Morgan's Passing (24 page)

“It will never pass,” said Brindle, sitting up and glaring at him. “If it hasn't passed in two years, how can you think it ever will? I tell you, there's nothing worse than two people with the same daydream getting together, finally. This morning I woke up and found he hadn't come to bed. I went down to the TV room and there he was, sound asleep with my photo in the crook of his arm. So I picked up my keys from the counter and left. I didn't even bother dressing. Oh, I was like someone half-crazy, demented. I drove all the way to your house and parked and got out before I remembered you were in Bethany. Do you know that idiot paper-boy is still delivering your papers? They were everywhere, clear across the lawn. Sunday's was so old and yellow, you'd think it was urine-stained—and maybe it was. Listen, Morgan, if you're burglarized while you're gone, you have every right to sue that paper-boy. You remember what I said. It's an open invitation to any passing criminal.”

“But things started off so well,” Morgan said. “I had so much hope when Robert Roberts first came calling. Ringing the doorbell, bringing you roses—”

“What roses? He never brought roses.”

“Of course he did.”

“No, he didn't.”

“I
remember
he did.”

“Morgan, please,” said Bonny. “Can't you let this be?”

“Oh, very well. But sweeping you into his arms … remember?”

“It was all an act,” said Brindle.

“An act?”

“If he'd been halfway truthful,” she said, “he'd have
swept my
graduation
photo into his arms. And kissed it on the lips. And given it a sports car.”

Her chin crumpled in again, and she pressed the damp knot of Kleenex to her mouth. Bonny gazed over Brindle's head at Morgan, as if expecting him to take some action. But what action would that be? He had never felt very close to Brindle; he had never understood her, although of course he loved her. They were so far apart in age that they were hardly brother and sister. At the time of her birth he already had his school life, and his street life, and his friends. And their father's death had not drawn them together but had merely shown how separate they were. They had mourned in such different ways, Brindle clinging fiercely to her mother while Morgan trudged, withdrawn and stubborn, through the outside world. You could almost say that they had mourned entirely different people.

He sat forward slowly, and scratched the crown of his sombrero. “You know,” he said, “I was certain he brought roses.”

“He never brought roses,” Brindle said.

“I could swear he did: red ones. Armloads.”

“You made those roses up,” said Brindle. She tucked the Kleenex into her bathrobe pocket.

“What a pity,” Morgan said sadly. “That was the part I liked best of all.”

6

F
or lunch he made spaghetti, which was Brindle's favorite dish. He put on his short-order-cook's clothes—a dirty white apron and a sailor cap—and took
over the kitchen, while Bonny and Brindle sat at the table drinking coffee. “Spaghetti à la Morgan!” he said, brandishing a sheaf of noodles. The women merely stared at him, blank-faced, with their minds on something else. “I had hints from the very beginning,” said Brindle, “but I wouldn't let myself see them. You know how it is. Almost the first thing he said to me, that first day he showed up, was … he pulled back from me and took both my hands and stared at me and, ‘I can't understand it,' he said. ‘I don't know why I've kept thinking of you. It's not as if you're a beauty, or ever were,' he said. ‘Also I'm getting older,' I told him, ‘and my dentist says my teeth are growing more crooked every year.' Oh, I never held anything back from him. I never tried to be what I wasn't.”

Bonny clicked her tongue. “He doesn't properly appreciate you,” she said. “He's one of those people who's got to see from a distance before he knows how to feel about it—from the past or out of other people's eyes or in a frame kind of thing like a book or a photo. You did right to leave him, Brindle.”

Morgan felt a little itch of anxiety starting in his temples. “But she didn't
leave
him; she's just taking a little holiday from him,” he told Bonny.

Bonny and Brindle gazed into space. Probably they hadn't even heard what he said.

Last spring Bonny's old college roommate had divorced her husband of twenty-seven years. And of course there were those wives of Billy's (every one of whom had left him, some without so much as a note) and Morgan's own daughter Carol, who just one week after her wedding had returned, in very good spirits, to settle back into the apartment she'd been sharing with her twin sister. Also, Morgan knew for a fact that two of Bonny's closest friends were considering separations, and one had actually spoken with a lawyer. He worried that it was contagious. He feared that Bonny might catch the illness; or it was more like catching a piece of news, catching
on;
she would come to her senses and leave
him. She would take with her … what? Something specific hung just at the edge of his mind. She would take with her the combination to a lock, it felt like—a secret he needed to know that Bonny knew all along without trying. When Bonny came back from lunch with a friend, Morgan was always quick to point out the friend's faults and ulterior motives. “She's discontented by nature; any fool can see that. How that poor lunk of a husband ever fell for her … Don't believe a word she tells you,” he would say. Oh, it was women friends you had to watch out for, not men at all but women.

He rattled a spatula on a frying pan, trying to claim Bonny's attention. He did a little short-order-cook's dance. “Cackles on a raft for Number Four!” he called. “BLT, hold the mayo!”

Bonny and Brindle gave him identical flat, bemused stares, unblinking, like cats.

“Bonny, I don't see any garlic cloves,” he said, switching tactics.

“Use dehydrated.”

“Dehydrated! Dried-out garlic chips? Unthinkable.”

