The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [5]
“No, and you notice it was alphabetical, too,” Rose said. “I do think alphabetizing helps to sort things out a little.”
Rose had a kitchen that was so completely alphabetized, you’d find the allspice next to the ant poison. She was a fine one to talk about the Leary men.
“At any rate,” she said. “Has Sarah been in touch since she left?”
“She’s come by once or twice. Once, actually,” Macon said. “For things she needed.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well, a double boiler. Things like that.”
“It’s an excuse, then,” Rose said promptly. “She could get a double boiler at any dimestore.”
“She said she liked ours.”
“She was checking to see how you’re doing. She still cares. Did you talk at all?”
“No,” Macon said, “I just handed her the double boiler. Also that gadget that unscrews bottle tops.”
“Oh, Macon. You might have asked her in.”
“I was scared she’d say no,” he said.
There was a silence. “Well. Anyhow,” Rose said finally.
“But I’m getting along!”
“Yes, of course you are,” she told him.
Then she said she had something in the oven and hung up.
Macon went over to his study window. It was a hot day in early July, the sky so blue it made his eyes ache. He rested his forehead against the glass and stared out at the yard, keeping his hands stuffed deep in the rear pockets of his khakis. Up in one of the oak trees, a bird sang what sounded like the first three notes of “My Little Gypsy Sweetheart.” “Slum . . . ber . . . on . . .” it sang. Macon wondered if even this moment would become, one day, something he looked back upon wistfully. He couldn’t imagine it; he couldn’t think of any period bleaker than this in all his life, but he’d noticed how time had a way of coloring things. That bird, for instance, had such a pure, sweet, piercing voice.
He turned away from the window, covered his typewriter, and left the room.
He didn’t eat real meals anymore. When he was hungry he drank a glass of milk, or he spooned a bit of ice cream directly from the carton. After the smallest snack he felt overfed and heavy, but he noticed when he dressed in the mornings that he seemed to be losing weight. His shirt collar stood out around his neck. The vertical groove between his nose and mouth had deepened so that he had trouble shaving it. His hair, which Sarah used to cut for him, jutted over his forehead like a shelf. And something had caused his lower lids to droop. He used to have narrow gray slits of eyes; now they were wide and startled. Could this be a sign of malnutrition?
Breakfast: Breakfast was your most important meal. He hooked up the percolator and the electric skillet to the clock radio on his bedroom windowsill. Of course he was asking for food poisoning, letting two raw eggs wait all night at room temperature, but once he’d changed menus there was no problem. You had to be flexible about these matters. He was awakened now by the smell of fresh coffee and hot buttered popcorn, and he could partake of both without getting out of bed. Oh, he was managing fine, just fine. All things considered.
But his nights were terrible.
It wasn’t that he had trouble getting to sleep in the first place. That was easy. He’d watch TV till his eyes burned; then he’d climb the stairs. He would start the shower running and spread his clothes in the tub. At times he thought of skipping this part, except there was such a danger in falling behind with your system. So he carried out each step: hanging the laundry, setting up the breakfast things, flossing his teeth. He couldn’t go to bed without flossing his teeth. For some reason, Sarah had found this irritating. If Macon were condemned to death, she’d said once, and they told him he’d be executed by firing squad at dawn, he would no doubt still insist on flossing the night before. Macon, after thinking it over, had agreed. Yes, of course he would. Hadn’t he flossed while in the depths of pneumonia? In the hospital with gallstones? In a motel the night his son was killed? He checked his teeth in the mirror. They were never entirely white, in spite of all