Morgan's Passing

by Anne Tyler

  Bonny gave him a look.

  He wandered into the living room, where his mother and Priscilla were playing Scrabble. Kate was painting her fingernails at a little rattan table. The smell of nail polish filled the room—a piercing, city smell that Morgan liked. He would have preferred to settle here, but he said, “Anyone seen Emily?”

  “She’s out front,” Priscilla told him.

  He went to the porch, letting the rickety screen door slam shut behind him. Emily was taking pictures again. She photographed Gina, who was lining up a row of oyster shells on the railing. She photographed Robert, who sat stiff and humiliated in a rocker, wearing borrowed clothes—Billy’s wedding-white slacks and candy-striped shirt. Then she photographed Morgan. Morgan had to stand still for a long, long moment while Emily squinted through the camera at him. He did his best not to show his irritation. At least, he was glad to see, Emily had got out of that swimsuit. She wore her black outfit and no shoes at all. She was her old, graceful, fairy-dancer self. As soon as Morgan heard the shutter click, he said, “Now I’ll snap one of you, since you’re looking so fine and pretty.” He came down the front steps and took the camera from her hands. She put up no resistance, for once. She seemed tired. Even when he drew away and aimed the camera at her, she didn’t smooth her hair or lighten her expression.

  He snapped the picture and handed the camera back to her. “Ah … Bonny was just wondering,” he said. “Should we count on having you three for the night?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She rolled the film forward with a little zipping sound. “I’ll have to talk to Leon,” she said finally.

  “Oh? Where is Leon?”

  “He never came back from his walk. I was planning to go into town and look for him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Morgan said. “Gina? You want to take a walk?”

  “I’m busy,” Gina said, laying out another row of shells.

  “Robert?”

  “I’m waiting for Brindle.”

  Morgan and Emily started down the street. It was narrow and patchily surfaced; they could walk in the center of it without much fear of traffic. They passed a woman hanging out beach towels and a little girl blowing soap bubbles on her steps. The houses were so close together that it almost seemed the two of them were proceeding through a series of rooms—hearing Neil Diamond on the radio and then an oboe concerto, catching a whiff of coffee and frying crabcakes, watching a man and a boy sort out their fishing tackle on a green porch glider. Emily said, “He’ll have a mighty long wait.”

  “Who will?” Morgan asked.

  “Robert Roberts. Brindle’s gone back to Baltimore.”

  “She has?”

  “Billy drove her to the bus in Ocean City.”

  “She doesn’t want it any more, she said.”

  “Oh,” said Morgan. He thought that over. “So it’s my house she’s gone to, is it.

  I didn’t ask,” Emily said.

  “It serves him right,” said Morgan. “Yes, I was on his side till now, the way he rang our doorbell, bringing roses … but, oh, this ocean business. No. People imagine they can hold you with such things. They cause themselves some damage and assume that we’ll accept responsibility. But they underestimate us. They fail to realize. No, Brindle will never forgive him for that.”

  Emily said nothing. He glanced down at her and found her drawn and pale, walking alongside him with her camera held tight in one bluish hand. How had she managed to avoid a sunburn? She’d been out on the beach as long as the others. He wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. “Well,” he said, “I suppose you must find us very tiring. Right?”

  “I’ve had a wonderful time,” she told him.

  “Eh?”

  “I’ve had a wonderful time.”

  “Yes, well, that’s sweet of you, but … never mind, I know this wasn’t what you’re used to. There’s no economy to our life. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that.”

  “It was wonderful. It was a real vacation,” Emily said. “As soon as we got your letter, I was so excited—I went out and bought us all new clothes. It’s been years since I’ve been to the beach. Not since high school.”

  “Ah, yes, high school,” Morgan said, sighing.

