Morgan's Passing Read online

  “You don’t want to get it dusty,” Butkins said, picking it up.

  “It’s already dusty. You can have it.”

  Butkins did not seem to want it, however. He gave the hat a doubtful, troubled look, and placed it cautiously on the counter beside a flashlight display.

  7

  At lunchtime, when Morgan was alone in the store, he dialed the Merediths’ number again. Nobody answered. They must not have returned from their puppet show. He let the phone ring on and on. Harry lay at his feet, his nose between his paws, rolling his eyes at Morgan.

  When Butkins came back, Morgan decided not to go to lunch himself. He wasn’t hungry. And he didn’t climb the stairs to his office, but stayed close to Butkins, drawing some kind of comfort from him, mutely watching the dull, homely transactions that took place: the purchasing of paint, nails, a screen-door hook, the return of a defective light switch. He noticed that when Butkins had no customers, he fell into a kind of trance; he gazed into space, sighing, and absently fingered an earlobe. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife. She had some slow, creeping illness; Morgan couldn’t think of the name. Something to do with her muscles. She was no longer able to walk. And the child who died had been struck by a hit-and-run driver. Morgan remembered the funeral. He wondered how Butkins endured it, where he found the strength to open his eyes every morning and dress himself and force down a little food and set out for the hardware store. He must feel nothing but contempt for Morgan. But when Butkins came out of his trance and found Morgan’s eyes on him, he only gave his gentle smile. “Why don’t you leave?” Morgan asked. “Take the afternoon off.”

  “But it’s not my day; it’s Wednesday.”

  “Leave anyhow.”

  “Oh, I might as well stay.”

  It was lucky he did, as it happened. Around three o’clock Jim showed up—Amy’s husband. From the focused way he strode in the door, wearing his slim gray lawyer suit, carrying his calfskin briefcase, Morgan guessed that he’d been sent by Bonny. Plainly, he knew everything. His face was pulled downward by long, severe lines. “Where can we talk?” he asked Morgan.

  “Why, my office, I suppose.”

  “Let’s go there.”

  Jim led the way himself. Morgan followed. He didn’t so much walk as drift, dimly touching T-squares and hammers as he passed down the aisle. He wondered, idly, how Jim would handle this. What had ever prepared him for such a discussion? He trailed Jim up the stairs. Jim took a seat in Morgan’s swivel chair. Morgan had to sit on the couch, like an applicant for something. (They must teach you this strategy in law school.) Morgan prinked the creases of his trousers and smiled at Jim, showing all his teeth. Jim didn’t smile back.

  “Well, I heard the news,” he told Morgan.

  “Yes, I figured you had.”

  “It’s not clear to anyone what you plan to do next, Morgan.”

  “Do?”

  “What steps you plan to take.”

  “Ah.”

  Jim waited. Morgan went on smiling at him.

  “Morgan?”

  “Well, for the moment I may have to sleep on this couch,” Morgan said. “It’s not the best of beds, as you see—damn buttons, tufting, whatever you want to call it—”

  “I’m not inquiring about your mattress, Morgan. I’m asking what arrangements you contemplate.”

  “Arrangements?”

  “Have you told this other woman you’re assuming responsibility?”

  “She’s not ‘this other woman,’ Jim. She’s Emily. You’ve met Emily. And of course I’m assuming responsibility.”

  “Morgan, I don’t like to be tactless—”

  “Then don’t be,” Morgan said.

  Jim sat back in the swivel chair, studying him. He had his briefcase set across his knees like a desk. Although he had long ago traded his crew-neck sweaters for suits, he had never lost his mannequin look. Even now that he was graying, Morgan saw, he was doing it in a mannequin’s style—handsome silvery wings above his ears. Jim tapped his briefcase thoughtfully. “You realize,” he told Morgan, “that you’re not the first man this has happened to.”

  “Oh? I’m not?”

  “Well, I fail to see what’s so humorous, Morgan.”

  “No, no … What I mean to say is, I am the first man it’s happened to in quite this way. Or rather, it’s the first time it’s happened to me, and to her. There’s no point trying to fit us on a graph.”

