“Yes, well, let’s see. You like to eat early; shall we say six o’clock?”
“Six will be fine,” he said.
When he hung up, he found Rose embarked on a discussion of the English language. She pretended not to notice he had rejoined them. It was shocking, she was saying, how sloppy everyday speech had become. How the world seemed bound and determined to say “the hoi polloi,” a clear redundancy in view of the fact that “hoi” was an article. How “chauvinist” had come to be a shorthand term for “male chauvinist,” its original meaning sadly lost to common knowledge. It was incredible, Charles chimed in, that a female movie star traveled “incognito” when any fool should know she was “incognita” instead. Julian appeared to share their indignation. It was more incredible still, he said, how everyone slung around the word “incredible” when really there was very little on earth that truly defied credibility. “Credence,” Macon corrected him, but Rose rushed in as if Macon hadn’t spoken. “Oh, I know just what you mean,” she told Julian. “Words are getting devalued, isn’t that right?” She tugged handfuls of her gray tube skirt over her knees in a childlike gesture. You would think she had never been warned that outsiders were not to be trusted.
To enter the Old Bay Restaurant, Macon had to climb a set of steps. Before he broke his leg he hadn’t even noticed those steps existed—let alone that they were made of smooth, unblemished marble, so that his crutches kept threatening to slide out from under him. Then he had to fight the heavy front door, hurrying a bit because Rose had taken a wrong turn driving him down and it was already five after six.
The foyer was dark as night. The dining room beyond was only slightly brighter, lit by netted candles on the tables. Macon peered into the gloom. “I’m meeting someone,” he told the hostess. “Is she here yet?”
“Not as I know of, hon.”
She led him past a tankful of sluggish lobsters, past two old ladies in churchy hats sipping pale pink drinks, past a whole field of empty tables. It was too early for anyone else to be eating; all the other customers were still in the bar. The tables stood very close together, their linens brushing the floor, and Macon had visions of catching a crutch on a tablecloth and dragging the whole thing after him, candle included. The maroon floral carpet would burst into flames. His grandfather’s favorite restaurant—his greatgrandfather’s too, quite possibly—would be reduced to a heap of charred metal crab pots. “Miss! Slow down!” he called, but the hostess strode on, muscular and athletic in her off-the-shoulder square-dance dress and sturdy white crepe-soled shoes.
She put him in a corner, which was lucky because it gave him a place to lean his crutches. But just as he was matching them up and preparing to set them aside, she said, “I’ll take those for you, darlin’.”
“Oh, they’ll be fine here.”
“I need to check them up front, sweetheart. It’s a rule.”
“You have a rule about crutches?”
“They might trip the other customers, honeybunch.”
This was unlikely, since the two other customers were clear across the room, but Macon handed his crutches over. Come to think of it, he might be better off without them. Then Sarah wouldn’t get the impression (at least at first glance) that he’d fallen apart in her absence.
As soon as he was alone he tugged each shirt cuff till a quarter-inch of white showed. He was wearing his gray tweed suit coat with gray flannel trousers—an old pair of trousers, so it hadn’t mattered if he cut one leg off. Charles had fetched them from home and Rose had hemmed them, and she’d also trimmed his hair. Porter had lent him his best striped tie. They had all been so discreetly helpful that Macon had felt sad, for some reason.
The hostess reappeared in the doorway, followed by Sarah. Macon had an instant of stunned recognition; it was something like accidentally glimpsing his own reflection in a mirror. Her halo of curls, the way her coat fell around her in soft folds, her firm, springy walk in trim pumps with wineglass heels—how had he forgotten all that?
He half stood. Would she kiss him? Or just, God forbid, coolly shake hands. But no, she did neither; she did something much worse. She came around the table and pressed her cheek to his briefly, as if they were mere acquaintances meeting at a cocktail party.
“Hello, Macon,” she said.
He waved her speechlessly into the chair across from his. He sat again, with some effort.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked.
“I had a kind of . . . fall.”
