The Accidental Tourist

fifteen

"I’m sorry I’m so fat,” Macon’s seatmate said.

Macon said, “Oh, er, ah—”

“I know I’m using more than my share of space,” the man told him. “Do you think I’m not aware of that? Every trip I take, I have to ask the stewardess for a seatbelt extender. I have to balance my lunch on my knees because the tray can’t unfold in front of me. Really I ought to purchase two seats but I’m not a wealthy man. I ought to purchase two tickets and not spread all over my fellow passengers.”

“Oh, you’re not spreading all over me,” Macon said.

This was because he was very nearly sitting in the aisle, with his knees jutting out to the side so that every passing stewardess ruffled the pages of Miss MacIntosh. But he couldn’t help feeling touched by the man’s great, shiny, despairing face, which was as round as a baby’s. “Name’s Lucas Loomis,” the man said, holding out a hand. When Macon shook it, he was reminded of risen bread dough.

“Macon Leary,” Macon told him.

“The stupid thing is,” Lucas Loomis said, “I travel for a living.”

“Do you.”

“I demonstrate software to computer stores. I’m sitting in an airplane seat six days out of seven sometimes.”

“Well, none of us finds them all that roomy,” Macon said.

“What do you do, Mr. Leary?”

“I write guidebooks,” Macon said.

“Is that so? What kind?”

“Oh, guides for businessmen. People just like you, I guess.”

“Accidental Tourist,” Mr. Loomis said instantly.

“Why, yes.”

“Really? Am I right? Well, what do you know,” Mr. Loomis said. “Look at this.” He took hold of his own lapels, which sat so far in front of him that his arms seemed too short to reach them. “Gray suit,” he told Macon. “Just what you recommend. Appropriate for all occasions.” He pointed to the bag at his feet. “See my luggage? Carry-on. Change of underwear, clean shirt, packet of detergent powder.”

“Well, good,” Macon said. This had never happened to him before.

“You’re my hero!” Mr. Loomis told him. “You’ve improved my trips a hundred percent. You’re the one who told me about those springy items that turn into clotheslines.”

“Oh, well, you could have run across those in any drugstore,” Macon said.

“I’ve stopped relying on hotel laundries; I hardly need to venture into the streets anymore. I tell my wife, I say, you just ask her, I tell her often, I say, ‘Going with the Accidental Tourist is like going in a capsule, a cocoon. Don’t forget to pack my Accidental Tourist !’ I tell her.”

“Well, this is very nice to hear,” Macon said.

“Times I’ve flown clear to Oregon and hardly knew I’d left Baltimore.”

“Excellent.”

There was a pause.

“Although,” Macon said, “lately I’ve been wondering.”

Mr. Loomis had to turn his entire body to look at him, like someone encased in a hooded parka.

“I mean,” Macon said, “I’ve been out along the West Coast. Updating my U.S. edition. And of course I’ve covered the West Coast before, Los Angeles and all that; Lord, yes, I knew the place as a child; but this was the first I’d seen of San Francisco. My publisher wanted me to add it in. Have you been to San Francisco?”

“That’s where we just now got on the plane,” Mr. Loomis reminded him.

“San Francisco is certainly, um, beautiful,” Macon said.

Mr. Loomis thought that over.

“Well, so is Baltimore too, of course,” Macon said hastily. “Oh, no place on earth like Baltimore! But San Francisco, well, I mean it struck me as, I don’t know…”

“I was born and raised in Baltimore, myself,” Mr. Loomis said. “Wouldn’t live anywhere else for the world.”

“No, of course not,” Macon said. “I just meant—”

“Couldn’t pay me to leave it.”

“No, me either.”

“You a Baltimore man?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“No place like it.”

“Certainly isn’t,” Macon said.

But a picture came to his mind of San Francisco floating on mist like the Emerald City, viewed from one of those streets so high and steep that you really could hang your head over and hear the wind blow.

