Muriel vanished again, and Edward sighed and settled his chin on his paws.
A teenaged girl walked past—a gypsy kind of girl with layers of flouncy skirts and a purple satin knapsack plastered all over with Grateful Dead emblems. Edward tensed. He watched every step she took; he rearranged his position to watch after her as she left. But he said nothing, and Macon—tensed himself—felt relieved but also a little let down. He’d been prepared to leap into action. All at once the silence seemed unusually deep; no other people passed. He experienced one of those hallucinations of sound that he sometimes got on planes or trains. He heard Muriel’s voice, gritty and thin, rattling along. “At the tone the time will be . . .” she said, and then she sang, “You will find your love in . . .” and then she shouted, “Cold drinks! Sandwiches! Step right up!” It seemed she had webbed his mind with her stories, wound him in slender steely threads from her life—her Shirley Temple childhood, unsavory girlhood, Norman flinging the screen out the window, Alexander mewing like a newborn kitten, Muriel wheeling on Doberman pinschers and scattering her salmon-pink business cards and galloping down the beach, all spiky limbs and flying hair, hauling a little red wagon full of lunches.
Then she stepped out of the thrift shop. “It was way too expensive,” she told Macon. “Good dog,” she said, and she snapped her fingers to let Edward up. “Now one more test.” She was heading back toward her car. “We want to try both of us going in again. We’ll do it down at the doctor’s.”
“What doctor’s?”
“Dr. Snell’s. I’ve got to pick up Alexander; I want to return him to school after I drop you off.”
“Will that take long?”
“Oh, no.”
They drove south, with the engine knocking in a way that Macon hadn’t noticed the first time. In front of a building on Cold Spring Lane, Muriel parked and got out. Macon and Edward followed her. “Now, I don’t know if he’s ready or not,” she said. “But all the better if he’s not; gives Edward practice.”
“I thought you said this wouldn’t take long.”
She didn’t seem to hear him.
They left Edward on the stoop and went into the waiting room. The receptionist was a gray-haired woman with sequined glasses dangling from a chain of fake scarabs. Muriel asked her, “Is Alexander through yet?”
“Any minute, hon.”
Muriel found a magazine and sat down but Macon remained standing. He raised one of the slats of the venetian blind to check on Edward. A man in a nearby chair glanced over at him suspiciously. Macon felt like someone from a gangster movie—one of those shady characters who twitches back a curtain to make sure the coast is clear. He dropped the blind. Muriel was reading an article called “Put on the New Sultry, Shadowed Eyes!” There were pictures of different models looking malevolent.
“How old did you say Alexander was?” Macon asked.
She glanced up. Her own eyes, untouched by cosmetics, were disquietingly naked compared to those in the magazine.
“He’s seven,” she said.
Seven.
Seven was when Ethan had learned to ride a bicycle.
Macon was visited by one of those memories that dent the skin, that strain the muscles. He felt the seat of Ethan’s bike pressing into his hand—the curled-under edge at the rear that you hold onto when you’re trying to keep a bicycle upright. He felt the sidewalk slapping against his soles as he ran. He felt himself let go, slow to a walk, stop with his hands on his hips to call out, “You’ve got her now! You’ve got her!” And Ethan rode away from him, strong and proud and straight-backed, his hair picking up the light till he passed beneath an oak tree.
Macon sat down next to Muriel. She looked over and said, “Have you thought?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you given any thought to coming to dinner?”
“Oh,” he said. And then he said, “Well, I could come. If it’s only for dinner.”
“What else would it be for?” she asked. She smiled at him and tossed her hair back.
The receptionist said, “Here he is.”
She was talking about a small, white, sickly boy with a shaved-looking skull. He didn’t appear to have quite enough skin for his face; his skin was stretched, his mouth was stretched to an unattractive width, and every bone and blade of cartilage made its presence known. His eyes were light blue and lashless, bulging slightly, rimmed with pink, magnified behind large, watery spectacles whose clear frames had an unfortunate pinkish cast themselves. He wore a carefully coordinated shirt-and-slacks set such as only a mother would choose.