“Is it broken?”
He nodded.
“And what did you do to your hand?”
He held it up to examine. “Well, it’s a sort of dog bite. But it’s nearly healed by now.”
“I meant the other one.”
The other one had a band of gauze around the knuckles. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s just a scrape. I’ve been helping Rose build a cat door.”
She studied him.
“But I’m all right!” he told her. “In fact the cast is almost comfortable. Almost familiar! I’m wondering if I broke a leg once before in some previous incarnation.”
Their waitress asked, “Can I bring you something from the bar?”
She was standing over them, pad and pencil poised. Sarah started flipping hastily through the menu, so Macon said, “A dry sherry, please.” Then he and the waitress turned back to Sarah. “Oh, my,” Sarah said. “Let me see. Well, how about a Rob Roy. Yes, a Rob Roy would be nice, with extra cherries.”
That was something else he’d forgotten—how she loved to order complicated drinks in restaurants. He felt the corners of his mouth twitching upward.
“So,” Sarah said when the waitress had gone. “Why would Rose be building a cat door? I thought they didn’t have any pets.”
“No, this is for our cat. Helen. Helen and I have been staying there.”
“What for?”
“Well, because of my leg.”
Sarah said nothing.
“I mean, can you see me managing those steps at home?” Macon asked her. “Taking Edward for walks? Lugging the trash cans out?”
But she was busy shucking off her coat. Beneath it she wore a gathered wool dress in an indeterminate color. (The candlelight turned everything to shades of sepia, like an old-fashioned photograph.) Macon had time to wonder if he’d given her the wrong idea. It sounded, perhaps, as if he were complaining—as if he were reproaching her for leaving him alone.
“But really,” he said, “I’ve been getting along wonderfully.”
“Good,” Sarah said, and she smiled at him and went back to her menu.
Their drinks were set before them on little cardboard disks embossed with crabs. The waitress said, “Ready to order, dearies?”
“Well,” Sarah said, “I think I’ll have the hot antipasto and the beef Pierre.”
The waitress, looking startled, peered over Sarah’s shoulder at the menu. (Sarah had never seemed to realize what the Old Bay Restaurant was all about.) “Here,” Sarah said, pointing, “and here.”
“If you say so,” the waitress said, writing it down.
“I’ll just have the, you know,” Macon said. “Crab soup, shrimp salad platter . . .” He handed back his menu. “Sarah, do you want wine?”
“No, thank you.”
When they were alone again, she said, “How long have you been at your family’s?”
“Since September,” Macon said.
“September! Your leg’s been broken all that time?”
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Tomorrow I get the cast off,” he said.
“And is Edward over there too?”
He nodded again.
“Was it Edward who bit your hand?”
“Well, yes.”
He wondered if she’d act like the others, urge him to call the S.P.C.A.; but instead she meditatively plucked a cherry off the plastic sword from her drink. “I guess he’s been upset,” she said.
“Yes, he has, in fact,” Macon said.
“He’s not himself at all.”
“Poor Edward.”
“He’s getting kind of out of control, to tell the truth.”
“He always did have a sensitivity to change,” Sarah said.
Macon took heart. “Actually, he’s been attacking right and left,” he told her. “I had to hire a special trainer. But she was too harsh; let’s face it, she was brutal. She nearly strangled him when he tried to bite her.”
“Ridiculous,” Sarah said. “He was only frightened. When Edward’s frightened he attacks; that’s just the way he is. There’s no point scaring him more.”
Macon felt a sudden rush of love.
Oh, he’d raged at her and hated her and entirely forgotten her, at different times. He’d had moments when he imagined he’d never cared for her to begin with; only went after her because everybody else had. But the fact was, she was his best friend. The two of them had been through things that no one else in the world knew of. She was embedded in his life. It was much too late to root her out.
“What he wants,” she was saying, “is a sense of routine. That’s all he needs: reassurance.”
“Sarah,” he said, “it’s been awful living apart.”
