Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [131]
It was cold, even in the sunlight. He raised his collar around his ears. He saw the newspaper on Bonny’s front walk. Ten-something in the morning and she hadn’t brought it in yet; typical. A cardinal was sitting in the dogwood tree, a drop of red in a net of black branches. Morgan wondered if it could be one of those who’d hatched in that nest in the mock-orange bush a few years back. He felt some proprietary interest. All one summer he’d chased the cat away; the parent birds would alert him, fluttering and giving their anxious chirps that sounded like the clink of loose change in a pocket. But didn’t cardinals migrate? His cigarette tasted like burning trash. He ground it out.
Then here came Billy’s wife, Priscilla, tapping up the walk in her spiffy white coat, carrying her basket-shaped purse that was sure to have a whale carved on its lid. She disappeared into the house. (She had to step right over the paper.) She was extraneous, no one he ever gave much thought to; he dismissed her instantly. He leaned forward and watched the door open again. Out popped a boy. His grandson? Todd? If so, he’d grown. He was carrying a yellow skateboard, and when he reached the street he just walked away—here one second, gone the next, for Morgan didn’t watch after him. He was centered on that door still.
A long time went by. He leaned against the hood of the truck and listened to the engine ticking as it cooled.
The door first darkened, drawing inward, and then vanished altogether. Bonny stepped out on the stoop. Beneath her matted brown cardigan she wore something peasantish, unbecoming—a gauzy, full blouse, and a gathered skirt that made her look fat. Morgan assumed she was heading for the paper, but she ignored it as the others had and continued down the walk. Morgan slid around behind the truck. She didn’t even look in his direction. She turned west, bustling along. He saw something flash in her hand—her red billfold, no doubt overstuffed as always with credit cards, outdated photos, and wrinkled little wads of money.
For a while he followed, keeping well back. He knew where she was going, of course. On a Sunday morning, with Priscilla there, and Todd, and who knew how many other people, she’d be off to the bakery for cinnamon rolls. But he followed anyway, and fixed his eyes on her. She’d let her hair grow, he noticed—a mistake. The puffy little clump at the back of her neck had turned into a sort of oval, with tattered ends.
What was going on in that head?
This was why he’d come: to find out. He’d driven here without wondering what for, and was confronted with it now so abruptly that he stopped short. All he wanted to ask was, why had she done it?
Was some meaning implied?
Did she imagine …?
No, surely not.
Did she imagine he really had passed away?
“Passed away” was all he was up to just now. “Died” would stick in his throat. No, he couldn’t ask that.
He continued to stand there while Bonny went on racing toward the bakery.
Then he turned and went back to the house. He circled around it. (The front door opened to the center hall, where anyone might see him enter.) He walked to the side, toward the screen porch, reached through a rip in the screen and raised the rusty hook and let himself in. The moldly smell of the wicker furniture—like mice, like cheap magazines—reminded him of summer. He tried the knob of the glass-paned door that led to the living room. It was unlocked. (He’d warned them a thousand times.) Soundlessly, he slipped in.
The room was empty. Last night’s Parcheesi game lay scrambled in front of the cold gray fireplace. A cup was making a ring on the coffee table. He crossed to the hall. From the kitchen Priscilla called, “Bonny? Back so soon?”
He darted toward the stairs, keeping to