Their first course arrived, placed before them by a hand that, as far as Macon was concerned, was not attached to a body. Condiment bottles were shifted needlessly; a metal stand full of sugar packets was moved a half-inch over. “Anything else?” the waitress asked.
“No!” Macon said. “Thank you.”
She left.
He said, “Sarah?”
“It’s not possible,” she told him.
She was sliding a single pearl up and down the chain at her throat. He had given her that pearl when they were courting. Was there any significance in her wearing it this evening? Or maybe she cared so little now, it hadn’t even occurred to her to leave it off. Yes, that was more likely.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t say no before you hear me out. Have you ever considered we might have another baby?”
He had shocked her, he saw; she drew in a breath. (He had shocked himself.)
“Why not?‘ he asked her. “We’re not too old.”
“Oh, Macon.”
“This time, it would be easy,” he said. “It wouldn’t take us seven years again; I bet you’d get pregnant in no time!” He leaned toward her, straining to make her see it: Sarah blossoming in that luscious pink maternity smock she used to wear. But oddly enough, what flashed across his mind instead was the memory of those first seven years — their disappointment each month. It had seemed to Macon back then (though of course it was pure superstition) that their failures were a sign of something deeper, some essential incompatibility. They had missed connections in the most basic and literal sense. When she finally got pregnant, he had felt not only relieved but guilty, as if they had succeeded in putting something over on someone.
He pushed these thoughts back down. “I realize,” he said, “that it wouldn’t be Ethan. I realize we can’t replace him. But—”
“No,” Sarah said.
Her eyes were very steady. He knew that look. She’d never change her mind.
Macon started on his soup. It was the best crab soup in Baltimore, but unfortunately the spices had a tendency to make his nose run. He hoped Sarah wouldn’t think he was crying.
“I’m sorry,” she said more gently. “But it would never work.”
He said, “All right, forget that. It was crazy, right? Crazy notion. By the time that baby was twenty we’d be… Aren’t you going to eat?”
She glanced down at her plate. Then she picked up a fork.
“Suppose I did this,” Macon said. “Suppose I packed a suitcase with your clothes and knocked on your door and said, ‘Come on, we’re going to Ocean City. We’ve wasted long enough.’ ”
She stared, an artichoke heart raised halfway to her mouth.
“Ocean City?” she said. “You hate Ocean City!”
“Yes, but I meant—”
“You always said it was way too crowded.”
“Yes, but—”
“And what clothes could you be talking about? They’re all in my apartment.”
“It was only a manner of speaking,” Macon said.
“Really, Macon,” she told him. “You don’t even communicate when you communicate.”
“Oh,
“I am starting over,” she said. She returned the artichoke heart to her plate. “I’m doing everything I can to start over,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I want to live the same life twice. I’m trying to branch off in new directions. I’m taking some courses. I’m even dating, a little.”
“Dating?”
“I’ve been going out with this physician.”
There was a pause.
Macon said, “Why not just call him a doctor.”
Sarah briefly closed her eyes.
“Look,” she said. “I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for both of us. But we really didn’t have much left, don’t you see? Look who you turned to when you broke your leg: your sister Rose! You didn’t even let me know, and you do have my telephone number.”
“If I’d turned to you instead,” he said, “would you have come?”
“Well… but at least you could have asked. But no, you called on your family. You’re closer to them than you ever were to me.”
“That’s not true,” Macon said. “Or rather, it’s true but it’s not the point. I mean, in one sense, of course we’re closer; we’re blood relations.”
“Playing that ridiculous card game no one else can fathom,” Sarah said. “Plotting your little household projects, Rose with her crescent wrench and her soldering gun. Cruising hardware stores like other people cruise boutiques.”
“
“Picking apart people’s English,” Sarah said. “Hauling forth the dictionary at every opportunity. Quibbling over
“For God’s sake, Sarah, what’s wrong with fastening your seatbelt?”
“They always go to one restaurant, the one their grandparents went to before them, and even there they have to rearrange the silver and set things up so they’re sitting around the table the same way they sit at home. They dither and deliberate, can’t so much as close a curtain without this group discussion back and forth, to and fro, all the pros and cons. ‘Well, if we leave it open it will be so hot but if we close it things will get musty…’ They have to have their six glasses of water every day. Their precious baked potatoes every night. They don’t believe in ballpoint pens or electric typewriters or automatic transmissions. They don’t believe in hello and good-bye.”
“Hello? Good-bye?” Macon said.
“Just watch yourself some time! People walk in and you just, oh, register it with your eyes; people leave and you just look away quickly. You don’t admit to comings and goings. And the best house in the world might come on the market, but you can’t buy it because you’ve ordered these address labels for the old house, a thousand five hundred gummed labels, and you have to use them up before you move.”
“That wasn’t me, it was Charles,” Macon said.
“Yes, but it could have been you. And his wife divorced him for it, and I don’t blame her.”
“And now you’re about to do the same damn thing,” Macon said. “Ruin twenty years of marriage over whether I fasten my seatbelt.”
“They were ruined long ago, believe me,” Sarah said.
Macon laid down his spoon. He forced himself to take a deep breath.
“Sarah,” he said. “We’re getting away from the point.”
After a silence, Sarah said, “Yes, I guess we are.”
“It’s what happened to Ethan that ruined us,” Macon told her.
She set an elbow on the table and covered her eyes.
“But it wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Why, some people, a thing like this brings them closer together. How come we’re letting it part us?”
The waitress said, “Is everything all right?”
Sarah sat up straighter and started rummaging through her purse.
“Yes, certainly,” Macon said.
The waitress was carrying a tray with their main dishes. She cast a doubtful look at Sarah’s antipasto. “Isn’t she going to eat that, or what?” she asked Macon.
“No, I guess, um, maybe not.”
“Didn’t she like it?”
“She liked it fine. Take it away.”
The waitress bustled around the table in an offended silence. Sarah put aside her purse. She looked down at