  “He never thinks we can spare the time. He’d rather stay at home. We either give our shows or stay home. Sometimes I think he’s doing it for spite—he’s saying, ‘You wanted to marry and settle, didn’t you? Well, here we are, and we’re never going anywhere again.’ It’s funny: I hoped I’d grow more like him—more, oh, active—but it seems instead he’s more like me. We just sit home. I sit in that room with that sewing machine; I feel like someone in a story, some drudge. I feel like the miller’s daughter, left to spin gold out of straw. Visiting here was just what we needed—so much going on, so many things happening—”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Morgan said. He felt very uncomfortable, and had forgotten to bring his cigarettes. They passed a man smoking on his front steps and Morgan drew a chestful of sharp gray air from him. “Doesn’t the sun set differently here,” he said, “so long and level; the light’s so flat, somehow—” He walked faster. Emily kept up. They turned east and passed the first of a string of shops.

  “He puts me in such a position,” she said. “He always makes it seem that everything was my idea, that I’m the one who organized our lives this way, but I’m not. I mean, if he just sat, what was I to do? Tell me that!”

  Morgan said, “I honestly don’t believe I can last another day in the place.”

  “In Bethany?” Emily asked. She looked around her. “But it’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It smells of dead fish.”

  “Why, Morgan.”

  They passed a gift-shop window hung with yellow nets and filled with spiky, varnished conch shells from Florida and pewter sand dollars, seahorses locked in Lucite paperweights, racks of pierced earrings shaped like starfish and dolphins. They climbed a set of weathered wooden stairs, and on the way up the ramp to the boardwalk Morgan glanced into the dark plate glass of the Holiday House restaurant. “Oh! My God,” he said.

  Emily turned to him.

  “Look!” he said, feeling his cheeks, peering into the glass. “I’m so old! I’m so ruined! I seem to have … fallen apart.”

  She laughed.

  “Well, I don’t see anything funny,” he told her.

  “Morgan, don’t worry. You’re fine. It’s always like that, if you haven’t braced your face first.”

  “Yes, but now my face is braced,” he said. “And look! Still!”

  She stopped laughing and put on a sympathetic expression. But, of course, he couldn’t expect her to understand. Her skin seemed filmed with gold; the metal filings of her hair glinted in the sunlight. She started walking again and after a moment he followed, still testing different parts of his face with his fingertips.

  “I thought he’d be right around here somewhere,” Emily said, gazing up and down the boardwalk.

  “Maybe he stopped at a café.”

  “Oh, he’d never do that on his own.”

  This interested him. “Why not?” he asked. “What would he have against it?”

  She didn’t answer. She set her hands on the boardwalk railing and looked out at the ocean. It was five o’clock at least, maybe later, and only one or two swimmers remained. A single white Styrofoam raft skated away on the surf. Couples strolled along the edge, dressed in clean, dry clothing that gave them the lovingly tended look of small children awakened from naps. There were flattened squares of sand where families had been camped on blankets, and abandoned drip-castles and bucket-shaped towers. But no Leon. “Maybe he’s back at the cottage,” Morgan said. “Emily?”

  She was crying. Tears rolled singly down her cheeks while she faced straight ahead, wide-eyed. “Why, Emily,” Morgan said. He wished Bonny were here. He put an arm around Emily, clumsily, and said what he supposed Bonny might say. “There, now. Never mind,” he told her, and when she turned toward h
im, he folded her in to him and said, “Never you mind, Emily.” Her hair smelled like fresh linen that had hung to dry in the sun all day. The camera, which she clutched to her chest, made a boxy shape between them, but elsewhere she was soft and boneless, surprisingly slight; there was nothing to her. He was startled by a sudden ache that made him tighten his arms and pull her hard against him. His head grew light. She made some sound, a kind of gasp, and tore away. “Emily, wait!” he said. It was difficult to get his breath. He said, “Emily, let me explain,” but she had already backed off, and Morgan was left reeling and hot-faced with shame, and before he could straighten out this new catastrophe, he looked down and saw Leon passing below them, absorbed in the evening paper.

