Morgan's Passing (19 page)

The school loomed up, a gloomy building surrounded by cracked concrete, teeming with shabby children. Emily bent to kiss Gina goodbye. “Have a good day, honey,” she said, and Morgan said, “How about old Morgan? No kiss for Uncle Morgan?”

He bent over, and Gina threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Come by after school and help me again with my yo-yo,” she said.

“All right, sugar-pie.”

“You promise?”

“Absolutely. Have I ever let you down?”

When she ran off, he stood watching after her, smiling and tapping cigarette ashes across the toes of his boots. “Ah, yes. Ah, yes,” he said. “What a darling, eh? I wish she'd stay this size forever.”

“I hate that school,” Emily said.

“Why! What could be wrong with it?”

“It's so crowded; classes are so big, and I doubt I'll ever feel safe letting her walk here alone. I'd like to send her someplace private. Leon's parents have offered
to pay, but I don't know. I'd have to think how to bring it up with Leon.”

“No, no, leave her here. Don't forsake your principles,” Morgan said. He took her elbow and turned her toward home. “I never thought you'd send your daughter to a private school.”

“Why not? What principles?” Emily asked. “You sent yours to private school.”

“That was Bonny's doing,” Morgan told her. “She has this money. We never see it, never buy anything inspiring with it, but it's there, all right, for things that don't show—new slate roof tiles and the children's education. Her money is so well behaved! I would have preferred a public school, myself. Why, surely. You don't want to cart her off to some faraway place, all these complicated carpools—”

“Dad Meredith happened to mention it while Leon was out of the room,” Emily said. “On purpose, I guess. He must be hoping I'll wear Leon down, so when the subject comes up again Leon will be used to it. But I haven't said a word, because Leon's so proud about money. And you know what a temper he has.”

“Temper?” Morgan said.

“He might just explode.”

“Oh, I can't picture that.”

“He's always had this angry streak.”

“I can't picture that at all,” Morgan said.

He stopped and looked around him. “I would offer to take you for a drive,” he said, “just to celebrate the return of Robert Roberts, don't you know. I'm much too keyed up to work today. But, unfortunately, my car's been stolen.”

“Oh, that's terrible,” Emily said. “When did it happen?”

“Just now,” he told her.

“Now? This morning?”

“This instant,” he said. He pointed to an empty place at the curb, beside a mailbox. “I parked it here, where I thought you might be passing. Now it's disappeared.”

Emily's mouth dropped open.

“There, there, I'm not upset,” he said. “As you would say: what's a car, after all?” He spread his arms, smiling. “It's only an encumbrance. Only another burden. Right? I'm better off without it.”

Emily didn't know how he could talk that way. A car was very important. She and Leon had been saving for one for years. “You ought to call the police immediately,” she told him. “Come back with me and use our telephone. Time really matters.”

“There'd be no point,” he said. “I've never had much faith in policemen.” He took her elbow again to lead her on. The grip of his tense, warm fingers reminded her of Gina. “Last summer,” he said, “while we were driving to the beach, a state trooper flagged us down and asked us for a lift. He said his patrol car had been stolen. Can you imagine? He got in the rear with Molly and Kate and my mother … those big, shiny boots, gun in a holster … he leaned over the front seat and saw Bonny, saw her eating an apple core. ‘You want to watch it with those seeds,' he told her. He said, ‘My cousin Donna used to love appleseeds. Best part of the apple, she claimed. One year me and my brother saved up all our seeds in a Baby Ben alarm-clock box and gave them to her for Christmas. She was thrilled. She ate them every one, and by evening she was dead. Here's where I get off,' he said; so I stopped the car and out he climbed and that was the last we saw of him. It seemed he'd only popped in to bring us this message, you know? And then departed. I said to Bonny, I told her, ‘Think of it, the lives of ordinary citizens in the hands of a man like that. Walking around with a gun,' I said. ‘No doubt loaded, no doubt cocked, or whatever it is you do with a gun.' ”

“Yes, but …” Emily said.

