The Accidental Tourist

nineteen

Macon and Sarah needed to buy a new couch. They set aside a Saturday for it — actually just half a Saturday, because Sarah had a class to attend in the afternoon. At breakfast, she flipped through an interior decorating book so they could get a head start on their decision. “I’m beginning to think along the lines of something flowered,” she told Macon. “We’ve never had a flowered couch before. Or would that be too frilly?”

“Well, I don’t know. I wonder about winter,” Macon said.

“Winter?”

“I mean right now in the middle of June a flowered couch looks fine, but it might seem out of place in December.”

“So you prefer something in a solid,” Sarah said.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Or maybe stripes.”

“I’m not sure.”

“I know you don’t like plaids.”

“No.”

“How do you feel about tweeds?”

“Tweeds,” Macon said, considering.

Sarah handed over the book and started loading the dishwasher.

Macon studied pictures of angular modern couches, cozy chintz-covered couches, and period reproduction couches covered in complex fabrics. He took the book to the living room and squinted at the spot where the couch would be sitting. The old one, which had turned out to be too waterlogged to salvage, had been carted away, along with both armchairs. Now there was just a long blank wall, with the freshly plastered ceiling glaring above it. Macon observed that a room without furniture had a utilitarian feeling, as if it were merely a container. Or a vehicle. Yes, a vehicle: He had a sense of himself speeding through the universe as he stood there.

While Sarah got dressed, Macon took the dog out. It was a warm, golden morning. Neighbors were trimming their grass and weeding their flower beds. They nodded as Macon walked past. He had not been back long enough for them to feel at ease yet; there was something a little too formal about their greetings. Or maybe he was imagining that. He made an effort to remind them of how many years he had lived here: “I’ve always liked those tulips of yours!” and “Still got that nice hand mower, I see!” Edward marched beside him with a busybody waggle of his hind end.

In movies and such, people who made important changes in their lives accomplished them and were done with it. They walked out and never returned; or they married and lived happily ever after. In real life, things weren’t so clean-cut. Macon, for instance, had had to go down to Muriel’s and retrieve his dog, once he’d decided to move back home. He had had to collect his clothing and pack up his typewriter while Muriel watched in silence with her accusing, reproaching eyes. Then there were all kinds of other belongings that he discovered too late he’d forgotten — clothes that had been in the wash at the time, and his favorite dictionary, and the extra-large pottery mug he liked to drink his coffee from. But of course he couldn’t go back for them. He had to abandon them — messy, trailing strings of himself cluttering his leavetaking.

By the time he and Edward returned from their outing, Sarah was waiting in the front yard. She wore a yellow dress that made her tan glow; she looked very pretty. “I was just wondering about the azaleas,” she told Macon. “Weren’t we supposed to feed them in the spring?”

“Well, probably,” Macon said, “but they seem all right to me.”

“In April, I think,” she said. “Or maybe May. No one was here to do it.”

Macon veered away from that. He preferred to pretend that their lives had been going on as usual. “Never mind, Rose has whole sacks of fertilizer,” he said. “We’ll pick up some from her while we’re out.”

“No one was here to seed the lawn, either.”

“The lawn looks fine,” he said, more forcefully than he’d meant to.

They shut Edward in the house and climbed into Macon’s car. Sarah had brought along a newspaper because there were several furniture ads. “Modern Housewares,” she read off. “But that’s all the way down on Pratt Street.”

“Might as well give it a try,” Macon said. Pratt was one of the few streets he knew how to find.

After they left their neighborhood, with its trees arching overhead, the car grew hotter and Macon rolled his window down. Sarah lifted her face to the sunlight. “Be a good day to go to the pool,” she said.

“Well, if we have time. I was thinking of asking you to lunch.”

“Oh, where?”

“Anywhere you like. Your choice.”

“Aren’t you nice,” she said.

Macon drove past two unshaven men talking on a corner. Sarah locked her door. Macon thought of what the men would be saying: “What’s coming down, man?” “Not all that much.”

The sidewalks grew more crowded. Women lugged string-handled shopping bags, an old man dragged a grocery cart, and a girl in a faded dress leaned her head against a bus stop sign.

