Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [99]
“She has a science report due Monday. She’s been working on it all weekend.”
Morgan imagined the hush in their apartment: the bare, clean living room, Gina concentrating on a single book.
“But Leon, at least,” Bonny said. “You could have brought Leon.”
“He wanted to watch this program on TV. If I waited till it was finished, the baby would have gone to bed, I figured.”
Two years ago the Merediths had bought a small television set. Morgan tended to forget that. Every time Emily referred to it, he mentally blinked; he felt himself having to make some disruptive inner adjustment. He went to the sideboard and poured her a glass of sherry—the only drink she’d ever been known to ask for. When he handed it to her, she was just slipping out of her coat. “Let me hang that up,” he told her.
“Oh, I’ll keep it. I can only stay a minute.”
She sat on the couch, talking to Bonny and Liz, and Morgan harumphed his way around the living room. He stepped over a Monopoly game, threw another log on the fire. He wound the clock on the mantel. He squatted, grunting, and picked up the discarded paper from Emily’s gift and folded it carefully for future use. She must have decorated the paper herself, or bought it from Crafts Unlimited. It was patterned with a block print of little bells. He loved her old-time, small-town manners—her prompt gifts and cards and thank-you notes, her Christmas fruitcake, her unfailing observance of every official occasion. She was the most proper person he had ever met. (A while back, she had angled a night away from home—their one whole night together. They were so tired of snatched moments. She’d told Leon she was going to Virginia. She’d met Morgan at the Patrician Hotel and insisted on signing her true name in the register—her name and address and telephone number, all written with the pen held perpendicular to the page in a stiff, quaint manner that delighted him. He’d asked later, why not a false name? It wouldn’t be right, she had said.)
“I parked the car at the corner,” she was telling Bonny, “and just as I got out I saw this little family. A man, a woman, two children. One of the children had fallen, he was crying, and I slowed down to check on him; you know how it is when you hear a child cry. Well, it was only a scrape or something, a scabby knee. But evidently the father was blind. He didn’t seem to know what had happened. He just kept saying, ‘What is it, Dorothy? Dorothy, what is it? Dorothy, what’s gone wrong?’ And Dorothy wouldn’t answer. She picked up the child that was crying and then she got the older one, really much too big a child to carry, hoisted on her other hip, and she was so swaddled around with winter coats and scarves and also she had a big purse and some huge kind of tote bag, I don’t know, groceries or things; it was hard to tell by the streetlight. She was staggering, just tottering along. And he was still asking, ‘What is it?’ and feeling all around him, frantic. She said, ‘Look, you wait here, I’ve got to go bring the car. Nicholas can’t walk.’ He said, ‘Why can’t he walk? For God’s sake, what’s happened?’ and she got all exasperated and said, ‘Just wait, I tell you; keep calm. Stay right here and I’ll be back. Jason, you weigh a ton. Hang on to Mommy, Nicholas …’ I wanted to tell the man, ‘It’s a scrape. It’s nothing.’ I wanted to tell the woman, ‘Why bring the car? Why are you doing this? Or if you do have to bring the car, why not leave the children with him, and the bags and things? He can manage those. Why wade off like that, why? Why make things, oh, so ingrown, so twisted?’ ”
“Oh, when you see how other people have such handicaps,” Bonny said, “you have to thank your stars our own lives are so easy. Don’t you?”
She’d missed the point. So had everyone else, Morgan supposed. They went on rattling their dice, clicking their needles. A log fell in the fire, sending out a shower of sparks. The dog stirred and half-heartedly thumped his tail. Brindle turned the pages of her catalog, with its garish, blurred illustrations. Amazing Soap Cradle! Morgan read.