The Accidental Tourist

There had always been some family member requiring Rose’s care. Their grandmother had been bedridden for years before she died, and then their grandfather got so senile, and first Charles and later Porter had failed in their marriages and come back home. So she had enough right here to fill her time. Or she made it enough; for surely it couldn’t be necessary to polish every piece of silver every week. Shut in the house with her all day, Macon noticed how painstakingly she planned the menus; how often she reorganized the utensil drawer; how she ironed even her brothers’ socks, first separating them from the clever plastic grips she used to keep them mated in the washing machine. For Macon’s lunch, she cooked a real meal and served it on regular place mats. She set out cut-glass dishes of pickles and olives that had to be returned to their bottles later on. She dolloped homemade mayonnaise into a tiny bowl.

Macon wondered if it ever occurred to her that she lived an odd sort of life — unemployed, unmarried, supported by her brothers. But what job would she be suited for? he asked himself. Although he could picture her, come to think of it, as the mainstay of some musty, antique law firm or accounting firm. Nominally a secretary, she would actually run the whole business, arranging everything just so on her employer’s desk every morning and allowing no one below her or above her to overlook a single detail. Macon could use a secretary like that. Recalling the gum-chewing redhead in Julian’s disastrous office, he sighed and wished the world had more Roses.

He zipped a page from his typewriter and set it face down on a stack of others. He had finished with his introduction — general instructions like A subway is not an underground train and Don’t say restroom, say toilet—and he’d finished the chapter called “Trying to Eat in England.” Rose had mailed those off for him yesterday. That was his new stratagem: sending his book piece by piece from this undisclosed location. “There’s no return address on this,” Rose told him. “There’s not meant to be,” Macon said. Rose had nodded solemnly. She was the only one in the family who viewed his guidebooks as real writing. She kept a row of them in her bedroom bookcase, alphabetized by country.

In midafternoon, Rose stopped work to watch her favorite soap opera. This was something Macon didn’t understand. How could she waste her time on such trash? She said it was because there was a wonderfully evil woman in it. “There are enough evil people in real life,” Macon told her.

“Yes, but not wonderfully evil.”

“Well, that’s for sure.”

“This one, you see, is so obvious. You know exactly whom to mistrust.”

While she watched, she talked aloud to the characters. Macon could hear her in the dining room. “It isn’t you he’s after, sweetie,” she said, and “Just you wait. Ha!”—not at all her usual style of speech. A commercial broke in, but Rose stayed transfixed where she was. Macon, meanwhile, worked on “Trying to Sleep in England,” typing away in a dogged, uninspired rhythm.

When the doorbell rang, Rose didn’t respond. Edward went mad, barking and scratching at the door and running back to Macon and racing again to the door. “Rose?” Macon called. She said nothing. Finally he stood up, assembled himself on his crutches, and went as quietly as possible to the hall.

Well, it wasn’t Sarah. A glance through the lace curtain told him that much. He opened the door and peered out. “Yes?” he said.

It was Garner Bolt, a neighbor from home — a scrawny little gray man who had made his fortune in cleaning supplies. When he saw Macon, every line in his pert, pointed face turned upward. “There you are!” he said. It was hard to hear him over Edward, who went on barking frantically.

“Why, Garner,” Macon said.

“We worried you had died.”

“You did?”

Macon grabbed at Edward’s collar, but missed.

“Saw the papers piling up on your lawn, mail inside your screen door, didn’t know what to think.”

“Well, I meant to send my sister for those,” Macon said. “I broke my leg, you see.”

“Now, how did you do that?”

“It’s a long story.”

He gave up blocking the door. “Come on in,” he told Garner.

Garner took off his cap, which had a Sherwin-Williams Paint sign across the front. His jacket was part of some long-ago suit, a worn shiny brown, and his overalls were faded to white at the knees. He stepped inside, skirting the dog, and shut the door behind him. Edward’s barks turned to whimpers. “My car is full of your mail,” Garner said. “Brenda said I ought to bring it to your sister and ask if she knew of your whereabouts. Also I promised your friend.”

“What friend?”

“Lady in pedal pushers.”

“I don’t know any lady in pedal pushers,” Macon said. He hadn’t realized pedal pushers still existed, even.

“Saw her standing on your porch, rattling your doorknob. Calling out, ‘Macon? You in there?’ Skinny little lady with hair. Looked to be in her twenties or so.”