He knew all this and yet, finding a folded sheet of paper on the counter, he opened it and devoured her lurching scrawl as if she were a stranger. Pretzels. Pantyhose. Dentist, he read. Pick up Mrs. Arnold’s laundry.
No, not that. Not that.
Then it was three o’clock and Alexander was home from school, letting himself in with a key that he wore on a shoelace around his neck. “Macon?” he’d call tentatively. “Is that you out there?” He was scared of burglars. Macon said, “It’s me.” Edward leapt up and went running for his ball. “How was your day?” Macon always asked.
“Oh, okay.”
But Macon had the feeling that school never went very well for Alexander. He came out of it with his face more pinched than ever, his glasses thick with fingerprints. He reminded Macon of a home-work paper that had been erased and rewritten too many times. His clothes, on the other hand, were as neat as when he’d left in the morning. Oh, those clothes! Spotless polo shirts with a restrained brown pinstripe, matching brown trousers gathered bulkily around his waist with a heavy leather belt. Shiny brown shoes. Blinding white socks. Didn’t he ever play? Didn’t kids have recess anymore?
Macon gave him a snack: milk and cookies. (Alexander drank milk in the afternoons without complaint.) Then he helped him with his schoolwork. It was the simplest sort—arithmetic sums and reading questions. “Why did Joe need the dime? Where was Joe’s daddy?”
“Umm . . .” Alexander said. Blue veins pulsed in his temples.
He was not a stupid child but he was limited, Macon felt. Limited. Even his walk was constricted. Even his smile never dared to venture beyond two invisible boundaries in the center of his face. Not that he was smiling now. He was wrinkling his forehead, raising his eyes fearfully to Macon.
“Take your time,” Macon told him. “There’s no hurry.”
“But I can’t! I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“You remember Joe,” Macon said patiently.
“I don’t think I do!”
Sometimes Macon stuck with it, sometimes he simply dropped it. After all, Alexander had managed without him up till now, hadn’t he? There was a peculiar kind of luxury here: Alexander was not his own child. Macon felt linked to him in all sorts of complicated ways, but not in that inseparable, inevitable way that he’d been linked to Ethan. He could still draw back from Alexander; he could still give up on him. “Oh, well,” he could say, “talk it over with your teacher tomorrow.” And then his thoughts could wander off again.
The difference was, he realized, that he was not held responsible here. It was a great relief to know that.
When Muriel came home she brought fresh air and bustle and excitement. “Is it ever cold! Is it ever windy! Radio says three below zero tonight. Edward, down, this minute. Who wants lemon pie for dessert? Here’s what happened: I had to go shopping for Mrs. Quick. First I had to buy linens for her daughter who’s getting married, then I had to take them back because they were all the wrong color, her daughter didn’t want pastel but white and told her mother plain as day, she said . . . and then I had to pick up pastries for the bridesmaids’ party and when Mrs. Quick sees the lemon pie she says, ‘Oh, no, not lemon! Not that tacky lemon that always tastes like Kool-Aid!’ I’m like, ‘Mrs. Quick, you don’t have any business telling me what is tacky. This is a fresh-baked, lemon meringue pie without a trace of artificial . . .’ So anyway, to make a long story short, she said to take it home to my little boy. ‘Well, for your information I’m certain he can’t eat it,’ I say. ‘Chances are he’s allergic.’ But I took it.”
She ranged around the kitchen putting together a supper— BLT’s, usually, and vegetables from a can. Sometimes things were not where she expected (Macon’s doing—he couldn’t resist reorganizing), but she adapted cheerfully. While the bacon sputtered in the skillet she usually phoned her mother and went over all she’d just told Macon and Alexander. “But the daughter wanted white and . . . ‘oh, not that tacky lemon pie!’ she says . . .”
