. He moved through the rooms turning off lights. By the time he came upstairs Sarah was already in bed, propped against the headboard with a glass of club soda. “Have some,” she said, holding out the glass. But he said no, he was tired; and he undressed and slid under the covers.

The tinkling of Sarah’s ice cubes took on some meaning in his mind. It seemed that with every tinkle, he fell deeper. Finally he opened a door and traveled down an aisle and stepped into the witness stand. They asked him the simplest of questions. “What color were the wheels?” “Who brought the bread?” “Were the shutters closed or open?” He honestly couldn’t remember. He tried but he couldn’t remember. They took him to the scene of the crime, a winding road like something in a fairy tale. “Tell us all you know,” they said. He didn’t know a thing. By now it was clear from their faces that he wasn’t merely a witness; they suspected him. So he racked his brain, but still he came up empty. “You have to see my side of this!” he cried. “I put it all out of my mind; I worked to put it out! Now I can’t bring it back.”

“Not even to defend yourself?” they asked.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, and Sarah breathed softly next to him. The clock radio said it was midnight. The midnight-curfew group was just returning. Hoots and laughter rang out, tires scraped a curb, and a fanbelt whinnied as someone struggled to park. Then gradually the neighborhood fell silent. It would stay that way, Macon knew, till time for the one-o’clock group. He would first hear faint strands of their music and then more laughter, car doors slamming, house doors slamming. Porch lights would switch off all along the street, gradually dimming the ceiling as he watched. In the end, he would be the only one left awake.