He’d left Baltimore on a sleety day with ice coating the airport runways, and he hadn’t been gone all that long; but when he returned it was spring. The sun was shining and the trees were tipped with green. It was still fairly cool but he drove with his windows down. The breeze smelled exactly like Vouvray — flowery with a hint of mothballs underneath.

On Singleton Street, crocuses were poking through the hard squares of dirt in front of basement windows. Rugs and bedspreads flapped in backyards. A whole cache of babies had surfaced. They cruised imperiously in their strollers, propelled by their mothers or by pairs of grandmothers. Old people sat out on the sidewalk in beach chairs and wheelchairs, and groups of men stood about on corners, their hands in their pockets and their posture elaborately casual — the unemployed, Macon imagined, emerging from the darkened living rooms where they’d spent the winter watching TV. He caught snatches of their conversation:

“What’s going down, man?”

“Nothing much.”

“What you been up to?”

“Not a whole lot.”

He parked in front of Muriel’s house, where Dominick Saddler was working on Muriel’s car. The hood was open and Dominick was deep in its innards; all Macon saw was his jeans and his gigantic, ragged sneakers, a band of bare flesh showing above his cowhide belt. On either side of him stood the Butler twins, talking away a mile a minute. “So she says to us we’re grounded—”

“Can’t go out with no one till Friday—”

“Takes away our fake i.d.’s—”

“Won’t let us answer the phone—”

“We march upstairs and slam our bedroom door, like, just a little slam to let her know what we think of her—”

“And up she comes with a screwdriver and takes our door off its hinges!”

“Hmm,” Dominick said.

Macon rested his bag on the hood and peered down into the engine. “Car acting up again?” he asked.

The Butler twins said, “Hey there, Macon,” and Dominick straightened and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was a dark, good-looking boy whose bulging muscles made Macon feel inadequate. “Damn thing keeps stalling out,” he said.

“How’d Muriel get to work?”

“Had to take the bus.”

Macon was hoping to hear she’d stayed home.

He climbed the steps and unlocked the front door. Just inside, Edward greeted him, squeaking and doing back flips and trying to hold still long enough to be petted. Macon walked through the rest of the house. Clearly, everyone had left in a hurry. The sofa was opened out. (Claire must have had another fight with her folks.) The kitchen table was littered with dishes and no one had put the cream away. Macon did that. Then he took his bag upstairs. Muriel’s bed was unmade and her robe was slung across a chair. There was a snarl of hair in the pin tray on her bureau. He picked it up between thumb and index finger and dropped it into the wastebasket. It occurred to him (not for the first time) that the world was divided sharply down the middle: Some lived careful lives and some lived careless lives, and everything that happened could be explained by the difference between them. But he could not have said, not in a million years, why he was so moved by the sight of Muriel’s thin quilt trailing across the floor where she must have dragged it when she rose in the morning.

It wasn’t quite time for Alexander to come home from school, so he thought he would walk the dog. He put Edward on his leash and let himself out the front door. When he passed the Butler twins again they said, “Hey, there, Macon,” singsong as ever, while Dominick cursed and reached for a wrench.

The men standing on the corner were discussing a rumor of jobs in Texas. Someone’s brother-in-law had found work there. Macon passed with his head lowered, feeling uncomfortably privileged. He skirted a welcome mat that had been scrubbed and set out to dry on the pavement. The women here took spring cleaning seriously, he saw. They shook their dust mops out of upstairs windows; they sat on their sills to polish the panes with crumpled sheets of newspapers. They staggered between houses with borrowed vacuum cleaners, rug machines, and gallon jugs of upholstery shampoo. Macon rounded the block and started home, having paused to let Edward pee against a maple sapling.