She looked at him. Some trick of light made her eyes appear a darker blue, almost black.
“Hasn’t it?” he said.
She lowered her glass. She said, “I asked you here for a reason, Macon.”
He could tell it was something he didn’t want to hear.
She said, “We need to spell out the details of our separation.” “We’ve been separated; what’s to spell out?” he asked.
“I meant in a legal way.”
“Legal. I see.”
“Now, according to the state of Maryland—”
“I think you ought to come home.”
Their first course arrived, placed before them by a hand that, as far as Macon was concerned, was not attached to a body. Condiment bottles were shifted needlessly; a metal stand full of sugar packets was moved a half-inch over. “Anything else?” the waitress asked.
“No!” Macon said. “Thank you.”
She left.
He said, “Sarah?”
“It’s not possible,” she told him.
She was sliding a single pearl up and down the chain at her throat. He had given her that pearl when they were courting. Was there any significance in her wearing it this evening? Or maybe she cared so little now, it hadn’t even occurred to her to leave it off. Yes, that was more likely.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t say no before you hear me out. Have you ever considered we might have another baby?”
He had shocked her, he saw; she drew in a breath. (He had shocked himself.)
“Why not?‘ he asked her. “We’re not too old.”
“Oh, Macon.”
“This time, it would be easy,” he said. “It wouldn’t take us seven years again; I bet you’d get pregnant in no time!” He leaned toward her, straining to make her see it: Sarah blossoming in that luscious pink maternity smock she used to wear. But oddly enough, what flashed across his mind instead was the memory of those first seven years—their disappointment each month. It had seemed to Macon back then (though of course it was pure superstition) that their failures were a sign of something deeper, some essential incompatibility. They had missed connections in the most basic and literal sense. When she finally got pregnant, he had felt not only relieved but guilty, as if they had succeeded in putting something over on someone.
He pushed these thoughts back down. “I realize,” he said, “that it wouldn’t be Ethan. I realize we can’t replace him. But—”
“No,” Sarah said.
Her eyes were very steady. He knew that look. She’d never change her mind.
Macon started on his soup. It was the best crab soup in Baltimore, but unfortunately the spices had a tendency to make his nose run. He hoped Sarah wouldn’t think he was crying.
“I’m sorry,” she said more gently. “But it would never work.”
He said, “All right, forget that. It was crazy, right? Crazy notion. By the time that baby was twenty we’d be . . . Aren’t you going to eat?”
She glanced down at her plate. Then she picked up a fork.
“Suppose I did this,” Macon said. “Suppose I packed a suitcase with your clothes and knocked on your door and said, ‘Come on, we’re going to Ocean City. We’ve wasted long enough.’ ”
She stared, an artichoke heart raised halfway to her mouth.
“Ocean City?” she said. “You hate Ocean City!”
“Yes, but I meant—”
“You always said it was way too crowded.”
“Yes, but—”
“And what clothes could you be talking about? They’re all in my apartment.”
“It was only a manner of speaking,” Macon said.
“Really, Macon,” she told him. “You don’t even communicate when you communicate.”
“Oh, communicate,” he said. (His least favorite word.) “All I’m saying is, I think we ought to start over.”
“I am starting over,” she said. She returned the artichoke heart to her plate. “I’m doing everything I can to start over,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I want to live the same life twice. I’m trying to branch off in new directions. I’m taking some courses. I’m even dating, a little.”
“Dating?”
“I’ve been going out with this physician.”
There was a pause.
Macon said, “Why not just call him a doctor.”
Sarah briefly closed her eyes.
“Look,” she said. “I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for both of us. But we really didn’t have much left, don’t you see? Look who you turned to when you broke your leg: your sister Rose! You didn’t even let me know, and you do have my telephone number.”
“If I’d turned to you instead,” he said, “would you have come?”
“Well . . . but at least you could have asked. But no, you called on your family. You’re closer to them than you ever were to me.”
