The Accidental Tourist

by Anne Tyler

But Julian wore crayon colors or navy blue.

The streets were named for trees that weren’t there, Birch Lane and Elm Court and Apple Blossom Way.

A sign of nostalgia, or hope, or disconnection from reality.

It occurred to him—as he oiled a hinge, as he tightened a doorknob—that the house reflected amazingly little of Muriel. She must have lived here six or seven years by now, but still the place had an air of transience.

Macon tightened his grip and felt a pleasant kind of sorrow sweeping through him. Oh, his life had regained all its old perils. He was forced to worry once again about nuclear war and the future of the planet. He often had the same secret, guilty thought that had come to him after Ethan was born: From this time on I can never be completely happy. Not that he was before, of course.

How many times had he done this before? It wasn’t even painful. Only disorienting, in a way, to see that everything continued no matter what.

Sometimes we feel comfort returning to a familiar place to see nothing has changed. But sometimes it’s the opposite: we have come back so necessarily changed, it’s odd to see nothing there has changed.

“They call this corduroy,” she’d said, buttoning his new coat, and he had thought, But do they really? Funny word, in fact, corduroy. Very suspicious. How could he be sure that other people weren’t speaking a whole different language out there?

He studied the words so long that he almost wondered if they were words; the whole English language seemed chunky and brittle. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the loudspeaker said, “we will be starting our descent…” and the word “descent” struck him as an invention, some new euphemism concocted by the airlines.

“But you always tell me it’s boring,” Macon said. “There are worse things than boring, I’ve decided.” He didn’t think that was much of a recommendation, but he went along with it.

Is there a wrong kind of perspective to have? Because this feels like it.

And if dead people aged, wouldn’t it be a comfort? To think of Ethan growing up in heaven—fourteen years old now instead of twelve—eased the grief a little. Oh, it was their immunity to time that made the dead so heartbreaking.

I love this thought. Also, it makes me wonder about Force ghosts in the Star Wars universe.

A sudden flash of sunlight hit the windshield, and spangles flew across the glass. The spangles were old water spots, or maybe the markings of leaves, but for a moment Macon thought they were something else. They were so bright and festive, for a moment he thought they were confetti.

The last line of the novel. This is when Macon finally sees things casually imaginatively. It’s a wonderful line.