“How’d it go?” Muriel asked him.
“Okay.”
“Sweetie, this is Macon. Can you say hi? I’ve been training his dog.”
Macon stood up and held out his hand. After a moment, Alexander responded. His fingers felt like a collection of wilted stringbeans. He took his hand away again and told his mother, “You have to make another appointment.”
“Sure thing.”
She went over to the receptionist, leaving Macon and Alexander standing there. Macon felt there was nothing on earth he could talk about with this child. He brushed a leaf off his sleeve. He pulled his cuffs down. He said, “You’re pretty young to be at the doctor’s without your mother.”
Alexander didn’t answer, but Muriel—waiting for the receptionist to flip through her calendar—turned and answered for him. “He’s used to it,” she said, “because he’s had to go so often. He’s got these allergies.”
“I see,” Macon said.
Yes, he was just the type for allergies.
“He’s allergic to shellfish, milk, fruits of all kinds, wheat, eggs, and most vegetables,” Muriel said. She accepted a card from the receptionist and dropped it into her purse. She said as they were walking out, “He’s allergic to dust and pollen and paint, and there’s some belief he’s allergic to air. Whenever he’s outside a long time he gets these bumps on any uncovered parts of his body.”
She clucked at Edward and snapped her fingers. Edward jumped up, barking. “Don’t pat him,” she told Alexander. “You don’t know what dog fur will do to you.”
They got into her car. Macon sat in back so Alexander could take the front seat, as far from Edward as possible. They had to drive with all the windows down so Alexander wouldn’t start wheezing. Over the rush of wind, Muriel called, “He’s subject to asthma, eczema, and nosebleeds. He has to get these shots all the time. If a bee ever stings him and he hasn’t had his shots he could be dead in half an hour.”
Alexander turned his head slowly and gazed at Macon. His expression was prim and censorious.
When they drew up in front of the house, Muriel said, “Well, let’s see now. I’m on full time at the Meow-Bow tomorrow . . .” She ran a hand through her hair, which was scratchy, rough, disorganized. “So I guess I won’t see you till dinner,” she said.
Macon couldn’t think of any way to tell her this, but the fact was he would never be able to make that dinner. He missed his wife. He missed his son. They were the only people who seemed real to him. There was no point looking for substitutes.
eleven
Muriel Pritchett was how she was listed. Brave and cocky: no timorous initials for Muriel. Macon circled the number. He figured now was the time to call. It was nine in the evening. Alexander would have gone to bed. He lifted the receiver.
But what would he say?
Best to be straightforward, of course, much less hurtful; hadn’t Grandmother Leary always told them so? Muriel, last year my son died and I don’t seem to . . . Muriel, this has nothing to do with you personally but really I have no . . .
Muriel, I can’t. I just can’t.
It seemed his voice had rusted over. He held the receiver to his ear but great, sharp clots of rust were sticking in his throat.
He had never actually said out loud that Ethan was dead. He hadn’t needed to; it was in the papers (page three, page five), and then friends had told other friends, and Sarah got on t
he phone . . . So somehow, he had never spoken the words. How would he do it now? Or maybe he could make Muriel do it. Finish the sentence, please: I did have a son but he—. “He what?” she would ask. “He went to live with your wife? He ran away? He died?” Macon would nod. “But how did he die? Was it cancer? Was it a car wreck? Was it a nineteen-year-old with a pistol in a Burger Bonanza restaurant?”
He hung up.
He went to ask Rose for notepaper and she gave him some from her desk. He took it to the dining room table, sat down, and uncapped his fountain pen. Dear Muriel, he wrote. And stared at the page a while.
Funny sort of name.
Who would think of calling a little newborn baby Muriel?
He examined his pen. It was a Parker, a swirly tortoiseshell lacquer with a complicated gold nib that he liked the looks of. He examined Rose’s stationery. Cream colored. Deckle edged. Deckle! What an odd word.
Well.
Dear Muriel.
I am very sorry, he wrote, but I won’t be able to have dinner with you after all. Something has come up. He signed it, Regretfully, Macon.