“No one will know the difference.”

“I wish you'd learn to make grocery lists,” he said. “You want to get organized, Bonny. Keep a list on the door of the fridge and write down whatever item you finish off.”

Bonny ran her fingers through her hair. She made it look like some kind of weaving—searching out a strand, lacing it into other strands behind her ear.

“Here's what we'll do,” he told her. “Next week, when we get back to Baltimore, I'm going to take a pad of paper to the supermarket. I'm going to map out all the aisles. Aisle one: olives, pickles, mustard. Aisle two: coffee, tea … nothing will be omitted. Then you can get it Xeroxed two hundred and sixty times.”

Her fingers paused. “How many?”

“Five times fifty-two. Five years' worth.”

She looked into his face.

“After five years I'll make you a new one,” Morgan said. “Things may have changed in the store by then.”

“Yes, they very well may have,” Bonny said.

She threw Brindle a quick, tucked glance, and they smiled at each other. It was a smile so sunny and bland, and so obviously collusive, that all of Morgan's uneasiness returned. It occurred to him that often they must discuss him behind his back. “Oh, you know Morgan,” they must say, rolling their eyes. “You know how he is.”

“Well, anyway,” he said, “all I intended was … See, if we check items off on this list, shopping would be so simple. Everything would go the way it ought to. Don't you agree?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Should I be the one to get it Xeroxed?”

“No, dear, I'll do it,” Bonny said. Then she sighed and laughed, in that way she had, and drank the last of her coffee. “For now,” she told Brindle, “let's you and me go into town and buy the garlic.”

“Never mind; I'll use dehydrated,” Morgan said hastily.

But she said, “Oh, the walk will do us good. We'll take your mother, too.” She rose and looked under a stack of magazines. Then she looked in the oven, and finally in the refrigerator. She took out her purse and kissed Morgan. “Anything else you want?” she asked him.

“You could get cream.”

“We have cream.”

“Yes, but with more people coming tomorrow, and they might be as early as breakfast time—”

“Who might?”

“The Merediths.”

“Merediths?”

“At least, I
think
they might,” he said. “I just dropped them this note, you see, because Brindle wasn't here and I hadn't known Billy was staying through the weekend. I'd thought there'd be enough room. And
there will be. Why, of course there will be! Where'd we put those sleeping bags?”

“Morgan, I wish you would check with me before you do these things,” Bonny said.

“But you like them! You always say you like them.”

“Like who?” Brindle asked. “Who're we talking about, here?”

Bonny said, “Oh, the … you remember them, Brindle: the Merediths. You've seen them at the house, several times. Leon and Emily Meredith. Well, certainly I like them. I'm very fond of both of them, you know that, but still—”

“
I
found them a little dry, personally,” Brindle said. “Her, at least. No, I don't think she'd be a barrel of fun at the beach.”

“Oh, Emily's not dry at all, just—”

“And anyhow,” Morgan told Brindle, “I don't remember asking what you thought. For that matter, I don't remember asking you to Bethany, so you're in a fine position to criticize my guest list.”

“Now, Morgan,” Bonny said.

“Oh, well,” said Brindle, “they won't come. Don't worry, Bonny. Emily won't like sand. She won't like mess. She won't want to go into that messy, sticky ocean. I know the type; they can't come to the banquet,” she said.

Then she set out with Bonny, so cheered by her own perceptiveness that her face looked peaky and alight with pleasure, and Robert Roberts might never have existed.

7

B
ut they did come. They arrived the next day in mid-morning, driving the little black VW that Leon had picked up secondhand. Morgan was not quite adjusted yet to the thought of their owning a car. (Though if it had to happen, he supposed that this tiny, bell-shaped machine was the most appropriate. And black; that was a nice touch. Yes, and, after all, what was wrong with itinerants possessing some form of transportation? Maybe they should buy a trailer, as well.) Morgan stood in the yard, rocking from heel to toe, watching as they parked. Emily got out first, and pulled the front seat forward for Gina. Emily had the wrong kind of shoes on—Docksiders. Morgan could hardly believe his eyes. With her black leotard and her flowing black skirt, there was something almost shocking about those cloddy, stiff brown loafers with the white rubber soles. And Gina, when she emerged, wore the squinty, grudging expression of someone yanked from sleep. Leon's face had a clenched look and there was a shaving cut in the cleft of his chin, plastered with a tiny square of toilet paper. No, they were definitely not at their best. It seemed Morgan had only to leave town and they fell apart, rushed ahead without him, tossed aside all their old charm, and invested in unsuitable clothing. (Leon's new polo shirt was electric blue, almost painful to the sight.) Still, Morgan stepped forward, putting on a smile of welcome. “Why! How nice to see you,” he said, and he kissed Emily's cheek. Then he hugged Gina and shook hands with Leon. “Have a good trip? Much traffic?
Bad on the Bridge?” he asked. Leon muttered something about senior-citizen drivers and jerked the trunk lid open.

“It was an easy trip, but I don't know what the scenery was like because Leon drove so fast it blurred together,” Emily said.

“Emily thinks I'm speeding if she can't read all the small print on every billboard,” Leon said, “every road sign and circus poster. If she can't count all the fruit in all the fruit stands.”