The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [54]
“And is Edward over there too?”
He nodded again.
“Was it Edward who bit your hand?”
“Well, yes.”
He wondered if she’d act like the others, urge him to call the S.P.C.A.; but instead she meditatively plucked a cherry off the plastic sword from her drink. “I guess he’s been upset,” she said.
“Yes, he has, in fact,” Macon said. “He’s not himself at all.”
“Poor Edward.”
“He’s getting kind of out of control, to tell the truth.”
“He always did have a sensitivity to change,” Sarah said.
Macon took heart. “Actually, he’s been attacking right and left,” he told her. “I had to hire a special trainer. But she was too harsh; let’s face it, she was brutal. She nearly strangled him when he tried to bite her.”
“Ridiculous,” Sarah said. “He was only frightened. When Edward’s frightened he attacks; that’s just the way he is. There’s no point scaring him more.”
Macon felt a sudden rush of love.
Oh, he’d raged at her and hated her and entirely forgotten her, at different times. He’d had moments when he imagined he’d never cared for her to begin with; only went after her because everybody else had. But the fact was, she was his best friend. The two of them had been through things that no one else in the world knew of. She was embedded in his life. It was much too late to root her out.
“What he wants,” she was saying, “is a sense of routine. That’s all he needs: reassurance.”
“Sarah,” he said, “it’s been awful living apart.”
She looked at him. Some trick of light made her eyes appear a darker blue, almost black.
“Hasn’t it?” he said.
She lowered her glass. She said, “I asked you here for a reason, Macon.”
He could tell it was something he didn’t want to hear.
She said, “We need to spell out the details of our separation.” “We’ve been separated; what’s to spell out?” he asked.
“I meant in a legal way.”
“Legal. I see.”
“Now, according to the state of Maryland—”
“I think you ought to come home.”
Their first course arrived, placed before them by a hand that, as far as Macon was concerned, was not attached to a body. Condiment bottles were shifted needlessly; a metal stand full of sugar packets was moved a half-inch over. “Anything else?” the waitress asked.
“No!” Macon said. “Thank you.”
She left.
He said, “Sarah?”
“It’s not possible,” she told him.
She was sliding a single pearl up and down the chain at her throat. He had given her that pearl when they were courting. Was there any significance in her wearing it this evening? Or maybe she cared so little now, it hadn’t even occurred to her to leave it off. Yes, that was more likely.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t say no before you hear me out. Have you ever considered we might have another baby?”
He had shocked her, he saw; she drew in a breath. (He had shocked himself.)
“Why not?‘ he asked her. “We’re not too old.”
“Oh, Macon.”
“This time, it would be easy,” he said. “It wouldn’t take us seven years again; I bet you’d get pregnant in no time!” He leaned toward her, straining to make her see it: Sarah blossoming in that luscious pink maternity smock she used to wear. But oddly enough, what flashed across his mind instead was the memory of those first seven years—their disappointment each month. It had seemed to Macon back then (though of course it was pure superstition) that their failures were a sign of something deeper, some essential incompatibility. They had missed connections in the most basic and literal sense. When she finally got pregnant, he had felt not only relieved but guilty, as if they had succeeded in putting something over on someone.
He pushed these thoughts back down. “I realize,” he said, “that it wouldn’t be Ethan. I realize we can’t replace him. But—”
“No,” Sarah said.
Her eyes were very steady. He knew that look. She’d never change her mind.
Macon started on his soup. It was the best crab soup in Baltimore, but unfortunately the spices had a tendency to make his nose run. He hoped Sarah wouldn’t think he was crying.
“I’m sorry,” she said more gently. “But it would never work.