Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [103]
Morgan was interested. “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding to himself. “I see what you mean.”
Emily rattled on, like somebody clacking away in a fever. “When I jog, you know what I imagine? I imagine I’m in training for some emergency—a forced flight, a national disaster. It’s comforting to know that I’m capable of running several miles. Nights, sometimes, I wake with a jolt, scared to death, heart just racing. Then I tell myself, ‘Now, Emily, you can manage. You are very good at surviving. You can run five miles at a stretch, if you have to, and your suitcase can be ready in thirty seconds flat—’ ”
“What you need is a backpack,” Morgan said. “An Army surplus backpack to leave your hands free.”
Emily said, “I am seventeen days overdue.”
“Seventeen days!” Morgan said.
He thought at first she was referring to some new jogging record. Then even after he understood, he seemed to have trouble absorbing it. (It was years since he and Bonny had had to concern themselves with such things.) “Think of that!” he said, stalling for time, nodding more rapidly.
“Of course, it could be a false alarm.”
“Oh, yes, a false alarm.”
“Will you please stop echoing?”
It hit him all at once. He straightened and yanked the truck’s handle, and the door swung out, flooding Emily’s face with light. She looked sleepy and creased; her eyes had adjusted to the dark. But she met his gaze firmly. “Emily,” he said, “what are you telling me?”
“What do you think I’m telling you?”
He noticed that her face was pinched, as if from fear. He saw this suddenly from her viewpoint—seventeen days of waiting, not telling a soul. He shut the door again and laid an arm around her, heavily. “You should have mentioned this earlier,” he said.
“I’m scared of what Leon will say.”
“Yes, well …” He coughed. “Ah … will he realize? That is, will he realize that, ah, this is not his doing?”
“Of course he will,” Emily said. “He does know how to count.”
Morgan thought this over—all that it revealed. He patted her shoulder and said, “Well, don’t worry, Emily.”
“Maybe it’s nerves,” Emily said.
“Oh, yes. Nerves.” He saw that he was echoing again and he quickly covered it up. “These things are vicious circles. What’s the word I want? Self-perpetuating. The greater the delay, the more nervous you become, of course, and so the delay is even greater and you become even more—”
“I do believe in abortion,” Emily said, “but I don’t believe in it for me.”
“Oh?” he said.
He frowned.
“Well, for who, then?” he asked.
“I mean, I don’t think I could go through with the actual process, Morgan.”
“Oh, yes. Well—”
“I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.”
“Oh. Well, naturally. Of course not,” he said. “No, naturally not.”
He noticed that he was still patting her—an automatic gesture that was beginning to make his palm feel numb. “We shouldn’t stay out here, Emily,” he said. “You’d better go in now.”
“I thought I was so careful,” she told him. “I don’t understand it.”
Bonny used to say that—long, long ago in a younger, sunnier world. He had been through it all before. He was a grandfather several times over. He steered Emily back to her building at a halting, elderly pace. “Yes, well, yes, well,” he said, filling the silence. On her front steps he thought to say, “But we could always ask a doctor. Get some tests.”
“You know I can’t stand doctors. I hate to just … hand myself over,” Emily said.
“Now, now, don’t upset yourself. Why, tomorrow you may find this was all a mistake—nerves or a miscalculation. You’ll see.”
He kissed her good night, and held the door while she slipped inside, and smiled at her through the glass. He was calm as a rock. And why shouldn’t he be?
None of this was happening.
4
Now every day that passed meant another blank on