Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [12]
“Your father would have sold this house long ago,” Morgan often told her. “Capital gains or no capital gains, he’d say you should get a new one.”
But Bonny would say, “Why? What for?” She would ask, “What’s wrong with this one? Everything’s been kept up. I just had the roofers in. The painters came last May.”
“Yes, but—”
“What is it that bothers you? Can you name one thing that’s in disrepair? Name it and I’ll fix it. Every inch is in perfect shape, and the Davey tree men just fertilized the trees.”
Yes, but.
He went out front for the paper. Under his bare feet the spikes of frosty grass crunched and stabbed. Everything glittered. A single rubber flip-flop skated on the ice in the birdbath. He dashed back in, hissing, and slammed the door behind him. Upstairs an alarm clock burred, as if set off by the crash. They would be swarming everywhere soon. Morgan removed the news section and the comics section, laid them on a kitchen chair, and sat on them. Then he lit his cigarette and opened to the classified ads.
LOST. White wedding dress size 10. No questions asked.
He grinned around his cigarette.
Now here came Bonny, slumping in, still buttoning her housecoat, trying to keep her slippers on her feet. Her hair was uncombed and there was a crease down one side of her face. “Did it freeze?” she asked him. “Is there frost on the ground? I meant to cover the boxwoods.” She lifted a curtain to peer out the window. “Oh, Lord, it froze.”
“Mm?”
She opened a cupboard door and clattered something. A blackened silver ashtray arrived inside the partition of Morgan’s newspaper. He tapped his cigarette on it. “Listen to this,” he told her. “FOUND. Article of jewelry, in Druid Hill Park. Caller must identify. I would call and say it was a diamond ring.”
“How come?” Bonny asked. She took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.
“Well, chances are no one wears real pearls to the zoo, or platinum bracelets, but plenty of people wear engagement rings, right? And besides, you can be so general about a ring. Yes, I would say a ring. Absolutely.”
“Maybe so,” said Bonny, cracking an egg on a skillet.
“LOST. Upper denture. Great sentimental value,” Morgan read out. Bonny snorted. He said, “I made it up about the sentimental value.”
“I never would have guessed,” Bonny told him.
He could hear bare feet pounding upstairs, water running, hairdryers humming. The smell of percolating coffee filled the kitchen, along with the crisp, sharp smoke from his Camel. Oh, he was hitting his stride, all right. He had managed it, broken into another day. He spread his paper wider. “I love the classifieds,” he said. “They’re so full of private lives.”
“Are you going to get those shoes fixed this morning?”
“Hmm? Listen to this: M.G. All is not forgiven and never will be.”
Bonny set a cup of coffee in front of him.
“What if that’s me?” Morgan asked.
“What if what’s you?”
“M.G. Morgan Gower.”
“Did you do something unforgivable?”
“You can’t help wondering,” Morgan said, “seeing a thing like that. You can’t help stopping to think.”
“Oh, Morgan,” Bonny said. “Why do you always take the papers so personally?”
“Because I’m reading the personals,” he told her. He turned the page. “WANTED,” he read. “Geotechnical lab chief.”
(For the past nineteen years he had supposedly been looking for a better job. Not that he expected to find it.)
“Here’s one. Experienced go-go girls.”
“Ha.”
He was employed by Bonny’s family, managing one of their hardware stores. He had always been a tinkering, puttering, hardware sort of a man. Back in graduate school, his advisor had once complained because Morgan had spent a whole conference period squatting in the corner, talking over his shoulder while he worked on a leaky radiator pipe.
WANTED. Barmaid, dog groomer, forklift operator.
What he liked were those ads with character. (Driver to chauffeur elderly