The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [115]
He went to the living room doorway. She was watching a ball game with Alexander. He said, “Muriel, have you been drinking that wine I bought?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Why, Muriel?”
“Oh, I just had this irresistible urge to try it out,” she said.
Then she looked at him with slitted eyes, tilting her chin. He felt she was challenging him to take some action, but he said nothing. He picked up his car keys and went out to buy another bottle.
Macon felt shy about attending this dinner, as if Rose had turned into a stranger. He took longer than usual dressing, unable to decide between two shirts, and Muriel seemed to be having some trouble too. She kept putting on outfits and taking them off; brightly colored fabrics began to mount on the bed and on the floor all around it. “Oh, Lord, I wish I was just a totally nother person,” she sighed. Macon, concentrating on tying his tie, said nothing. Her baby photo grinned out at him from the frame of the mirror. He happened to notice the date on the border: AUG 60. Nineteen sixty.
When Muriel was two years old, Macon and Sarah were already engaged to be married.
Downstairs, Dominick Saddler was sitting on the couch with Alexander. “Now this here is your paste wax,” he was saying. He held up a can. “You never want to polish a car with anything but paste wax. And here we have a diaper. Diapers make real good rags because they don’t shed hardly no lint. I generally buy a dozen at a time from Sears and Roebuck. And chamois skins: well, you know chamois skins. So what you do is, you get yourself these here supplies and a case of good beer and a girl, and you head on out to Loch Raven. Then you park in the sun and you take off your shirt and you and the girl start to polishing. Ain’t no sweeter way that I know of to use up a spring afternoon.”
Dominick’s version of a bedtime story, Macon supposed. He was baby-sitting tonight. (The Butler twins had dates, and Claire was out with the General. As everybody referred to him now.) In payment, Muriel’s car would be Dominick’s to use for a week; mere money would never have persuaded him. He slouched next to Alexander with the diaper spread over one knee, muscles bulging under a T-shirt that read WEEKEND WARRIOR. A Greek sailor cap was tipped back on his head with a Judas Priest button pinned above the visor. Alexander looked enthralled.
Muriel came tapping down the stairs; she arrived craning her neck to see if her slip showed. “Is this outfit okay?” she asked Macon.
“It’s very nice,” he said, which was true, although it was also totally unlike her. Evidently, she had decided to take Rose for her model. She had pulled her hair back in a low bun and she wore a slim gray dress with shoulder pads. Only her spike-heeled sandals seemed her own; probably she didn’t possess any shoes so sensible as Rose’s schoolgirl flats. “I want you to tell me if there’s anything not right,” she said to Macon. “Anything you think is tacky.”
“Not a thing,” Macon assured her.
She kissed Alexander, leaving a dark red mark on his cheek. She made one last survey in the mirror beside the front door, meanwhile calling, “Don’t let him stay up too late now, Dommie; don’t let him watch anything scary on T V—”
Macon said, “Muriel.”
“I look like the wrath of God.”
The Leary children had been raised to believe that when an invitation involved a meal, the guests should arrive exactly on time. Never mind that they often caught their hostess in curlers; they went on doing what they were taught. So Macon pressed the buzzer in the lobby at precisely six twenty-seven, and Porter and Charles joined them in front of the elevator. They both told Muriel it was nice to see her. Then they rode upward in a gloomy silence, eyes fixed on the numbers over the door. Charles carried a potted jade tree, Porter another bottle of wine.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Muriel said. “We’re their first invited guests.”
“At home now we’d be watching the CBS Evening News,” Charles told her.
Muriel couldn’t seem to think of any answer to that.
By six thirty sharp they were ringing the doorbell, standing