If Mrs. Dugan couldn’t come to the phone (which was often the case), Muriel talked to Claire instead. Evidently Claire was having troubles at home. “Tell them!” Muriel counseled her. “Just tell them! Tell them you won’t stand for it.” Cradling the receiver against her shoulder, she opened a drawer and took out knives and forks. “Why should they have to know every little thing you do? It doesn’t matter that you’re not up to anything, Claire. Tell them, ‘I’m seventeen years old and it’s none of your affair anymore if I’m up to anything or not. I’m just about a grown woman,’ tell them.”
But later, if Mrs. Dugan finally came to the phone, Muriel herself sounded like a child. “Ma? What kept you? You can’t say a couple of words to your daughter just because your favorite song is playing on the radio? ‘Lara’s Theme’ is more important than flesh and blood?”
Even after Muriel hung up, she seldom really focused on dinner. Her girlfriend might drop by and stay to watch them eat—a fat young woman named Bernice who worked for the Gas and Electric Company. Or neighbors would knock on the kitchen door and walk right in. “Muriel, do you happen to have a coupon for support hose? Young and slim as you are, I know you wouldn’t need it yourself.” “Muriel, Saturday morning I got to go to the clinic for my teeth, any chance of you giving me a lift?” Muriel was an oddity on this street—a woman with a car of her own—and they knew by heart her elaborate arrangement with the boy who did her repairs. Sundays, when Dominick had the car all day, nobody troubled her; but as soon as Monday rolled around they’d be lining up with their requests. “Doctor wants me to come in and show him my . . .” “I promised I’d take my kids to the . . .”
If Muriel couldn’t do it, they never thought to ask Macon instead. Macon was still an outsider; they shot him quick glances but pretended not to notice he was listening. Even Bernice was bashful with him, and she avoided using his name.
By the time the lottery number was announced on TV, everyone would have left. That was what mattered here, Macon had discovered: the television schedule. The news could be missed but the lottery drawing could not; nor could “Evening Magazine” or any of the action shows that followed. Alexander watched these shows but Muriel didn’t, although she claimed to. She sat on the couch in front of the set and talked, or painted her nails, or read some article or other. “Look here! ‘How to Increase Your Bustline.’ ”
“You don’t want to increase your bustline,” Macon told her.
“ ‘Thicker, More Luxurious Eyelashes in Just Sixty Days.’ ”
“You don’t want thicker eyelashes.”
He felt content with everything exactly the way it was. He seemed to be suspended, his life on hold.
And later, taking Edward for his final outing, he liked the feeling of the neighborhood at night. This far downtown the sky was too pale for stars; it was pearly and opaque. The buildings were muffled dark shapes. Faint sounds threaded out of them—music, rifle shots, the whinnying of horses. Macon looked up at Alexander’s window and saw Muriel unfolding a blanket, as delicate and distinct as a silhouette cut from black paper.
One Wednesday there was a heavy snowstorm, starting in the morning and continuing through the day. Snow fell in clumps like white woolen mittens. It wiped out the dirty tatters of snow from earlier storms; it softened the street’s harsh angles and hid the trash cans under cottony domes. Even the women who swept their stoops hourly could not keep pace with it, and toward evening they gave up and went inside. All night the city glowed lilac. It was absolutely silent.
The next morning, Macon woke late. Muriel’s side of the bed was empty, but her radio was still playing. A tired-sounding announcer was reading out cancellations. Schools were closed, factories were closed, Meals on Wheels was not running. Macon was impressed by the number of activities that people had been planning for just this one day—the luncheons and lectures and protest meetings. What energy, what spirit! He felt almost proud, though he hadn’t been going to attend any of these affairs himself.
Then he realized he was hearing voices downstairs. Alexander must be awake, and here he was trapped in Muriel’s bedroom.
