and athletic in her off-the-shoulder square-dance dress and sturdy white crepe-soled shoes.
She put him in a corner, which was lucky because it gave him a place to lean his crutches. But just as he was matching them up and preparing to set them aside, she said, “I’ll take those for you, darlin’.”
“Oh, they’ll be fine here.”
“I need to check them up front, sweetheart. It’s a rule.”
“You have a rule about crutches?”
“They might trip the other customers, honeybunch.”
This was unlikely, since the two other customers were clear across the room, but Macon handed his crutches over. Come to think of it, he might be better off without them. Then Sarah wouldn’t get the impression (at least at first glance) that he’d fallen apart in her absence.
As soon as he was alone he tugged each shirt cuff till a quarter-inch of white showed. He was wearing his gray tweed suit coat with gray flannel trousers — an old pair of trousers, so it hadn’t mattered if he cut one leg off. Charles had fetched them from home and Rose had hemmed them, and she’d also trimmed his hair. Porter had lent him his best striped tie. They had all been so discreetly helpful that Macon had felt sad, for some reason.
The hostess reappeared in the doorway, followed by Sarah. Macon had an instant of stunned recognition; it was something like accidentally glimpsing his own reflection in a mirror. Her halo of curls, the way her coat fell around her in soft folds, her firm, springy walk in trim pumps with wineglass heels — how had he forgotten all that?
He half stood. Would she kiss him? Or just, God forbid, coolly shake hands. But no, she did neither; she did something much worse. She came around the table and pressed her cheek to his briefly, as if they were mere acquaintances meeting at a cocktail party.
“Hello, Macon,” she said.
He waved her speechlessly into the chair across from his. He sat again, with some effort.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked.
“I had a kind of… fall.”
“Is it broken?”
He nodded.
“And what did you do to your hand?”
He held it up to examine. “Well, it’s a sort of dog bite. But it’s nearly healed by now.”
“I meant the other one.”
The other one had a band of gauze around the knuckles. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s just a scrape. I’ve been helping Rose build a cat door.”
She studied him.
“But I’m all right!” he told her. “In fact the cast is almost comfortable. Almost familiar! I’m wondering if I broke a leg once before in some previous incarnation.”
Their waitress asked, “Can I bring you something from the bar?”
She was standing over them, pad and pencil poised. Sarah started flipping hastily through the menu, so Macon said, “A dry sherry, please.” Then he and the waitress turned back to Sarah. “Oh, my,” Sarah said. “Let me see. Well, how about a Rob Roy. Yes, a Rob Roy would be nice, with extra cherries.”
That was something else he’d forgotten — how she loved to order complicated drinks in restaurants. He felt the corners of his mouth twitching upward.
“So,” Sarah said when the waitress had gone. “Why would Rose be building a cat door? I thought they didn’t have any pets.”
“No, this is for our cat. Helen. Helen and I have been staying there.”
“What for?”
“Well, because of my leg.”
Sarah said nothing.
“I mean, can you see me managing those steps at home?” Macon asked her. “Taking Edward for walks? Lugging the trash cans out?”
But she was busy shucking off her coat. Beneath it she wore a gathered wool dress in an indeterminate color. (The candlelight turned everything to shades of sepia, like an old-fashioned photograph.) Macon had time to wonder if he’d given her the wrong idea. It sounded, perhaps, as if he were complaining — as if he were reproaching her for leaving him alone.
“But really,” he said, “I’ve been getting along wonderfully.”
“Good,” Sarah said, and she smiled at him and went back to her menu.
Their drinks were set before them on little cardboard disks embossed with crabs. The waitress said, “Ready to order, dearies?”
“Well,” Sarah said, “I think I’ll have the hot antipasto and the beef Pierre.”
The waitress, looking startled, peered over Sarah’s shoulder at the menu. (Sarah had never seemed to realize what the Old Bay Restaurant was all about.) “Here,” Sarah said, pointing, “and here.”
“If you say so,” the waitress said, writing it down.
“I’ll just have the, you know,” Macon said. “Crab soup, shrimp salad platter…” He handed back his menu. “Sarah, do you want wine?”
“No, thank you.”
When they were alone again, she said, “How long have you been at your family’s?”
“Since September,” Macon said.
“September! Your leg’s been broken all that time?”
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Tomorrow I get the cast off,” he said.
“And is Edward over there too?”
He nodded again.
“Was it Edward who bit your hand?”
“Well, yes.”
He wondered if she’d act like the others, urge him to call the S.P.C.A.; but instead she meditatively plucked a cherry off the plastic sword from her drink. “I guess he’s been upset,” she said.
“Yes, he has, in fact,” Macon said. “He’s not himself at all.”
“Poor Edward.”
“He’s getting kind of out of control, to tell the truth.”
“He always did have a sensitivity to change,” Sarah said.
Macon took heart. “Actually, he’s been attacking right and left,” he told her. “I had to hire a special trainer. But she was too harsh; let’s face it, she was brutal. She nearly strangled him when he tried to bite her.”
“Ridiculous,” Sarah said. “He was only frightened. When Edward’s frightened he attacks; that’s just the way he is. There’s no point scaring him more.”
Macon felt a sudden rush of love.
Oh, he’d raged at her and hated her and entirely forgotten her, at different times. He’d had moments when he imagined he’d never cared for her to begin with; only went after her because everybody else had. But the fact was, she was his best friend. The two of them had been through things that no one else in the world knew of. She was embedded in his life. It was much too late to root her out.
“What he wants,” she was saying, “is a sense of routine. That’s all he needs: reassurance.”
“Sarah,” he said, “it’s been awful living apart.”
She looked at him. Some trick of light made her eyes appear a darker blue, almost black.
“Hasn’t it?” he said.
She lowered her glass. She said, “I asked you here for a reason, Macon.”
He could tell it was something he didn’t want to hear.
She said, “We need to spell out the details of our separation.”
“We’ve been separated; what’s to spell out?” he asked.
“I meant in a legal way.”
“Legal. I see.”
“Now, according to the state of Maryland—”
“I think you ought to come home.”
