Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [48]
At a gap in the hedge, Morgan slipped through. He found himself on the sidewalk, next to the brisk, noisy street, on a normal Saturday afternoon. His car was parked alongside the curb. He opened the door and climbed in. For a while he just sat there, rubbing his damp palms on the knees of his trousers. But the sun through the glass was baking him, and finally he rolled down a window, dug through his pockets for the keys, and started the engine.
These were his closest friends: Potter the musical-instrument man, the hot-dog lady, the Greek tavern-keeper on Broadway, and Kazari the rug merchant. None of them would do. For one reason or another, there wasn’t a single person he could tell, “My oldest daughter’s getting married. Could I sit here with you and smoke a cigarette?”
He floated farther and farther downtown, as if descending through darkening levels of water. All’s Fair Pawnshop, Billiards, Waterbeds, Beer, First House of Jesus, SOUL BROTHER DO NOT BURN. Flowers were blooming in unlikely places—around a city trashcan and in the tiny, parched weed-patch beneath a rowhouse window. He turned a corner where a man sat on the curb flicking out the blade of his knife, slamming it shut with the heel of his hand, and flicking it out again. He traveled on. He passed Meller Street, then Merger Street. He turned down Crosswell. He parked and switched the engine off and sat looking at Crafts Unlimited.
It was months since he’d been here. The shop window was filled with Easter items now—hand-decorated eggs and stuffed rabbits, a patchwork quilt like an early spring garden. The Merediths’ windows were empty, as always; you couldn’t tell a thing from them. Maybe they’d moved. (They could move in a taxi, with one suitcase, after ten minutes’ preparation.) He slid out of the car and walked toward the shop. He climbed the steps, pushed through the glass door, and gazed up the narrow staircase. But he didn’t have what it took to continue. (What would he say? How would he explain himself?) Instead, he turned left, through a second glass door and into the crafts shop. It smelled of raw wood. A gray-haired, square-boned woman in a calico smock was arranging hand-carved animals on a table. “Hello,” she said, and then she glanced up and gave him a startled look. It was the top hat, he supposed. He wished he’d worn something more appropriate. And why were there no other customers? He was all alone, conspicuous, in a roomful of quilted silence. Then he saw the puppets. “Ah, so!” he said. “Ze poppets!” Surprisingly, he seemed to have developed an accent—from what country, he couldn’t say. “Zese poppets are for buying?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” the woman said.
They lay on a center table: Pinocchio, a princess, a dwarf, an old lady, all far more intricate than the first ones he’d seen. Their heads were no longer round, simple, rubber-ball heads but were constructed of some padded cloth, with tiny stitches making wrinkles and bulges. The old-lady puppet, in particular, had a face so furrowed that he couldn’t help running his finger across it. “Wonderful!” he said, still in his accent.
“They’re sewn by a girl named Emily Meredith,” the woman told him. “A remarkable craftsman, really.”
Morgan nodded. He felt a mixture of jealousy and happiness. “Yes, yes,” he wanted to say, “don’t I know her very well? Don’t I know both of them? Who are you, to speak of them?” But also he wanted to hear how this woman saw them, what the rest of the world had to say about them. He waited, still holding the puppet. The woman turned back to her animals.
“Perhaps I see her workroom,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“She leeve nearby, yes?”
“Why, yes, she lives just upstairs, but I’m not sure she—”
“Zis means a great deal to me,” Morgan said.
Across from him, on the other side of the