He dressed stealthily, making sure the coast was clear before crossing the hall to the bathroom. He tried not to creak the floorboards as he descended the stairs. The living room was unnaturally bright, reflecting the snow outside. The couch was opened, a mass of sheets and blankets; Claire had slept over the last few nights. Macon followed the voices into the kitchen. He found Alexander eating pancakes, Claire at the stove making more, Muriel curled in her usual morning gloom above her coffee cup. Just inside the back door Bernice stood dripping snow, swathed in various enormous plaids. “So anyhow,” Claire was telling Bernice, “Ma says, ‘Claire, who was that boy you drove up with?’ I said, ‘That was no boy, that was Josie Tapp with her new punk haircut,’ and Ma says, ‘Expect me to believe a cock-and-bull story like that!’ So I say, ‘I’ve had enough of this! Grillings! Curfews! Suspicions!’ And I leave and catch a bus down here.”
“They’re just worried you’ll turn out like Muriel did,” Bernice told her.
“But Josie Tapp! I mean God Almighty!”
There was a general shifting motion in Macon’s direction. Claire said, “Hey there, Macon. Want some pancakes?”
“Just a glass of milk, thanks.”
“They’re nice and hot.”
“Macon thinks sugar on an empty stomach causes ulcers,” Muriel said. She wrapped both hands around her cup.
Bernice said, “Well, I’m not saying no,” and she crossed the kitchen to pull out a chair. Her boots left pads of snow with each step. Edward toddled after her, licking them up. “You and me ought to build a snowman,” Bernice told Alexander. “Snow must be four feet deep out there.”
“Have the streets been cleared?” Macon asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“They couldn’t even get through with the newspaper,” Alexander told him. “Edward’s about to lose his mind wondering where it’s got to.”
“And there’s cars abandoned all over the city. Radio says nobody’s going anywhere at all.”
But Bernice had hardly spoken when Edward wheeled toward the back door and started barking. A figure loomed outside. “Who’s that?” Bernice asked.
Muriel tapped her foot at Edward. He lay down but kept on barking, and Macon opened the door. He found himself face to face with his brother Charles—unusually rugged-looking in a visored cap with earflaps. “Charles?” Macon said. “What are you doing here?”
Charles stepped in, bringing with him the fresh, expectant smell of new snow. Edward’s yelps changed to welcoming whines. “I came to pick you up,” Charles said. “Couldn’t reach you on the phone.”
“Pick me up for what?”
“Your neighbor Garner Bolt called and said pipes or something have burst in your house, water all over everything. I’ve been trying to get you since early morning but your line was always busy.”
“That was me,” Claire said, setting down a platter of pancakes. “I took the receiver off the hook so my folks wouldn’t call me up and nag me.”
“This is Muriel’s sister, Claire,” Macon said, “and that’s Alexander and that’s Bernice Tilghman. My brother Charles.”
Charles looked confused.
Come to think of it, this wasn’t an easy group to sort out. Claire was her usual mingled self—rosebud bathrobe over faded jeans, fringed moccasin boots that laced to her knees. Bernice could have been a lumberjack. Alexander was neat and polished, while Muriel in her slinky silk robe was barely decent. Also, the kitchen was so small that there seemed to be more people than there actually were. And Claire was waving her spatula, spangling the air with drops of grease. “Pancakes?” she asked Charles. “Orange juice? Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Charles said. “I really have to be—”
“I bet you want milk,” Muriel said. She got to her feet, fortunately remembering to clutch her robe together. “I bet you don’t want sugar on an empty stomach.”
“No, really I—”
“It won’t be any trouble!” She was taking the carton from the refrigerator. “How’d you get here, anyways?”
“I drove.”
“I thought the streets were blocked.”
“They weren’t so bad,” Charles said, accepting a glass of milk. “Finding the place was the hard part.” He told Macon, “I looked it up on the map but evidently I was mizzled.”
“Mizzled?” Muriel asked.
“He was misled,” Macon explained. “What did Garner say, exactly, Charles?”
“He said he saw water running down the inside of your living room window. He looked in and saw the ceiling dripping. Could have been that way for weeks, he said; you know that cold spell we had over Christmas.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” Macon said.
He went to the closet for his coat. When he came back, Muriel was saying, “Now that you don’t have an empty stomach, Charles, won’t you try some of Claire’s pancakes?”
