Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [0]
If Morning Ever Comes
The Tin Can Tree
A Slipping-Down Life
The Clock Winder
Celestial Navigation
Searching for Caleb
Earthly Possessions
Morgan’s Passing
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
The Accidental Tourist
Breathing Lessons
Saint Maybe
Ladder of Years
A Patchwork Planet
Back When We Were Grownups
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1980 by Anne Tyler Modarressi
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. for permission to reprint an excerpt from the lyrics of “Five Hundred Miles” by Hedy West. Copyright © 1964 by Atzal Music, Inc. All rights on behalf of Atzal Music, Inc., administered by Unichappell Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96708
eISBN: 978-0-307-78837-5
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Also by Anne Tyler
Title Page
Copyright
1967
1968
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
1969
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
1971
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
1973
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
1975
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
1976
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
1977
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
1978
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
1979
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About the Author
1967
There used to be an Easter Fair at the Presbyterian church every year. Early Saturday morning the long, gentle hill out front would be taken over by tents, painted booths, mechanical rides on lease from the Happy Days Amusement Company, and large wooden carts slowly filling up their windows with buttered popcorn. A white rabbit, six feet tall, would bow in a dignified way as he passed out jellybeans from a basket. In the afternoon there would be an egg hunt behind the Sunday School building, and the winner was given a chocolate chicken. Music floated everywhere, strung-out wisps of one song weaving into another. The air always smelled like cotton candy.
But the Baltimore climate was unpredictable. Sometimes it was really too cold for a fair. One year, when Easter fell in March, so little was growing yet that the egg hunt was a joke. The eggs lay exposed and foolish on the bald brown lawn, and children pounced on them with mittened hands. The grownups stood hunched in sweaters and scarves. They seemed to have strayed in from the wrong season. It would have been a better fair with no human beings at all—just the striped tents flapping their spring-colored scallops, the carousel playing “After the Ball,” and the plastic horses prancing around riderless.
At the puppet show, in a green and white tent lit by a chilly greenish glow, Cinderella wore a strapless evening gown that made her audience shiver. She was a glove puppet with a large, round head and braids of yellow yarn. At the moment she was dancing with the Prince, who had a Dutch Boy haircut. They held each other so fondly, it was hard to remember they were really just two hands clasping each other. “You have a beautiful palace,” she told him. “The floors are like mirrors! I wonder who scrubs them.”
Her voice was wry and throaty, not at all puppet-like. You almost expected to see the vapor rising from her painted mouth.
The Prince said, “I have no idea, Miss … what was that name?”
Instead of answering, she looked down at her feet. The pause grew too long. The children shifted in their folding chairs.