Grandmother Leary would not have approved.
He sealed the envelope and tucked it in his shirt pocket. Then he went to the kitchen where Rose kept a giant city map thumb-tacked to the wall.
Driving through the labyrinth of littered, cracked, dark streets in the south of the city, Macon wondered how Muriel could feel safe living here. There were too many murky alleys and stairwells full of rubbish and doorways lined with tattered shreds of posters. The gridded shops with their ineptly lettered signs offered services that had a sleazy ring to them: CHECKS CASHED NO QUESTIONS, TINY BUBBA’S INCOME TAX, SAME DAY AUTO RECOLORING. Even this late on a cold November night, clusters of people lurked in the shadows— young men drinking out of brown paper bags, middle-aged women arguing under a movie marquee that read CLOSED.
He turned onto Singleton and found a block of row houses that gave a sense of having been skimped on. The roofs were flat, the windows flush and lacking depth. There was nothing to spare, no excess material for overhangs or decorative moldings, no generosity. Most were covered in formstone, but the bricks of Number 16 had been painted a rubbery maroon. An orange bugproof bulb glowed dimly above the front stoop.
He got out of the car and climbed the steps. He opened the screen door, which was made of pitted aluminum. It clattered in a cheap way and the hinges shrieked. He winced. He took the letter from his pocket and bent down.
“I’ve got a double-barreled shotgun,” Muriel said from inside the house, “and I’m aiming it exactly where your head is.”
He straightened sharply. His heart started pounding. (Her voice sounded level and accurate—like her shotgun, he imagined.) He said, “It’s Macon.”
“Macon?”
The latch clicked and the inner door opened several inches. He saw a sliver of Muriel in a dark-colored robe. She said, “Macon! What are you doing here?”
He gave her the letter.
She took it and opened it, using both hands. (There wasn’t a trace of a shotgun.) She read it and looked up at him.
He saw he had done it all wrong.
“Last year,” he said, “I lost . . . I experienced a . . . loss, yes, I lost my . . .”
She went on looking into his face.
“I lost my son,” Macon said. “He was just . . . he went to a hamburger joint and then . . . someone came, a holdup man, and shot him. I can’t go to dinner with people! I can’t talk to their little boys! You have to stop asking me. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings but I’m just not up to this, do you hear?”
She took one of his wrists very gently and she drew him into the house, still not fully opening the door, so that he had a sense of slipping through something, of narrowly evading something. She closed the door behind him. She put her arms around him and hugged him.
“Every day I tell myself it’s time to be getting over this,” he said into the space above her head. “I know that people expect it of me. They used to offer their sympathy but now they don’t; they don’t even mention his name. They think it’s time my life moved on. But if anything, I’m getting worse. The first year was like a bad dream— I was clear to his bedroom door in the morning before I remembered he wasn’t there to be wakened. But this second year is real. I’ve stopped going to his door. I’ve sometimes let a whole day pass by without thinking about him. That absence is more terrible than the first, in a way. And you’d suppose I would turn to Sarah but no, we only do each other harm. I believe that Sarah thinks I could have prevented what happened, somehow—she’s so used to my arranging her life. I wonder if all this has only brought out the truth about us—how far apart we are. I’m afraid we got married because we were far apart. And now I’m far from everyone; I don’t have any friends anymore and everyone looks trivial and foolish and not related to me.”
She drew him through a living room where shadows loomed above a single beaded lamp, and a magazine lay face down on a lumpy couch. She led him up a stairway and across a hall and into a bedroom with an iron bedstead and a varnished orange bureau.
“No,” he said, “wait. This is not what I want.”
“Just sleep,” she told him. “Lie down and sleep.”
That seemed reasonable.
She removed his duffel coat and hung it on a hook in a closet curtained with a length of flowered sheeting. She knelt and untied his shoes. He stepped out of them obediently. She rose to unbutton his shirt and he stood passive with his hands at his sides. She hung his trousers over a chair back. He dropped onto the bed in his underwear and she covered him with a thin, withered quilt that smelled of bacon grease.
