Morgan's Passing

by Anne Tyler

  “Pardon?”

  “She leeve nearby, yes?”

  “Why, yes, she lives just upstairs, but I’m not sure she—”

  “Zis means a great deal to me,” Morgan said.

  Across from him, on the other side of the table, stood a blond wooden cabinet filled with weaving. Its doors were wavery glass, and they reflected a shortened and distorted view of Morgan—a squat, bearded man in a top hat. Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course! He adjusted the hat, smiling. Everything black turned transparent in the glass. He wore a column of rainbow-colored weaving on his head and a spade of weaving on his chin. “You see, I also am artiste,” he told the woman. Definitely, his accent was a French one.

  She said, “Oh?”

  “I am solitary man. I know other artistes.”

  “But I don’t think you understand,” she said. “Emily and her husband, they just give puppet shows to children, mainly. They only sell puppets when they have a few extras. They’re not exactly—”

  “Steel,” he said, “I like to meet zem. I like you to introduce me. You know so many people! I see zat. A friend to ze artistes. What your name is, please?”

  “Well … Mrs. Apple,” she said. She thought a moment. “Oh, all right. I don’t suppose they would mind.” She called to someone at the rear, “Hannah, will you watch for customers?” Then she turned to lead Morgan out the side door.

  He followed her up the staircase. There was a smell of fried onions and disinfectant. Mrs. Apple’s hips looked very broad from this angle. She became, by extension, someone fascinating: she must speak to the Merediths every day, know intimately their schedules and their habits, water their plants when they went on tour. He restrained the urge to set a friendly palm on her backside. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and he gave her a reassuring smile.

  At the top of the stairs she turned to the right and knocked on a tall oak door. “Emily?” she called.

  But when the door opened, it was Leon who stood there. He was holding a newspaper. When he saw Morgan, he drew the paper sharply to his chest. “Dr. Morgan!” he said.

  Mrs. Apple said, “Doctor?”

  She looked at Morgan and then at Leon. “Why,” she said, “is this the doctor you told me about? The one who delivered Gina?”

  Leon nodded.

  “But I thought you were an artist!” Mrs. Apple said. “You said you were an artist!”

  Morgan hung his head. He shuffled his feet. “I was embarrassed about my hat,” he said. “I’ve just recently come from a wedding; I know I look ridiculous. I said I was an artist so you wouldn’t laugh at me.”

  “Oh, you poor man,” Mrs. Apple said. Then she did laugh. “You and your ‘zis and zat.’ Your ‘zese and zose.’ ”

  He risked a glance at Leon. Leon wasn’t laughing. He was glaring at Morgan, and he kept the newspaper clamped to his chest as if guarding secrets.

  “I do want to see your workroom,” Morgan told him. “I may buy a large number of puppets.”

  “We don’t have a large number,” Leon said.

  “Oh, come on, Leon,” Mrs. Apple said. “Why not show him? What’s the harm?” She nudged Morgan in the side. “You and your ‘artistes.’ Your ‘poppets.’ ” She started laughing again. Her eyes grew rays of wrinkles at the corners.

  Leon stood scowling at Mrs. Apple. Then, “Well,” he said ungraciously, and he stepped back and turned to lead them down the hall.

  Morgan peered swiftly into the room on his right—a flash of sunken sofa and a half-empty bookcase. On his left was the kitchen; he had an impression of cold, gleaming whiteness. The next door on the left led to the workroom. There was no real furniture at all—just a sewing machine beneath the window, and a stubby aluminum stepladder on which Emily sat snipping paper. Her black skirt drooped around her, nearly obscuring the ladder. The braids on top of her head picked up light from somewhere and glinted like flying sparks. “Emily,” Leon said.

  She looked up. Then she jumped off the stepladder and hid whatever she was doing behind her back. “What do you want?” she asked Morgan.

  “Why, Emily. Goodness,” Mrs. Apple said. “This is Dr. Morgan. Don’t you recognize him? He’s come to buy some puppets. A large number of puppets, Emily.”

  “Buy them downstairs,” said Emily, white-faced.

  You would think she had something against him.

  Morgan tried not to feel hurt. He smiled at her. He said, “I like to see the process of things. Actually.”