Just as he was approaching Singleton Street, whom should he see but Alexander scurrying up ahead. There was no mistaking that stiff little figure with the clumsy backpack. “Wait!” Alexander was crying. “Wait for me!” The Ebbetts children, some distance away, turned and called something back. Macon couldn’t hear what they said but he knew the tone, all right — that high, mocking chant. “Nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah!” Alexander started running, stumbling over his own shoes. Behind him came another group, two older boys and a girl with red hair, and they began jeering too. Alexander wheeled and looked at them. His face was somehow smaller than usual. “Go,” Macon told Edward, and he dropped the leash. Edward didn’t need any urging. His ears had perked at the sound of Alexander’s voice, and now he hurtled after him. The three older children scattered as he flew through them, barking. He drew up short in front of Alexander, and Alexander knelt to hug his neck.

When Macon arrived, he said, “Are you all right?”

Alexander nodded and got to his feet.

“What was that all about?” Macon asked him.

Alexander said, “Nothing.”

But when they started walking again, he slipped his hand into Macon’s.

Those cool little fingers were so distinct, so particular, so full of character. Macon tightened his grip and felt a pleasant kind of sorrow sweeping through him. Oh, his life had regained all its old perils. He was forced to worry once again about nuclear war and the future of the planet. He often had the same secret, guilty thought that had come to him after Ethan was born: From this time on I can never be completely happy.

Not that he was before, of course.

Macon’s U.S. edition was going to be five separate pamphlets now, divided geographically, slipcased together so you had to buy all five even if you needed only one. Macon thought this was immoral. He said so when Julian stopped by for the West Coast material. “What’s immoral about it?” Julian asked. He wasn’t really paying attention; Macon could see that. He was filing mental notes on Muriel’s household, no doubt the real purpose of this unannounced, unnecessary visit. Even though he’d already collected his material, he was wandering around the living room in an abstracted way, first examining a framed school photo of Alexander and then a beaded moccasin that Claire had left on the couch. It was Saturday and the others were in the kitchen, but Macon had no intention of letting Julian meet them.

“It’s always immoral to force a person to buy something he doesn’t want,” Macon said. “If he only wants the Midwest, he shouldn’t have to buy New England too, for heaven’s sake.”

Julian said, “Is that your friend I hear out there? Is it Muriel?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Macon said.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“She’s busy.”

“I’d really like to meet her.”

“Why? Hasn’t Rose given you a full report?”

“Macon,” Julian said, “I’m soon going to be a relative of yours.”

“Ah, God.”

“It’s only natural I’m interested in knowing her.”

Macon said nothing.

“Besides,” Julian told him, “I want to invite her to the wedding.”

“You do?”

“So can I talk to her?”

“Oh. Well. I guess so.”

Macon led the way to the kitchen. He felt he’d made a mistake — that having acted so thorny, he’d caused this meeting to seem more important than it was. But Julian, as it happened, was breezy and offhand. “Hello, ladies,” he said.

They looked up — Muriel, Claire, and Bernice, seated around a sheaf of notebook paper. Macon reeled their names off rapidly but got stuck on Julian’s. “Julian, ah, Edge, my…”

“Future brother-in-law,” Julian said.

“My boss.”

“I’ve come to invite you to the wedding, Muriel. Also your little boy, if — where’s your little boy?”

“He’s out walking the dog,” Muriel said. “But he’s not too good in churches.”

“This’ll be a garden wedding.”

“Well, maybe, then, I don’t know…”

Muriel was wearing what she called her “paratrooper look” — a coverall from Sunny’s Surplus — and her hair was concealed beneath a wildly patterned silk turban. A ballpoint pen mark slashed across one cheekbone. “We’re entering this contest,” she told Julian. “Write a country-music song and win a trip for two to Nashville. We’re working on it all together. We’re going to call it ‘Happier Days.’ ”

“Hasn’t that already been written?”

“Oh, I hope not. You know how they always have these photographs of couples in magazines? ‘Mick Jagger and Bianca in happier days.’ ‘Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, in—’ ”

“Yes, I get it.”