At Modern Homewares, huge paper banners covered the plate glass windows. SPECIAL FOR FATHER’S DAY! they read. Sarah hadn’t mentioned that this was a Father’s Day sale. Macon made a point of mentioning it himself, to show it didn’t bother him. Taking her arm as they entered, he said, “Isn’t that typical. Father’s Day! They’ll capitalize on anything.”

Sarah looked away from him and said, “All they seem to have is beds.”

“I suppose it began with reclining chairs,” Macon said. “A Barcalounger for Dad, and next thing you know it’s a whole dinette set.”

“Could we see your couches,” Sarah told a salesman firmly.

The couches were all of the straight-back, Danish sort, which was fine with Macon. He didn’t really care. Sarah said, “What do you think? Legs? Or flush with the floor.”

“It’s all the same to me,” he said. He sat down heavily on something covered in leather.

Sarah chose a long, low couch that opened into a queen-sized bed. “Macon? What do you say?” she asked. “Do you like what you’re sitting on better?”

“No, no,” he said.

“Well, what do you think of this one?”

“It’s fine.”

“Don’t you have any opinion?”

“I just gave you my opinion, Sarah.”

Sarah sighed and asked the salesman if he offered same-day delivery.

They’d been so efficient about picking out the couch that time remained for other errands as well. First they drove to Hutzler’s and bought queen-sized sheets. Then they checked the furniture department for armchairs; there was a Father’s Day sale there, too. “Maybe we’re on a roll,” Sarah told Macon. But they weren’t as lucky with the armchairs; nothing looked just right. Not to Macon, at least. He gave up trying and stood watching a kiddie show on a row of television sets.

After Hutzler’s they went to get fertilizer from Rose, but Macon braked on the way and said, “Wait! There’s my bank.” It had come upon him unexpectedly — the branch where he rented a safe deposit box. “I need my passport for the France trip,‘ he told Sarah. “Might as well pick it up while I’m here.”

Sarah said she’d just wait in the car.

He had to stand in line; two elderly women were ahead of him. They were checking out their jewels for Saturday night, he liked to imagine. Or clipping their coupons — whatever coupons were. While he stood there he kept feeling the presence of someone behind him. For some reason he didn’t want to turn and find out who it was. He just kept staring ahead, every now and then glancing at his watch in a businesslike way. This person breathed very gently and smelled like flowers — bitter, real-life flowers, not the kind in perfume bottles. But when he finally squared his shoulders and looked around, he found only another stranger waiting for her jewels.

It wasn’t true that Muriel had watched in silence as he packed. Actually, she had spoken. She had said, “Macon? Are you really doing this? Do you mean to tell me you can just use a person up and then move on? You think I’m some kind of… bottle of something you don’t have any further need for? Is that how you see me, Macon?”

His turn for the vault had arrived, and he followed a girl in a miniskirt across a carpeted area, into the windowless cubicle lined with drawers. “I won’t need to take my box to the other room,” he told the girl. “I just want to get one thing.”

She gave him his card to sign and accepted his key. After she had unlocked his box she stood back, scrutinizing her nails, while he rummaged through various papers for his passport. Then he turned to tell her he was finished, but all at once he was so moved by her tact in looking elsewhere, by the delicacy that people could come up with on their own (for surely it wouldn’t have been written into the bank’s instructions)… Well, he must be going soft in the head. It was the weather or something; it was the season or something; he had not been sleeping well. He said, “Thank you very much,” and took back his key and left.

At his grandfather’s house, Rose was out front pruning the hedge. Her gardening smock was an enormous gray workshirt inherited from Charles. When she saw their car pull up she straightened and waved. Then she went on pruning while they consulted her about fertilizers. “For azaleas and what else do you have, andromeda, acid-loving plants…” she mused.

Sarah said, “Where are the children today?”

“Children?”

“Your nephew and nieces.”

“Oh, they went home to their mother.”

Sarah said, “I just assumed, since you hadn’t moved back with Julian…”

“Well, not yet, of course,” Rose said.

Macon, anxious to guard her privacy, murmured, “No, of course not,” practically at the same moment, but Sarah said, “Why? What’s keeping you?”

“Oh, Sarah, you wouldn’t believe what a state I found the boys in when I came back here,” Rose said. “They were living in their pajamas so as not to have too much laundry. They were eating gorp for their suppers.”

