Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [125]
Then the apartment was suddenly still and Morgan was in the bedroom. He stood in the light from the hall, gazing into the mirror above one bureau. His Panama hat was still on his head. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He emptied his pockets of change, a crackling pack of Camels, and something that rolled a short distance and fell to the floor. He stooped for it, grunting. She said, “Morgan?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Has he gone?”
“Yes.”
“All this ‘Mr. Meredith’ business,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Oh, well, if it makes him happy …”
He came to sit on the edge of the bed. He bent over to kiss her (still in his hat, which seemed about to topple onto her), but just then, slow, unsteady footsteps started across the hall. He straightened up. There was a tiny knock.
In the lighted doorway Louisa stood silhouetted. Her long white nightgown outlined two stick legs. “Morgan?” she said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“I fear I may have trouble sleeping.”
“Jesus, Mother, you’ve barely got to bed yet.”
“Morgan, what was the name of the man we used to see so much of?”
“What man, Mother?”
“He was always around. He lived in our house. Morgan, what was his name?”
“Mother! Christ! Go to bed! Get out of here!”
“Oh, excuse me,” she said.
She wandered away again. They heard her in the living room—first in one part, then in another, as if she were walking without purpose. The springs in the sofa creaked, directly behind their heads.
“You shouldn’t be so rude to her,” Emily told Morgan.
“No,” he said. He sighed.
“Shouting like that! What’s wrong with you?”
“I can’t help it. She never sleeps. She’s down to three hours a night.”
“But that’s the way old people are, Morgan.”
“We don’t have any chance to be alone,” he said. “Mother, Brindle, the baby … it’s like a transplant. I transplanted all the mess from home. It’s like some crazy practical joke. Isn’t it? Why, I even have a teenaged daughter again! Or near teenaged; nowadays they’re adolescents earlier, it seems to me …”
“I don’t mind,” Emily said. “I kind of enjoy it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he told her. “It’s not your problem, really. You stay unencumbered no matter what, like those people who can eat and eat and not gain weight. You’re still in your same wrap skirt. Same leotard.”
Little did he know how many replacement leotards she had had to buy over the years. Evidently, he imagined they lasted forever. She smoothed his hair off his forehead. “You’ll feel better when we move,” she told him. “Naturally, it’s difficult, six people in two bedrooms.”
“Ah! And what will we use for money, for this move?”
“I’ll find some other places to sell my puppets. I don’t think Mrs. Apple pays me enough. And I’ll start making more of them. And Brindle—why can’t Brindle work?”
“What doing? Pumping gas?”
“There must be something.”
“Emily, hasn’t it occurred to you that Brindle’s not all that well balanced?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say—”
“We’re living in a house of lunatics.”
She was silent. It was as if he’d twisted some screw on a telescope.
“Anyway,” he said, more gently, “she has to help out with Mother. She may be a total loss other ways, but at least she saves you some of that—Mother’s little mental lapses and her meals and pills.”
He nudged her over on the bed and lay down next to her, fully dressed, with his head propped against the wall. “What we want to do,” he said, “is desert.”
“Do what?”
“Just ditch them all,” he said, “and go. We want a place that’s smaller, not bigger.”
“Oh, Morgan, talk sense,” she said.
“Sweetheart, you know that Gina would be better off with Leon.”
She sat up sharply. “That’s not true!” she said.
“What kind of life is this for her? Strange ladies in her bedroom … You mark my words.