  10

  They lost their good weather on Monday and didn’t see the sun again till Thursday, and by then it was too late; everyone remaining in the cottage was annoyed with everyone else. Billy and Priscilla left early, in a huff—Priscilla driving Brindle’s car. Louisa quarreled with Kate about some blueberry muffins, and Bonny told Morgan that he’d have to take Louisa in the pickup, going home. She certainly couldn’t travel with the two of them together. But Morgan didn’t want to take her. He looked forward to making the trip alone, with an extra-early start and no stops along the way. Then as soon as he reached home, he figured, he would pay a call on Joshua Bennett, the antique dealer. And maybe afterward he’d wander on downtown, just to see what he’d missed. No, there wasn’t any room for Louisa in his plans. So Saturday morning, while the others were still packing, he threw his encyclopedia into the truckbed. “Goodbye, everybody,” he said, and he left. Traveling down their little street, before he turned onto the highway, he could look in the rear-view mirror and see Kate chasing after him, and Bonny descending the porch steps calling something, and Louisa shading her eyes in the door. In this family, you could never have a simple leavetaking. There were always threads and tangles trailing.

  He drove slightly over the speed limit, once even swerving to the shoulder of the road to bypass a line of cars. He had only a few minutes’ wait at the Kent Narrows and none at all on the Bridge. Skimming across the Bridge, he felt he was soaring. He reached the city limits at eleven, and was home by eleven-twenty—long before Bonny and the others.

  The yard was overgrown, littered with rolled newspapers. The house was cool and musty-smelling behind its drawn shades, and there was a mountain of mail in the hall beneath the mail slot. In the dining room Brindle sat playing solitaire. Coffee stains yellowed the front of her bathrobe. She trilled her fingers absently when he walked in, and then she laid a jack of diamonds on a queen of spades. “Pardon my not bringing in the papers,” she said, “but I didn’t want to go outside because Robert Roberts was parked in front of the house for most of the week.”

  “Persisting, is he?” Morgan said. He sat down next to her to sort the mail.

  “I couldn’t even go for milk, or to buy a loaf of bread, so I managed on what was here. Sardines and corned-beef hash, mainly. I feel like someone on a submarine; I have this craving for lettuce. But it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t really mind. It made me think of back when we were kids, when we were poor. Morgan,” she said, pausing with a ten of clubs in mid-air, “weren’t we happier, in some ways, when we were up against it?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, we’re still up against it,” Morgan said.

  There was a dainty blue envelope from Priscilla that must contain a thank-you note. It made him tired to think of it. He passed on to a thicker one that looked more promising, and ripped it open. Inside was a sheaf of photographs, wrapped in a letter. He checked the signature: Emily. Now what? Dear Morgan and Bonny, she wrote, in a neat, italic hand that struck him as stunted. Thank you again for a lovely vacation. I hope we did not put you to too much trouble. Toward the end we were so rushed, getting off in time to beat the dark, that I didn’t feel we properly said goodbye. But it was so nice of you to have us and we all had such a …

  Morgan grimaced and turned to the photos. He flipped through them idly. Then he sat straighter and went through them again. He laid one on the dining-room table and another one beside it, and another. Bonny, Robert, Brindle, Kate …

  Each person sat alone, suspended in an amber light that surely did not exist in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Bonny folded her arms across her stomach and smiled a radiant smile. Robert Roberts shone like a honey-mooner in his borrowed shirt, and Brindle’s skin had the mellow glow of a priceless painting. Kate with her stubborn pout was as sultry and mysterious as a piece of exotic fruit. Morgan’s sombrero, pushed back, was a halo, and the white streaks in his beard gave him the depth and texture of something carved. Well, it was only the film. It was cut-rate film, or out of date, or underexposed.

  But each person gazed out so steadily, with such trust, such concentration. Emily herself, marble-pale in folds of black, met his scrutiny with eyes so clear that he imagined he could see through them and behind them; he could see what she must see, how his world must look to her. A buoyant little bubble of hope began to rise in him. Over and over, he sorted through the pictures, rearranging them, aligning them, dropping them, smiling widely and sighing and laughing, ignoring his sister’s astonished stare: a man in love.

