Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [82]
“Persisting, is he?” Morgan said. He sat down next to her to sort the mail.
“I couldn’t even go for milk, or to buy a loaf of bread, so I managed on what was here. Sardines and corned-beef hash, mainly. I feel like someone on a submarine; I have this craving for lettuce. But it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t really mind. It made me think of back when we were kids, when we were poor. Morgan,” she said, pausing with a ten of clubs in mid-air, “weren’t we happier, in some ways, when we were up against it?”
“As far as I’m concerned, we’re still up against it,” Morgan said.
There was a dainty blue envelope from Priscilla that must contain a thank-you note. It made him tired to think of it. He passed on to a thicker one that looked more promising, and ripped it open. Inside was a sheaf of photographs, wrapped in a letter. He checked the signature: Emily. Now what? Dear Morgan and Bonny, she wrote, in a neat, italic hand that struck him as stunted. Thank you again for a lovely vacation. I hope we did not put you to too much trouble. Toward the end we were so rushed, getting off in time to beat the dark, that I didn’t feel we properly said goodbye. But it was so nice of you to have us and we all had such a …
Morgan grimaced and turned to the photos. He flipped through them idly. Then he sat straighter and went through them again. He laid one on the dining-room table and another one beside it, and another. Bonny, Robert, Brindle, Kate …
Each person sat alone, suspended in an amber light that surely did not exist in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Bonny folded her arms across her stomach and smiled a radiant smile. Robert Roberts shone like a honey-mooner in his borrowed shirt, and Brindle’s skin had the mellow glow of a priceless painting. Kate with her stubborn pout was as sultry and mysterious as a piece of exotic fruit. Morgan’s sombrero, pushed back, was a halo, and the white streaks in his beard gave him the depth and texture of something carved. Well, it was only the film. It was cut-rate film, or out of date, or underexposed.
But each person gazed out so steadily, with such trust, such concentration. Emily herself, marble-pale in folds of black, met his scrutiny with eyes so clear that he imagined he could see through them and behind them; he could see what she must see, how his world must look to her. A buoyant little bubble of hope began to rise in him. Over and over, he sorted through the pictures, rearranging them, aligning them, dropping them, smiling widely and sighing and laughing, ignoring his sister’s astonished stare: a man in love.
1976
1
When spring came, Emily started walking. She walked all spring and summer, down alleyways, across tattered rags of parks, through stores that smelled of pickles and garlic. She went in the front doors and out the back, emerging on some unknown street full of delivery trucks, stacked wooden crates, construction workers with pneumatic drills tearing up the pavement. Her ballet slippers, nearly soundless, tripped along in time to the music in her head. She liked songs about leaving, about women who packed up and left, and men who woke to find their beds unexpectedly empty. If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone … She slipped between two children sharing popcorn from a bag. One of these mornings, it won’t be long, you’ll call my name and I’ll be gone … She brushed against an old lady with a shopping bag full of bottles, did not apologize, kept going. I know you, rider, going to miss me when I’m … Gone, gone, gone: her slippers thumped it out. She had a spiky step to begin with, but every day, all over again, she softened; she would slow down bit by bit, and wilt, and grow calm. She would think of how Leon’s jacket hung across that broad, subtle curve between his shoulder blades. How complete his words sounded—more certain