Morgan's Passing (42 page)

She crossed the hall and went into her own room. First she closed the door partway, so that only a thin crack of light showed, and then she changed into her nightgown and slipped between the sheets. Across from her, Joshua stirred in his crib and gave a snuffling sigh. The window was open and she heard all the sounds of summer—a police siren, someone whistling “Clementine,” music from a passing radio. Durwood said, “Think how it'd free you! Think on it, Mr. Meredith.
We do the booking; we do the billing, let you attend to more essential things. Why, we even got Master Charge. Got BankAmericard. Got NAC, I tell you.”

There was something about a sound heard from a lying-down position: it was smaller, but clearer. She even heard Morgan's match strike when he lit a cigarette. She smelled his sharp smoke. She was reminded of houses she had visited as a child—the rough, ragged smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes and the smells of fried fatback and kerosene in the Shufords' and Biddixes' kitchens, where she had been ill at ease, an outsider. Shrinking inwardly, as her family would have expected her to, she had waited barely within the door for some schoolmate to snatch up a spelling book and a couple of cold biscuits for lunch. But she had longed, all those years, to step farther into those kitchens and to have them open up to her. She smiled now, in the dark, and fell asleep listening to Morgan's rumbling answers.

Then the apartment was suddenly still and Morgan was in the bedroom. He stood in the light from the hall, gazing into the mirror above one bureau. His Panama hat was still on his head. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He emptied his pockets of change, a crackling pack of Camels, and something that rolled a short distance and fell to the floor. He stooped for it, grunting. She said, “Morgan?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Has he gone?”

“Yes.”

“All this ‘Mr. Meredith' business,” she said. “Why didn't you tell him?”

“Oh, well, if it makes him happy …”

He came to sit on the edge of the bed. He bent over to kiss her (still in his hat, which seemed about to topple onto her), but just then, slow, unsteady footsteps started across the hall. He straightened up. There was a tiny knock.

In the lighted doorway Louisa stood silhouetted. Her
long white nightgown outlined two stick legs. “Morgan?” she said.

“Yes, Mother.”

“I fear I may have trouble sleeping.”

“Jesus, Mother, you've barely got to bed yet.”

“Morgan, what was the name of the man we used to see so much of?”

“What man, Mother?”

“He was always around. He lived in our house. Morgan, what was his name?”

“Mother! Christ! Go to bed! Get out of here!”

“Oh, excuse me,” she said.

She wandered away again. They heard her in the living room—first in one part, then in another, as if she were walking without purpose. The springs in the sofa creaked, directly behind their heads.

“You shouldn't be so rude to her,” Emily told Morgan.

“No,” he said. He sighed.

“Shouting like that! What's wrong with you?”

“I can't help it. She never sleeps. She's down to three hours a night.”

“But that's the way old people
are
, Morgan.”

“We don't have any chance to be alone,” he said. “Mother, Brindle, the baby … it's like a transplant. I transplanted all the mess from home. It's like some crazy practical joke. Isn't it? Why, I even have a teenaged daughter again! Or near teenaged; nowadays they're adolescents earlier, it seems to me …”

“I don't mind,” Emily said. “I kind of enjoy it.”

“That's easy for you to say,” he told her. “It's not your problem, really. You stay unencumbered no matter what, like those people who can eat and eat and not gain weight. You're still in your same wrap skirt. Same leotard.”

Little did he know how many replacement leotards she had had to buy over the years. Evidently, he imagined they lasted forever. She smoothed his hair off his forehead. “You'll feel better when we move,” she told
him. “Naturally, it's difficult, six people in two bedrooms.”

“Ah! And what will we use for money, for this move?”

“I'll find some other places to sell my puppets. I don't think Mrs. Apple pays me enough. And I'll start making more of them. And Brindle—why can't Brindle work?”

“What doing? Pumping gas?”

“There must be something.”

“Emily, hasn't it occurred to you that Brindle's not all that well balanced?”

“Oh, I wouldn't say—”

“We're living in a house of lunatics.”

She was silent. It was as if he'd twisted some screw on a telescope.

“Anyway,” he said, more gently, “she has to help out with Mother. She may be a total loss other ways, but at least she saves you some of that—Mother's little mental lapses and her meals and pills.”

He nudged her over on the bed and lay down next to her, fully dressed, with his head propped against the wall. “What we want to do,” he said, “is desert.”

“Do what?”

“Just ditch them all,” he said, “and go. We want a place that's smaller, not bigger.”

“Oh, Morgan, talk sense,” she said.

