Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [18]
But customers here were rare, and Morgan didn’t want to interrupt. “No, no,” he said, holding up a hand. “I must be on my way. Blessings!” and he backed out the door.
He cut through an alley and came out on Marianna Street. An exotic woman with a torrent of black hair stood beside a hot-dog cart. Her make-up was stupendous—a coppery glaze on her skin, a flaring red slash of a mouth, and mascara so heavily applied that each eyelash seemed strung with black beads. Now that it was winter, she was wrapped in old coats and sweaters, but Morgan knew from warmer seasons that underneath she wore a red lace dress and an armload of chipped, flaking, gold-tone bracelets. “Zosem pas!” he called out to her.
“Well, hey!” she said. She spoke extra brightly, exaggerating her lip movements. “How you today? Get a letter from home?”
Morgan smiled humbly and looked perplexed.
“Letter!” she shouted. She wrote on her palm with an imaginary pencil. “You get a letter?”
“Ah!” said Morgan, suddenly realizing. He shook his head. “Pok,” he said sadly. “Kun salomen baso.” The corners of his mouth turned down; he scuffed a boot against the wheel of her cart.
“You poor man,” she said. “Well, maybe tomorrow, huh?”
“Brankuso,” he told her. “Zosem pas!” and he waved and grinned and walked on.
At the corner of Marianna Street and Crosswell he hesitated. What he would really like was to turn down Crosswell—just ahead in that general direction. What harm could it do? He hadn’t been in several weeks. He’d resisted temptation admirably. He shoved both hands in his pockets and set out.
CRAFTS UNLIMITED, the sign in the middle of the block said. It was an elderly building, four stories tall. The first-floor bay window was full of patchwork quilts, cornhusk dolls, samplers, woven goods, and puppets. The windows above it were narrower, dark and uncurtained. It was the third-floor windows that Morgan watched, from the shadow of a Laundromat doorway—Emily and Leon Meredith’s windows. He had learned their address with no trouble at all, just looked it up in the telephone book. He’d learned that along about now (just before the baby’s nap, he supposed) one or the other of the Merediths would float up behind the window on the left and tug it open. A hand would trail out—Emily’s pale hand or Leon’s darker one—and there would be a still, considering moment while they pondered how to dress the baby for her outing. Morgan enjoyed that. (Bonny, with the last few children, had simply thrown whatever was closest into the stroller—a blanket, or some older child’s jacket; anything would do.) He imagined that the Merediths would also sprinkle a few drops of milk on their wrists before giving their daughter a bottle, and would test the water with the tip of an elbow before lowering her into her bath—whatever was instructed, he liked to believe. Whatever the proper method was. He waited, smiling upward, with both hands buried deep in his pockets.
Had he missed them? No, here they came, out the glass door beside the CRAFTS UNLIMITED sign. Leon carried the baby over his shoulder. (Naturally they would not have bought a carriage.) She must be nine or ten months old by now—a fat, apple-cheeked child in a thick snowsuit. Emily walked next to Leon, with her hand tucked through his arm and her face lifted and bright, talking to the baby and tripping along in her shabby trenchcoat and little black slippers. Morgan loved the way the Merediths dressed. It seemed they had decided, long ago, what clothes would be their trademark, and they never swerved from it. Leon always wore clean khaki trousers and a white shirt. Below the sleeves of his rust-colored corduroy jacket, a half-inch of immaculate white cuff emerged. And Emily wore one of three scoop-necked leotards—brown, plum, or (most often) black—with a matching wrap skirt of some limp material that flowed to mid-calf length. He had noticed such outfits in modern-dance productions on TV, and admired their fluidity. Now he saw that, worn on the street, they made fashion