The Accidental Tourist

They entered the pantry. Rose opened the bathroom door and helped him inside. "Call me when you're ready," she said, closing the door after him. Macon sagged against the sink.

At breakfast, Porter was cheerily talkative while the others ate in silence. Porter was the best-looking of all the Learys-more tightly knit than Macon, his hair a brighter shade of blond. He gave an impression of vitality and direction that his brothers lacked. "Got a lot to do today," he said between mouthfuls. "That meeting with Herrin, interviews for Dave's old job, Gates flying in from Atlanta . . ."

Charles just sipped his coffee. While Porter was already dressed, Charles still wore his pajamas. He was a soft, sweet-faced man who never seemed to move; any time you looked at him he'd be watching you with his sorrowful eyes that slanted downward at the outer corners.

Rose brought the coffeepot from the stove, "Last night, Edward woke me twice asking to go out," she said. "Do you think he has some sort of kidney problem?"

"It's the adjustment," Macon said. "Adjustment to change. I wonder how he knows not to wake me."

Porter said, "Maybe we could rig up some sort of system. One of those little round pet doors or something."

"Edward's kind of portly for a pet door," Macon said.

"Besides," Rose said, "the yard's not fenced. We can't let him out on his own if he's not fenced in."

"A litterbox, then," Porter suggested.

"Litterbox! For a dog?"

"Why not? If it were big enough."

Macon said, "Use a bathtub. The one in the basement. No one goes there anymore."

"But who would clean it?"

"Ah."

They all looked down at Edward, who was lying at Rose's feet. He rolled his eyes at them.

"How come you have him, anyway?" Porter asked Macon.

"He was Ethan's."

"Oh. I see," Porter said. He gave a little cough. "Animals!" he said brightly. "Ever considered what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from the grocery store with the most amazing haul- chicken, pork, half a cow. We leave at nine and we're back at ten, evidently having caught an entire herd of beasts. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!"

Macon leaned back in his chair with his coffee mug cupped in both hands. The sun was warming the breakfast table, and the kitchen smelled of toast. He almost wondered whether, by some devious, subconscious means, he had engineered this injury-every elaborate step leading up to it-just so he could settle down safe among the people he'd started out with.

Charles and Porter left for the factory, and Rose went upstairs and ran the vacuum cleaner. Macon, who was supposed to be typing his guidebook, struggled back to the sun porch and collapsed. Since he'd come home he'd been sleeping too much. The urge to sleep was like a great black cannonball rolling around inside his skull, making his head heavy and droopy.

On the wall at the end of the room hung a portrait of the four Leary children: Charles, Porter, Macon, and Rose, clustered in an armchair.

Their grandfather had commissioned that portrait several years before they came to live with him. They were still in California with their mother-a giddy young war widow. From time to time she sent snapshots, but Grandfather Leary found those inadequate. By their very nature, he told her in his letters, photos lied. They showed what a person looked like over a fraction of a second-not over long, slow minutes, which was what you'd take to study someone in real life. In that case, said Alicia, didn't paintings lie also? They showed hours instead of minutes. It wasn't Grandfather Leary she said this to, but the artist, an elderly Californian whose name Grandfather Leary had somehow got hold of. If the artist had had a reply, Macon couldn't remember what it was.

He could remember sitting for the portrait, though, and now when he looked at it he had a very clear picture of his mother standing just outside the gilded frame in a pink kimono, watching the painting take shape while she toweled her hair dry. She had fluffy, short, brittle hair whose color she "helped along," as she put it. Her face was a type no longer seen-it wasn't just unfashionable, it had vanished altogether. How did women mold their basic forms to suit the times? Were there no more of those round chins, round foreheads, and bruised, baroque little mouths so popular in the forties?

The artist, it was obvious, found her very attractive. He kept pausing in his work to say he wished she were the subject. Alicia gave a breathless laugh and shooed away his words with one hand. Probably later she had gone out with him a few times. She was always taking up with new men, and they were always the most exciting men in the world, to hear her tell it.