The Accidental Tourist (9 page)

“He’s supposed to match his pace to anything,” she called back. “Slow, fast, anything I do.” She speeded up. When Edward crossed in front of her, she walked right into him. When he dawdled, she yanked his leash. She tip-tapped briskly eastward, her coat a stiff, swaying triangle beneath the smaller triangle of her hair blowing back. Macon waited, ankle-deep in wet leaves.

On the return trip, Edward kept close to Muriel’s left side. “I think he’s got the hang of it,” she called. She arrived in front of Macon and offered him the leash. “Now you.”

He attempted to slap his hip—which was difficult, on crutches. Then he set off. He was agonizingly slow and Edward kept pulling ahead. “Yank that leash!” Muriel said, clicking along behind. “He knows what he’s supposed to do. Contrary thing.”

Edward fell into step, finally, although he gazed off in a bored, lofty way. “Don’t forget to cluck,” Muriel said. “Every little minute, you have to praise him.” Her heels made a scraping sound behind them. “Once I worked with this dog that had never in her life been housebroken. Two years old and not one bit housebroken and the owners were losing their minds. First I can’t figure it out; then it comes to me. That dog thought she wasn’t supposed to piddle
any
place, not indoors or outdoors, either one. See, no one had ever praised her when she did it right. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I had to catch her peeing outdoors which wasn’t easy, believe me, because she was all the time ashamed and trying to hide it, and then I praised her to bits and after a while she caught on.”

They reached the corner. “Now, when you stop, he has to sit,” she said.

“But how will I practice?” Macon asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on these crutches.”

“So? It’s good exercise for your leg,” she said. She didn’t ask how the leg had been broken. Come to think of it, there was something impervious about her, in spite of all her interest in his private life. She said, “Practice lots, ten minutes a session.”

“Ten minutes!”

“Now let’s start back.”

She led the way, her angular, sashaying walk broken by the jolt of her sharp heels. Macon and Edward followed. When they reached the house, she asked what time it was. “Eight fifty,” Macon said severely. He mistrusted women who wore no watches.

“I have to get going. That will be five dollars, please, and the four cents you owe me from yesterday.”

He gave her the money and she stuffed it in her raincoat pocket. “Next time, I’ll stay longer and talk,” she said. “That’s a promise.” She trilled her fingers at him, and then she clicked off toward a car that was parked down the street—an aged, gray, boat-like sedan polished to a high shine. When she slid in and slammed the door behind her, there was a sound like falling beer cans. The engine twanged and rattled before it took hold. Macon shook his head, and he and Edward returned to the house.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, Macon spent what seemed a lifetime struggling up and down Dempsey Road beside Edward. His armpits developed a permanent ache. There was a vertical seam of pain in his thigh. This made no sense; it should have been in the shin. He wondered if something had gone wrong—if the break had been set improperly, for instance, so that some unusual strain was being placed upon the thighbone. Maybe he’d have to go back to the hospital and get his leg rebroken, probably under general anesthesia with all its horrifying complications; and then he’d spend months in traction and perhaps walk the rest of his life with a limp. He imagined himself tilting across intersections with a grotesque, lopsided gait. Sarah, driving past, would screech to a halt. “Macon?” She would roll down her window. “Macon, what
happened
?”

He would raise one arm and let it flop and totter away from her.

Or tell her, “I’m surprised you care enough to inquire.”

No, just totter away.

Most likely these little spells of self-pity (an emotion he despised ordinarily) were caused by sheer physical exhaustion. How had he got himself into this? Slapping his haunch was the first problem; then summoning his balance to jerk the leash when Edward fell out of step, and staying constantly alert for any squirrel or pedestrian. “Sss!” he kept saying, and “Cluck-cluck!” and “Sss!” again. He supposed passersby must think he was crazy. Edward loped beside him, occasionally yawning, looking everywhere for bikers. Bikers were his special delight. Whenever he saw one, the hair between his shoulders stood on end and he lunged forward. Macon felt like a man on a tightrope that was suddenly set swinging.