“I’m not even going to ask what gorp is,” Sarah said.

“It’s a mixture of wheat germ and nuts and dried—”

“But what about your apartment, Rose? What about Julian?”

“Oh, you know, I kept losing that apartment every time I turned around,” Rose said vaguely. “I’d head one block east to the grocery store and then turn west to get back again and I’d always be wrong; always. The apartment building would have worked over to the east somehow; I don’t know how.”

There was a silence. Finally Macon said, “Well, if you could get us some of that fertilizer, Rose…”

“Certainly,” she said. And she went off to the toolshed.

They had lunch at the Old Bay Restaurant — Sarah’s idea. Macon said, “Are you sure?” and Sarah said, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“But you always tell me it’s boring,” Macon said.

“There are worse things than boring, I’ve decided.”

He didn’t think that was much of a recommendation, but he went along with it.

The restaurant was full, even though it was barely noon, and they had to wait a few minutes to be seated. Macon stood by the hostess’s podium trying to adjust to the dimness. He surveyed the other diners and found something odd about them. They were not the usual Old Bay crowd — middle aged, one face much like the next — but an assortment of particular and unusual individuals. He saw a priest offering a toast to a woman in a tennis dress, and a smartly suited woman with a young man in an orange gauze robe, and two cheerful schoolgirls loading all their potato chips onto the plate of a small boy. From where he stood Macon couldn’t hear what any of these people were saying; he had to guess. “Maybe the woman wants to join a convent,” he told Sarah, “and the priest is trying to discourage her.”

“Pardon?”

“He’s pointing out that sorting her husband’s socks can be equally whatever-he’d-call-it, equally holy. And the young man in gauze, well…”

“The young man in gauze is Ashley Demming,” Sarah said. “You know Ashley. Peter and Lindy Demming’s son. My, he’s aged poor Lindy twenty years in the last six months, hasn’t he? I don’t think they’re ever going to get over this.”

“Ah, well,” Macon said.

Then they were shown to a table.

Sarah ordered something called a White Lady and Macon ordered a sherry. With their meal they had a bottle of wine. Macon wasn’t used to drinking in the daytime; he grew a little fuzzy. So did Sarah, evidently, for she drifted off in the middle of a sentence about upholstery fabrics. She touched his hand, which was lying on the tablecloth. “We ought to do this more often,” she said.

“Yes, we ought to.”

“You know what I missed most when we were separated? The little, habitual things. The Saturday errands. Going to Eddie’s for coffee beans. Even things that used to seem tiresome, like the way you’d take forever in the hardware store.”

When he folded her hand into a fist it was round, like a bird. It had no sharp angles.

“I’m not sure if you know this,” she said, “but for a while I was seeing another man.”

“Well, fine; whatever; eat your salad,” he told her.

“No, I want to say it, Macon. He was just getting over the death of his wife, and I was getting over things too so of course… Well, we started out very slowly, we started as friends, but then he began talking about getting married someday. After we’d given ourselves some time, he meant. In fact I think he really loved me. He took it hard when I told him you’d moved back.”

She looked straight at Macon when she said that, her eyes a sudden blue flash. He nodded.

“But there were these things I had trouble with,” she said. “I mean good things; qualities I’d always wished for. He was a very dashing driver, for instance. Not unsafe; just dashing. At first, I liked that. Then bit by bit it began to feel wrong. ‘Double-check your rearview mirror!’ I wanted to tell him. ‘Fasten your seatbelt! Inch past stop signs the way my husband does!’ He never examined a restaurant bill before he paid it — shoot, he didn’t even take his credit card receipt when he walked away from a table — and I thought of all the times I sat stewing while you totted up every little item. I thought, ‘Why do I miss that? It’s perverse!’ ”

Like “eck cetera,” Macon thought.

Like Muriel saying, “eck cetera.” And Macon wincing.

And the emptiness now, the thinness when he heard it pronounced correctly.

He stroked the dimpled peaks that were Sarah’s knuckles.

“Macon, I think that after a certain age people just don’t have a choice,” Sarah said. “You’re who I’m with. It’s too late for me to change. I’ve used up too much of my life now.”

You mean to tell me you can just use a person up and then move on? Muriel had asked.