“That’s not true,” Macon said. “Or rather, it’s true but it’s not the point. I mean, in one sense, of course we’re closer; we’re blood relations.”
“Playing that ridiculous card game no one else can fathom,” Sarah said. “Plotting your little household projects, Rose with her crescent wrench and her soldering gun. Cruising hardware stores like other people cruise boutiques.”
“As other people cruise boutiques,” Macon said. And then regretted it.
“Picking apart people’s English,” Sarah said. “Hauling forth the dictionary at every opportunity. Quibbling over method. The kind of family that always fastens their seatbelts.”
“For God’s sake, Sarah, what’s wrong with fastening your seatbelt?”
“They always go to one restaurant, the one their grandparents went to before them, and even there they have to rearrange the silver and set things up so they’re sitting around the table the same way they sit at home. They dither and deliberate, can’t so much as close a curtain without this group discussion back and forth, to and fro, all the pros and cons. ‘Well, if we leave it open it will be so hot but if we close it things will get musty . . .’ They have to have their six glasses of water every day. Their precious baked potatoes every night. They don’t believe in ballpoint pens or electric typewriters or automatic transmissions. They don’t believe in hello and good-bye.”
“Hello? Good-bye?” Macon said.
“Just watch yourself some time! People walk in and you just, oh, register it with your eyes; people leave and you just look away quickly. You don’t admit to comings and goings. And the best house in the world might come on the market, but you can’t buy it because you’ve ordered these address labels for the old house, a thousand five hundred gummed labels, and you have to use them up before you move.”
“That wasn’t me, it was Charles,” Macon said.
“Yes, but it could have been you.
And his wife divorced him for it, and I don’t blame her.”
“And now you’re about to do the same damn thing,” Macon said. “Ruin twenty years of marriage over whether I fasten my seatbelt.”
“They were ruined long ago, believe me,” Sarah said.
Macon laid down his spoon. He forced himself to take a deep breath.
“Sarah,” he said. “We’re getting away from the point.”
After a silence, Sarah said, “Yes, I guess we are.”
“It’s what happened to Ethan that ruined us,” Macon told her.
She set an elbow on the table and covered her eyes.
“But it wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Why, some people, a thing like this brings them closer together. How come we’re letting it part us?”
The waitress said, “Is everything all right?”
Sarah sat up straighter and started rummaging through her purse.
“Yes, certainly,” Macon said.
The waitress was carrying a tray with their main dishes. She cast a doubtful look at Sarah’s antipasto. “Isn’t she going to eat that, or what?” she asked Macon.
“No, I guess, um, maybe not.”
“Didn’t she like it?”
“She liked it fine. Take it away.”
The waitress bustled around the table in an offended silence. Sarah put aside her purse. She looked down at her meal, which was something brown and gluey.
“You’re welcome to half my shrimp salad,” Macon told her when the waitress had gone.
She shook her head. Her eyes were deep with tears, but they hadn’t spilled over.
“Macon,” she said, “ever since Ethan died I’ve had to admit that people are basically bad. Evil, Macon. So evil they would take a twelve-year-old boy and shoot him through the skull for no reason. I read a paper now and I despair; I’ve given up watching the news on TV. There’s so much wickedness, children setting other children on fire and grown men throwing babies out second-story windows, rape and torture and terrorism, old people beaten and robbed, men in our very own government willing to blow up the world, indifference and greed and instant anger on every street corner. I look at my students and they’re so ordinary, but they’re exactly like the boy who killed Ethan. If it hadn’t said beneath that boy’s picture what he’d been arrested for, wouldn’t you think he was just anyone? Someone who’d made the basketball team or won a college scholarship? You can’t believe in a soul. Last spring, Macon, I didn’t tell you this, I was cutting back our hedge and I saw the bird feeder had been stolen out of the crape myrtle tree. Someone will even steal food from little birds! And I just, I don’t know, went kind of crazy and attacked the crape myrtle. Cut it all up, ripped off the branches, slashed it with my pruning shears . . .”