“So this man is talking about his ex-wife. ‘I knew her in another time and place…’ ”

She sang it right out, in her thin scratchy voice that gave a sense of distance, like a used-up phonograph record:

“Very catchy,” Julian said, “but I don’t know about ‘shared every pain.’ ”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I mean, in happier days they had pain?”

“He’s right,” Bernice told Muriel.

“Rain, brain, drain,” Julian reflected. “ ‘When our lives were more sane,’ ‘When we used to raise Cain…’ ”

“Let it be, why don’t you,” Macon told him.

“ ‘When I hadn’t met Jane,’ ‘When she didn’t know Wayne…’ ”

“Wait!” Bernice said, scribbling furiously.

“I may have tapped some hidden talent here,” Julian told Macon.

“I’ll see you to the door,” Macon said.

“ ‘When our love had no stain,’ ‘When she wasn’t insane…’ ” Julian said, trailing Macon through the living room. “Don’t forget the wedding!” he called back. He told Macon, “If she wins, you could cover Nashville free for your next U.S. edition.”

“I think she’s planning on taking Bernice,” Macon told him.

“ ‘When we guzzled champagne…’ ” Julian mused.

“I’ll be in touch,” Macon said, “as soon as I start on the Canada guide.”

“Canada! Aren’t you coming to the wedding?”

“Well, that too, of course,” Macon said, opening the door.

“Wait a minute, Macon. What’s your hurry? Wait, I want to show you something.”

Julian set down the West Coast material to search his pockets. He pulled out a shiny, colored advertisement. “Hawaii,” he said.

“Well, I certainly see no point in covering—”

“Not for you; for me! For our honeymoon. I’m taking Rose.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Look,” Julian said. He unfolded the ad. It turned out to be a map — one of those useless maps that Macon detested, with out-sized, whimsical drawings of pineapples, palm trees, and hula dancers crowding the apple-green islands. “I got this from The Travel People Incorporated. Have you heard of them? Are they reliable? They suggested a hotel over here on…” He drew a forefinger across the page, hunting down the hotel.

“I know nothing at all about Hawaii,” Macon said.

“Somewhere here…” Julian said. Then he gave up, perhaps just at that moment hearing what Macon had told him, and refolded the map. “She may be exactly what you need,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“This Muriel person.”

“Why does everyone call her—”

“She’s not so bad! I don’t think your family understands how you’re feeling.”

“No, they don’t. They really don’t,” Macon said. He was surprised that it was Julian, of all people, who saw that.

Although Julian’s parting words were, “ ‘When we stuffed on chow mein…’ ”

Macon shut the door firmly behind him.

He decided to buy Alexander some different clothes. “How would you like some blue jeans?” he asked. “How would you like some work shirts? How would you like a cowboy belt with ‘Budweiser Beer’ on the buckle?”

“You serious?”

“Would you wear that kind of thing?”

“Yes! I would! I promise!”

“Then let’s go shopping.”

“Is Mama coming?”

“We’ll surprise her.”

Alexander put on his spring jacket — a navy polyester blazer that Muriel had just paid a small fortune for. Macon didn’t know if she would approve of jeans, which was why he’d waited till she was off buying curtains for a woman in Guilford.

The store he drove to was a Western-wear place where he used to take Ethan. It hadn’t changed a bit. Its wooden floorboards creaked, its aisles smelled of leather and new denim. He steered Alexander to the boys’ department, where he spun a rack of shirts. How many times had he done this before? It wasn’t even painful. Only disorienting, in a way, to see that everything continued no matter what. The student jeans were still stacked according to waist and inseam. The horsey tie pins were still arrayed behind glass. Ethan was dead and gone but Macon was still holding up shirts and asking, “This one? This one? This one?”

“What I’d really like is T-shirts,” Alexander said.

“T-shirts. Ah.”

“The kind with a sort of stretched-out neck. And jeans with raggedy bottoms.”

“Well, that you have to do for yourself,” Macon said. “You have to break them in.”

“I don’t want to look new.”

“Tell you what. Everything we buy, we’ll wash about twenty times before you wear it.”

