Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [54]
“I was looking for my shoe.”
Emily took the sneaker from her and loosened a knot in the lace. “Now, Gina, listen,” she said. “We’ve got a play to give out in the country today, and we’re leaving before you get back. When kindergarten’s over, you walk home with the Berger girls and wait in the shop till we come. Mrs. Apple says she’ll keep an eye on you.”
“Why can’t I stay home and go with you?”
“Summer will be here soon enough,” Emily told her. “You’ll be home all the time, come summer.”
She slipped the sneaker on Gina’s foot and tied it. Gina’s socks were already creased and soiled and falling down her ankles. Her blouse had egg on the front. Emily had known children like Gina when she was a child herself. They had a kind of extravagant squalor; there was something lush about the tumbled appearance of their clothing. She had always assumed their mothers were to blame, but now she knew better. Not half an hour ago Gina had been neat as a pin; Emily had made certain of it. She plucked a dust ball from Gina’s hair, which was rich and thick-stranded like Leon’s. “Come along,” she told her. “You’ll be late.”
She slung her purse on her shoulder and they left the apartment, clicking the latch very gently because Leon was still asleep. They walked down the stairs, where everyone’s breakfast smells hung in the air—bacon, burned butter, the Conways’ kippered herrings. They passed the door of the shop, which was still dark, and stepped out into the street. It was a warm, sunny morning. The city looked freshly washed, with gold-lit buildings rising through a haze in the distance, women in spring dresses sweeping their stoops, green ivy flooding through the windows of an abandoned rowhouse. Gina hung on to Emily’s hand and skipped and sang:
Miss Lucy had a baby,
She called it Tiny Tim,
She put it in the bathtub
To see if it could swim …
Emily said good morning to Mrs. Ellery, who was shaking out her dust mop, and to the ancient blind man whose daughter, or granddaughter it must have been, set him on his stoop every fair day with a grayish quilt wrapped around his legs. “Nice weather,” Emily called, and the old man nodded, turning his sealed-looking eyelids toward the sun like a plant in the window. She stopped on the second corner to wait for the Berger girls. Helena Berger shooed them out the door—two little freckled redheads in plaid dresses. They ran ahead with Gina, and at the next intersection Emily had to call, “Stop! Wait!” She hurried up, out of breath, while they lurched and teetered on the edge of the curb. She held out her hands, and the younger Berger girl took one and Gina took the other. The Berger child was all bones; Emily felt a rush of love for Gina’s warm, chubby fingers, which were slightly sticky in the creases. She waded across the street, embroiled in children, and turned them loose on the other side. They scattered ahead again, skipping disjointedly.
Miss Lucy called the doctor,
Miss Lucy called the nurse,
Miss Lucy called the lady
With the alligator purse …
Emily sensed a presence nearby, the shape of someone familiar, and she turned and found Morgan Gower loping along beside her. He tipped his battered green Army helmet and smiled. “Morgan,” she said. “How come you’re out so early?”
“I couldn’t sleep past five o’clock this morning,” he said. “There’s too much excitement at the house.”
At Morgan’s house there was always too much excitement. She’d never been there, but she pictured a bulging, seething box of a place—the roof straining off, the side seams splitting. “What is it this time?” she asked him.
“It’s Brindle. My sister. Her sweetheart came back.”
Emily hadn’t known his sister had a sweetheart. She shaded her eyes and called, “Children! Wait for me!” Then she said, “Did Kate get out of her leg cast yet?”
“Who?” he asked. “Oh, yes. Yes, that’s all … but see, at seven or so last night, just at the end of supper, the doorbell rang and Bonny said, ‘Brindle, go see who that is, will you?’ since Brindle was nearest