She was about to tell him that surely the next policeman wouldn't be so peculiar. But then she wondered. Some people, it appeared, attract the peculiar all their
lives. “Well, anyway,” she said, “it wouldn't hurt just to give the police a phone call.”

“Maybe not, maybe not,” Morgan said. He was reading a chipped and peeling sign:
EUNOLA'S RESTAURANT
. “Is this place any good?” he asked.

“I've never tried it.”

“Lived right here in the neighborhood and never tried Eunola's?”

“It's a matter of money.”

“Let's go in and have some coffee,” Morgan said.

“I thought you had to open your store.”

“Oh, Butkins will do that. He's happier without me, to tell the truth. I get in the way.” He pulled open the door and shepherded Emily in ahead of him. There were four small tables and a counter where a row of men in hard hats sat drinking their coffee under a veil of cigarette smoke. “Sit,” Morgan said, guiding her to a table. He settled opposite her. “Do you know what this means, this Robert Roberts business? Do you see the implications? Why, it's wonderful! First the years go by and Brindle stays in her bathrobe, moping, scuffing about in her slippers, wondering when the next meal is. ‘Fix it yourself, if you're hungry,' I've told her, but she says, ‘Well,' she says, ‘I don't know where anything's kept, the food and utensils and such.' Understand, this is a house she's been living in since nineteen … was it sixty-four? Or maybe sixty-five, she moved in. Kate was already in school, I remember. Sue had started her piccolo lessons … Then here comes Robert Roberts! Here he comes, out of the blue. He says his wife is dead now. And anyhow, he says, his heart was always with Brindle. I can't imagine why. She's very plain to look at and she's not at all good-natured. But his heart was always with her, he says. And he was the very person she's been telling us about at the dinner table, every night of our lives. Why, our children knew Robert Roberts's name before they knew their own! They knew all his favorite board games and his batting average. And here he comes, with an armload of roses, the most
colossal heap of roses; the whole entrance hall took on that rainy, dressed-up smell that roses have … and asking her to marry him! Isn't life … symmetrical? I'd really underestimated it.”

A waitress stood over them, tapping her pencil. Emily cleared her throat and said, “I'll have coffee, please.”

“Me too,” said Morgan. “Yes, it was quite a night. The two of them sat up till dawn, discussing their plans. I kept them company. They want to get married in June, they say.”

“You certainly have a lot of weddings in your family,” Emily told him.

“Oh, not really,” he said. He reached across the table for her purse, opened it, and peered inside. “There was Amy's, of course, and then Jean's, but I don't count Carol's; she got divorced before she'd finished writing her thank-you notes.” He turned the purse upside down and shook it. Emily's wallet fell out, followed by a key ring. He shook the purse again, but it was empty. “Look at that!” he said. “You're so orderly.”

Emily retrieved her belongings and put them back in her purse. Morgan watched, with his head cocked. “I too am orderly,” he told her.

“You are?”

“Well, at least I have an interest in order. I mean, order has always intrigued me. When I was a child, I thought order might come when my voice changed. Then I thought, no, maybe when I'm educated. At one point I thought I would be orderly if I could just once sleep with a woman.”

He took a napkin from the dispenser and unfolded it and smoothed it across his knees.

Emily said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Did sleeping with a woman make you orderly?”

“How can you ask?” he said. He sighed.

Their coffee arrived, and he seized the sugarbowl and
started spooning out sugar. Four teaspoons, five … he stirred after each spoonful, and dripped coffee on the tabletop and into the bowl. Caramel-colored beads grew up across the surface of the sugar. Emily looked at them and then at Morgan. Morgan bared his teeth at her encouragingly. She looked away again.

