The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [128]
Macon said, “Why don’t you give her a job, Julian.”
“Job?”
“Why don’t you show her that office of yours. That filing system you never get sorted, that secretary chewing her gum and forgetting whose appointment is when. Don’t you think Rose could take all that in hand?”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Call her up and tell her your business is going to pieces. Ask if she could just come in and get things organized, get things under control. Put it that way. Use those words. Get things under control, tell her. Then sit back and wait.”
Julian thought that over.
“But of course, what do I know,” Macon said.
“No, you’re right.”
“Now let’s see your folder.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Julian said.
“Look at this!” Macon said. He held up the topmost letter. “Why do you bother me with this? I just wanted to appraise you folks of a wonderful little hotel in . . . A man who says he wants to ‘appraise’ us, do you really suppose he’d know a good hotel when he saw one?”
“Macon,” Julian said.
“The whole damn language has been slaughtered,” Macon said.
“Macon, I know you feel I’m crass and brash.”
This took Macon a moment to answer, only partly because he first heard it as “crash and brass.” “Oh,” he said. “Why, no, Julian, not at—”
“But I just want to say this, Macon. I care about that sister of yours more than anything else in the world. It’s not just Rose, it’s the whole way she lives, that house and those turkey dinners and those evening card games. And I care about you, too, Macon. Why, you’re my best friend! At least, I hope so.”
“Oh, why, ah—” Macon said.
Julian rose and shook his hand, mangling all the bones inside, and clapped him on the shoulder and left.
Sarah came home at five-thirty. She found Macon standing at the kitchen sink with yet another cup of coffee. “Did the couch get here?” she asked him.
“All safe and sound.”
“Oh, good! Let’s see it.”
She went into the living room, leaving tracks of gray dust that Macon supposed was clay or granite. There was dust in her hair, even. She squinted at the couch and said, “What do you think?”
“Seems fine to me,” he said.
“Honestly, Macon. I don’t know what’s come over you; you used to be downright finicky.”
“It’s fine, Sarah. It looks very nice.”
She stripped off the cellophane and stood back, arms full of crackling light. “We ought to see how it opens out,” she said.
While she was stuffing the cellophane into the wastebasket, Macon pulled at the canvas strap that turned the couch into a bed. It made him think of Muriel’s house. The strap’s familiar graininess reminded him of all the times Muriel’s sister had slept over, and when the mattress slid forth he saw the gleam of Claire’s tangled golden hair.
“Maybe we should put on the sheets, now that we’ve got it open,” Sarah said. She brought the sack of linens from the front hall. With Macon positioned at the other side of the couch, she floated a sheet about the mattress and then bustled up and down, tucking it in. Macon helped, but he wasn’t as fast as Sarah. The clay dust or whatever it was had worked itself into the seams of her knuckles, he saw. There was something appealing about her small, brown, creased hands against the white percale. He said, “Let’s give the bed a trial run.”
Sarah didn’t understand at first. She looked up from unfolding the second sheet and said, “Trial run?”
But she allowed him to take the sheet away and slip her sweat shirt over her head.
Making love to Sarah was comfortable and soothing. After all their years together, her body was so well known to