Evidently so, was the answer. For even if he had stayed with Muriel, then wouldn’t Sarah have been left behind?

“After a certain age,” he told Sarah, “it seems to me you can only choose what to lose.”

“What?” she said.

“I mean there’s going to be something you have to give up, whichever way you cut it.”

“Well, of course,” she said.

He supposed she’d always known that.

They finished their meal but they didn’t order coffee because they were running late. Sarah had her class; she was studying with a sculptor on Saturdays. Macon called for the bill and paid it, self-consciously totaling it first. Then they stepped out into the sunshine. “What a pretty day,” Sarah said. “It makes me want to play hooky.”

“Why don’t you?” Macon asked. If she didn’t go to class, he wouldn’t have to work on his guidebook.

But she said, “I can’t disappoint Mr. Armistead.”

They drove home, and she changed into a sweat suit and set off again. Macon carried in the fertilizer, which Rose had poured into a bucket. It was something shredded that had no smell — or only a harsh, chemical smell, nothing like the truckloads of manure the men used to bring for his grandmother’s camellias. He set it on the pantry floor and then he took the dog out. Then he made himself a cup of coffee to clear his head. He drank it at the kitchen sink, staring into the yard. The cat rubbed against his ankles and purred. The clock over the stove ticked steadily. There was no other sound.

When the telephone rang, he was glad. He let it ring twice before he answered so as not to seem overeager. Then he picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Leary?”

“Yes!”

“This is Mrs. Morton calling, at Merkle Appliance Store. Are you aware that the maintenance policy on your hot water heater expires at the end of the month?”

“No, I hadn’t realized,” Macon said.

“You had a two-year policy at a cost of thirty-nine eighty-eight. Now to renew it for another two years the cost of course would be slightly higher since your hot water heater is older.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Macon said. “Gosh! How old is that thing by now?”

“Let’s see. You purchased it three years ago this July.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to keep the maintenance policy.”

“Wonderful. I’ll send you a new contract then, Mr. Leary, and thank you for—”

“And would that still include replacement of the tank?” Macon asked.

“Oh, yes. Every part is covered.”

“And they’d still do the yearly checkups.”

“Why, yes.”

“I’ve always liked that. A lot of the other stores don’t offer it; I remember from when I was shopping around.”

“So I’ll send you the contract, Mr.—”

“But I would have to arrange for the checkup myself, as I recall.”

“Yes, the customer schedules the checkup.”

“Maybe I’ll just schedule it now. Could I do that?”

“That’s a whole different department, Mr. Leary. I’ll mail you out the contract and you can read all about it. Bye bye.”

She hung up.

Macon hung up too.

He thought a while.

He had an urge to go on talking; anyone would do. But he couldn’t think what number to dial. Finally he called the time lady. She answered before the first ring was completed. (She had no worries about seeming overeager.) “At the tone,” she said, “the time will be one… forty-nine. And ten seconds.” What a voice. So melodious, so well modulated. “At the tone the time will be one… forty-nine. And twenty seconds.”

He listened for over a minute, and then the call was cut off. The line clicked and the dial tone started. This made him feel rebuffed, although he knew he was being foolish. He bent to pat the cat. The cat allowed it briefly before walking away.

There was nothing to do but sit down at his typewriter.

He was behind schedule with this guidebook. Next week he was supposed to start on France, and he still hadn’t finished the conclusion to the Canada book. He blamed it on the season. Who could sit alone indoors when everything outside was blooming? Travelers should be forewarned, he typed, but then he fell to admiring a spray of white azaleas that trembled on the ledge of his open window. A bee crawled among the blossoms, buzzing. He hadn’t known the bees were out yet. Did Muriel know? Would she recall what a single bee could do to Alexander?

… should be forewarned, he read over, but his concentration was shot now.

She was so careless, so unthinking; how could he have put up with her? That unsanitary habit she had of licking her finger before she turned a magazine page; her tendency to use the word “enormity” as if it referred to size. There wasn’t a chance in this world that she’d remember about bee stings.

He reached for the phone on his desk and dialed her number. “Muriel?”

“What,” she said flatly.

“This is Macon.”

“Yes, I know.”

He paused. He said, “Um, it’s bee season, Muriel.”

“So?”