“I’ve had a half a dozen,” Bernice told him. “They don’t call me Big-Ass Bernice for nothing.”
Charles said, “Uh, well—” and gave Macon a helpless look.
“We have to be going,” Macon told the others. “Charles, are you parked in back?”
“No, in front. Then I went around back because I couldn’t get the doorbell to work.”
There was a reserved, disapproving note in Charles’s voice when he said this, but Macon just said airily, “Oh, yes! Place is a wreck.” He led the way toward the front of the house. He felt like someone demonstrating how well he got on with the natives.
They pushed open the door with some difficulty and floundered down steps so deeply buried that both men more or less fell the length of them, trusting that they would be cushioned. The sunlight sparked and flashed. They waded toward the street, Macon’s shoes quickly filling with snow—a refreshing sharpness that almost instantly turned painful.
“I guess we’d better take both cars,” he told Charles.
“How come?”
“Well, you don’t want to have to drive all the way back down here.”
“But if we take just one, then one of us can drive and one can push if we get stuck.”
“Let’s take mine, then.”
“But mine’s already cleared and dug out.”
“But with mine I could drop you off home and save you the trip back down.”
“But that leaves my car stranded on Singleton Street.”
“We could get it to you after they plow.”
“And my car has its engine warmed!” Charles said.
Was this how they had sounded, all these years? Macon gave a short laugh, but Charles waited intently for his answer. “Fine, we’ll take yours,” Macon told him. They climbed into Charles’s VW.
It was true there were a lot of abandoned cars. They sat in no particular pattern, featureless white mounds turned this way and that, so the street resembled a river of drifting boats. Charles dodged expertly between them. He kept a slow, steady speed and talked about Rose’s wedding. “We told her April was too iffy. Better wait, we told her, if she’s so set on an outdoor service. But Rose said no, she’ll take her chances. She’s sure the weather will be perfect.”
A snow-covered jeep in front of them, the only moving vehicle they’d yet encountered, suddenly slurred to one side. Charles passed it smoothly in a long, shallow arc. Macon said, “Where will they live, anyhow?”
“Why, at Julian’s, I suppose.”
“In a singles building?”
“No, he’s got another place now, an apartment near the Belvedere.”
“I see,” Macon said. But he had trouble picturing Rose in an apartment—or anywhere, for that matter, if it wasn’t her grandparents’ house with its egg-and-dart moldings and heavily draped windows.
All through the city people were digging out—tunneling toward their parked cars, scraping off their windshields, shoveling sidewalks. There was some
thing holidaylike about them; they waved to each other and called back and forth. One man, having cleared not only his walk but a section of the street as well, was doing a little soft-shoe dance on the wet concrete, and when Charles and Macon drove through he stopped to shout, “What are you, crazy? Traveling around in this?”
“I must say you’re remarkably calm in view of the situation,” Charles told Macon.
“What situation?”
“Your house, I mean. Water pouring through the ceiling for who knows how long.”
“Oh, that,” Macon said. Yes, at one time he’d have been very upset about that.
By now they were high on North Charles Street, which the plows had already cleared. Macon was struck by the spaciousness here—the buildings set far apart, wide lawns sloping between them. He had never noticed that before. He sat forward to gaze at the side streets. They were still completely white. And just a few blocks over, when Charles turned into Macon’s neighborhood, they saw a young girl on skis.
His house looked the same as ever, though slightly dingy in comparison with the snow. They sat in the car a moment studying it, and then Macon said, “Well, here goes, I guess,” and they climbed out. They could see where Garner Bolt had waded through the yard; they saw the scalloping of footprints where he’d stepped closer to peer in a window. But the sidewalk bore no tracks at all, and Macon found it difficult in his smooth-soled shoes.
The instant he unlocked the door, they heard the water. The living room was filled with a cool, steady, dripping sound, like a greenhouse after the plants have been sprayed. Charles, who was the first to enter, said, “Oh, my God.” Macon stopped dead in the hallway behind him.