Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [74]
“Of course,” she said. She held out a hand, first to Leon and then to Emily. “You brought me that fruitcake last Christmas,” she told Emily.
“Oh, yes.”
“It had the most marvelous glaze on the top.”
“Why, thank you,” Emily said.
“And did your husband ever recover from his stroke?”
“Excuse me?”
Morgan saw in a flash what must have happened. His mother had Emily confused with Natalie Czernov, a next-door neighbor from Morgan’s childhood. Mrs. Czernov had also made fruitcake at Christmas. He was so fascinated by this slippage in time (as if the fruitcake were a kind of key that opened several doors at once, from several levels of history) that he forgot to come to Emily’s rescue. Emily said, “This is my husband right here, Mrs. Gower.”
“Oh, good, he’s better, then,” Louisa said.
Emily looked at Morgan.
“Maybe I should show you where you’re staying,” he said.
He picked up their suitcase again and led them down the hall to Kate’s room. The bed had been freshly made and there was a sleeping bag on the floor for Gina. “The bathroom is next door,” he said. “There are towels above the sink. If you need anything else …”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Emily said. She opened the suitcase. Morgan glimpsed several new-looking squares of folded clothing. Leon, meanwhile, crossed the room abruptly and looked out the window. (All he would see was a row of dented trashcans.) Then he moved on to the picture that hung over the bed: a dim blue sea, flat as glass, on which rode a boat made of real shells. “We shouldn’t have come,” he said, peering at a clamshell sail.
“Oh, Leon, we need a rest,” Emily told him.
“We have to give a puppet show on Monday morning. That means either we fight the Sunday traffic on the Bridge, or we go back at the crack of dawn on Monday, driving like hell to meet the schedule, and Lord help us if we have a flat or any little tie-up on the way.”
“It’s nice to get out of the city,” Emily told Morgan. She removed a camera from the suitcase and closed the lid again. “Leon thought we couldn’t take the time, but I said, ‘Leon, I’m tired. I want to go. I’m tired of puppets.’ ”
“She’s tired of puppets,” Leon said. “Whose idea were they, I’d like to know? Whose were they in the first place? I’m only doing what you said to, Emily. You’re the one who started this.”
“Well, there’s no good reason we can’t leave them for a weekend, Leon.”
“She thinks we can just leave whenever we like,” Leon told Morgan.
Morgan passed a hand across his forehead. He said, “Please. I’m sure this will all work out. Don’t you want to come see the ocean now?”
Neither Leon nor Emily answered him. They stood facing each other across the bed, their backs very straight, as if braced for something serious. They didn’t even seem to notice when Morgan left the room.
8
No, it hadn’t been such a good idea to ask them here. The weekend passed so slowly, it didn’t so much pass as chafe along. It ground to a stop and started up again. It rasped on Morgan’s nerves. Actually, this was not entirely the Merediths’ fault. It was more the fault of Brindle, who faded into tears a dozen times a day; or Bonny, who overdid her sunbathing and developed a fever and chills; or Kate, who was arrested in Ocean City on charges of possessing half an ounce of marijuana. But Morgan blamed the Merediths anyhow. He couldn’t help but feel that Leon’s sulkiness had cast some kind of evil spell, and he was irritated by the way Emily hung around Bonny all the time. (Who had befriended Emily first, after all? Who had first discovered her?) She had changed; just wearing different shoes on her feet had somehow altered her. He began to avoid her. He devoted himself to Gina—a sad, sprouty child at an awkward age, just the age to tear at his heart. He made her a kite from a Hefty bag, and she thanked him earnestly, but when he looked into her face he saw that she was really watching her parents, who were arguing in low voices at the other end of the porch.
He began reflecting on Joshua Bennett, a new neighbor back in Baltimore. This