Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [70]
“It’s not a duster, it’s a bathrobe,” Brindle said. She blew her nose in a soggy-looking Kleenex. Crying had turned her soft and full, almost pretty. Her eyelids were shiny and her sallow skin had a faint pink glow. She sank into the chair next to Morgan’s and folded her Kleenex to a dry spot. “I got it last week at Stewart’s,” she said. “Sixteen forty-nine, marked down from thirty-two ninety-eight.”
“Half-price; not bad at all,” said Morgan. “Here, dear, have a cigarette.”
“I don’t smoke,” she told him.
“Have one, sweetheart. It’ll do you good.”
He extended the pack and shook it invitingly, but she only blotted her eyes. “I can’t stand it any more,” she said. “I must have been out of my mind, marrying that … tree, that boulder; all he does is sit there mourning. I can’t stand it.”
“Have a Rolaid. Have a coughdrop. Have some Wrigley’s spearmint gum,” Morgan said. He tore through his pockets.
“He keeps my graduation photo on the television set. Half the time that he pretends he’s watching TV, he’s really watching my photo. I see him clicking his eyes back in focus when I walk into the room. When he thinks I’m busy with something else, he’ll go over to the photo and pick it up and study it. Then he’ll shake his head and set it down again.”
Her face fell apart and she started sobbing. Morgan gazed off toward the street. He wasn’t exactly humming, but he went, “Mm-mm, mm-mm,” from time to time, and drummed his fingers on his open book. A little boy rode by on a bicycle, tinkling a bell. Two ladies in skirted swimsuits carried a basketful of laundry between them.
“Of course, every situation has its difficult moments,” Morgan said. He cleared his throat.
Then Bonny came out on the porch. “Brindle!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Bonny, I just can’t stand it any more,” Brindle said.
She reached out her arms, and Bonny came over to hug her and tell her, “There now, Brindle, never mind.” (She always knew better than Morgan what to say.) “Never you mind, now, Brindle.”
“It’s getting so I’m jealous of my own self,” Brindle said, muffled. “I’m jealous of my photograph, and the silver-plated ID bracelet I gave him when I was thirteen. He never takes that bracelet off. He sleeps with it; he bathes with it. ‘Let it go,’ I feel like saying. ‘Can’t you ever forget her?’ He sits in that TV room staring at my photo … there’s times I’ve even seen tears in his eyes. I say, ‘Robert, talk to me, please,’ and he says, ‘Yes, yes, in a minute.’ ”
Bonny smoothed a lashing of Brindle’s hair back under the white scarf. Morgan said, “Oh, but surely this will pass.”
“It will never pass,” said Brindle, sitting up and glaring at him. “If it hasn’t passed in two years, how can you think it ever will? I tell you, there’s nothing worse than two people with the same daydream getting together, finally. This morning I woke up and found he hadn’t come to bed. I went down to the TV room and there he was, sound asleep with my photo in the crook of his arm. So I picked up my keys from the counter and left. I didn’t even bother dressing. Oh, I was like someone half-crazy, demented. I drove all the way to your house and parked and got out before I remembered you were in Bethany. Do you know that idiot paper-boy is still delivering your papers? They were everywhere, clear across the lawn. Sunday’s was so old and yellow, you’d think it was urine-stained—and maybe it was. Listen, Morgan, if you’re burglarized while you’re gone, you have every right to sue that paper-boy. You remember what I said. It’s an open invitation to any passing criminal.”
“But things started off so well,” Morgan said. “I had so much hope when Robert Roberts first came calling. Ringing