  1976

  1

  When spring came, Emily started walking. She walked all spring and summer, down alleyways, across tattered rags of parks, through stores that smelled of pickles and garlic. She went in the front doors and out the back, emerging on some unknown street full of delivery trucks, stacked wooden crates, construction workers with pneumatic drills tearing up the pavement. Her ballet slippers, nearly soundless, tripped along in time to the music in her head. She liked songs about leaving, about women who packed up and left, and men who woke to find their beds unexpectedly empty. If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone … She slipped between two children sharing popcorn from a bag. One of these mornings, it won’t be long, you’ll call my name and I’ll be gone … She brushed against an old lady with a shopping bag full of bottles, did not apologize, kept going. I know you, rider, going to miss me when I’m … Gone, gone, gone: her slippers thumped it out. She had a spiky step to begin with, but every day, all over again, she softened; she would slow down bit by bit, and wilt, and grow calm. She would think of how Leon’s jacket hung across that broad, subtle curve between his shoulder blades. How complete his words sounded—more certain than other people’s, spoken in an even voice that carried some special weight. How he always kept his mouth closed, not tightly clamped but relaxed and gentle, giving her, for some reason, an impression of secrets working within him.

  She sighed and turned home, after all.

  Often, on these walks, she was followed by Morgan Gower—a wide leather hat and a tumult of beard, loping along behind her. If she paused till he caught up, he’d make a nuisance of himself. He had entered some new stage, developed a new fixation. It was harmless, really, but annoying. He might declare himself to her anywhere—fling out his arms in the middle of the Broadway Fish Market, beam down at her, full of joy. “Last night I dreamed you went to bed with me.” She would click her tongue and walk away. She would march on out and down the block, cut through an alley past a grinding garbage truck, and he would follow, but he kept his distance. His hat rounded corners like a flying saucer, level and spinning, the rest of him sauntering beneath. Glancing back, she had to laugh. Then she turned away again, but he’d already noticed; she heard him laugh too. Didn’t he realize she had problems on her mind? She was overhung by thoughts of Leon, like someone traveling under a cloud. First marching, then drifting, she paced out the knots and snarls of life with Leon. Love was not a comedy. But here came Morgan, laughing. She gave in and stopped once more and waited. He arrived beside her and pointed at the neon sign that swung above their heads. “Look! LaTrella’s Rooms. Weekly! Daily! Let’s just nip upstairs.”

  “Really, Morgan.”

  And even in front of Leon—what did Morgan imagine he was doing
? In front of glowering, dark Leon, he said, “Emily, fetch your toothbrush. We’re eloping.” When there was music, anywhere—a car radio passing on the street—he would seize her by the waist and dance. He danced continually, nowadays. It seemed his feet could not keep quiet. She had never known him to act so silly.

  Fortunately, Leon didn’t take him seriously.

  “You’d be getting more than you bargained for,” he said to Morgan.

  Still, she said, “Morgan, I wish you wouldn’t joke like that in front of Leon. What must he think?”

  “What should he think? I’m stealing you away,” Morgan said, and he circled the kitchen, where Emily happened to be washing dishes, and threw open all the cupboards. “Which things are you bringing with you? These plates? This bowl? This two-quart vinyl orange-juice pitcher?”

  She rested her soapy hands on the sink and watched him. “Morgan,” she said. “Don’t you ever get self-conscious?”

  “Well,” he said.

  He closed a cupboard door. He stroked his beard.

  “That’s a very interesting question,” he said. “I’m glad you asked me that. The fact is … ah, yes, I do.” She blinked. “You do?”

  “The fact is,” he said, “with you: well, yes, I do.”

  He stood before her, smiling. There was something clumsy about him that made her see, suddenly, what he must have been like as a boy—one of those bumbling boys who can’t think what to talk about with girls; or who talk too much, perhaps, out of nervousness—compulsively relating the entire plots of movies or explaining how the internal-combustion engine works. It was a shock; she had never pictured him that way. And anyhow, she was probably wrong, for an instant later he was back to the Morgan she had always known: a gray-streaked, twinkling clown of a man, swinging into a soft-shoe dance across her kitchen floor.

  At least he could make her laugh.

  2

  She walked through summer and into fall. She did other things too, of course—gave puppet shows, sewed costumes, cooked, helped Gina with her homework. But at night, when she closed her eyes, she saw a maze of streets and traffic, the way compulsive chess-players see chessboards in their dreams. She was revisited by the smallest details of her walks—by the clank of a foot on a manhole cover, the spark of mica in concrete, and the Bicentennial fire hydrants sticking out their stunted arms like so many defective babies. She opened her eyes, sat up, rearranged her pillow. “What’s the trouble?” Leon would ask.