Summary
Macon and Sarah Leary return early from a trip to the beach. On the car ride home, it starts pouring heavy rain. Sarah is concerned that Macon cannot see properly through the windshield, but he continues to drive, assuring her it’s fine. She recalls to him a recent situation where she asked him if there was a point to life after the death of their son Ethan, to which he responded that there had never been any point. Sarah accuses him of never properly comforting her. Then, abruptly, she says she wants a divorce.
The next chapter flashes forward to after the divorce. Since Sarah has left, Macon finds that their Baltimore house seems smaller rather than larger. Some of the objects in the house continue to remind Macon of Sarah, such as the outdoor chaise and kitchen radio. Macon has always used a “system” to organize his life, including the house; this is something that Sarah never understood. In Sarah’s absence, Macon has adopted several strange habits, such as washing clothes in the bathtub while he showers, and sleeping in a “body bag” instead of normal linens. Macon considers how together, he and Sarah had kept each other more rational; now, separated, they are wandering “wildly off course.”
Macon works from home writing travel guides for people forced to take business trips, something he finds ridiculous as he hates to travel. His guides emphasize how Americans can feel at home in foreign cities, and he enjoys the writing aspect of the work. Macon’s sister Rose calls him and is surprised to hear that Macon and Sarah have separated. Macon only admits to this when Rose asks to speak to Sarah. Macon asks Rose not to take Sarah’s side.
Macon can hardly eat real meals anymore and he loses weight. He has a terrible time sleeping at night, his brain consumed with worries. He ponders why his 20-year relationship has ended, noting that, towards the end, Sarah and Macon acted more like rivals rather than as a couple. Their son Ethan only brought out their differences more; they had very different parenting styles. Ethan was murdered at the age of 13 at a fast-food restaurant while away at summer camp. Macon is not sure whom to blame.
One day, Sarah calls Macon and asks if she can come by to pick up her rug. She wants to come by the next day, but Macon is leaving for a business trip to England. The two discuss how they have both have been depressed, barely able to eat and get out of bed in the morning. Sarah reveals the rage she feels for the person who killed their son.
The next day, Macon prepares to leave for his trip. First, he drives to the veterinary to drop off his dog, Edward. The vet receptionist will not accept Edward after seeing in Macon’s file that the dog has previously bitten a staff member. Angry, Macon leaves and wonders what to do with his pet. He goes to an animal hospital and the receptionist there says he needs a reservation in order to board a dog. Macon explains the desperate situation; the receptionist, named Muriel Pritchett, inquires about Macon’s wife and why she can’t watch the dog. Macon has to inform her that he is divorced, and she tells him that she is also a divorcee.
Macon is on his flight from the U.S. to London. He tries to avoid conversation with the people seated next to him and partakes in his usual routine of flossing in the bathroom and reading from a 1,000-page book. He thinks back to a time when he and Ethan were planning to go to a movie. Once in London, Macon makes his rounds of various hotels and American-style restaurants, jotting down notes about the quality of the coffee, breakfast, and comfort of the mattresses.
After four days, he already wants to go back home; he tries to look for return tickets but can’t find any, so he decides to stay the full week. On his trip home, he thinks of Sarah again and how she used to pick him up at the airport. Macon goes to get Edward from the kennel and Muriel Pritchett tells him the dog was well behaved. She not-so-subtly shows her interest in Macon, informing him that she is a professional dog-trainer and giving him her business card. Macon is uninterested, takes Edward, and goes home, feeling once again the absence of Sarah as soon as he walks through the door.
Analysis
The book opens right as the relationship between Macon and Sarah Leary falls apart. The death of their 13-year-old son Ethan has happened before the story even begins, and it colors all of the events that take place. Anne Tyler encapsulates the tension between a married couple who has lost their child in the car, where a patch of heavy rain symbolizes how their emotional dynamic has run its course. Macon’s driving in the rain despite Sarah’s pleas to pull over seems like a minor enough incident; however, it is enough to trigger Sarah to declare she wants a divorce, as she realizes that Macon is incapable of being receptive to her needs and feelings.
We are shown how Macon’s life disintegrates once Sarah leaves him. Macon has very strict living habits, which he calls “systems,” that border on compulsions. After Sarah moves out, these tendencies become all the more strange and rigid, such as washing clothes in the tub while he showers or eating buttery popcorn for breakfast. His obsessive behavior can be inferred to be a sort of coping mechanism for the grief he is experiencing at the loss of his relationship, as well as the earlier death of his son. His peculiar mental rituals bar Macon from allowing himself to fully process his emotions and start creating a new life for himself.
Sarah, whose life is more peripheral for the reader in these first chapters, is also clearly struggling with huge changes. In a telephone conversation with Macon, we learn that she is almost too depressed to get out of bed every morning. She is holding onto a lot of anger about the murder of Ethan, speaking about her fantasy of getting a gun and putting her son’s killer to death. This disturbs Macon, and he tells his ex-wife that this sort of anger is harmful to both of them. Macon’s controlled and contained way of dealing with emotions and suppressing anger is at odds with Sarah’s more effusive emotions.
Anne Tyler also portrays the typical difficulty in ending a longterm marriage in the way Macon feels the presence of the different objects in the house—objects which had a special connection to his ex-wife. He even feels at certain moments that Sarah is still in the house, watching him go about his daily business. It is significant when Macon observes that his house now feels smaller, not bigger, without Sarah. This demonstrates that when we are on our own, left in our familiar thoughts and routines, our life can seem to shrink regardless of the physical space we occupy.
Much of the text of these chapters consists of dialogue, a good way of getting the reader acquainted with the main characters. The exchange of conversation between Macon and the staff at the animal hospital, for example, reflect Macon’s continuous grief and disinterest in life, where he tries to keep his personal interactions at a minimum. Throughout his daily chores and his business trip to London, his main focus of attention seems to be Sarah: fantasies of her returning home, memories of her picking him up from the airport, and so on. These recollections haunt Macon, seeming to stand in way of fully engaging his responsibilities, instead making him hide away from other people and from life itself—whether it is in his hotel room in England or behind a book in his plane seat.