  Jim sighed. “Let’s start all over,” he said.

  “Certainly.”

  “You know, Morgan, that Bonny was pretty upset this morning when she heard the news. But it’s not the end of the world, I told her. It’s not what you’d break up a marriage for. Is it? Get a hold of yourself, I told her. Oh, sure, she’ll take a while forgiving you. It’s a shock to everybody—Amy, Jean … they might be hard on you at the moment …”

  Morgan nodded, trying to look reasonable. Of course, he should have realized the girls would be involved. They were loyal to Bonny, naturally, and it must look terrible, what he’d done. Oh, he didn’t blame them at all. But still he felt a little hurt, picturing Bonny surrounded by clucking daughters. How they rushed to scenes of tragedy and melodrama! He was reminded of Susan, their most difficult child, who had spent a tiresome, extended adolescence bickering with Bonny. She would drive home from college for weekends and he’d barely have unloaded the laundry from her car when she’d be storming out again. “I’ll never come back here, never. I was an idiot to try.”

  “But what happened?” he would ask, astonished. She would yank her laundry bag from his hands and flounce into her car and grind the engine. “And how did it happen so fast?” he would call after her departing taillights. Spontaneous combustion! Flint rocks, miraculously magnetized! They rushed to battle with such enthusiasm.

  It was just as well he was done with all that. In his mind Emily shone as clear and still as a pool.

  “I plan to ask Bonny for a divorce,” he told Jim.

  “Morgan. Christ, Morgan. Look, man …”

  “I don’t suppose you give discounts to family members, do you?”

  “I don’t handle divorces.”

  “Oh.”

  “And anyhow … Christ, Morgan, what’s got into you? You’re throwing everything away!”

  “I’ve already told Emily,” Morgan said, “that I’ll take care of her and Gina and the baby. She could never just stay with her husband; she’s said that. And she has nobody else to rely on. See, I realize I’m behaving badly, Jim, but this is one of those times when, whatever you do, it’s bad from one angle and good from another. I mean, I can’t be virtuous on every front in this situation. Can I?”

  “Listen,” Jim said. He hunched forward over his briefcase, as if about to pass on a secret. “Life is not always X-rated, Morgan.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean, generally it’s more like … oh, a low R, I’d say: part bed, part grocery-shopping. You don’t want to ruin everything for the sake of, ah …”

  Morgan fished for his cigarettes. What did Jim imagine? Life with Bonny, after all, was not exactly rated G. He decided not to say that out loud. He offered Jim a cigarette. Jim, who didn’t smoke, took one and waited for Morgan to strike a match. “See, what I’m getting at—” he said.

  “I know what you’re getting at,” said Morgan, “but you miss the point. I’ve already made my mind up, Jim. I’m not going to change it. I have this feeling of … swerving, like seizing my boat and wrenching it around, steering it off course and onto a whole new, unlikely one. It’s not bad! It’s not a bad feeling! You aren’t going to make me give it up!”

  And as he spoke, he felt drunk with his own decisiveness. He could hardly wait for Jim to leave, so that he could go find Emily and settle this forever.

  8

  He had trouble coaxing the dog into the pickup. Harry didn’t like traveling. He had to be dragged across the sidewalk with his nails scritching. But Morgan couldn’t leave him behind,
because Butkins had begun to sneeze. He heaved Harry into the truck, tucked his tail in, and closed the door. Then he went back to the store to tell Butkins, “I’m not sure how long I’ll be. If I’m still away by closing time, lock up, will you? And don’t let anyone bother my clothes.”

  It was the time of afternoon when children were coming home from school—neat little grade-schoolers with satchels, junior-high boys in baggy Army jackets and girls with plastic combs sticking out of their jeans pockets. Teenagers milled at intersections, making driving difficult.

  On Crosswell Street the mothers were waiting on their stoops. They shaded their eyes and discussed the weather, the Orioles, what they planned to serve for supper. A fat woman in a dress like a petticoat had opened a can of beer and was passing it around. Burnished lavender pigeons clustered at a sack of spilled popcorn.

