The Accidental Tourist

At supper, Sue Carney seated Macon at her right. She put a hand on his and said it was wonderful that he and Sarah had worked things out. “Well, thank you,” Macon said. “Gosh you make a really good salad, Sue.”

“We all have our ups and downs,” she said. For a second he thought she meant her salads weren’t consistently successful. “I’ll be honest,” she told him, “there’ve been times when I have wondered if Bob and I would make it. There’s times I feel we’re just hanging in there, you know what I mean? Times I say, ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ but inside I’m feeling like a Gold Star mother.”

Macon turned the stem of his glass and tried to think what step he’d missed in her logic.

“Like someone who’s suffered a loss in a war,” she said, “and then forever afterward she has to go on supporting the war; she has to support it louder than anyone else, because otherwise she’d be admitting the loss was for no purpose.”

“Um. ”

“But that’s just a passing mood,” she said.

“Well, naturally,” Macon said.

He and Sarah walked home through air as heavy as water. It was eleven o’clock and the teenagers who had eleven o’clock curfews were just returning. These were the youngest ones, most of them too young to drive, and so they were chauffeured by grownups. They jumped out of cars shouting, “See you! Thanks! Call me tomorrow, hear?” Keys jingled. Front doors blinked open and blinked shut again. The cars moved on.

Sarah’s skirt had the same whispery sound as the Tuckers’ lawn sprinkler, which was still revolving slowly in a patch of ivy.

When they reached the house, Macon let Edward out for one last run. He tried to get the cat to come in, but she stayed hunched on the kitchen window ledge glaring down at him, owlish and stubborn; so he let her be. He moved through the rooms turning off lights. By the time he came upstairs Sarah was already in bed, propped against the headboard with a glass of club soda. “Have some,” she said, holding out the glass. But he said no, he was tired; and he undressed and slid under the covers.

The tinkling of Sarah’s ice cubes took on some meaning in his mind. It seemed that with every tinkle, he fell deeper. Finally he opened a door and traveled down an aisle and stepped into the witness stand. They asked him the simplest of questions. “What color were the wheels?” “Who brought the bread?” “Were the shutters closed or open?” He honestly couldn’t remember. He tried but he couldn’t remember. They took him to the scene of the crime, a winding road like something in a fairy tale. “Tell us all you know,” they said. He didn’t know a thing. By now it was clear from their faces that he wasn’t merely a witness; they suspected him. So he racked his brain, but still he came up empty. “You have to see my side of this!” he cried. “I put it all out of my mind; I worked to put it out! Now I can’t bring it back.”

“Not even to defend yourself?” they asked.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, and Sarah breathed softly next to him. The clock radio said it was midnight. The midnight-curfew group was just returning. Hoots and laughter rang out, tires scraped a curb, and a fanbelt whinnied as someone struggled to park. Then gradually the neighborhood fell silent. It would stay that way, Macon knew, till time for the one-o’clock group. He would first hear faint strands of their music and then more laughter, car doors slamming, house doors slamming. Porch lights would switch off all along the street, gradually dimming the ceiling as he watched. In the end, he would be the only one left awake.

twenty

The plane to New York was a little bird of a thing, but the plane to Paris was a monster, more like a building. Inside, great crowds were cramming coats and bags into overhead compartments, stuffing suitcases under seats, arguing, calling for stewardesses. Babies were crying and mothers were snapping at children. Steerage could not have been worse than this, Macon felt.

He took his place next to a window and was joined almost immediately by an elderly couple speaking French. The man sat next to Macon and gave him a deep, unsmiling nod. Then he said something to his wife, who passed him a canvas bag. He unzipped it and sorted through its contents. Playing cards, an entire tin of Band-aids, a stapler, a hammer, a lightbulb. Macon was fascinated. He kept sliding his eyes to the right to try and see more. When a wooden mousetrap tumbled out, he began to wonder if the man might be some sort of lunatic; but of course even a mousetrap could be explained, given a little thought. Yes, what he was witnessing, Macon decided, was just one answer to the traveler’s eternal choice: Which was better? Take all you own, and struggle to carry it? Or travel light, and spend half your trip combing the shops for what you’ve left behind? Either way had its drawbacks.