Morgan's Passing (31 page)

Emily nodded gravely. She sympathized with Bonny: he must be exasperating to live with. But, after all, it wasn't Emily who had to live with him.

She recalled how odd he'd seemed when they first knew him—his hats and costumes, his pedantic, elderly style of speech. Now he seemed … not ordinary, exactly, but understandable. She was beginning to want to believe his assumption that events don't necessarily have a reason behind them. Last month she and Leon were sitting with him in Eunola's Restaurant when Morgan
glanced out the window and said, “How funny, there's Lamont. I thought he was dead.” He didn't act very surprised. “That happens more and more often,” he said cheerfully. “I often think I see, for instance, my mother's father, Grandfather Brindle, walking down the street, and he's been dead for forty years. I tell myself he might not really have died at all—just got tired of his old existence and left to start a new one without us. Who's to say it couldn't happen? Someplace there may be a whole little settlement—even a town, perhaps—full of people who supposedly died but really didn't. Have you thought of that?”

Then Leon gave a tired hiss, the way he did when Emily said something silly. Well, why shouldn't there be such a town? What was so impossible about it? Emily sat straighter, and looked guiltily into her lap. “The world is a peculiar place,” Morgan said. “Tottery old ladies, people you wouldn't trust to navigate a grocery cart, are heading two-ton cars in your direction at speeds of seventy miles per hour. Our lives depend on total strangers. So much lacks logic, or a proper sequence.”

“Jesus,” said Leon.

But Emily felt encouraged; everything looked brighter. (This was shortly after she'd come back from Taney. Morgan's kind of spaciousness sounded wonderful to her.) She smiled at him. He smiled back. He was wearing a furry Russian hat, now that the weather had turned. It sat on his head like a bear cub. He leaned across the table to Leon and told him, “Often I fall into despair. You may find that funny. I seem to be one of those people whose gloominess is comical. But to me it's very serious. I think, in ten thousand years, what will all this amount to? Our planet will have vanished by then. What's the point? I think, and I board the wrong bus. But when I'm happy, it's for no clearer reason. I imagine that I'm being very witty, I have everyone on my side, but probably that's not the case at all.”

Leon let out his breath and watched the waitress refilling their cups.

“Oh, I'm annoying you,” Morgan said.

“No, you're not,” Emily told him.

“Somehow, it appears I am. Leon? Am I annoying you?”

“Not at all,” Leon said grimly.

“I tend to think,” Morgan said, “that nothing real has ever happened to me, but when I look back I see that I'm wrong. My father died, I married, my wife and I raised seven human beings. My daughters had the usual number of accidents and tragedies; they grew up and married and gave birth, and some divorced. My sister has undergone
two
divorces, or terminations of marriage, at least, and my mother is aging and her memory isn't what it ought to be … but somehow it's as if this were all a story, just something that happened to somebody else. It's as if I'm watching from outside, mildly curious, thinking, So this is what kind of life it is, eh? You would suppose it wasn't really mine. You would suppose I'd planned on having other chances-second and third tries, the best two out of three. I can't seem to take it all seriously.”

“Well, I for one have work to do,” Leon said, rising.

But Emily told Morgan, “I know what you mean.”

I
wish
I knew, was what she should have said.

His manners were atrocious (she often thought); he smoked too much and suffered from a chronic cough that would surely be the death of him, ate too many sweets (and exposed a garble of black fillings whenever he opened his mouth), scattered ashes down his front, chewed his cuticles, picked his teeth, meddled with his beard, fidgeted, paced, scratched his stomach, hummed distractingly whenever it was someone else's turn to speak; he was not a temperate person. He wore rich men's hand-me-downs, stained and crumpled and poorly kept, and over them an olive-drab, bunchy nylon parka, its hood trimmed with something matted that might be monkey fur. He smelled permanently of stale tobacco. When he wore glasses, they were so fingerprinted and greasy you couldn't read his eyes. He was
excitable and unpredictable, sometimes nearly manic, and while it was kind of him to manage their affairs, the fact was that he could often become … well, presumptuous was the word—pushy, managerial, bending the Merediths to his conception of them, which was not remotely rooted in reality, taking too much for granted, assuming what he should not have assumed. He talked too much and too erratically, or grew stuffy and bored them with lengthy accounts of human-interest items from the paper, grandchildren's clever remarks, and
Consumer Reports
ratings; while at moments when he should have been sociable—when the Merediths had other guests, at their Halloween party, for instance—he would as likely as not clam up completely and stand around in some corner with his hands jammed deep in his pockets and a glum expression on his face. And
his
parties! Well, the less said, the better. Combining garbage men with philosophy professors, seating small children next to priests with hearing aids …

But once, passing a bookstore, Emily happened to notice a blown-up photo of the first successful powered flight, and the sight of Wilbur Wright poised on the sand at Kitty Hawk—capped and suited, strangely stylish, suspended forever in that tense, elated, ready position—reminded her for some reason of Morgan, and she suddenly felt that she had never given him full credit. And another time, when she switched on a cassette tape to see if it were the music for “Hansel and Gretel,” she found that Morgan must have been playing with it, for his gruff, bearded voice leaped forth, disguised in a German accent. “Nu? Vhere is de button?” he said, and then she heard a Japanese “Ah so!” and two clicks, where he must have pressed the button off and on again. “Tum, te-tum,” he said, singing tunelessly, rustling cellophane. There was the sound of a match being struck. He blew a long puff of air. “Naughty boy, Pinocchio!” he said in a chirping voice. “I see you've been untruthful again. Your nose has grown seven inches!” Then he gave his smoker's laugh,
breathy and wheezing, “Heh, heh,” descending into a cough. But Emily didn't laugh with him. She listened intently, with her forehead creased. She bent very close to the machine, unsmiling, trying to figure him out.

