The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [76]
But what he said was, “I’m worried the mailman’s going to come.” She looked at him for a moment longer, and then she opened the door for Edward.
Rose was knitting Julian a pullover sweater for Christmas. “Already?” Macon asked. “We’ve barely got past Thanksgiving.”
“Yes, but this is a really hard pattern and I want to do it right.”
Macon watched her needles flashing. “Actually,” he said, “have you ever noticed that Julian wears cardigans?”
“Yes, I guess he does,” she said.
But she went on knitting her pullover.
It was a heathery gray wool, what he believed they called Ragg wool. Macon and both his brothers had sweaters that color. But Julian wore crayon colors or navy blue. Julian dressed like a golfer. “He tends toward the V-necked look,” Macon said to Rose.
“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t wear a crew neck if he had one.”
“Look,” Macon said. “I guess what I’m getting at—”
Rose’s needles clicked serenely.
“He’s really kind of a playboy,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize that. And besides, he’s younger.”
“Two years,” she said.
“But he’s got a younger, I don’t know, style of living. Singles and apartments and so on.”
“He says he’s tired of all that.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“He says he likes homeyness. He appreciates my cooking. He can’t believe I’m knitting him a sweater.”
“No, I guess not,” Macon said grimly.
“Don’t try to spoil this, Macon.”
“Sweetheart, I only want to protect you. It’s wrong, you know, what you said at Thanksgiving. Love is not what it’s all about. There are other things to consider besides, all kinds of other issues.”
“He ate my turkey and did not get sick. Two big helpings,” Rose said.
Macon groaned and tore at a handful of his hair.
“First we try him on a real quiet street,” Muriel said. “Someplace public, but not too busy. Some out-of-the-way little store or something.”
She was driving her long gray boat of a car. Macon sat in front beside her, and Edward sat in back, his ears out horizontal with joy. Edward was always happy to be invited for a car ride, though very soon he’d turn cranky. (“How much longer?” you could almost hear him whine.) It was lucky they weren’t going far.
“I got this car on account of its big old trunk,” Muriel said. She slung it dashingly around a corner. “I needed it for my errand business. Guess how much it cost?”
“Um . . .”
“Only two hundred dollars. That’s because it needed work, but I took it to this boy down the street from where I live. I said, ‘Here’s the deal. You fix my car up, I let you have the use of it three nights a week and all day Sunday.’ Wasn’t that a good idea?”
“Very inventive,” Macon said.
“I’ve had to be inventive. It’s been scrape and scrounge, nail and knuckle, ever since Norman left me,” she said. She had pulled into a space in front of a little shopping center, but she made no move to get out of the car. “I’ve lain awake, oh, many a night, thinking up ways to earn money. It was bad enough when room and board came free, but after Mrs. Brimm died it was worse; her house passed on to her son and I had to pay him rent. Her son’s an old skinflint. Always wanting to jack up the price. I said, ‘How’s about this? You leave the rent where it is and I won’t trouble you with maintenance. I’ll tend to it all myself,’ I said. ‘Think of the headaches you’ll save.’ So he agreed and now you should see what I have to deal with, things go wrong and I can’t fix them and so we just live with them. Leaky roof, stopped-up sink, faucet dripping hot water so my gas bill’s out of this world, but at least I’ve kept the rent down. And I’ve got about fifty jobs, if you count them all up. You could say I’m lucky; I’m good at spotting a chance. Like those lessons at Doggie, Do, or another time a course in massage at the Y. The massage turned out to be a dud, seems you have to have a license and all like that, but I will say Doggie, Do paid off. And also I’m trying to start this research service; that’s on account of all I picked up helping the school librarian. Wrote