At this uneven, lurching pace, he saw much more than he would have otherwise. He had a lengthy view of every bush and desiccated flower bed. He memorized eruptions in the sidewalk that might trip him. It was an old people’s street, and not in the best of repair. The neighbors spent their days telephoning back and forth among themselves, checking to see that no one had suffered a stroke alone on the stairs or a heart attack in the bathroom, a broken hip, blocked windpipe, dizzy spell over the stove with every burner alight. Some would set out for a walk and find themselves hours later in the middle of the street, wondering where they’d been headed. Some would start fixing a bite to eat at noon, a soft-boiled egg or a cup of tea, and by sundown would still be puttering in their kitchen, fumbling for the salt and forgetting how the toaster worked. Macon knew all this through his sister, who was called upon by neighbors in distress. “Rose, dear! Rose, dear!” they would quaver, and they’d stumble into her yard waving an overdue bill, an alarming letter, a bottle of pills with a childproof top.

In the evening, taking Edward for his last walk, Macon glanced in windows and saw people slumped in flowered armchairs, lit blue and shivery by their TV sets. The Orioles were winning the second game of the World Series, but these people seemed to be staring at their own thoughts instead. Macon imagined they were somehow dragging him down, causing him to walk heavily, to slouch, to grow short of breath. Even the dog seemed plodding and discouraged.

And when he returned to the house, the others were suffering one of their fits of indecisiveness. Was it better to lower the thermostat at night, or not? Wouldn’t the furnace have to work harder if it were lowered? Hadn’t Porter read that someplace? They debated back and forth, settling it and then beginning again. Why! Macon thought. They were not so very different from their neighbors. They were growing old themselves. He’d been putting in his own two bits (by all means, lower the thermostat), but now his voice trailed off, and he said no more.

That night, he dreamed he was parked near Lake Roland in his grandfather’s ’57 Buick. He was sitting in the dark and some girl was sitting next to him. He didn’t know her, but the bitter smell of her perfume seemed familiar, and the rustle of her skirt when she moved closer. He turned and looked at her. It was Muriel. He drew a breath to ask what she was doing here, but she put a finger to his lips and stopped him. She moved closer still. She took his keys from him and set them on the dashboard. Gazing steadily into his face, she unbuckled his belt and slipped a cool, knowing hand down inside his trousers.

He woke astonished and embarrassed, and sat bolt upright in his bed.

“Everybody always asks me, ‘What is
your
dog like?’ ” Muriel said. “ ‘I bet he’s a model of good behavior,’ they tell me. But you want to hear something funny? I don’t own a dog. In fact, the one time I had one around, he ran off. That was Norman’s dog, Spook. My ex-husband’s. First night we were married, Spook ran off to Norman’s mom’s. I think he hated me.”

“Oh, surely not,” Macon said.

“He hated me. I could tell.”

They were outdoors again, preparing to put Edward through his paces. By now, Macon had adjusted to the rhythm of these lessons. He waited, gripping Edward’s leash. Muriel said, “It was just like one of those Walt Disney movies. You know: where the dog walks all the way to the Yukon or something. Except Spook only walked to Timonium. Me and Norman had him downtown in our apartment, and Spook took off and traveled the whole however many miles it was back to Norman’s mom’s house in Timonium. His mom calls up: ‘When did you drop Spook off?’ ‘What’re you talking about?’ Norman asks her.”

She changed her voice to match each character. Macon heard the thin whine of Norman’s mother, the stammering boyishness of Norman himself. He remembered last night’s dream and felt embarrassed all over again. He looked at her directly, hoping for flaws, and found them in abundance—a long, narrow nose, and sallow skin, and two freckled knobs of collarbone that promised an unluxurious body.

