Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [47]
The weather had turned out fine, after all. It was a warm, yellow-green day, and daffodils were blooming near the garage. A smiling brown maid, on loan from Uncle Ollie, bore a tray of drinks through the crowd, picking her way carefully around the muddy patches where the spring reseeding had not yet taken hold. The bride stood sipping champagne and listening to an elderly gentleman whom Morgan had never seen before. His other daughters—oddly plain in their dress-up clothes—passed around sandwiches and little things on toothpicks, and his mother was telling the groom’s mother why she lived on the third floor. “I started out on the second floor,” she said, “but moved on account of the goat.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Murphy, patting her pearls.
“This goat was housebroken, naturally, but the drawback was that I am the only person in this family who reads Time magazine. In fact, I have a subscription. And as coincidence would have it, the goat had only been trained on Time magazine. I mean, he would only … I mean, if the necessity arose, the only place he was willing to … was on a Time magazine spread on the floor. He recognized that red border, I suppose. And so you see if I were to lay my magazine aside even for a second, why, along this animal would come and just … would up and … would …”
“He’d pee all over it,” Morgan said. “Tough luck if she wasn’t through reading it.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Murphy said. She took a sip from her glass.
At Morgan’s elbow, in a splintered wicker chair, an unknown man sat facing in the other direction. Maybe he was from the groom’s side. He had a bald spot at the back of his head; fragile wisps of hair were drawn across it. He raised a drink to his lips. Morgan saw his weighty signet ring. “Billy?” Morgan said. He went around to the front of the chair. Good God, it was Billy, Bonny’s brother.
“Nice wedding, Morgan,” Billy said. “I’ve been to a lot, you know—mostly my own. I’m an expert on weddings.” He laughed. His voice was matter-of-fact, but to Morgan it was the misplaced, eerie matter-of-factness sometimes encountered in dreams. How could this be Billy? What had happened here? Morgan had last seen Billy not a month ago. He said, “Billy, from the back of your head I didn’t know you.”
“Really?” Billy said, unperturbed. “Well, how about from the front?”
From the front he was the same as ever—boyish-looking, with a high, round forehead and dazzling blue eyes. But no, if you met him on the street somewhere, wouldn’t he be just another half-bald businessman? Only someone who’d known him as long as Morgan had could find the bones in his slackening face. Morgan stood blinking at him. Billy seemed first middle-aged and anonymous; then he was Bonny’s high-living baby brother; then he was middle-aged again—like one of those trick pictures that alter back and forth as you shift your position. “Well?” Billy said.
“Have some champagne, why don’t you?” Morgan asked him.
“No, thanks, I’ll stick to scotch.”
“Have some cheese, then. It’s very expensive.”
“Good old Morgan,” Billy said, toasting him. “Good old, cheap old Morgan, right?”
Morgan wandered away again. He looked for someone else to talk to, but none of the guests seemed his type. They were all so genteel and well modulated, sipping their champagne, the ladies placing their high heels carefully to avoid sinking through the sod. In fact, who here was a friend of Morgan’s? He stopped and looked around him. Nobody was. They were Bonny’s friends, or Amy’s, or the groom’s. A twin flew by—Susan, in chiffon. Her flushed, earnest face and steamy spectacles reminded him that his daughters, at least, bore some connection to him. “Sue!” he cried.
But she flung back, “I’m not Sue, I’m Carol.”
Of course she was. He hadn’t made that mistake in years. He walked on, shaking his head. Under the dogwood tree, three uncles in gray suits were holding what appeared to be a committee meeting. “No, I’ve been letting my cellar go, these days,” one of them was saying. “Been drinking what I have on hand. To put it bluntly, I’m seventy-four years old.