“I wasn’t sure you were aware. I mean summer just creeps up, I know how summer creeps up, and I was wondering if you’d thought about Alexander’s shots.”

“Don’t you believe I can manage that much for myself?” she screeched.

“Oh. Well.”

“What do you think I am, some sort of ninny? Don’t you think I know the simplest dumbest thing?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure, you see, that—”

“A fine one you are! Ditch that child without a word of farewell and then call me up on the telephone to see if I’m raising him right!”

“I just wanted to—”

“Criticize, criticize! Tell me Oodles of Noodles is not a balanced meal and then go off and desert him and then have the nerve to call me up and tell me I’m not a good mother!”

“No, wait, Muriel—”

“Dominick is dead,” she said.

“What?”

“Not that you would care. He died.”

Macon noticed how the sounds in the room had stopped. “Dominick Saddler?” he asked.

“It was his night to take my car and he went to a party in Cockeysville and coming home he crashed into a guardrail.”

“Oh, no.”

“The girl he had with him didn’t get so much as a scratch.”

“But Dominick…” Macon said, because he didn’t believe it yet.

“But Dominick died instantly.”

“Oh, my Lord.”

He saw Dominick on the couch with Alexander, holding aloft a can of paste wax.

“Want to hear something awful? My car will be just fine,” Muriel said. “Straighten the front end and it’ll run good as ever.”

Macon rested his head in his hand.

“I have to go now and sit with Mrs. Saddler in the funeral home,” she said.

“Is there something I can do?”

“No,” she said, and then spitefully, “How could you be any help?”

“I could stay with Alexander, maybe.”

“Alexander’s got people of our own to stay with him,” she said.

The doorbell rang, and Edward started barking. Macon heard him in the front hall.

“Well, I’ll say good-bye now,” Muriel said. “Sounds like you have company.”

“Never mind that.”

“I’ll let you get back to your life,” she said. “So long.”

He kept the receiver to his ear for a moment, but she had hung up.

He went out to the hall and tapped his foot at Edward. “Down!” he said. Edward lay down, the hump on his back still bristling. Macon opened the door and found a boy with a clipboard.

“Modern Housewares,” the boy told him.

“Oh. The couch.”

While the couch was being unloaded, Macon shut Edward in the kitchen. Then he returned to the hall and watched the couch lumbering toward him, borne by the first boy and another, just slightly older, who had an eagle tattooed on his forearm. Macon thought of Dominick Saddler’s muscular, corded arms grappling beneath the hood of Muriel’s car. The first boy spat as he approached the house, but Macon saw how young and benign his face was. “Aw, man,” the second one said, stumbling over the doorstep.

Macon said, “That’s all right,” and gave them each a five-dollar bill when they’d placed the couch where he directed.

After they’d gone he sat down on the couch, which still had some sort of cellophane covering. He rubbed his hands on his knees. Edward barked in the kitchen. Helen padded in softly, stopped still, eyed the couch, and continued through the room with an offended air. Macon went on sitting.

When Ethan died, the police had asked Macon to identify the body. But Sarah, they suggested, might prefer to wait outside. Yes, Sarah had said; she would. She had taken a seat on a molded beige chair in the hallway. Then she’d looked up at Macon and said, “Can you do this?”

“Yes,” he’d told her, evenly. He had felt he was barely breathing; he was keeping himself very level, with most of the air emptied out of his lungs.

He had followed a man into a room. It was not as bad as it could have been because someone had folded a wad of toweling under the back of Ethan’s head to hide the damage. Also it wasn’t Ethan. Not the real Ethan. Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him. This was simply an untenanted shell, although it bore a distant resemblance to Ethan — the same groove down the upper lip, same cowlick over the forehead. Macon had a sensation like pressing against a blank wall, willing with all his being something that could never happen: Please, please come back inside. But finally he said, “Yes. That is my son.”

He’d returned to Sarah and given her a nod. Sarah had risen and put her arms around him. Later, when they were alone in their motel, she’d asked him what he had seen. “Not really much of anything, sweetheart,” he had told her. She kept at him. Was Ethan… well, hurt-looking? Scared? He said, “No, he was nothing.” He said, “Let me get you some tea.”