  Morgan pushed through the door of the Crafts Unlimited building and pulled Harry after him. Harry hung back, whining, but Morgan hauled him up the stairs with a length of rope he’d borrowed from the store. He knocked on the Merediths’ door. Emily opened it. “Good, you’re back,” he said. He walked in.

  “Morgan? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to get this settled.” He paused in the hall and glanced around for Leon. “Where is he?”

  “He’s picking up Gina. It’s our turn for the carpool.”

  “Have you told him yet?”

  “No.”

  He turned to look at her. She was twisting her hands. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m scared. You don’t know what a temper he has.”

  “Emily … Sit, Harry. Sit, dammit. Emily, what are you saying?” he asked. It cost him some effort, but he said, “Would you rather not do this at all? Rather go on the way you were, work it out somehow—the two of you? You should say no now, Emily, if that’s true. Just tell me what you want of me.”

  “I want to be with you,” she said. “I wish we could just run away.”

  “Ah,” he said. He was immediately taken with the idea. “Yes! Run away. No luggage, no fixed destination … Will Gina come willingly, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She swallowed. “It’s telling him face to face I mind. Maybe I could go to a pay phone and call him up, tell him from a distance.”

  “Well, that’s a thought.”

  “Or you could tell him.”

  “Me?”

  “You could … get behind a table or something where he couldn’t hit you and then break the news to him.”

  “I preferred the running-away plan,” Morgan said.

  “But taking Gina: I couldn’t do that to Leon. And I’d never leave her behind.”

  “All right,” Morgan said. “I’ll tell him myself.”

  He assumed it was all arranged then, and went into the kitchen to sit down and wait for Leon. But Emily floated after him, still twisting her hands, and said, “Oh, no, what am I thinking of? I don’t know why I’m such a coward. Of course I have to be the one to do it. Go away and come back later, Morgan.”

  “That’s impossible,” he said. “I’m lugging this dog around.”

  “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Dear heart. This is really very simple,” he told her. “We’re all adults. We’re reasonable beings. What do you imagine will happen? Could I have some water for Harry, please?”

  She took a bowl from the cupboard and filled it at the sink. She set the water in front of Harry, who started slurping it up. Then she shifted her purse from a chair and sat next to Morgan. “If we ran away, I would have to find some other kind of work,” she said. “Something I couldn’t be traced by. It’s so easy to track down a puppet show, at any fair or church bazaar.”

  “Well, then. You can’t run away,” he said. “What would you do without your puppets?”

  “I could manage fine without my puppets,” she said. “No, no …”

  “I never planned to stick with them forever.”

  “Oh, of course you’ll stick with them, Emily, dear.”

  She slumped in her chair, massaging her temples with her fingertips. Harry raised his head and shook water all over the kitchen floor. “Mind your manners,” Morgan told him. He reached across the table for Emily’s purse. It had an interesting weight to it. Most days, all it contained was keys and her billfold, but whenever she had a puppet show she loaded it with carefully selected equipment. You could live in the wilderness for a month off that purse, Morgan thought. He rummaged through it and came up with a ball of string, a roll of Scotch tape, her Swiss Army knife, a pair of needle-nosed pliers … “What’s this for? And this?” he kept asking.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said. “What’s this little Baggie full of Cheerios?”

  “They’re the doughnuts for Red Riding Hood’s basket.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, excellent.”

  He began to feel very happy. He piled everything back in the purse and started humming, patting his knees, looking around for something new. “How’s your burner doing?” he asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “See? I told you all it needed was unclogging.”

  He hummed a few more bars. Then he said, “Don’t you want to know why I have this dog with me?”

