The Accidental Tourist

“It’s not like it really paid much,” Muriel said. “And you do buy most of the groceries now and help me with the rent and all; it’s not like I needed the money. Besides, it took so much time! Time I could spend with you and Alexander! Why, I was coming home nights literally dead with exhaustion, Macon.”

They passed Methylene’s Beauty Salon, an insurance agency, a paint-stripping shop. Edward gave an interested glance at a large, jowly tomcat basking on the hood of a pickup.

“Figuratively,” Macon said.

“Huh?”

“You were figuratively dead with exhaustion. Jesus, Muriel, you’re so imprecise. You’re so sloppy. And how could you quit your job like that? How could you just assume like that? You never even warned me!”

“Oh, don’t make such a big deal about it,” Muriel said.

They arrived at her favorite shop — a nameless little hole in the wall with a tumble of dusty hats in the window. Muriel started through the door but Macon stayed where he was. “Aren’t you coming in?” she asked him.

“I’ll wait here.”

“But it’s the place with all the gadgets!”

He said nothing. She sighed and disappeared.

Seeing her go was like shucking off a great, dragging burden.

He squatted to scratch behind Edward’s ears, and then he rose and studied a sun-bleached election poster as if it held some fascinating coded message. Two black women passed him, pulling wire carts full of laundry. “It was just as warm as this selfsame day I’m speaking to you but she wore a very very fur coat…”

“May-con.”

He turned toward the door of the shop.

“Oh, Maay-con!”

He saw a mitten, one of those children’s mittens designed to look like a puppet. The palm was a red felt mouth that widened to squeak, “Macon, please don’t be angry with Muriel.”

Macon groaned.

“Come into this nice store with her,” the puppet urged.

“Muriel, I think Edward’s getting restless now.”

“There’s lots of things to buy here! Pliers and wrenches and T-squares… There’s a silent hammer.”

“What?”

“A hammer that doesn’t make a sound. You can pound in nails in the dead of night.”

“Listen—” Macon said.

“There’s a magnifying glass all cracked and broken, and when you look at broken things through the lens you’d swear they’d turned whole again.”

“Really, Muriel.”

“I’m not Muriel! I’m Mitchell Mitten! Macon, don’t you know Muriel can always take care of herself?” the puppet asked him. “Don’t you know she could find another job tomorrow, if she wanted? So come inside! Come along! There’s a pocket-knife here with its own whetstone blade.”

“Oh, for Lord’s sake,” Macon said.

But he gave a grudging little laugh.

And went on inside.

Over the next few days she kept bringing up France again and again. She sent him an anonymous letter pasted together from magazine print: Don’t FoRget tO BUY plANe Ticket for MuRiel. (And the telltale magazine — with little blocks clipped out of its pages — still lay on the kitchen table.) She asked him to get her her keys from her purse and when he opened her purse he found photographs, two slick colored squares on thin paper showing Muriel’s eyes at half mast. Passport photos, plainly. She must have meant for him to see them; she was watching him so intently. But all he did was drop her keys in her palm without comment.

He had to admire her. Had he ever known such a fighter? He went grocery shopping with her unusually late one evening, and just as they were crossing a shadowed area a boy stepped forth from a doorway. “Give over all what you have in your purse,” he told Muriel. Macon was caught off guard; the boy was hardly more than a child. He froze, hugging the sack of groceries. But Muriel said, “The hell I will!” and swung her purse around by its strap and clipped the boy in the jaw. He lifted a hand to his face. “You get on home this instant or you’ll be sorry you were ever born,” Muriel told him. He slunk away, looking back at her with a puzzled expression.

When Macon had caught his breath again, he told Muriel she was a fool. “He might have had a gun, for all you knew,” he said. “Anything might have happened! Kids show less mercy than grownups; you can see that any day in the papers.”

“Well, it turned out fine, didn’t it?” Muriel asked. “What are you so mad at?”

He wasn’t sure. He supposed he might be mad at himself. He had done nothing to protect her, nothing strong or chivalrous. He hadn’t thought as fast as she had or thought at all, in fact. While Muriel… why, Muriel hadn’t even seemed surprised. She might have strolled down that street expecting a neighbor here, a stray dog there, a holdup just beyond — all equally part of life. He felt awed by her, and diminished. Muriel just walked on, humming “Great Speckled Bird” as if nothing particular had happened.

“I don’t think Alexander’s getting a proper education,” he said to her one evening.

“Oh, he’s okay.”

“I asked him to figure what change they’d give back when we bought the milk today, and he didn’t have the faintest idea. He didn’t even know he’d have to subtract.”

“Well, he’s only in second grade,” Muriel said.

“I think he ought to switch to a private school.”

“Private schools cost money.”

“So? I’ll pay.”

She stopped flipping the bacon and looked over at him. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“What are you saying, Macon? Are you saying you’re committed?”

Macon cleared his throat. He said, “Committed.”

“Alexander’s got ten more years of school ahead of him. Are you saying you’ll be around for all ten years?”

“Um…”

“I can’t just put him in a school and take him out again with every passing whim of yours.”

He was silent.

“Just tell me this much,” she said. “Do you picture us getting married sometime? I mean when your divorce comes through?”

He said, “Oh, well, marriage, Muriel…”

“You don’t, do you. You don’t know what you want. One minute you like me and the next you don’t. One minute you’re ashamed to be seen with me and the next you think I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

He stared at her. He had never guessed that she read him so clearly.

“You think you can just drift along like this, day by day, no plans,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll be here, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll just go on back to Sarah. Oh yes! I saw you at Rose’s wedding. Don’t think I didn’t see how you and Sarah looked at each other.”

Macon said, “All I’m saying is—”

“All I’m saying,” Muriel told him, “is take care what you promise my son. Don’t go making him promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“But I just want him to learn to subtract!” he said.

She didn’t answer, and so the last word rang in the air for moments afterward. Subtract. A flat, sharp, empty sound that dampened Macon’s spirits.

At supper she was too quiet; even Alexander was quiet, and excused himself the minute he’d finished his