“I don’t want tea, I want to hear!” she’d said. “What are you hiding?” He had the impression she was blaming him for something. Over the next few weeks it seemed she grew to hold him responsible, like a bearer of bad tidings — the only one who could say for a fact that Ethan had truly died. She made several references to Macon’s chilliness, to his appalling calm that night in the hospital morgue. Twice she expressed some doubt as to whether, in fact, he was really capable of distinguishing Ethan from some similar boy. In fact, that may not have been Ethan at all. It may have been somebody else who had died. She should have ascertained for herself. She was the mother, after all; she knew her child far better; what did Macon know?

Macon said, “Sarah. Listen. I will tell you as much as I can. He was very pale and still. You wouldn’t believe how still. He didn’t have any expression. His eyes were closed. There was nothing bloody or gruesome, just a sense of… futility. I mean I wondered what the purpose had been. His arms were down by his sides and I thought about last spring when he started lifting weights. I thought, ‘Is this what it comes to? Lift weights and take vitamins and build yourself up and then — nothing?’ ”

He hadn’t been prepared for Sarah’s response. “So what are you saying?” she asked him. “We die in the end, so why bother living in the first place? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No—” he said.

“It all comes down to a question of economy?” she asked.

“No, Sarah. Wait,” he had said.

Thinking back on that conversation now, he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up — could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.

Lord knows how long he sat there.

Edward had been barking in the kitchen all this time, but now he went into a frenzy. Somebody must have knocked. Macon rose and went to the front of the house, where he found Julian standing on the porch with a file folder. “Oh. It’s you,” Macon said.

“What’s all that barking I hear?”

“Don’t worry, he’s shut in the kitchen. Come on in.”

He held the screen door open and Julian stepped inside. “Thought I’d bring you the material for Paris,” Julian said.

“I see,” Macon said. But he suspected he was really here for some other reason. Probably hoping to hurry the Canada book. “Well, I was just this minute touching up my conclusion,” he said, leading the way to the living room. And then, hastily, “Few details here and there I’m not entirely happy with; may be a little while yet…”

Julian didn’t seem to be listening. He sat down on the cellophane that covered the couch. He tossed the folder aside and said, “Have you seen Rose lately?”

“Yes, we were over there just this morning.”

“Do you think she’s not coming back?”

Macon hadn’t expected him to be so direct. In fact, Rose’s situation had begun to look like one of those permanent irregularities that couples never refer to. “Oh, well,” he told Julian, “you know how it is. She’s worried about the boys. They’re eating glop or something.”

“Those are not boys, Macon. They’re men in their forties.”

Macon stroked his chin.

“I’m afraid she’s left me,” Julian said.

“Oh, now, you can’t be sure of that.”

“And not even for a decent reason!” Julian said. “Or for any reason. I mean our marriage was working out fine; that much I can swear to. But she’d worn herself a groove or something in that house of hers, and she couldn’t help swerving back into it. At least, I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Well, it sounds about right,” Macon told him.

“I went to see her two days ago,” Julian said, “but she was out. I was standing in the yard wondering where she’d got to when who should drive past but Rose in person, with her car stuffed full of old ladies. All the windows packed with these little old faces and feathered hats. I shouted after her, I said, ‘Rose! Wait!’ but she didn’t hear me and she drove on by. Then just at the last minute she caught sight of me, I guess, and she turned and stared, and I got the funniest feeling, like the car was driving her—like she was just gliding past helpless and couldn’t do a thing but send me one long look before she disappeared.”

Macon said, “Why don’t you give her a job, Julian.”

“Job?”

“Why don’t you show her that office of yours. That filing system you never get sorted, that secretary chewing her gum and forgetting whose appointment is when. Don’t you think Rose could take all that in hand?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“Call her up and tell her your business is going to pieces. Ask if she could just come in and get things organized, get things under control. Put it that way. Use those words. Get things under control, tell her. Then sit back and wait.”

Julian thought that over.

“But of course, what do I know,” Macon said.

“No, you’re right.”

“Now let’s see your folder.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Julian said.

“Look at this!” Macon said. He held up the topmost letter. “Why do you bother me with this? I just wanted to appraise you folks of a wonderful little hotel in… A man who says he wants to ‘appraise’ us, do you really suppose he’d know a good hotel when he saw one?”

“Macon,” Julian said.

“The whole damn language has been slaughtered,” Macon said.

