Summary
It is Christmas day and Macon drives with Muriel and Alexander to Muriel’s parents’ house, which is in a lower-class neighborhood in Baltimore. On the way, Muriel slyly asks Macon if he would ever consider moving in with her. Macon says he has not given it much thought yet. Once they arrive, Macon meets Muriel’s sister Claire and her mother, Mrs. Dugan, who greets Macon without much enthusiasm. She expresses concern that Macon is not yet divorced and thus won’t commit to her daughter. Muriel and her mother bicker back and forth throughout the day; at the dinner table, Macon has a feeling of “dislocation” in what is a very different type of family than his own. Muriel’s mother reveals much about Muriel’s life and how she had previously been interested in her wealthy boss.
After Muriel and Macon return home, she accuses him of being mad at her, worried that Macon thinks she is solely on the lookout for rich men, but Macon is completely indifferent. Instead, he changes the subject to Ethan and how hard it was to celebrate the last Christmas without him. He tells Muriel that this Christmas was much better. Muriel gives him a photo of her as a toddler. Macon thanks her, but inwardly, he can’t help but think that the photo does not represent the best of Muriel but rather her fierce and determined nature.
Macon begins to spend all his time with Muriel and pretty much lives at her place, even bringing Edward to her house with him. Alexander takes a liking to the dog and surprisingly does not have an allergic reaction to him. Macon tries to hide from Alexander the fact that he sleeps in the same bed as his mother, thinking it might confuse him. Macon begins to get into the rhythm of his routine with Muriel and Alexander, working at their house while they are off at school and work. Through living with her, Macon begins to understand Muriel’s quirks better, such as her belief in the supernatural and her inconsistent parenting style.
When Alexander returns from school, Macon takes care of him and helps him with homework. He enjoys being able to nurture the boy without having the full responsibility of an actual parent. Muriel often returns from work with stories to tell and likes to call her mother and sister while making dinner. Neighbors frequently come by in the evening to talk to her and ask favors of her, never paying much attention to Macon.
One day, there is a big snowstorm and everyone stays home for the day. To Macon’s surprise, his brother Charles shows up at Muriel’s house to pick him up, informing him that the pipes at Macon’s house have burst. Macon is “remarkably calm” about the situation. Charles drives Macon back to his house; on the way, he tells him that Rose is planning her wedding to Julian for April.
Arriving at Macon’s house, the brothers find that it has been thoroughly destroyed by the leaking pipe, with everything soaked and covered in plaster. Charles is upset; Macon, on the other hand, is unfazed by the damage and is eager to leave again. During the car ride back to Muriel’s place, Charles confronts Macon about his new relationship. He reveals that none of his siblings think it’s right for him to be dating such a younger woman of a different class and that Macon has changed for the worse. Macon insists that he is wrong and eagerly returns to Muriel’s house, feeling a sense of freedom being back there.
Macon is on a plane, heading home after a business trip to San Francisco, and sits next to a man who he finds out is a big fan of his guidebook series. He returns to Baltimore just as spring starts. He arrives at Muriel’s house when no one else is home and observes the disarray. While Macon is walking Edward, he runs into Alexander, who is running away from a pack of bullies. Later, Julian shows up at Muriel’s house to see Macon, and Macon is forced to introduce Muriel to his boss. After, Julian expresses that, unlike the rest of the Leary family, he can understand Macon's feelings for Muriel.
Macon takes Alexander shopping for new clothes one day; while Alexander is trying on the clothes, he runs into Scott, an old classmate of Ethan, and Scott’s mother, Laurel Canfield. Next, he runs into Mrs. Sidey, Sarah’s mother. Macon finds himself in an awkward scenario when Mrs. Sidey asks why Macon is there and whose child Alexander is.
It is the morning of Rose’s wedding and Macon is concerned that it is raining. It clears up later, and he, Muriel, and Alexander make their way to the event. There, Macon meets the many guests Rose and Julian have invited, including his mother, Sarah, the local dentist, and the mailman. Macon is disturbed by the idea that, as he is getting older, he is becoming more attracted to superficial women like his mother, noticing the resemblance between Alicia and Muriel. He makes small talk with Sarah, who reveals that she already knows that Macon is living with someone else. He asks her if she is living with someone as well, and she replies “not really,” which later makes Macon wonder what she means. Macon is the best man while Sarah has unexpectedly been chosen by Rose to be her best matron, so they stand facing each other during the ceremony, which feels "natural" to Macon.
Analysis
Starting in Chapter Thirteen, we begin to see Macon become more deeply embedded in the lives of Muriel and Alexander. Starting with Christmas dinner at her parents’ house, Macon enters what he would have once considered to be very foreign territory. It is clear that Muriel and her family are from a different economic class as well as general sensibility of life. While the Learys are highly self-controlled, serious, and concerned with order, Muriel is the polar opposite: lacking boundaries, spacey, and interested in the trivial. Yet there is something that clearly draws Macon to the woman in an almost magnetic manner, evident when Macon, after seeing that his home has been destroyed by a leaking pipe, can only think about returning to Muriel’s familiar home.
Anne Tyler makes her characters come alive through the dialogue, especially in the Christmas Day scene, when Macon encounters Muriel’s family for the first time. Here, we do not need to read much about the traits and beliefs of Muriel’s parents to get an understanding of them: Tyler’s dialogue reveals all, making it clear to the reader where Muriel has gotten her brash and unselfconscious mentality from. We see this especially in Mrs. Dugan, who has no interest in engaging in formalities with Macon and instead instantly grills him on the status of his divorce, out of concern for her own daughter.
Macon is somewhat conscious of the strangeness of Muriel’s world, as seen in the scene where he introduces Muriel to his brother Charles, thinking to himself that “he felt like someone demonstrating how well he got on with the natives.” Yet there is an aspect of this foreignness that Macon seems to like, much more so than the many unfamiliar hotels and restaurants he must visit for work. Whether with Muriel’s quixotic neighbors or at the dinner table with her outspoken parents, Macon has stopped judging and has allowed himself to almost be absorbed in this culture, viewing it as a break from the regimented and predictable life he lived before.
Yet at the same time, there is something that doesn’t quite sit right with Macon about Muriel. From the beginning of their relationship, he has felt not so much in love as curiously affectionate towards her. This feeling is only exacerbated as he lives in her home and sees the full scope of her behavior. In many ways, the two are not on the same page about what they want from the partnership. Muriel shows many signs that she wishes to make the relationship more serious, hinting at getting married on their way to Rose’s wedding. She encourages fast movement, even asking Macon to move in soon after they start dating and entwining him in her family life almost immediately. Macon goes along with this, but perhaps for the wrong reasons.
It is evident that Macon is experiencing deep internal conflict. In one way, he likes his new life and the fact that he can again act as a father to a son, enjoying the idea of feeling needed by another. He also likes the sense of freedom that lets him escape his family’s house and the house he once occupied with Sarah and Ethan. In another way, however, the enjoyment is somewhat hollow. Macon realizes this on Rose’s wedding day when he emerges out of Muriel’s world and takes her into his own, confronting his mother, siblings, and ex-wife with his new reality. In this context, suddenly, Muriel seems different to him; he sees her in his mother, who dresses and acts in a similar superficial way. The key moment is when he becomes emotionally agitated upon learning that Sarah, rather than firmly denying that she is living with anyone else, leaves her relationship status ambiguous.
