“No, you,” Macon said firmly.
There was a bad moment or two in which it seemed that Alexander might keep up that stare of his forever. He sat C-shaped in his chair, chin on one hand, eyes expressionless. The shins emerging from his trousers were thin as Tinkertoys, and his brown school shoes seemed very large and heavy. Finally he said, “So the water won’t whoosh all over.”
“Right.”
Macon was careful not to make too much of his victory.
“Now, this leak is not from the spout, but from the handle,” he said. “So you want to take the handle apart and replace the packing. First you unscrew the top screw. Let’s see you do it.”
“Me?”
Macon nodded and offered him the screwdriver.
“I don’t want to,” Alexander said.
“Let him just watch,” Muriel suggested.
“If he just watched he won’t know how to fix the one in the bathtub, and I’m going to ask him to manage that without me.”
Alexander took the screwdriver, in one of those small, stingy gestures of his that occupied a minimum of space. He inched off the chair and came over to the sink. Macon pulled another chair up close and Alexander climbed onto it. Then there was the problem of fitting the screwdriver into the slot of the screw. It took him forever. He had tiny fingers, each tipped with a little pink pad above painfully bitten nails. He concentrated, his glasses slipping down on his nose. Always a mouth-breather, he was biting his tongue now and panting slightly.
“Wonderful,” Macon said when the screwdriver finally connected.
At each infinitesimal turn, though, it slipped and had to be repositioned. Macon’s stomach muscles felt tight. Muriel, for once, was silent, and her silence was strained and anxious.
Then, “Ah!” Macon said. The screw had loosened enough so that Alexander could twist it by hand. He managed that part fairly easily. He even removed the faucet without being told. “Very good,” Macon said. “I believe you may have natural talents.”
Muriel relaxed. Leaning back against the counter, she said, “My folks have their Christmas dinner in the daytime. I mean it’s not at noon but it’s not at night either, it’s more like midafternoon, or this year it’s really late afternoon because I’ve got the morning shift at the Meow-Bow and—”
“Look at this,” Macon told Alexander. “See that gunk? That’s old, rotted packing. So take it away. Right. Now here’s the new packing. You wind it around, wind even a little more than you need. Let’s see you wind it around.”
Alexander wrapped the thread. His fingers turned white with the effort. Muriel said, “Usually we have a goose. My daddy brings a goose from the Eastern Shore. Or don’t you care for goose. Would you rather just a turkey? A duck? What are you used to eating, Macon?”
Macon said, “Oh, well…” and was saved by Alexander. Alexander turned, having reassembled the faucet without any help, and said, “Now what?”
“Now make sure the screw is well in.”
Alexander resumed his struggles with the screwdriver. Muriel said, “Maybe you’d rather a good hunk of beef. I know some men are like that. They think poultry is kind of pansy. Is that how you think too? You can tell me! I won’t mind! My folks won’t mind!”
“Oh, um, Muriel…”
“Now what,” Alexander ordered.
“Why, now we turn the water back on and see what kind of job you’ve done.”
Macon crouched beneath the sink and showed him where the valve was. Alexander reached past him and twisted it, grunting. Wasn’t it odd, Macon thought, how little boys all had that same slightly green smell, like a cedar closet. He rose and turned on the faucet. No leak. “Look at that!” he told Alexander. “You’ve solved the problem.”
Alexander fought to hold a grin back.
“Will you know how to do it the next time?”
He nodded.
“Now when you’re grown,” Macon said, “you can fix the faucets for your wife.”
Alexander’s face squinched up with amusement at the thought.
“ ‘Step back, dearie,’ you can say. ‘Just let me see to this.’ ”
Alexander said, “Tssh!”—his face like a little drawstring purse.
“ ‘Let a real
“Tssh! Tssh!”
“Macon? Are you coming to my folks’, or aren’t you?” Muriel asked.
It seemed unreasonable to say he wasn’t. Somehow or other, he had got himself involved already.
thirteen
Muriel’s parents lived out in Timonium, in a development called Foxhunt Acres. Muriel had to show Macon the way. It was the coldest Christmas Day either of them could remember, but they drove with the windows slightly open so that Alexander, riding in back, would not be bothered by the dog hair. The radio was tuned to Muriel’s favorite station. Connie Francis was singing “Baby’s First Christmas.”
“You warm enough?” Muriel asked Alexander. “You doing okay?”
Alexander must have nodded.
“You feel like you’re wheezing at all?”
“Nope.”
“No, ma’am,” she corrected him.
Sarah used to do that, too, Macon remembered — give their son a crash course in manners anytime they set out to visit her mother.
Muriel said, “Once I was riding Alexander uptown on some errands for George? My company? And I had these two cats in the car just the day before? And I didn’t think a thing about it, clean forgot to vacuum like I usually do, and all at once I turn around and Alexander’s stretched across the seat, flat out.”
“I wasn’t flat
“You were just as good as.”
“I was only laying down so I wouldn’t need so much air.”
“See there?” Muriel said to Macon.
They were traveling up York Road now, past body shops and fast food outlets all closed and bleak. Macon had never seen this road so empty. He overtook a van and then a taxicab; nothing else. Swags of Christmas greens hung stiffly above a used car lot.
“He can get shots, though,” Muriel said.
“Shots?”
“He can get shots to keep him from wheezing.”
“Then why doesn’t he?”
“Well, if Edward was to move in I guess that’s what we’d do.”
“Edward?”
“I mean if, you know. If you moved in on a permanent basis and Edward came too.”
“Oh,” Macon said.
Brenda Lee was singing “I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus.” Muriel hummed along, tipping her head perkily left and right to keep time.
“Would you ever think of doing that?” she asked him finally.
“Doing what?” he said, pretending not to know.
“Would you ever think of moving in with us?”
“Oh, um…”