“Macon, I know you feel I’m crass and brash.”

This took Macon a moment to answer, only partly because he first heard it as “crash and brass.” “Oh,” he said. “Why, no, Julian, not at—”

“But I just want to say this, Macon. I care about that sister of yours more than anything else in the world. It’s not just Rose, it’s the whole way she lives, that house and those turkey dinners and those evening card games. And I care about you, too, Macon. Why, you’re my best friend! At least, I hope so.”

“Oh, why, ah—” Macon said.

Julian rose and shook his hand, mangling all the bones inside, and clapped him on the shoulder and left.

Sarah came home at five-thirty. She found Macon standing at the kitchen sink with yet another cup of coffee. “Did the couch get here?” she asked him.

“All safe and sound.”

“Oh, good! Let’s see it.”

She went into the living room, leaving tracks of gray dust that Macon supposed was clay or granite. There was dust in her hair, even. She squinted at the couch and said, “What do you think?”

“Seems fine to me,” he said.

“Honestly, Macon. I don’t know what’s come over you; you used to be downright finicky.”

“It’s fine, Sarah. It looks very nice.”

She stripped off the cellophane and stood back, arms full of crackling light. “We ought to see how it opens out,” she said.

While she was stuffing the cellophane into the wastebasket, Macon pulled at the canvas strap that turned the couch into a bed. It made him think of Muriel’s house. The strap’s familiar graininess reminded him of all the times Muriel’s sister had slept over, and when the mattress slid forth he saw the gleam of Claire’s tangled golden hair.

“Maybe we should put on the sheets, now that we’ve got it open,” Sarah said. She brought the sack of linens from the front hall. With Macon positioned at the other side of the couch, she floated a sheet about the mattress and then bustled up and down, tucking it in. Macon helped, but he wasn’t as fast as Sarah. The clay dust or whatever it was had worked itself into the seams of her knuckles, he saw. There was something appealing about her small, brown, creased hands against the white percale. He said, “Let’s give the bed a trial run.”

Sarah didn’t understand at first. She looked up from unfolding the second sheet and said, “Trial run?”

But she allowed him to take the sheet away and slip her sweat shirt over her head.

Making love to Sarah was comfortable and soothing. After all their years together, her body was so well known to him that he couldn’t always tell the difference between what he was feeling and what she was feeling. But wasn’t it sad that they hadn’t the slightest uneasiness about anyone walking in on them? They were so alone. He nestled his face in her warm, dusty neck and wondered if she shared that feeling as well — if she sensed all the empty air in the house. But he would never ask.

While Sarah took a shower, he shaved. They were supposed to go to Bob and Sue Carney’s for supper. When he came out of the bathroom Sarah was standing in front of the bureau, screwing on little gold earrings. (She was the only woman Macon knew of who didn’t have pierced ears.) He thought Renoir could have painted her: Sarah in her slip with her head cocked slightly, plump tanned arms upraised. “I’m really not in the mood to go out,” she said.

“Me neither,” Macon said, opening his closet door.

“I’d be just as content to stay home with a book.”

He pulled a shirt off a hanger.

“Macon,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“You never asked me if I slept with anyone while we were separated.”

Macon paused, halfway into one sleeve.

“Don’t you want to know?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

He put on the shirt and buttoned the cuffs.

“I would think you’d wonder.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said.

“The trouble with you is, Macon—”

It was astonishing, the instantaneous flare of anger he felt. “Sarah,” he said, “don’t even start. By God, if that doesn’t sum up every single thing that’s wrong with being married. ‘The trouble with you is, Macon—’ and, ‘I know you better than you know yourself, Macon—’ ”

“The trouble with you is,” she continued steadily, “you think people should stay in their own sealed packages. You don’t believe in opening up. You don’t believe in trading back and forth.”

“I certainly don’t,” Macon said, buttoning his shirt front.

“You know what you remind me of? The telegram Harpo Marx sent his brothers: No message. Harpo.”

That made him grin. Sarah said, “You would think it was funny.”

“Well? Isn’t it?”

“It isn’t at all! It’s sad! It’s infuriating! It would be infuriating to go to your door and sign for that telegram and tear it open and find no message!”

He took a tie from the rack in his closet.