Why put up with him? He was really so strange that sometimes, out in public, she felt an urge to walk several paces ahead so that no one would guess they were acquainted. Or when the three of them were together, she'd make a point of taking Leon's arm. But it was funny how he grew on a person. He added something; she couldn't say just what. He made things look more interesting than they really were. Sometimes he accompanied the Merediths when they went to put on a puppet show, and from the squirrel-like attention he gave to all they did she would understand, suddenly, how very exotic this occupation was—itinerant puppeteers! Well, not itinerant, exactly, but still … and she'd look at Leon and realize what a flair he had, with his deep, dark eyes and swift movements. She herself would feel not quite so colorless; she would notice that Gina, who sometimes struck her as a little blowzy, was just like one of those cherubic children on a nineteenth-century chocolate box.

“Leon's picture was in the paper,” she told Morgan now.

“Eh?”

She leaned forward. She saw that this must be why she'd agreed to stop for coffee. “There was an article,” she said, “in the morning paper, all about our puppets.”

“Oh, I missed it,” he said. “I left the house too early.”

“They had a picture of the three of us, but really it was Leon's article,” she said.

Morgan lit a cigarette and tipped his chair back, studying her.

“He talked about the puppets, how they're … oh,
not improvised. How they're cut from a pattern.” She folded her hands and examined her knuckles. “He meant something by that. It's hard to explain. If I tell you what it meant, you'll think I'm imagining things.”

“You probably are,” Morgan said.

“And last night, this play he went to try for … what he used to do in the old days was, he'd memorize a part for tryouts. He wouldn't just go and read it, like other people. He had this very quick memory. It always made an impression. So yesterday afternoon he started to learn the part he wanted, and it turned out he couldn't do it. He'd memorize one line and go on to the next, but when he put the two together he found he'd forgotten the first one and he'd have to begin all over again. It kept happening. It was eerie,
I
knew the lines, finally, just from hearing them; but he still didn't. And he blamed me for it. He didn't say so outright, but he did. I know.”

“You're imagining things,” Morgan said. “It's true that he's changed since he met me,” Emily said.

Morgan rocked on his chair legs, smoking and frowning. He said, “Did I ever tell you I was married once before?”

“What? No, I don't think so. And now he's so friendly with his parents. Well, of course he can say that's all my doing; I used to be the only one who spoke to them. But now it seems … well, truthfully, they visit a little too much. He gets on with them a little too well.”

“I married during my senior year in college,” Morgan said. “Her name was Letitia. We eloped and never told a soul. But as soon as we got married, we lost interest in each other. It was the funniest thing. We took up with different crowds; Letitia became involved in an antique-music group and went off to New York over Christmas vacation … we drifted apart, as they say. We went our separate ways.”

Emily couldn't see why he was telling her this. She
made an effort and sat straighter in her chair. “Is that right?” she said. “So you got a divorce?”

“Well, no.”

“What happened, then?”

“Nothing happened,” Morgan said. “We just went our ways. No one knew about the elopement, after all.”

Emily thought back over what he'd told her. She said, “But then you'd be a bigamist.”

“Technically speaking, I suppose I am,” Morgan said cheerfully.

“But that's illegal!”

“Well, yes, I guess it is, in a way.”

She stared at him.

“But it's really very natural,” he told her. “It's quite fitting, when you stop to consider. Aren't we all sitting on stacks of past events? And now every level is neatly finished off, right? Sometimes a lower level bleeds into an upper level. Isn't that so?”

“Honestly,” Emily said. “What has this got to do with anything?” She reached for her purse and stood up. Morgan stood too and came lunging around to pull her chair back, but she was too quick for him. She didn't even wait for him to pay the cashier. She walked on out the door and left him at the register, and he had to run to catch up with her.

“Emily?” he said.

“I have to be getting home now.”

“But I seem to have strayed from my point. All your talk of bigamy, legalities, you made me forget what I wanted to say.”

“Half the time, Morgan,” Emily said, “I believe you're telling out-and-out lies. I believe you just told me one. You did, didn't you? Did you? Or not?”

“See, Emily,” Morgan said, “of course he's changed. Everybody does; everyone goes bobbing along, in and out of inlets, snagging on pilings, skating down rapids … Well, I mustn't get carried away. But, Emily, you're still close. You haven't parted directions. You're still very much alike.”