“Seems his mom woke up in the morning,” she was saying, “and there was Spook, sitting on the doorstep. But that was the first we realized he was missing. Norman goes, ‘I don’t know what got into him. He never ran off before.’ And gives me this doubtful kind of look. I could tell he wondered if it might be my fault. Maybe he thought it was an omen or something. We were awful young to get married. I can see that now. I was seventeen. He was eighteen—an only child. His mother’s pet. Widowed mother. He had this fresh pink face like a girl’s and the shortest hair of any boy in my school and he buttoned his shirt collars all the way to the neck. Moved in from Parkville the end of junior year. Caught sight of me in my strapless sundress and goggled at me all through every class; other boys teased him but he didn’t pay any mind. He was just so . . . innocent, you know? He made me feel like I had powers. There he was following me around the halls with his arms full of books and I’d say, ‘Norman? You want to eat lunch with me?’ and he’d blush and say, ‘Oh, why, uh, you serious?’ He didn’t even know how to drive, but I told him if he got his license I’d go out with him. ‘We could ride to someplace quiet and talk and be alone,’ I’d say, ‘you know what I mean?’ Oh, I was bad. I don’t know what was wrong with me, back then. He got his license in no time flat and came for me in his mother’s Chevy, which incidentally she happened to have purchased from my father, who was a salesman for Ruggles Chevrolet. We found that out at the wedding. Got married the fall of senior year, he was just dying to marry me so what could I say? and at the wedding my daddy goes to Norman’s mom, ‘Why, I believe I sold you a car not long ago,’ but she was too busy crying to take much notice. That woman carried on like marriage was a fate worse than death. Then when Spook runs off to her house she tells us, ‘I suppose I’d best keep him, it’s clear as day he don’t like it there with you-all.’ With
me
, is what she meant. She held it against me I took her son away. She claimed I ruined his chances; she wanted him to get his diploma. But I never kept him from getting his diploma. He was the one who said he might as well drop out; said why bother staying in school when he could make a fine living on floors.”

“On what?” Macon asked.

“Floors. Sanding floors. His uncle was Pritchett Refinishing. Norman went into the business as soon as we got married and his mom was always talking about the waste. She said he could have been an accountant or something, but I don’t know who she thought she was kidding. He never mentioned accounting to
me
.”

She pulled a dog hair off her coat sleeve, examined it, and flicked it away. “So let’s see him,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Let’s see him heel.”

Macon slapped his hip and started off, with Edward lagging just a bit behind. When Macon stopped, Edward stopped too and sat down. Macon was pleasantly surprised, but Muriel said, “He’s not sitting.”

“What? What do you call it, then?”

“He’s keeping his rear end about two inches off the ground. Trying to see what he can get away with.”

“Oh, Edward,” Macon said sadly.

He pivoted and returned. “Well, you’ll have to work on that,” Muriel said. “But meantime, we’ll go on to the down-stay. Let’s try it in the house.”

Macon worried they’d meet up with Rose, but she was nowhere to be seen. The front hall smelled of radiator dust. The clock in the living room was striking the half hour.

“This is where we start on Edward’s real problem,” Muriel said. “Getting him to lie down and stay, so he won’t all the time be jumping at the door.”

She showed him the command: two taps of the foot. Her boot made a crisp sound. When Edward didn’t respond, she bent and pulled his forepaws out from under him. Then she let him up and went through it again, several times over. Edward made no progress. When she tapped her foot, he panted and looked elsewhere. “Stubborn,” Muriel told him. “You’re just as stubborn as they come.” She said to Macon, “A lot of dogs will act like this. They hate to lie down; I don’t know why. Now you.”

Macon tapped his foot. Edward seemed fascinated by something off to his left.

“Grab his paws,” Muriel said.

“On crutches?”

“Sure.”

Macon sighed and propped his crutches in the corner. He lowered himself to the floor with his cat in front of him, took Edward’s paws and forced him down. Edward rumbled threateningly, but in the end he submitted. To get up again, Macon had to hold onto the lamp table. “This is really very difficult,” he said, but Muriel said, “Listen, I’ve taught a man with no legs at all.”

“You have?” Macon said. He pictured a legless man dragging along the sidewalk with some vicious breed of dog, Muriel standing by unconcerned and checking her manicure. “I don’t suppose
you
ever broke a leg,” he accused her. “Getting around is harder than it looks.”

“I broke an arm once,” Muriel said.

“An arm is no comparison.”

“I did it training dogs, in fact. Got knocked off a porch by a Doberman pinscher.”

“A Doberman!”

“Came to to find him standing over me, showing all his teeth. Well, I thought of what they said at Doggie, Do: Only one of you can be boss. So I tell him, ‘Absolutely not.’ Those were the first words that came to me—what my mother used to say when she wasn’t going to let me get away with something. ‘Absolutely not,’ I tell him and my right arm is broken so I hold out my left, hold out my palm and stare into his eyes—they can’t stand for you to meet their eyes—and get to my feet real slow. And durned if that dog doesn’t settle right back on his haunches.”