Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [27]
“All that stuff is Communist anyhow,” said Mr. Meredith.
“Is … what?”
“Sure, this tractor-farming, workers-unite bit, killing off the Tsar and Anastasia …”
“Well, I’m not … I believe that came a little later.”
“What is it, you’re one of these college leftists?”
“No, but I don’t think Tolstoy lived that long.”
“Of course he did,” Mr. Meredith said. “Where do you think your friend Lenin would be if he didn’t have Tolstoy?”
“Lenin?”
“Do you deny it? Look, my girl,” Mr. Meredith said. He leaned earnestly toward her, lacing his fingers together. (He must sit this way at the bank, Emily thought, explaining to some farmer why he couldn’t have a loan on his tobacco crop.) “The minute Lenin got his foot in the door, first person he called on was Tolstoy. Tolstoy this, Tolstoy that … Any time they wanted any propaganda written, ‘Ask Tolstoy,’ he’d say. ‘Ask Leo.’ Why, sure! They didn’t tell you that in school?”
“But … I thought Tolstoy died in nineteen …”
“Forty,” said Mr. Meredith.
“Forty?”
“I was in my senior year in college.”
“Oh.”
“And Stalin!” said Mr. Meredith. “Listen, there was a combination. Tolstoy and Stalin.”
Leon turned suddenly from the window and left the room. They heard him going up the stairs to the sleeping quarters. Emily and Mrs. Meredith looked at each other.
“If you want my personal opinion,” Mr. Meredith said, “Tolstoy was a bit of a thorn in Stalin’s side. See, he couldn’t unseat Tolstoy, the guy was sort of well known by then, but at the same time he was too old-line. You knew he was pretty well off, of course. Owned a large piece of land.”
“That’s true, he did,” Emily said.
“You can see it must have been a little awkward.”
“Well, yes …”
“ ‘The fact is,’ Stalin says to his henchmen, ‘he’s an old guy. I mean, he’s just a doddering old guy with a large piece of land.’ ”
Emily nodded, her mouth slightly open.
Leon came pounding down the stairs. He entered the parlor with a dictionary open in his hands. “Tolstoy Lev,” he read out, “1828-1910.”
There was a silence.
“Born in eighteen twenty-eight, died in nineteen—”
“All right,” said Mr. Meredith. “But where is this getting us? Don’t try to change the subject, Leon. We were talking about your grades. Your sloppy grades and this damn-fool acting business.”
“I’m serious about my acting,” Leon said.
“Serious! About play-acting?”
“You can’t make me give it up; I’m twenty-one years old. I know my rights.”
“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do,” said Mr. Meredith. “If you refuse, I warn you, Leon: I’m withdrawing you from school. I’m not paying next year’s tuition.”
“Oh, Burt!” Mrs. Meredith said. “You wouldn’t do that! He’d be drafted!”
“Army’s the best thing that could happen to that boy,” Mr. Meredith said.
“You can’t!”
“Oh, can’t I?”
He turned to Leon. “I’m driving home with you today,” he said, “unless I have your signed and notarized statement that you will drop all extracurricular activities—plays, girlfriends …”
He flapped a pink, tight-skinned hand in Emily’s direction.
“Not a chance,” said Leon.
“Start packing, then.”
“Burt!” Mrs. Meredith cried.
But Leon said, “Gladly. I’ll be gone by nightfall. Not home, though—not now or ever again.”
“See what you’ve done?” Mrs. Meredith asked her husband.
Leon walked out of the room. Through the parlor’s front windows (small-paned, with rippling glass) Emily saw his angular figure repeatedly dislocating itself, jarring apart and drawing back together as he strode across the quadrangle. She was left with Leon’s parents, who seemed slapped into silence. She had the feeling that she was one of them, that she would spend the rest of her days in heavily draped parlors—a little dry stick of a person. “Excuse me,” she said, rising. She crossed the room, stepped out the door, and closed it gently behind her. Then she started running after Leon.
She found