  “There’s no process going on here.”

  He stroked his beard.

  Mrs. Apple said, “But … Emily? Show him the shadow puppets.” She told Morgan, “She’s trying something new, Doctor: shadow puppets, out of paper. See?” She crossed to the sewing machine and took something from one of its drawers. It was the silhouette of a knight in armor, attached to a slender rod. “You notice he’s hinged at the joints,” she said. “You work him behind a screen. He casts a shadow on the screen. Isn’t that clever?”

  “Yes, certainly,” said Morgan. He looked around the room. He wondered what Emily sat on while she worked at the sewing machine. The stepladder, maybe? Even in his fondest fantasies he had not imagined such starkness. He was fascinated. “And will you be using shadow puppets in your shows now?” he asked Emily.

  “Yes,” she said shortly.

  “No,” Leon said.

  There was a pause. Mrs. Apple gave a little laugh.

  “With shadow puppets,” Leon said, “it’s all how they’re hinged, nothing more. How Emily caused their joints to swing when she made them.”

  “So?” Emily said.

  “You just scoot them along the ledge behind the screen, and their joints fall into place. There’s nothing to do, even less to do than there is with the old kind of puppets.”

  “So?”

  They stared at each other.

  Morgan cleared his throat.

  “Is that your child I’m hearing?” he asked.

  Of course it was. She was singing something in a small, cracked voice, off in some other room. But nobody answered him. He poked his head out into the hall. Then he crossed the hall and went into the bedroom. There was a mattress in one corner and a bureau in another, and a narrow cot along one wall. A child sat on the cot, fitting Tinker Toys together. She sang, “… how to get to Sesame Street …” When she saw Morgan, she stopped.

  Morgan said, “Hello there.”

  She looked at him doubtfully.

  He heard the Merediths coming, and he said quickly, “Would you like my hat?” He tore his hat from his head and set it on hers, tilting it back so it wouldn’t engulf her completely.

  From the doorway, Emily said, “Gina! Take that off. You never try another person’s hat on.”

  “It’s my hat,” Gina said. “He gave it to me.”

  “Take it off,” Leon said.

  “No.”

  She had a round face and a pointed chin; she had to keep her chin raised so the hat wouldn’t slide down over her eyes. This made her look proud and challenging. In fact, she resembled Leon, Morgan thought. When Emily tried to lift the hat from her head, Gina fought her hands away. “It’s my hat. It’s mine.”

  Morgan said, “Surely. It’s a gift.”

  Emily stopped struggling, but she continued to stand between Morgan and the child, shielding her. Her eyes were pale and cold. She had her arms folded tightly, and Leon stood firm beside her.

  Mrs. Apple said, “Dr. Morgan?” She arrived breathless, and handed him another shadow puppet. This one was a king. He might have stepped out of a stained-glassed window; red and blue transparent paper covered the pierced design in his robe. Lit behind a screen, he would cast jewel-like colored shadows. “Isn’t he marvelous?” Mrs. Apple said. “It’s art! You could hang it on the wall.”

  “That’s true, I could,” Morgan said. He stroked the colored paper with a thumb. Something about the precision of the design made him feel sad and deprived. His gaze slid off the king and away, landing fina
lly on the bureau. Its top was nearly bare. There were no bottles or safety pins or ticket stubs; just a single framed photo of Leon and Emily holding hands in front of this building. Gina rode on Leon’s shoulders. Her plump little calves bracketed his neck. All three of them were smiling squintily into the sunlight. Morgan stepped closer and bent over the photo, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and index finger. The king hung forgotten in his left hand. Bemused, he peered into a drawer that was partway open. Then he opened it further and studied its contents: three white shirts and a box of Kleenex. “Dr. Morgan!” Emily said sharply.

  “Yes, yes.”

  He followed the others out of the room, laying a hand on Gina’s head as he passed. Her hair was so soft, it seemed to cling to his fingers for several seconds afterward.

  Back in the workroom, he said, “What do you do with Gina while you’re giving your puppet shows?”

  Emily turned away, refusing to answer, but Leon said, “We take her along.”

  “And? Does she help with the productions?”