6

S
he and Leon were invited to the Percy School's Thanksgiving Festival, where they'd never been before. She wasn't sure what show they should put on. “Rapunzel”? “Thumbelina”? Late one afternoon, just a few days before the Festival, she took Rapunzel from her muslin bag and propped her on the kitchen table. Rapunzel had not been used for a while and had an unkempt, neglected look. Her long, long braids had grown frazzled. “I suppose I should make her another wig,” Emily told Gina. Gina was doing her homework; all she said was, “Mmm.”

But then Leon came in and said, “Rapunzel? What's she doing here?”

“I thought we'd take her to the Festival.”

“Last night you said we'd do ‘Sleeping Beauty.' ”

“I did?”

“I suggested ‘Sleeping Beauty' and you said that would be fine.”

“How could I have?” Emily asked. “We can't give ‘Sleeping Beauty.' There are thirteen fairies. Not even counting the king, the queen, the princess …”

“I said, ‘Emily, why not let's do something different for a change?' and you said, ‘All right, Leon—' ”

“But never ‘Sleeping Beauty,' ” Emily said.

“I said, ‘How about “Sleeping Beauty”?' and you said, ‘All right, Leon.' ”

He was making it up. Except that Leon never made things up. There was no way Emily could have held that conversation, not even half asleep. Why, if you counted the old woman at the spinning wheel, Prince Charming … It was out of the question. They couldn't begin to handle a cast of that size. She considered the possibility that he had discussed the subject with someone else, mistakenly. They always seemed to miss connections these days. They started every morning so courteous, so hopeful, but deteriorated rapidly and ended up, at night, sleeping with their backs to each other on the outermost edges of the bed.

She noticed that two vertical grooves had started to appear in Leon's cheeks. They were not so much lines as hollows, such as you would see in a man who habitually kept his jaw set too far forward.

Then he said, “How about taking Gina?
She
could work some of the fairies.”

“But it's on Wednesday afternoon,” Emily said. “Gina would still be in school.”

“Oh, I don't mind missing school,” Gina said.

Emily suspected she was only trying to keep peace. Gina loved school. “Well,
I
mind,” Emily told her.

“Oh, Mama.”

“And thirteen fairies! Even if we owned that many, how would just one more pair of hands help run them all?”

“We could bring them on a few at a time, maybe,” Leon said.

Emily started pacing around the table. Gina and Leon watched her. Gina chewed a pencil and swung her feet, but Leon stayed motionless. Then Emily wheeled on him and said, “Are you doing this on purpose?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, is this supposed to prove something, Leon? Are you just trying to show me I'm … oh, set in my ways? You want me to say I refuse to give a play with
eighteen puppets in it, and my daughter playing hooky, and that will mean I'm rigid, narrow-minded?”

“All I know is, I said, ‘How about “Sleeping Beauty,” Emily—' ”

“You never did.”

Leon closed his mouth, shrugged, and walked out of the room. Emily looked over at Gina, who was watching, but Gina abruptly stopped chewing her pencil and buried herself in her homework.

Then Emily took her coat from the hook in the hall and left the apartment, jabbing her arms into her sleeves as she stalked down the stairs. It was late enough so the smell of different suppers had begun to fill the stairwell: cabbage, green peppers, oil—stifling smells. Crafts Unlimited was already dark and dead-looking. She slammed out into the street. Twilight had drained the color from the buildings. An old woman paused on the corner to set down all her bundles and rearrange them. Emily swerved around her, keeping her fists knotted in her coat pockets. She crossed against a red light and walked very fast.

He was impossible. There was no hope for either of them. She had locked herself in permanently with someone she couldn't bear.

She passed a boy and girl who were standing in the center of the sidewalk, holding hands, the girl pivoting on her heels and giving the boy a shy smile. It was heartbreaking. She would have stopped to set them straight, but of course they wouldn't believe her; they imagined they were going to do everything differently. She met a child, some friend of Gina's. “Hello, Mrs. Meredith.” “Hello, um, Polly,” she said—motherly, matronly, indistinguishable from any other woman.

Sometimes she thought the trouble was, she and Leon were too well acquainted. The most innocent remark could call up such a string of associations, so many past slights and insults never quite settled or forgotten, merely smoothed over. They could no longer have a single uncomplicated feeling about each other.

Then she heard footsteps behind her. They kept coming. She slowed, and the corners of her mouth started turning up without her say-so, but when she looked back it was no one she knew—a man on his way to someplace in a hurry. He kept his face buried in his collar. She let him pass her. Then she looked back again. But no matter how long she stood watching, the sidewalk was empty.

She took a right on Meller Street and walked with more purpose. She crossed another street and turned left. Now there was a stream of people bundled up, intent, rushing home to supper. It occurred to her that Cullen Hardware might be closed by now. She slowed, frowning. But no, its windows were still lit with that faded light that always seemed filmed by dust. She pushed through the door. Butkins was bent over a sheet of paper at the counter. “Has Morgan gone home?” she asked him.

Butkins straightened and passed a hand across his high forehead. “Oh. Mrs. Meredith,” he said. (He was so determinedly formal, though she'd known him for years.) “No, he's up in his office.” he said.

She headed down an aisle of snow shovels and sidewalk salt, and climbed the steps at the rear. Every board whined beneath her feet. On the landing, Morgan's office seemed unusually still—no sawing, hammering, drilling, no flurry of wood chips. Morgan was lying on the maroon plush sofa. He was hatless, for once, and wore a satin-lapeled smoking jacket that very nearly matched the sofa. His hair looked flat and thin. His face was a pale glimmer in the dusk. “Morgan? Are you sick?” Emily asked.