Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [83]
She sighed and turned home, after all.
Often, on these walks, she was followed by Morgan Gower—a wide leather hat and a tumult of beard, loping along behind her. If she paused till he caught up, he’d make a nuisance of himself. He had entered some new stage, developed a new fixation. It was harmless, really, but annoying. He might declare himself to her anywhere—fling out his arms in the middle of the Broadway Fish Market, beam down at her, full of joy. “Last night I dreamed you went to bed with me.” She would click her tongue and walk away. She would march on out and down the block, cut through an alley past a grinding garbage truck, and he would follow, but he kept his distance. His hat rounded corners like a flying saucer, level and spinning, the rest of him sauntering beneath. Glancing back, she had to laugh. Then she turned away again, but he’d already noticed; she heard him laugh too. Didn’t he realize she had problems on her mind? She was overhung by thoughts of Leon, like someone traveling under a cloud. First marching, then drifting, she paced out the knots and snarls of life with Leon. Love was not a comedy. But here came Morgan, laughing. She gave in and stopped once more and waited. He arrived beside her and pointed at the neon sign that swung above their heads. “Look! LaTrella’s Rooms. Weekly! Daily! Let’s just nip upstairs.”
“Really, Morgan.”
And even in front of Leon—what did Morgan imagine he was doing? In front of glowering, dark Leon, he said, “Emily, fetch your toothbrush. We’re eloping.” When there was music, anywhere—a car radio passing on the street—he would seize her by the waist and dance. He danced continually, nowadays. It seemed his feet could not keep quiet. She had never known him to act so silly.
Fortunately, Leon didn’t take him seriously.
“You’d be getting more than you bargained for,” he said to Morgan.
Still, she said, “Morgan, I wish you wouldn’t joke like that in front of Leon. What must he think?”
“What should he think? I’m stealing you away,” Morgan said, and he circled the kitchen, where Emily happened to be washing dishes, and threw open all the cupboards. “Which things are you bringing with you? These plates? This bowl? This two-quart vinyl orange-juice pitcher?”
She rested her soapy hands on the sink and watched him. “Morgan,” she said. “Don’t you ever get self-conscious?”
“Well,” he said.
He closed a cupboard door. He stroked his beard.
“That’s a very interesting question,” he said. “I’m glad you asked me that. The fact is … ah, yes, I do.” She blinked. “You do?”
“The fact is,” he said, “with you: well, yes, I do.”
He stood before her, smiling. There was something clumsy about him that made her see, suddenly, what he must have been like as a boy—one of those bumbling boys who can’t think what to talk about with girls; or who talk too much, perhaps, out of nervousness—compulsively relating the entire plots of movies or explaining how the internal-combustion engine works. It was a shock; she had never pictured him that way. And anyhow, she was probably wrong, for an instant later he was back to the Morgan she had always known: a gray-streaked, twinkling clown of a man, swinging into a soft-shoe dance across her kitchen floor.
At least he could make her laugh.
2
She walked through summer and into fall. She did other things too, of course—gave puppet shows, sewed costumes, cooked, helped Gina with her homework. But at night, when she closed her eyes, she saw a maze of streets and traffic, the way compulsive chess-players see chessboards in their dreams. She was revisited by the smallest details of her walks—by the clank of a foot on a manhole cover, the spark of mica in concrete, and the Bicentennial fire hydrants sticking out their stunted arms like so many defective babies. She opened her eyes, sat up, rearranged her pillow. “What