Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [61]
2
Emily and Leon had given a good deal of thought to Morgan’s wife—to what she must be like, considering the amount of time he spent away from her. He was always dropping in on the Merediths for a visit, mentioning other places he’d just come from and still others where he was heading afterward. Was he ever home at all, in fact? Even weekends? For on Saturdays he engaged in his own unique style of shopping. He would travel to the depths of Baltimore and return with unlikely items: dented canned goods, or knobby packages wrapped in brown paper and tied all around with string in a dozen clumsy knots. (You would think they hadn’t heard of bagging yet, where Morgan shopped.) Sundays he went to fairs and festivals. At events where Emily and Leon took their puppets, they might even run into him purely by chance. They’d look through the scrim at the seated audience—no more than a long, low hillock—and find him standing at the rear, this sudden jutting peak topped by some outlandish hat, always alone, always brooding over something and puffing on a cigarette. (But when they came out afterward to take their bows, he’d be beaming mightily and clapping like a proud parent.) Winters, when the fairs died down, he’d go to church bazaars and grade-school fund-raisers. No occasion was too small for him. He was never too busy to stop and contemplate the appliquéd felt Christmas-tree skirts or the Styrofoam snowmen with sequin eyes. So who was this Bonny, whom he was so eager to leave? Maybe she nagged him, Leon said. Maybe she was one of those tight, crimped ladies holding court alone in her careful living room, among the polished figurines that Morgan mustn’t touch and the crystal ashtrays he mustn’t flick his ashes into. But Emily didn’t think so. Putting together all that Morgan said (his rush of accidents and disasters, his admiration of the Merediths’ stripped apartment), she imagined Bonny as a slattern, in a zip-front housedress and a headful of pincurls. She wasn’t surprised when Morgan parked his car in front of a well-kept brick Colonial house—after all, she’d known there was money, and slate tiles for the roof—but she blinked when she stepped out and found a brown-haired woman in a neat skirt and blouse weeding petunias along the front walk. Well, maybe it was the sister. But Morgan said, “Bonny?”
Bonny straightened and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. There were a few faint smile lines around her eyes. Her lipstick was a chipped, cracked, glossless red. She looked cheerful but noncommittal; she seemed to be waiting for Morgan to explain himself.
“Bonny, this is Emily Meredith,” Morgan said.
Bonny went on waiting.
“Emily and her husband run a puppet show,” Morgan said.
“Oh, really?”
It hadn’t occurred to Emily that Bonny wouldn’t have heard of her. (She had heard of Bonny, after all.) She felt a little hurt. She held out her hand and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Gower.”
Bonny shook her hand. She said, “Well, are … you here to see Morgan? Or what?”
“She’s here to see you,” Morgan told her.
“Me?”
Morgan said, “What happened was, my car was stolen, but then I stole it back, by and by, but still there was so much excitement, what with Robert Roberts and all …”
“You mean, you asked her to come inside the house?”
“Oh!” Emily said. “Well, of course I don’t want to interrupt your work.”
“It’s all right,” Bonny said. “Why don’t you roll down your pants leg, Morgan?” She turned to lead them up the walk.
“But, Mrs. Gower—”
“Stay, stay,” Morgan urged, from a bent position. He flattened his cuff around his ankle. “She’s just surprised. You’ve come this far, stay!”
Emily followed Bonny up the steps. She felt she had no choice, although she would rather have been anywhere else. They passed a clay pot in which herbs were growing—chives and maybe marjoram or thyme. Emily looked at them wistfully. Under other conditions, she thought, Bonny might very well have been someone she