Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [45]
“Yes, but, I don’t know …”
“I mean, what would you say? Is it sex, or isn’t it?”
“Bonny, will you just stop hammering at me?”
“Anyhow,” she said, returning to her list, “in this day and age, I bet she’d laugh in my face.”
Morgan rubbed his forehead with two fingers. Really, it occurred to him, if Bonny had been more serious, more responsible, none of this upheaval would be happening. Or at least it wouldn’t be happening quite so soon. It seemed to him that she had let the children slip through her fingers in some sort of sloppy, casual, cheerful style that was uniquely hers. He recalled that once, while chaperoning Kate’s sixth-grade class on a field trip to Washington, she’d lost all eight of her charges in the Smithsonian Institution. They’d been found among showcases full of savages, copying down the recipe for shrunken heads. At the school’s annual mother-daughter picnic, where everyone else brought potato salad and lemonade, Bonny brought a sack of Big Macs and a Thermos of chablis. Yes, and she had such a disastrous effect upon machinery; she had only to settle behind the steering wheel and instantly the car fell apart. Warning lights would blink, steam would issue from the radiator, the muffler would drop off, and hubcaps would roll in every direction and clang along the gutters and slither down storm drains. She’d make one simple right turn and the turn signal would never work again. No wonder he spent half his weekends on his back in the garage! And she’d passed all this on to the girls too. The first driving lesson he gave Amy, the left front window had slid down inside the door and could not be retrieved. For that he’d had to go to the dealer.
And then there was his sister, who hadn’t been out of that bathrobe of hers since Christmas. It hung on her like old orchid petals, wilted, striated, heavy-smelling. And his mother’s memory was failing more than ever now, though she flew into a fury if anyone hinted as much. At supper, proving her sharpness, she’d recite whole portions of “Hiawatha” or the Rubáiyát. “Come, fill the Cup …!” she’d start up out of nowhere, slamming a fork against her glass, and Brindle would say, “Oh, Jesus, not again,” and all the others would groan and fall into their separate, disorderly factions around the table.
Useless? Living this life of his was such hard work that even if he retired tomorrow, he had no hope of feeling useless.
2
A my stood at the top of the stairs, wearing white and carrying roses. The hall window behind her lit her long, filmy skirt. At the bottom of the stairs Morgan waited with his hand on the newel post. He wore his new top hat and a pure-black suit from Second Chance. (There’d been a little fuss about the hat, but he’d held his ground.) He had trimmed his beard. Gold-rimmed spectacles (window glass) perched on his nose. He felt like Abraham Lincoln.
One of Morgan’s failings was that formal, official proceedings—weddings, funerals—never truly affected him. They just didn’t seem to penetrate. He’d lain awake half of last night mourning his daughter, but the fact was that now, with the ceremony about to begin, all that was on his mind was Amy’s roses. He had distinctly heard the wedding-dress lady tell her to carry them low, at arm’s length—too low, even, she said, because if Amy were nervous at all she’d tend to lift them higher. And now, before the music had even started, Amy had her bouquet at breast level. This didn’t trouble Morgan (he couldn’t see that it made the slightest difference), but he wondered why nervousness should cause people to raise their arms. Was it something to do with protecting the heart? Morgan experimented. He clasped his hands first low, then high. He didn’t find the one any more comforting than the other. With his hands folded just beneath his beard, he tried a dipping rhythmic processional, humming to himself as he sashayed across the hall. “Daddy,” Amy hissed. Morgan dropped his hands and hurried back to the newel post.
Kate set the needle on the record. The wedding march began in mid-note. In the living room the