The Accidental Tourist

A biker appeared at the end of the street, a girl with a Baskin-Robbins uniform bunching below her jacket. Edward perked his ears up. "Now, act like we expect no trouble," Muriel told Macon. "Just go along, go along, don't even look in Edward's direction."

The girl skimmed toward them-a little slip of a person with a tiny, serious face. When she passed, she gave off a definite smell of chocolate ice cream. Edward sniffed the breeze but marched on.

"Oh, Edward, that was wonderful!" Macon told him.

Muriel just clucked. She seemed to take his good behavior for granted.

"So anyhow," she said. "They finally did let Alexander come home. But he was still no bigger than a minute. All wrinkles like a little old man.

Cried like a kitten would cry. Struggled for every breath. And Norman was no help. I think he was jealous. He got this kind of stubborn look whenever I had to do something, go warm a bottle or something. He'd say, 'Where you off to? Don't you want to watch the end of this program?' I'd be hanging over the crib watching Alexander fight for air, and Norman would call, 'Muriel? Commercial's just about over!' Then next thing I knew, there was his mother standing on my doorstep saying it wasn't his baby anyhow."

"What? Well, of all things!" Macon said.

"Can you believe it? Standing on my doorstep looking so pleased with herself. 'Not his baby!' I said. 'Whose, then?' 'Well, that I couldn't say,' she said, 'and I doubt if you could either. But I can tell you this much: If you don't give my son a divorce and release all financial claims on him, I will personally produce Dana Scully and his friends in a court of law and they will swear you're a known tramp and that baby could be any one of theirs. Clearly it's not Norman's; Norman was a darling baby.'

Well. I waited till Norman got home from work and I said, 'Do you know what your mother told me?' Then I saw by his face that he did. I saw she must have been talking behind my back for who knows how long, putting these suspicions in his head. I said, 'Norman?' He just stuttered around.

I said, 'Norman, she's lying, it's not true, I wasn't going with those boys when I met you! That's all in the past!' He said, 'I don't know what to think.' I said, 'Please!' He said, 'I don't know.' He went out to the kitchen and started fixing this screen I'd been nagging him about, window screen halfway out of its frame, even though supper was already on the table. I'd made him this special supper. I followed after him. I said, 'Norman, Dana and them are from way, way back. That baby couldn't be theirs.' He pushed up on one side of the screen and it wouldn't go, and he pushed up on the other side and it cut his hand, and all at once he started crying and wrenched the whole thing out of the window and threw it as far as he could. And next day his mother came to help him pack his clothes and he left me."

"Good Lord," Macon said. He felt shocked, as if he'd known Norman personally.

"So I thought about what to do. I knew I couldn't go back to my folks.

Finally I phoned Mrs. Brimm and asked if she still wanted me to come take care of her, and she said yes, she did; the woman she had wasn't any use at all. So I said I would do it for room and board if I could bring the baby and she said yes, that would be fine. She had this little row house downtown and there was an extra bedroom where me and Alexander could sleep. And that's how I managed to keep us going."

They were several blocks from home now, but she didn't suggest turning back. She held the leash loosely and Edward strutted next to her, matching her pace. "I was lucky, wasn't I," she said. "If it wasn't for Mrs. Brimm I don't know what I'd have done. And it's not like it was all that much work. Just keeping the house straight, fixing her a bite to eat, helping her get around. She was crippled up with arthritis but just as spunky! It's not like I really had to nurse her."

She slowed and then came to a stop. Edward, with a martyred sigh, sat down at her left heel. "When you think about it, it's funny," she said.