Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [50]
“There’s no process going on here.”
He stroked his beard.
Mrs. Apple said, “But … Emily? Show him the shadow puppets.” She told Morgan, “She’s trying something new, Doctor: shadow puppets, out of paper. See?” She crossed to the sewing machine and took something from one of its drawers. It was the silhouette of a knight in armor, attached to a slender rod. “You notice he’s hinged at the joints,” she said. “You work him behind a screen. He casts a shadow on the screen. Isn’t that clever?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Morgan. He looked around the room. He wondered what Emily sat on while she worked at the sewing machine. The stepladder, maybe? Even in his fondest fantasies he had not imagined such starkness. He was fascinated. “And will you be using shadow puppets in your shows now?” he asked Emily.
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“No,” Leon said.
There was a pause. Mrs. Apple gave a little laugh.
“With shadow puppets,” Leon said, “it’s all how they’re hinged, nothing more. How Emily caused their joints to swing when she made them.”
“So?” Emily said.
“You just scoot them along the ledge behind the screen, and their joints fall into place. There’s nothing to do, even less to do than there is with the old kind of puppets.”
“So?”
They stared at each other.
Morgan cleared his throat.
“Is that your child I’m hearing?” he asked.
Of course it was. She was singing something in a small, cracked voice, off in some other room. But nobody answered him. He poked his head out into the hall. Then he crossed the hall and went into the bedroom. There was a mattress in one corner and a bureau in another, and a narrow cot along one wall. A child sat on the cot, fitting Tinker Toys together. She sang, “… how to get to Sesame Street …” When she saw Morgan, she stopped.
Morgan said, “Hello there.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
He heard the Merediths coming, and he said quickly, “Would you like my hat?” He tore his hat from his head and set it on hers, tilting it back so it wouldn’t engulf her completely.
From the doorway, Emily said, “Gina! Take that off. You never try another person’s hat on.”
“It’s my hat,” Gina said. “He gave it to me.”
“Take it off,” Leon said.
“No.”
She had a round face and a pointed chin; she had to keep her chin raised so the hat wouldn’t slide down over her eyes. This made her look proud and challenging. In fact, she resembled Leon, Morgan thought. When Emily tried to lift the hat from her head, Gina fought her hands away. “It’s my hat. It’s mine.”
Morgan said, “Surely. It’s a gift.”
Emily stopped struggling, but she continued to stand between Morgan and the child, shielding her. Her eyes were pale and cold. She had her arms folded tightly, and Leon stood firm beside her.
Mrs. Apple said, “Dr. Morgan?” She arrived breathless, and handed him another shadow puppet. This one was a king. He might have stepped out of a stained-glassed window; red and blue transparent paper covered the pierced design in his robe. Lit behind a screen, he would cast jewel-like colored shadows. “Isn’t he marvelous?” Mrs. Apple said. “It’s art! You could hang it on the wall.”
“That’s true, I could,” Morgan said. He stroked the colored paper with a thumb. Something about the precision of the design made him feel sad and deprived. His gaze slid off the king and away, landing finally on the bureau. Its top was nearly bare. There were no bottles or safety pins or ticket stubs; just a single framed photo of Leon and Emily holding hands in front of this building. Gina rode on Leon’s shoulders. Her plump little calves bracketed his neck. All three of them were smiling squintily into the sunlight. Morgan stepped closer and bent over the photo, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and index finger. The king hung forgotten in his left hand. Bemused, he peered into a drawer that was partway open. Then he opened it further and studied its contents: three white shirts and a box of Kleenex. “Dr. Morgan!” Emily said sharply.
“Yes, yes.”
He followed the others out of the room, laying a hand on Gina’s head as he passed. Her hair was so soft, it