  She didn’t seem to. He continued anyway. “Bonny brought him. Threw everything out on the sidewalk: hats, clothes, vacuum-cleaner instructions … and Harry. But Harry belongs to Mother. Mother’s always owned a dog. This must be her tenth or twentieth. Who did she have when you first met us—Elmer? Lucille? She pays them no mind at all, never looks at them, it’s me who walks them … but she’s always had one, so she always will. That’s the way they work things, back home. The extras! The stacks of unnecessary extras! This Harry, you see, is Bonny’s revenge. Oh, she knew what she was doing, all right. Cluttering up my leaving, even. I’m surprised she didn’t bring the cat as well.”

  “I always did want a dog,” Emily said unexpectedly.

  “Eh?”

  “But I couldn’t because my mother was allergic.”

  “Yes, that’s Butkins’ trouble, too. Allergic.”

  “Butkins?”

  They heard the front door open. Emily sat up straighter. “Mama,” said Gina, bouncing in, “guess what I got on my science test. Hello, Morgan, what’s Harry doing here?”

  “I brought him in for a drink. Well, Miss Gina,” Morgan said. “What’d you get on your science test?”

  “?-plus,” she said. She twined an arm around him and looked down at Harry, who was scratching fleas. Leon walked in.

  “Hello, Morgan,” he said.

  “Leon.”

  “Taking the afternoon off?”

  “Yes, well, there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  “What’s that?” asked Leon.

  Morgan glanced over at Gina. She had dropped her arm but continued to stand there, so close that he could smell her salty, summery smell of fresh sweat and chewing gum. He scratched his head. “Leon,” he said, “would you like to … come walk the dog with me?”

  “Do what?”

  “Walk the dog.”

  Leon looked at the dog, who grinned.

  “Don’t if you don’t want to,” Morgan said. “Do you want to?”

  “All right, Morgan,” Leon said calmly.

  Morgan stood up, tucking in his shirt, adjusting his Panama hat. They went out of the apartment together. Just as Leon was closing the door, Gina called, “Wait!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You forgot the dog.”

  “Oh,” Morgan said. He shuffled back to the door and took Harry’s rope from her.

  They went down the stairs and outside. The rush-hour traffic was just beginning. Trucks rumbled past, and cars with single, determined drivers, and taxis carrying ladies submerged in packages. It took a while to cross the street. Then they started north. Leon led, with both hands loose at his sides in an easy, unquestioning way that gave Morgan a sudden pang.

  “Well,” Morg
an said.

  He waited for Harry to sniff out the proper spot in the grass. Leon straightened a sign that had pivoted on its post.

  “I find myself in a little difficulty,” Morgan said. “Say it, Morgan.”

  “It’s Emily.”

  They walked on. Morgan thought of the old women in the neighborhood where he had grown up—how they never announced a death straightforwardly but prepared the bereaved first, planting tiny seeds of news and allowing them to sprout on their own, no faster than the bereaved could handle. Emily’s name, he hoped, might be such a seed all by itself. Certainly Leon seemed to be turning it over in his mind. They stopped and waited for a light to change, although no cars were coming.

  “Emily and I …” Morgan said.

  They crossed the street. They avoided a shattered whiskey flask.

  “She’s expecting a child,” Morgan said.

  Leon didn’t slow down. Morgan cast a sideways glance at him and found his face unmoved. “You knew all along,” Morgan said.

  “No,” said Leon. “Not about the child.”

  “But the rest of it, you knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well … how?”

  “Osmosis, maybe,” Leon said. “Something or other.”

  “You have to believe me,” Morgan said. “I never intended any harm. I really can’t explain … I mean, day by day, you see, it didn’t seem so terrible. But I know how it must appear from outside.”

  “What are your plans?” Leon asked politely.

  They paused, facing each other, with Harry on his haunches between them. If Leon was going to get violent, now was the time. But he didn’t, of course. Morgan had never understood why Emily thought he would. She must have been mistaken, suffered one of those funny blind spots married people often have. Or maybe she was talking about an earlier Leon; that possibility occurred to him. Morgan gazed off, seeing the last of someone he’d been hearing about for years. He sighed and pulled his nose.

  “Well,” he said, “if you’re willing, I suppose I’ll move her and Gina to some other town. I don’t know.”

  “Do you want the apartment?”

  “Your apartment?”