“For your information,” she said, “I didn’t sleep with anyone the whole entire time.”

He felt like she’d won some kind of contest. He pretended he hadn’t heard her.

Bob and Sue had invited just neighbors — the Bidwells and a new young couple Macon hadn’t met before. Macon stuck mainly to the new couple because with them, he had no history. When they asked if he had children, he said, “No.” He asked if they had any children.

“No,” Brad Frederick said.

“Ah.”

Brad’s wife was in transit between girlhood and womanhood. She wore her stiff navy blue dress and large white shoes as if they belonged to her mother. Brad himself was still a boy. When they all went out back to watch the barbecue, Brad found a Frisbee in the bushes and flung it to little Delilah Carney. His white polo shirt pulled loose from his trousers. Dominick Saddler came to Macon’s mind like a deep, hard punch. He remembered how, after his grandfather died, the sight of any old person could make his eyes fill with tears. Lord, if he wasn’t careful he could end up feeling sorry for the whole human race. “Throw that thing here,” he said briskly to Delilah, and he set aside his sherry and held out a hand for the Frisbee. Before long they had a real game going — all the guests joining in except Brad’s wife, who was still too close to childhood to risk getting stuck there on a visit back.

At supper, Sue Carney seated Macon at her right. She put a hand on his and said it was wonderful that he and Sarah had worked things out. “Well, thank you,” Macon said. “Gosh you make a really good salad, Sue.”

“We all have our ups and downs,” she said. For a second he thought she meant her salads weren’t consistently successful. “I’ll be honest,” she told him, “there’ve been times when I have wondered if Bob and I would make it. There’s times I feel we’re just hanging in there, you know what I mean? Times I say, ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ but inside I’m feeling like a Gold Star mother.”

Macon turned the stem of his glass and tried to think what step he’d missed in her logic.

“Like someone who’s suffered a loss in a war,” she said, “and then forever afterward she has to go on supporting the war; she has to support it louder than anyone else, because otherwise she’d be admitting the loss was for no purpose.”

“Um…”

“But that’s just a passing mood,” she said.

“Well, naturally,” Macon said.

He and Sarah walked home through air as heavy as water. It was eleven o’clock and the teenagers who had eleven o’clock curfews were just returning. These were the youngest ones, most of them too young to drive, and so they were chauffeured by grownups. They jumped out of cars shouting, “See you! Thanks! Call me tomorrow, hear?” Keys jingled. Front doors blinked open and blinked shut again. The cars moved on.

Sarah’s skirt had the same whispery sound as the Tuckers’ lawn sprinkler, which was still revolving slowly in a patch of ivy.

When they reached the house, Macon let Edward out for one last run. He tried to get the cat to come in, but she stayed hunched on the kitchen window ledge glaring down at him, owlish and stubborn; so he let her be. He moved through the rooms turning off lights. By the time he came upstairs Sarah was already in bed, propped against the headboard with a glass of club soda. “Have some,” she said, holding out the glass. But he said no, he was tired; and he undressed and slid under the covers.

The tinkling of Sarah’s ice cubes took on some meaning in his mind. It seemed that with every tinkle, he fell deeper. Finally he opened a door and traveled down an aisle and stepped into the witness stand. They asked him the simplest of questions. “What color were the wheels?” “Who brought the bread?” “Were the shutters closed or open?” He honestly couldn’t remember. He tried but he couldn’t remember. They took him to the scene of the crime, a winding road like something in a fairy tale. “Tell us all you know,” they said. He didn’t know a thing. By now it was clear from their faces that he wasn’t merely a witness; they suspected him. So he racked his brain, but still he came up empty. “You have to see my side of this!” he cried. “I put it all out of my mind; I worked to put it out! Now I can’t bring it back.”

“Not even to defend yourself?” they asked.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, and Sarah breathed softly next to him. The clock radio said it was midnight. The midnight-curfew group was just returning. Hoots and laughter rang out, tires scraped a curb, and a fanbelt whinnied as someone struggled to park. Then gradually the neighborhood fell silent. It would stay that way, Macon knew, till time for the one-o’clock group. He would first hear faint strands of their music and then more laughter, car doors slamming, house doors slamming. Porch lights would switch off all along the street, gradually dimming the ceiling as he watched. In the end, he would be the only one left awake.