The Accidental Tourist

and down he went.”

“I’m proud of both of you.”

She told Edward, “Stay,” holding out a hand. She backed into the house again. “Now, Macon, you come in too.”

They closed the front door. Muriel tweaked the lace curtain and peered out. “Well, he’s staying so far,” she announced.

She turned her back to the door. She checked her fingernails and said, “Tsk!” Tiny beads of rain trickled down her raincoat, and her hair — reacting to the damp — stood out in corkscrews. “Someday I’m going to get me a professional manicure,” she said.

Macon tried to see around her; he wasn’t sure that Edward would stay put.

“Have you ever been to a manicurist?” she asked.

“Me? Goodness, no.”

“Well, some men go.”

“Not me.”

“I’d like just once to get everything done professional. Nails, skin… My girlfriend goes to this place where they vacuum your skin. They just vacuum all your pores, she says. I’d like to go there sometime. And I’d like to have my colors done. What colors look good on me? What don’t? What brings out the best in me?”

She looked up at him. All at once, Macon got the feeling she had not been talking about colors at all but something else. It seemed she used words as a sort of background music. He took a step away from her. She said, “You didn’t have to apologize, the other day.”

“Apologize?”

Although he knew exactly what she was referring to.

She seemed to guess that. She didn’t explain herself.

“Um, I don’t remember if I ever made this clear,” Macon said, “but I’m not even legally divorced yet.”

“So?”

“I’m just, what do you call. Separated.”

“Well? So?”

He wanted to say, Muriel, forgive me, but since my son died, sex has… turned. (As milk turns; that was how he thought of it. As milk will alter its basic nature and turn sour.) I really don’t think of it anymore. I honestly don’t. I can’t imagine anymore what all that fuss was about. Now it seems pathetic.

But what he said was, “I’m worried the mailman’s going to come.” She looked at him for a moment longer, and then she opened the door for Edward.

Rose was knitting Julian a pullover sweater for Christmas. “Already?” Macon asked. “We’ve barely got past Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, but this is a really hard pattern and I want to do it right.”

Macon watched her needles flashing. “Actually,” he said, “have you ever noticed that Julian wears cardigans?”

“Yes, I guess he does,” she said.

But she went on knitting her pullover.

It was a heathery gray wool, what he believed they called Ragg wool. Macon and both his brothers had sweaters that color. But Julian wore crayon colors or navy blue. Julian dressed like a golfer. “He tends toward the V-necked look,” Macon said to Rose.

“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t wear a crew neck if he had one.”

“Look,” Macon said. “I guess what I’m getting at—”

Rose’s needles clicked serenely.

“He’s really kind of a playboy,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize that. And besides, he’s younger.”

“Two years,” she said.

“But he’s got a younger, I don’t know, style of living. Singles and apartments and so on.”

“He says he’s tired of all that.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“He says he likes homeyness. He appreciates my cooking. He can’t believe I’m knitting him a sweater.”

“No, I guess not,” Macon said grimly.

“Don’t try to spoil this, Macon.”

“Sweetheart, I only want to protect you. It’s wrong, you know, what you said at Thanksgiving. Love is not what it’s all about. There are other things to consider besides, all kinds of other issues.”

“He ate my turkey and did not get sick. Two big helpings,” Rose said.

Macon groaned and tore at a handful of his hair.

“First we try him on a real quiet street,” Muriel said. “Someplace public, but not too busy. Some out-of-the- way little store or something.”

She was driving her long gray boat of a car. Macon sat in front beside her, and Edward sat in back, his ears out horizontal with joy. Edward was always happy to be invited for a car ride, though very soon he’d turn cranky. (“How much longer?” you could almost hear him whine.) It was lucky they weren’t going far.

“I got this car on account of its big old trunk,” Muriel said. She slung it dashingly around a corner. “I needed it for my errand business. Guess how much it cost?”

“Um…”

“Only two hundred dollars. That’s because it needed work, but I took it to this boy down the street from where I live. I said, ‘Here’s the deal. You fix my car up, I let you have the use of it three nights a week and all day Sunday.’ Wasn’t that a good idea?”

“Very inventive,” Macon said.

“I’ve had to be inventive. It’s been scrape and scrounge, nail and knuckle, ever since Norman left me,” she said. She had pulled into a space in front of a little shopping center, but she made no move to get out of the car. “I’ve lain awake, oh, many a night, thinking up ways to earn money. It was bad enough when room and board came free, but after Mrs. Brimm died it was worse; her house passed on to her son and I had to pay him rent. Her son’s an old skinflint. Always wanting to jack up the price. I said, ‘How’s about this? You leave the rent where it is and I won’t trouble you with maintenance. I’ll tend to it all myself,’ I said. ‘Think of the headaches you’ll save.’ So he agreed and now you should see what I have to deal with, things go wrong and I can’t fix them and so we just live with them. Leaky roof, stopped-up sink, faucet dripping hot water so my gas bill’s out of this world, but at least I’ve kept the rent down. And I’ve got about fifty jobs, if you count them all up. You could say I’m lucky; I’m good at spotting a chance. Like those lessons at Doggie, Do, or another time a course in massage at the Y. The massage turned out to be a dud, seems you have to have a license and all like that, but I will say Doggie, Do paid off. And also I’m trying to start this research service; that’s on account of all I picked up helping the school librarian. Wrote out these little pink cards I passed around at Towson State: We-Search Research. Xeroxed these flyers and mailed them to every Maryland name in the Writer’s Directory. Men and Women of Letters!I said. Do you want a long slow illness that will effectively kill off a character without unsightly disfigurement? So far no one’s answered but I’m still hoping. Twice now I’ve paid for an entire Ocean City vacation just by going up and down the beach offering folks these box lunches me and Alexander fixed in our motel room every morning. We lug them in Alexander’s red wagon; I call out, ‘Cold drinks! Sandwiches! Step right up!’ And this is not even counting the regular jobs, like the Meow-Bow or before that the Rapid-Eze. Tiresome old Rapid-Eze; they did let me bring Alexander but it was nothing but copying documents and tedious things like that, canceled checks and invoices, little chits of things. I’ve never been so disinterested.”

Macon stirred and said, “Don’t you mean uninterested?”

“Exactly. Wouldn’t you be? Copies of letters, copies of exams, copies of articles on how to shop for a mortgage. Knitting instructions, crochet instructions, all rolling out of the machine real slow and stately like they’re