The Accidental Tourist

But it must have been an exceptionally strong toddy — either that, or Susan had an exceptionally weak head for alcohol. At any rate, after two small sips she leaned toward him in an unbalanced way. “This is sort of fun!” she said. “You know, Uncle Macon, I like you much better than I thought I did.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I used to think you were kind of finicky. Ethan used to make us laugh, pointing to your artichoke plate.”

“My artichoke plate.”

She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“I didn’t mean to talk about him.”

“You can talk about him.”

“I don’t want to,” she said.

She gazed off across the room. Macon, following her eyes, found only a harpsichord. He looked back at her and saw her chin trembling.

It had never occurred to him that Ethan’s cousins missed him too.

After a minute, Susan picked her mug up and took several large swallows. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Hot,” she explained. It was true she seemed to have recovered herself.

Macon said, “What was funny about my artichoke plate?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“I won’t be hurt. Was it funny?”

“Well, it looked like geometry class. Every leaf laid out in such a perfect circle when you’d finished.”

“I see.”

“He was laughing with you, not at you,” Susan said, peering anxiously into his face.

“Well, since I wasn’t laughing myself, that statement seems inaccurate. But if you mean he wasn’t laughing unkindly, I believe you.”

She sighed and drank some more of her rum.

“Nobody talks about him,” Macon said. “None of you mentions his name.”

“We do when you’re not around,” Susan said.

“You do?”

“We talk about what he’d think, you know. Like when Danny got his license, or when I had a date for the Halloween Ball. I mean we used to make so much fun of the grown-ups. And Ethan was the funniest one; he could always get us to laugh. Then here we are, growing up ourselves. We wonder what Ethan would think of us, if he could come back and see us. We wonder if he’d laugh at us. Or if he’d feel. left out. Like we moved on and left him behind.”

The woman in the Colonial gown came to show them to their table. Macon brought his drink; Susan had already finished hers. She was a bit unsteady on her feet. When their waitress asked them if they’d like a wine list, Susan gave Macon a bright-eyed look but Macon said, “No,” very firmly. “I think we ought to start with soup,” he said. He had some idea soup was sobering.

But Susan talked in a reckless, headlong way all through the soup course, and the main course, and the two desserts she hadn’t been able to decide between, and the strong black coffee that he pressed upon her afterward. She talked about a boy she liked who either liked her back or else preferred someone named Sissy Pace. She talked about the Halloween Ball where this really juvenile eighth-grader had thrown up all over the stereo. She said that when Danny was eighteen, the three of them were moving to their own apartment because now that their mother was expecting (which Macon hadn’t known), she wouldn’t even realize they were gone. “That’s not true,” Macon told her. “Your mother would feel terrible if you left.” Susan propped her cheek on her fist in a sort of slipshod manner and said that she wasn’t born yesterday. Her hair had grown wilder through the evening, giving her an electrified appearance. Macon found it difficult to stuff her into her jacket, and he had to hold her up more or less by the back of her collar while they were waiting for a taxi.

In the railroad station she got a confused, squinty look, and once they were on the train she fell asleep with her head against the window. In Baltimore, when he woke her, she said, “You don’t think he’s mad at us, do you, Uncle Macon?”

“Who’s that?”

“You think he’s mad we’re starting to forget him?”

“Oh, no, honey. I’m sure he’s not.”

She slept in the car all the way from the station, and he drove very gently so as not to wake her. When they got home, Rose said it looked as if he’d worn the poor child right down to a frazzle.

“You want your dog to mind you in every situation,” Muriel said. “Even out in public. You want to leave him outside a public place and come back to find him waiting. That’s what we’ll work on this morning. We’ll start with him waiting right on your own front porch. Then next lesson we’ll go on to shops and things.”

She picked up the leash and they stepped out the door. It was raining, but the porch roof kept them dry. Macon said, “Hold on a minute, I want to show you something.”

“What’s that?”

He tapped his foot twice. Edward looked uncomfortable; he gazed off toward the street and gave a sort of cough. Then slowly, slowly, one forepaw crumpled. Then the other. He lowered himself by degrees until he was lying down.

“Well! Good dog!” Muriel said. She clucked her tongue.

Edward flattened his ears back for a pat.