Morgan's Passing (38 page)

“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,” Morgan 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?”

“Do you want the puppets, the equipment, the job? Want me to be the one to go?”

“Oh, well, no, I couldn't ask—”

“Really, what do I need with all that? Take it,” Leon said.

“Oh.”

“Take it.”

“Well, if you're sure,” said Morgan. Then Leon said, “Aah, God, Morgan.” He spoke wearily, disgustedly, but not with any sharpness. Even so, Morgan flinched.

When they resumed walking, it was in the other direction, homeward. They passed Eunola's Restaurant, where the three of them had so often stopped for coffee. Then they came to the Laundromat where Morgan had stood, countless times, watching Leon and Emily setting out with their baby. Perhaps, he thought, this was
not so much a love story as a friendship story, and he felt saddened by Leon's patient, trudging figure beside him. (Where was that thin, olive-skinned boy parting the curtains to call for a doctor? Would Emily ever again, in the future, wear that tilted look she had first tossed Morgan?)

They crossed the street and entered the building. When Morgan saw the long stairway, he believed, for a moment, that he might not make it. He was exhausted, and his chest ached. But a strange thing happened. As he climbed, it seemed his spirits climbed too. He speeded up, leaving Leon behind, taking steps two at a time. He wanted to get on with this. He wanted to begin his new life.

1978

1

C
inderella was dancing with the Prince, nestled in his brown felt arms, gliding across the walnut desk in somebody's father's study. Over her head, blue satin swoops hung from the folding wooden stage. There was a scrim at the rear that didn't entirely conceal the puppeteers, but the audience was too entranced to notice. It was a very young audience—mostly four-year-olds. The birthday child wore a gilt paper crown that resembled the Prince's.

“Mercy,” Cinderella said, “it must be getting late. I'm sure it's nearly midnight.”

“Midnight? So what?” the Prince asked in his gruff, rasping voice. “We'll dance till dawn. We'll dance all the next day!”

“Um, well, but you see, Your Majesty …” They were stalling for time. Where was the clock? “The clock!” Emily whispered. Gina was off in a trance again, holding the cassette recorder just beyond Emily's reach and gazing dreamily at the audience. Joshua, who was supposed to be in Gina's care, was creeping under the desk. He gurgled to himself and dribbled on a nest of extension cords.

“Ding, ding!” Emily called in desperation. “Ding, ding, ding …”

Somewhere in there she lost count, but she trusted that the audience wouldn't catch it. She could hardly wait to whisk Cinderella off the stage so she could rescue the baby. The instant the curtain was lowered, she snatched him up. He wore only a grayish diaper. His
solid little trunk, barrel-shaped, was faintly sticky, and he trailed a silvery, cool thread of spit down the back of Emily's hand.

“Gina, honey,” Emily said, “I thought you were going to watch him for me. ‘Oh, I can manage both,' you told me, ‘mind Josh and do the props too …' ”

Morgan, meanwhile, was digging through a pile of objects on the floor. “Fireplace, fireplace,” he muttered. “What's happened to the fireplace?”

“Gina had it last.”

But Gina was busy with thoughts of her own. Eleven years old, tall and secretive, languorous from half a summer of lolling about in the heat, she sat on a leather chair with her knees cocked and hummed the waltz that Cinderella had been dancing to. “Here we are,” Morgan said. He straightened, puffing, and held up the cardboard fireplace. Joshua reached for it, but Morgan was too quick for him. He set the fireplace in one corner of the stage. “Now, where's the stepmother?” he asked Emily. “Where are the sisters?”

“Gina? Take Josh for me, will you?”

Gina unfolded herself with a sigh and accepted the baby. He grabbed at her shiny hair clasp. He grabbed at Morgan's sailor cap, in passing, but was borne away to the leather chair. “Tra la la,” Gina sang, rocking him too hard.

Out front, the audience grew hushed and expectant. Emily slipped off Cinderella's ballgown, exposing her burlap rags. She held her up, ready to go, and smiled at Morgan. He nodded and raised the curtain.

2

“Y
ou know that Kate's home,” Bonny said.

“Oh, really?” said Emily. “I hadn't heard.” She switched the receiver to her other ear. She was trying to stir a stew and talk on the phone simultaneously. “Has something happened?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Bonny let out a long, thin breath. All of a sudden, this late in her life, Bonny had taken up smoking. She didn't smoke very competently and always seemed to be inhaling or exhaling at exactly the wrong moment, leaving her listeners suspended. She had also developed other new habits. She continually joined strange philosophical societies and women's groups, began unpromising jobs and then resigned almost at once, and telephoned Emily at any hour she pleased. Although she never mentioned Morgan without biting his name off, she seemed not to blame Emily at all. This was a relief, of course, but it was also a little insulting. (It implied that Emily was powerless, without a will of her own.) When Bonny paused for one of her cigarette breaths, Emily pictured the humming wires that linked them. Bonny was knotted into her line, knotted into her whole existence. Even if Emily were to hang up, Bonny's phone would still connect hers because Bonny was the one who'd placed the call.

“She has this back,” Bonny said. “This sprained or twisted back, or something. The way it came about was, she and her husband were involved in a head-on collision. David walked away from it without a scratch, but Kate did something to her back.”