“But nothing prewashed,” Alexander said.

“No, no.”

“Only nerds wear prewashed.”

“Right.”

Alexander chose several T-shirts, purposely too big, along with an assortment of jeans because he wasn’t sure of his size. Then he went off to try everything on. “Shall I come with you?” Macon asked.

“I can do it myself.”

“Oh. All right.”

That was familiar, too.

Alexander disappeared into one of the stalls and Macon went on a tour of the men’s department. He tried on a leather cowboy hat but took it off immediately. Then he went back to the stall. “Alexander?”

“Huh?”

“How’s it going?”

“Okay.”

In the space below the door, Macon saw Alexander’s shoes and his trouser cuffs. Evidently he hadn’t got around to putting on the jeans yet.

Someone said, “Macon?”

He turned and found a woman in a trim blond pageboy, her wrap skirt printed with little blue whales. “Yes,” he said.

“Laurel Canfield. Scott’s mother, remember?”

“Of course,” Macon said, shaking her hand. Now he caught sight of Scott, who had been in Ethan’s class at school — an unexpectedly tall, gawky boy lurking at his mother’s elbow with an armload of athletic socks. “Why, Scott. Nice to see you,” Macon said.

Scott flushed and said nothing. Laurel Canfield said, “It’s nice to see you. Are you doing your spring shopping?”

“Oh, well, ah—”

He looked toward the stall. Now Alexander’s trousers were slumped around his ankles. “I’m helping the son of a friend,” he explained.

“We’ve just been buying out the sock department.”

“Yes, I see you have.”

“Seems every other week I find Scott’s run through his socks again; you know how they are at this age—”

She stopped herself. She looked horrified. She said, “Or, rather…”

“Yes, certainly!” Macon said. “Amazing, isn’t it?” He felt so embarrassed for her that he was pleased, at first, to see another familiar face behind her. Then he realized whose it was. There stood his mother-in-law. “Why!” he said. Was she still Mother Sidey? Mrs. Sidey? Who, for God’s sake?

Luckily, it turned out that Laurel Canfield knew her too. “Paula Sidey,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since last year’s Hunt Cup.”

“Yes, I’ve been away,” Mrs. Sidey told her, and then she dropped her lids somewhat, as if drawing a curtain, before saying, “Macon.”

“How are you?” Macon said.

She was flawlessly groomed, industriously tended — a blue-haired woman in tailored slacks and a turtleneck. He used to worry that Sarah would age the same way, develop the same brittle carapace, but now he found himself admiring Mrs. Sidey’s resolve. “You’re looking well,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she said, touching her hairdo. “I suppose you’re here for your spring wardrobe.”

“Oh, Macon’s helping a friend!” Laurel Canfield caroled. She was so chirpy, all of a sudden, that Macon suspected she’d just now recalled Mrs. Sidey’s relationship to him. She looked toward Alexander’s stall. Alexander was in his socks now. One sock rose and vanished, stepping into a flood of blue denim. “Isn’t shopping for boys so difficult?” she said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Mrs. Sidey said. “I never had one. I’m here for the denim skirts.”

“Oh, the skirts, well, I notice they’re offering a—”

“What friend are you helping to buy for?” Mrs. Sidey asked Macon.

Macon didn’t know what to tell her. He looked toward the stall. If only Alexander would just stay hidden forever, he thought. How to explain this scrawny little waif, this poor excuse of a child who could never hold a candle to the real child?

Contrary as always, Alexander chose that moment to step forth.

He wore an oversized T-shirt that slipped a bit off one shoulder, as if he’d just emerged from some rough-and-tumble game. His jeans were comfortably baggy. His face, Macon saw, had somehow filled out in the past few weeks without anybody’s noticing; and his hair — which Macon had started cutting at home — had lost that shaved prickliness and grown thick and floppy.

“I look wonderful!” Alexander said.

Macon turned to the women and said, “Actually, I find shopping for boys is a pleasure.”