“Sweetheart, you know that Gina would be better off with Leon.”

She sat up sharply. “That's not true!” she said.

“What kind of life is this for her? Strange ladies in her bedroom … You mark my words. After that luxury camp, after she's visited Leon a couple of days and gone out sailing with Grandpa Meredith and shopping for clothes with Grandma, she's going to call and ask to stay. You want to bet? She's at that age now; she disapproves of irregularity. She'll like Leon's apartment swimming pool and tennis courts and whatever else. He may even have a sauna bath! Ever thought of that?”

“I can't do without Gina, Morgan.”

“And the others,” he said. “Mother and Brindle. You think Bonny wouldn't take them back? If we walked out of here and left them, Brindle would be on the phone to Bonny before we hit the pavement. ‘Bonny, dear, they've left us!' ” Morgan said in a high, gleeful voice. “ ‘Goody, now we can get back to color TV and civilization!' And Bonny would say, ‘Oh, God, I suppose it's up to me now,' and here she'd come, rolling her eyes and clucking, but secretly, you know that she'd be pleased. She likes a lot of tumult. A lot of feathers flying in her nest. I'd ask her for a divorce again and this time she'd agree to it. No, I can't do that, I don't want her knowing where we are. I don't want her driving after us with hats and dogs and relatives. I'll bring one suit, one hat, and you and Josh. We'll just clear out—pull up our tent and go.”

“Yes? Where to?” Emily asked. She was lying flat again, with her eyes closed. There was no point taking him seriously.

“Tindell, Maryland,” he told her. “Join up with that fellow Durwood.”

“It was Leon he was asking for.”

“
I
am Leon, for all he knows.”

“Oh, Morgan, really.”

He was silent. He seemed to be thinking. Finally he said, “Isn't it funny? I've never changed my name. The most I've done is reverse it. My name has been the one last thing I've hung on to.”

She opened her eyes. She said, “I mean this, Morgan. I do not intend to leave Gina.”

“Oh, all right, all right.”

“I absolutely mean that.”

“I was only talking,” he said.

Then he rose and went to the closet, and she heard his Panama hat settle among the other hats with a dim, soft, whiskery sound.

8

“I
t's all very easy for you,” Bonny said, “because Morgan's in a position of certainty by now. You know what I mean? He's … solidified. You inherited him when he was old and certain. You have never got lost in a car together and yelled at each other over a map; he will always seem in charge, to you.”

Emily stood in pitch dark, lifting first one foot and then the other from the cool, slick kitchen floor. She said, “Bonny, why do you keep calling?”

“Hmm?”

“This is just not natural. Why are we always on the phone this way?”

Bonny let out a whoosh of smoke. She said, “Well, I'm worried about his eyes.”

“His eyes?”

“I'm reading this book. This book by some Japanese expert. Everything's in the eyes, it says. If you can see a rim of white below someone's iris, you can be sure that person's in trouble. Physically, emotionally … and you know Morgan's eyes. That's not just a
rim
of white, it's an ocean! His lower lids sag like hammocks. I don't think he's eating right. He needs more vegetables.”

“I feed him plenty of vegetables.”

“You know he has a sweet tooth. And he drinks so much coffee, chock-full of sugar. Deadly! Refined white sugar, processed sugar. It's a wonder he's lasted as long as he has. Oh, Emily! He should be eating alfalfa sprouts and fresh strawberries, organically grown.”

“There's nothing wrong with Morgan's diet.”

“He should cut down on red meats and saturated fats!”

“I have to hang up now, Bonny.”

“If he were properly fed,” said Bonny, “don't you think he'd act different? I mean, basically he's a good man, Emily. Basically he's warm-hearted and open. Openness is his problem, in fact. Oh, Emily, if I had him back, don't you think I would feed him better now?”

9

E
mily felt her way down the dark hall, stubbing her toe against the wicker elephant. She arrived in the bedroom and found Morgan wide awake, propped against the wall, silently smoking a cigarette. He didn't say anything. She got into bed beside him, smoothed her pillow, and lay down. The telephone rang in the kitchen.

“Don't answer,” Morgan said.

“What if it's someone else?”

“It's not.”

“What if it's Gina? An emergency?”

“It won't be. Let it ring.”

“You can't say that for sure.”

“I'm almost sure.”

At this hour, in this mood, “almost” seemed good enough. She took the chance. She didn't get up. There was something restful about simply giving in, finally—abdicating, allowing someone else to lead her. The
phone rang on and on, first insistent, then resigned, faint and forlorn, rhyming with itself, like the chorus of a song.

1979

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