Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [114]
“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.