Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [94]
But then Leon came in and said, “Rapunzel? What’s she doing here?”
“I thought we’d take her to the Festival.”
“Last night you said we’d do ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ ”
“I did?”
“I suggested ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and you said that would be fine.”
“How could I have?” Emily asked. “We can’t give ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ There are thirteen fairies. Not even counting the king, the queen, the princess …”
“I said, ‘Emily, why not let’s do something different for a change?’ and you said, ‘All right, Leon—’ ”
“But never ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ” Emily said.
“I said, ‘How about “Sleeping Beauty”?’ and you said, ‘All right, Leon.’ ”
He was making it up. Except that Leon never made things up. There was no way Emily could have held that conversation, not even half asleep. Why, if you counted the old woman at the spinning wheel, Prince Charming … It was out of the question. They couldn’t begin to handle a cast of that size. She considered the possibility that he had discussed the subject with someone else, mistakenly. They always seemed to miss connections these days. They started every morning so courteous, so hopeful, but deteriorated rapidly and ended up, at night, sleeping with their backs to each other on the outermost edges of the bed.
She noticed that two vertical grooves had started to appear in Leon’s cheeks. They were not so much lines as hollows, such as you would see in a man who habitually kept his jaw set too far forward.
Then he said, “How about taking Gina? She could work some of the fairies.”
“But it’s on Wednesday afternoon,” Emily said. “Gina would still be in school.”
“Oh, I don’t mind missing school,” Gina said.
Emily suspected she was only trying to keep peace. Gina loved school. “Well, I mind,” Emily told her.
“Oh, Mama.”
“And thirteen fairies! Even if we owned that many, how would just one more pair of hands help run them all?”
“We could bring them on a few at a time, maybe,” Leon said.
Emily started pacing around the table. Gina and Leon watched her. Gina chewed a pencil and swung her feet, but Leon stayed motionless. Then Emily wheeled on him and said, “Are you doing this on purpose?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, is this supposed to prove something, Leon? Are you just trying to show me I’m … oh, set in my ways? You want me to say I refuse to give a play with eighteen puppets in it, and my daughter playing hooky, and that will mean I’m rigid, narrow-minded?”
“All I know is, I said, ‘How about “Sleeping Beauty,” Emily—’ ”
“You never did.”
Leon closed his mouth, shrugged, and walked out of the room. Emily looked over at Gina, who was watching, but Gina abruptly stopped chewing her pencil and buried herself in her homework.
Then Emily took her coat from the hook in the hall and left the apartment, jabbing her arms into her sleeves as she stalked down the stairs. It was late enough so the smell of different suppers had begun to fill the stairwell: cabbage, green peppers, oil—stifling smells. Crafts Unlimited was already dark and dead-looking. She slammed out into the street. Twilight had drained the color from the buildings. An old woman paused on the corner to set down all her bundles and rearrange them. Emily swerved around her, keeping her fists knotted in her coat pockets. She crossed against a red light and walked very fast.
He was impossible. There was no hope for either of them. She had locked herself in permanently with someone she couldn’t bear.
She passed a boy and girl who were standing in the center of the sidewalk, holding hands, the girl pivoting on her heels and giving the boy a shy smile. It was heartbreaking. She would have stopped to set them straight, but of course they wouldn’t believe her; they imagined they were going to do everything differently. She met a child, some friend of Gina’s. “Hello, Mrs. Meredith.” “Hello, um, Polly,” she said—motherly, matronly, indistinguishable from any other woman.
Sometimes she thought the trouble was, she and Leon