Morgan's Passing Read online

  “This is crazy,” Leon told him.

  “Yes,” said Morgan.

  “You must be crazy!”

  But Emily said, “Well, I don’t know. I see what he means, in a way.”

  Both men turned to stare at her. Leon said, “You do?”

  “He just … has to get out of his life, sometimes,” she said.

  Then Morgan gave a long, shaky sigh and sank down on the stoop. “My oldest daughter’s getting married,” he said. “Could I sit here with you and smoke a cigarette?”

  1973

  1

  The newspaper said, Crafts Revival in Baltimore? Festival Begins June 2. There was a picture of Henry Prescott, ankle-deep in wood chips, carving one of his decoys. There was a picture of Leon Meredith holding up a puppet, with his wife beside him and his daughter at his feet. He was a grim, handsome, angular man, and his mouth was sharply creviced at the corners. He was not a young boy any more. It took a photo to make Emily see that. She placed the paper on the kitchen table, pushing away several breakfast dishes, and leaned over it on both elbows to study it more closely. The porous texture of the newsprint gave Leon a dramatic look—all hollows and steel planes. Next to him, Emily seemed almost featureless. Even Gina failed to show how special she was.

  “The whole idea,” Leon was quoted as saying, “is improvisation. We take it moment by moment. We adapt as we go along. I’m talking about the plays, you understand—not the puppets. The puppets are my wife’s doing. She makes them according to a fixed pattern. They’re not improvised.”

  This was true, in a way, and yet it wasn’t. Emily did have a homemade brown-paper pattern for the puppets’ outlines, but the outlines were the least of it. What was important was the faces, the dips and hills of their expressions, which tended to develop unexpected twists of their own no matter how closely she guided the fabric through the sewing machine. Yes, definitely, the puppets were improvised too. She wished she’d spoken up when that reporter was interviewing them—said something to defend herself.

  “The heads are padded,” Leon said, “and stiffened with some kind of sizing. My wife mixes the sizing. She has her own recipe, her own way of doing things. I’m allowed to help with the props sometimes, but my wife insists on making the puppets totally by herself.”

  Emily folded the paper and laid it aside. She went down the hall to the back room. It was Gina’s room now. The sewing machine and the muslin bags had been moved to the room Leon and Emily shared; Gina’s belongings had multiplied too far to be contained in one small corner. Her unmade bed was laden with stuffed animals, books, and clothes. In the rocking chair by the window sat a Snoopy dog bigger than Gina. Grandma and Grandpa Meredith had brought it for her sixth birthday. Emily felt it was ridiculous to give a child something that size—not to mention the cost. What could they have been thinking of? “Oh, well,” Leon had told her, “that’s just how they are, I guess. You know how they are.”

  Gina was under the bed. She emerged, frowsy-haired, with a sneaker in her hand. “Aren’t you ready yet?” Emily asked her. “It’s time to go.”

  “I was looking for my shoe.”

  Emily took the sneaker from her and loosened a knot in the lace. “Now, Gina, listen,” she said. “We’ve got a play to give out in the country today, and we’re leaving before you get back. When kindergarten’s over, you walk home with the Berger girls and wait in the shop till we come. Mrs. Apple says she’ll keep an eye on you.”

  “Why can’t I stay home and go with you?”

  “Summer will be here soon enough,” Emily told her. “You’ll be home all the time, come summer.”

  She slipped the sneaker on Gina’s foot and tied it. Gina’s socks were already creased and soiled and falling down her ankles. Her blouse had egg on the front. Emily had known children like Gina when she was a child herself. They had a kind of extravagant squalor; there was something lush about the tumbled appearance of their clothing. She had always assumed their mothers were to blame, but now she knew better. Not half an hour ago Gina had been neat as a pin; Emily had made certain of it. She plucked a dust ball from Gina’s hair, which was rich and thick-stranded like Leon’s. “Come along,” she told her. “You’ll be late.”

  She slung her purse on her shoulder and they left the apartment, clicking the latch very gently because Leon was still asleep. They walked down the stairs, where everyone’s breakfast smells hung in the air—bacon, burned butter, the Conways’ kippered herrings. They passed the door of the shop, which was still dark, and stepped out into the street. It was a warm, sunny morning. The city looked freshly washed, with gold-lit buildings rising through a haze in the distance, women in spring dresses sweeping their stoops, green ivy flooding through the windows of an abandoned rowhouse. Gina hung on to Emily’s hand and skipped and sang:

  Miss Lucy had a baby,

  She called it Tiny Tim,

  She put it in the bathtub

  To see if it could swim …

  Emily said good morning to Mrs. Ellery, who was shaking out her dust mop, and to the ancient blind man whose daughter, or granddaughter it must have been, set him on his stoop every fair day with a grayish quilt wrapped around his legs. “Nice weather,” Emily called, and the old man nodded, turning his sealed-looking eyelids toward the sun like a plant in the window. She stopped on the second corner to wait for the Berger girls. Helena Berger shooed them out the door—two little freckled redheads in plaid dresses. They ran ahead with Gina, and at the next intersection Emily had to call, “Stop! Wait!” She hurried up, out of breath, while they lurched and teetered on the edge of the curb. She held out her hands, and the younger Berger girl took one and Gina took the other. The Berger child was all bones; Emily felt a rush of love for Gina’s warm, chubby fingers, which were slightly sticky in the creases. She waded across the street, embroiled in children, and turned them loose on the other side. They scattered ahead again, skipping disjointedly.

  Miss Lucy called the doctor,

  Miss Lucy called the nurse,

  Miss Lucy called the lady

  With the alligator purse …

  Emily sensed a presence nearby, the shape of someone familiar, and she turned and found Morgan Gower loping along beside her. He tipped his battered green Army helmet and smiled. “Morgan,” she said. “How come you’re out so early?”

  “I couldn’t sleep past five o’clock this morning,” he said. “There’s too much excitement at the house.”

  At Morgan’s house there was always too much excitement. She’d never been there, but she pictured a bulging, seething box of a place—the roof straining off, the side seams splitting. “What is it this time?” she asked him.

  “It’s Brindle. My sister. Her sweetheart came back.”

  Emily hadn’t known his sister had a sweetheart. She shaded her eyes and called, “Children! Wait for me!” Then she said, “Did Kate get out of her leg cast yet?”

  “Who?” he asked. “Oh, yes. Yes, that’s all … but see, at seven or so last night, just at the end of supper, the doorbell rang and Bonny said, ‘Brindle, go see who that is, will you?’ since Brindle was nearest the door, so Brindle went and then …”

  They’d reached the intersection. Emily held out her hands and the children swarmed around her, knocking Morgan backward a pace. When she’d crossed to the other side and turned to look for him, he was picking up his helmet from the gutter. He polished it with his sleeve, sadly, and set it on his head. It matched his splotchy camouflage jacket and his crumpled olive-drab jungle pants. He was always dressing for catastrophes that were unlikely to occur, she thought. “These are guaranteed, certified, snake-proof boots,” he said now. He stopped to hold up one green foot. “I bought them at Sunny’s Surplus.”

  “They’re very nice,” she said. “Children! Slow down, please.”

  “How come you have those other two girls?” Morgan asked. “I don’t remember seeing them before.”

  “I’m trading off with their mother. She’s walking Gina
home today so that I can do a show.”

  “Well, it all seems so disorganized,” Morgan said. “I come to you people for peace and quiet and I find this disorganization. Look at Gina: she hasn’t even said hello to me.”

  “Oh, she will; you know she loves to see you. It’s only that she’s with friends.”

  “I prefer it when you both come and Gina walks between you, just the one of her. Where’s Leon? Why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s sleeping. He was out late last night, trying for a part in a play.”

  “It’s too disorganized,” Morgan said glumly. He stopped and peered down the front of his jacket. Then he reached inside and brought up a pack of cigarettes. “So Brindle goes to the door,” he said, “and nothing more happens. There’s nothing but silence. Well, we thought she might have faded off somewhere. Forgot where she was headed. Lost her way or something. You know Brindle. Or at least, you know about her: always in that bathrobe, moping. ‘How was your day?’ you ask, and she says, ‘Day?’ She acts surprised to hear there’s been one. ‘Go see where she’s got to,’ Bonny tells me. ‘She’s your sister; see what she’s up to.’ So I push away from the table and go to find her and there she is in the entrance hall being kissed by a total stranger. It’s one of those long, deep, wrap-around kisses, like in the movies. I was uncertain what to do about it. It seemed rude to interrupt, but if I turned and left they’d no doubt hear the floorboards creak, so I just stood there flossing my teeth and the two of them went on kissing. Heavy-set man with slicked-down hair. Brindle in her bathrobe. Finally I ask, ‘Was there something you wanted?’ Then they pulled apart and Brindle said, ‘It’s Robert Roberts, my childhood sweetheart. Don’t you know him?”

  “Children!” Emily called. They’d reached another intersection. She ran ahead to take their hands. Morgan followed, muttering something. “Known him all his life, of course” was what it sounded like. “Knew him when he was a bit of a thing, coming to play roll-a-bat with Brindle in the alley. Called her ‘Idiot. Dumbhead. Moron,’ in that fond, insulting way that childhood sweethearts have …”

  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.”