  “Oh, no. She’s just barely turned four.”

  “She knows the ropes, though,” Morgan suggested. “She was raised backstage, after all. She knows to stay quiet while a play is going on.”

  “Gina?” Leon said. He laughed. “Gina’s never been quiet a full minute in her life. We have to keep hushing her all through the show, and if it’s a birthday party, it’s worse. She cries when someone else gets to blow out the candles. She hates it when Emily pays attention to other children.”

  “Oh, you ought to see one of their shows,” said Mrs. Apple. She slid the king out of Morgan’s hand. Without noticing, he’d rucked up one corner of the colored paper. “They’re getting so well known! They’ve been all the way to Washington. And a man who runs an entertainment company wanted to just take them over, make them part of his troupe, like professionals. What did you ever tell that man, Leon? Did you ever answer his letter?”

  “I threw it away,” Leon said.

  “Threw it away!”

  “It was some kind of Bible group. Gospel singers and things.”

  “But—threw it away! You could at least have answered it.”

  “And off in some poky town,” Leon said. “Tinville, Tindale …”

  “I doubt you ever answer letters,” Morgan said. He felt suddenly pleased and excited.

  Leon said, “Oh, well …”

  “Really, what’s the point? Why complicate your lives? You go downstairs to clear out the mailbox every now and then, and you glance at what’s there and toss it all in the wastebasket and come back empty-handed.”

  “Well, sometimes,” Leon said.

  “When?” Emily asked him. Then she turned to Morgan and said, “We’re not who you believe we are.”

  “Eh?”

  “We’re not who you imagine.”

  “Come look at Rip Van Winkle,” Mrs. Apple said.

  “We live like anyone else. We manage fine. We like to be left alone,” said Emily. “Let me show you to the door.”

  “Oh, but Emily!” Mrs. Apple said. “He hasn’t seen all the puppets!”

  “He’s seen enough.”

  “He wanted to buy a large number!”

  “No, no, that’s all right … I really must be going,” Morgan said. “Thank you anyhow.”

  Emily spun through the door, a swirl of black skirt, and he followed her. They went down the hallway single-file—Emily, Morgan, Leon. Mrs. Apple stayed behind, no doubt looking around at the puppets in bewilderment. “Maybe some other time?” she called after him.

  “Yes, maybe so …”

  He skidded on a Tinker Toy and said, “Oh, excuse me,” and lurched against the wall. He clapped a hand to his head. “I’d better go home and change,” he said.

  “Change?” Leon asked.

  “Yes, I … need another hat.”

  His voice was echoing now; they’d reached the stairs. But instead of starting down, he looked at the door across the landing. “Who lives there?” he asked.

  “Joe and Hannah Miles,” said Leon, but Emily said, “No one.”

  “Miles? Are they craftsmen also?”

  “We’ll see you to the street,” Emily told him. She pushed forward, edging him toward the stairs, and when he took his first step down, she followed so closely that he felt hounded. “I don’t understand you,” she said. (He should have known. She would not veil anything; she was as uncurtained as her windows.) “What do you want of us? What are you after? Why did you trail us all those months and lurk in doorways and peer around corners?”

  “Oh? You noticed?” Morgan said. He staggered with embarrassment and grabbed the banister.

  “You could have come straight up and said hello, like ordinary people.”

  “Yes, but I was so … I’d built up this idea of you. I almost preferred watching, don’t you see. My own household is impossible. Very confusing, very tedious,” he said. He stopped, halfway down the last flight of stairs. “Oh, you think it’s all so romantic, I suppose,” he said. “Big-city doctor! Saving lives. But mostly it’s a treadmill. I work too far downtown; I attract a low class of patient. Twice I’ve had my office robbed by addicts looking for drugs, and one of those times I was present. They tied my secretary to her chair with a raincoat belt and they made me go through all my desk drawers. It was unnerving. There I was, tumbling out sample packs of decongestants, sinus tablets, pediatric nosedrops … I’m not a brave man. I gave them all I had. I tell you this to show you what sort of existence I lead, Emily, Leon …”