Next he heard her moving through the rest of the house, snapping off lights, running water, murmuring something in another room. She returned to the bedroom and stood in front of the bureau. Earrings clinked into a dish. Her robe was old, shattered silk, the color of sherry. It tied at the waist with a twisted cord and the elbows were clumsily darned. She switched off the lamp. Then she came over to the bed and lifted the quilt and slid under it. He wasn’t surprised when she pressed against him. “I just want to sleep,” he told her. But there were those folds of silk. He felt how cool and fluid the silk was. He put a hand on her hip and felt the two layers of her, cool over warm. He said, “Will you take this off?”
She shook her head. “I’m bashful,” she whispered, but immediately afterward, as if to deny that, she put her mouth on his mouth and wound herself around him.
In the night he heard a child cough, and he swam up protestingly through layers of dreams to answer. But he was in a room with one tall blue window, and the child was not Ethan. He turned over and found Muriel. She sighed in her sleep and lifted his hand and placed it upon her stomach. The robe had fallen open; he felt smooth skin, and then a corrugated ridge of flesh jutting across her abdomen. The Caesarean, he thought. And it seemed to him, as he sank back into his dreams, that she had as good as spoken aloud. About your son, she seemed to be saying: Just put your hand here. I’m scarred, too. We’re all scarred. You are not the only one.
twelve
I don’t understand you,” Rose told Macon. “First you say yes, you’ll be here all afternoon, and then you say you won’t. How can I plan when you’re so disorganized?”
She was folding linen napkins and stacking them on the table, preparing her annual tea for the old people. Macon said, “Sorry, Rose, I didn’t think it would matter that much.”
“Last night you said you’d want supper and then you weren’t here to eat it. Three separate mornings these past two weeks I go to call you for breakfast and I find you haven’t slept in your bed. Don’t you think I worry? Anything might have happened.”
“Well, I said I was sorry.”
Rose smoothed the stack of napkins.
“Time creeps up on me,” he told her. “You know how it is. I mean I don’t intend to go out at all, to begin with, but then I think, ‘Oh, maybe for a little while,’ and
next thing I know it’s so late, much too late to be driving, and I think to myself, ‘Well . . .’ ”
Rose turned away quickly and went over to the buffet. She started counting spoons. “I’m not asking about your private life,” she said.
“I thought in a sense you were.”
“I just need to know how much food to cook, that’s all.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for being curious,” he said.
“I just need to know how many breakfasts to fix.”
“You think I don’t notice you three? Whenever she’s here giving Edward his lesson, everyone starts coming out of the woodwork. Edging through the living room—‘Just looking for the pliers! Don’t mind me!’ Sweeping the entire front porch the minute we take Edward out for a walk.”
“Could I help it if the porch was dirty?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Tomorrow night I’ll definitely be here for supper. That’s a promise. You can count on it.”
“I’m not asking you to stay if you don’t want to,” she told him.
“Of course I want to! It’s just this evening I’ll be out,” he said, “but not late, I’m sure of that. Why, I bet I’ll be home before ten!”
Although even as he spoke, he heard how false and shallow he sounded, and he saw how Rose lowered her eyes.
He bought a large combination pizza and drove downtown with it. The smell made him so hungry that he kept snitching bits off the top at every stoplight—coins of pepperoni, crescents of mushroom. His fingers got all sticky and he couldn’t find his handkerchief. Pretty soon the steering wheel was sticky too. Humming to himself, he drove past tire stores, liquor stores, discount shoe stores, the Hot-Tonight Novelty Company. He took a shortcut through an alley and jounced between a double row of backyards—tiny rectangles crammed with swing sets and rusted auto parts and stunted, frozen bushes. He turned onto Singleton and drew up behind a pickup truck full of moldy rolls of carpet.
The next-door neighbor’s twin daughters were perched on their front stoop—flashy sixteen-year-olds in jeans as tight as sausage casings. It was too cold to sit outside, but that never stopped them. “Hey there, Macon,” they sing-songed.