  He was out of breath. He felt a white space inside his head, as if he were standing at an unaccustomed altitude. “Just hear what happened last summer,” he said. “I had this patient who’d been stabbed. Stabbed in front of a Fells Point bar, something to do with a woman. They brought him in and woke me in the dead of night. That’s the kind of practice I have—such fine patients. And no answering service, no condominium in Ocean City where I can vanish over the weekend … Anyhow. He had a long, shallow cut all down the left side, from the ribcage to the hipbone, fortunately clear of the heart. I laid him on the table in my office and stitched him up right then and there. Took me an hour and a quarter—a tiresome job, as you might imagine. Then just as I’m knotting the last stitch, wham! The door bursts open. In comes the man who stabbed him. Pulls out a knife and rips him down the right side, ribcage to hipbone. Back to the needle and thread. Another hour and a quarter.”

  Leon gave a sudden snort of laughter, but Emily just nudged Morgan forward, Morgan resumed his descent, leaning heavily on the banister like someone old and rheumatic. He said, “They come to me with headaches, colds, black eyes … self-healing things. A man who does sedentary work—a taxi driver, say—will spend the weekend moving furniture and then call me out of bed on a Sunday night. ‘Doc, I got the most terrible backache. Do you think it could be a disk? A fusion? Will I need an operation?’ For this I went to medical school!”

  “Here,” said Emily. They had reached the front door. She pushed it open for him and held out her hand. “Goodbye,” she told him. Leon grinned anxiously behind her, as if trying to ease the insult. Morgan took her hand and was startled by its lightness and its dryness.

  “You don’t want to be friends at all, do you?” he said.

  “No,” Emily told him.

  “Ah,” he said. “And why would that be?”

  “I don’t like how you try to get into our lives. I hate it! I don’t like being pried into.”

  “Emily,” Leon said.

  “No, no,” Morgan told him. “It’s quite all right. I understand.” He looked away, toward his dusty, sagging car. He had no feelings whatsoever. It seemed he’d been emptied. “Maybe you could meet my wife,” he said with an effort. “Would you like to meet Bonny? Have I told you about her? Or you might like my children. I have very nice children, very normal, very ordinary; they seem determined to be ordinary … Two are in high school. One’s grown, really, a secretary; and four others a
re in college, here and there. Most of the year, they’re gone. We hardly hear from them. But that’s the way it is, right? Every parent says that. You can see that I’m a family man. Does that help? No, I guess it doesn’t.” It seemed he was still holding Emily’s hand. He dropped it. “The oldest girl’s getting married,” he said. “I’m not a doctor. I work in a hardware store.”

  Emily said, “What?”

  “I manage Cullen Hardware.”

  “But … you delivered our baby!” she said.

  “Ah, well,” he told her, “I haven’t witnessed three of my daughters’ births for nothing.” He patted all his pockets, hunting cigarettes, but when he found a pack, he just stood holding it and looking into their stunned faces. “That stabbing business, well, I read it in the paper,” he said. “I presented myself untruthfully. I do that often, in fact. I often find myself giving a false impression. It’s not something I intend, you understand. It almost seems that other people conspire with me, push me into it. That day you called for a doctor in the house: no one else came forward. There was this long, long silence. And it seemed like such a simple thing—offer some reassurance, drive you to the hospital. I had no inkling I’d actually have to deliver a baby. Events just … rolled me forward, so to speak.”

  He wished they would say something. All they did was stare at him. Meanwhile a girl in an old-fashioned dress climbed the front steps and said, “Hello, Emily, Leon,” but they didn’t even glance at her, or move aside when she slipped past them and through the open door.

  “Please. It’s not entirely my fault,” he said. “Why are people so willing to believe me? Just tell me that. And this is what’s depressing: they’ll believe me all the quicker if I tell them something disillusioning. I might say, for instance, that being a movie star is not what it’s cracked up to be. I’ll say the lights are so hot that my make-up runs, and there’s forever this pinkish-gray stain around the inside of my collar that my wife despairs of. Clorox has no effect on it; not even Wisk does, though she’s partially solved the problem by prevention. What she does, you see, is rub my collar with a bar of white bath soap before I put a shirt on. Yes, that seems to work out fairly well, I’ll say.”