Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

"Died?" asked the other. "Just up and died."

"How'd it happen?"

"Well, he finished shaving and he put on a little aftershave and he came back into the bedroom and went to sit on the bed-"

"But what was it? His heart?" 'Well, I'm telling you, Libby.." Morgan began to have an uncomfortable thought. He became convinced that his band, which gripped the seat in plain- view of these two women, was so repulsive to them that they were babbling utter nonsense just to keep from thinking about it. He imagined that he could see through their eyes; he saw exactly how his band appeared to them-its knuckly fingers, wiry black hairs, sawdust ingrained around the nails.

He saw his whole person, in fact. What a toad be was! A hat and a beard, on legs. His eyes felt huge and hot and heavy, set in a 'baroque arrangement of dark pouches. "He reached for his socks," the first woman said desperately, "and commenced to unroll them. One sock was rolled inside the other, don't you know…" She was looking away from Morgan; she was avoiding the sight of his band. He let go of the seat and buried both fists in his armpits. For the rest of the trip he rode unsupported, 'lurching violently whenever the bus stopped.

And when they reached home, where the girls were doing their lessons on the dining-room table and Brindle was laying out her Tarot cards in the kitchen, Morgan went straight up the stairs to bed. "I thought you'd like some coffee," Bonny said. She' called after him, "Morgan? Don't you want a cup of coffee?"

"No, I guess not tonight," be said. "Thank you, dear," and he continued up the stairs. He went to his room, undressed to his thermal underwear, and lit a cigarette from the pack o-n the bureau. For the first time all day, he was bare-headed. In the mirror his forehead looked lined and vulnerable. He noticed a strand of white in his beard. White hair! "Christ," he said. Then he bent forward and looked more closely.

Maybe, he thought, he could pass himself off as one of those miracles front the Soviet Union-a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty, still scaling mountains with his herd of goats. He brightened. He could cross the country on a lecture tour. At every whistle stop he'd take off his shirt and show his black-pelted chest.

Reporters would ask him his secret. "Yogurt and cigarettes, comrades," be cackled to the mirror. He took a couple of prancing steps, showing off. "Never another sing but yogurt und Rossian cigarettes." Feeling more cheerful, he went to the closet for his cardboard box, which be placed on the — bed. He drew intently on his Camel as he padded around, getting arranged: turning on the electric blanket, propping up his pillow, finding an ashtray. He climbed into bed and set the ashtray in his lap. There was a little coughing fit to be seen through first. He scattered ashes down his undershirt. He pinched a speck of tobacco from his tongue. "Ah, comrades," be wheezed.

He opened the box, took out the first sheet of paper, and settled back to read it.

1. Familiarize yourself with all steps before beginning.

2. Have on hand the following: pliers, Phillips screw-driver…

He lowered the sheet of paper and gazed at the black windowpanes. Miles away from here, he imagined, the windows on Croswell Street were blinking out, first the left one, then the right one. The baby would stir in her sleep. Leon's hand would drop from the light switch and be would cross the cold floor to their pallet. Then all daytime sounds would stop; there would only be the sifting breaths of sleepers, motionless and dreamless on their threadbare sheets. Morgan turned his light off too, and settled down for the night.

1969

What was it that he wanted of them? He was everywhere, it seemed-an oddly shaped, persistent shadow trailing far behind when they went for a walk, lurking in various, doorways, flattening himself around the corner of a building. What they ought to do was simply wheel and confront him. "Why, Dr. Morgan!" — smiling, surprised-"how nice to run into you!" But the situation hadn't lent itself to that, somehow. The first time they'd seen him (or felt his presence, really), back when Gina was a baby, they hadn't realized who he was. Coming home from a shopping trip at twilight, they'd been chilled by a kind of liquid darkness flowing in and out of alleyways behind them. Emily had been frightened. Leon had been angry, but with Emily next to him and Gina in his arms he hadn't wanted to force anything. They had merely walked a little faster, and spoken to each other in a loud, casual tone without once mentioning what was happening. The second time, Emily had been alone. She'd left the baby with Leon and gone to buy felt for the puppets. Directly opposite their apartment building, in an arched granite doorway, a figure fell suddenly backward into the gloom of the laundromat. She hardly saw; she was calculating the yardage she would need. But that evening, as she was making a pointed hat for Rumpelstiltskin, the memory came swimming in again. She saw the figure fall once more out of sight-though he hadn't been wearing a pointed hat at all but something flat, a beret, perhaps. Still, where had she seen him before? She said, "Oh!" and laid her scissors down. "Guess who I think I saw today?" she said to Leon. "That doctor. That Dr. Morgan."

"Did you ask him why he never sent a bill?"

"No, he wasn't really… It wasn't a meeting, exactly. I mean, he didn't see me. Well, he saw me, but it seemed he… Probably," she said, "it wasn't Dr. Morgan at all. I'm sure he would have spoken." A month or so later he followed her along Beacon Avenue. She stopped to look in the window of an infants'-wear shop and she felt someone else stop too. She turned and found a man some distance away, his back to her, gazing off down the street at nothing in particular. He might have stepped out of a jungle movie, she thought, with his safari shut and shorts, his knee-high socks, ankle boots, and huge pith helmet, Extraneous buckles and D-rings glittered all over him — on Ms shoulders, his sleeves, his rear pockets. It was nobody dangerous. It was only one of those eccentric people you often see on city streets, acting out some elaborate inner vision of themselves. She walked on. At the next red light she glanced back again and here he came, hurrying toward her with a swaggering, soldierly gait to match the uniform, his eyes obscured by the helmet but his abundant beard in full view. Oh, you couldn't mistake that beard. Dr. Morgan! She took a step toward him. He looked up at her, clapped a hand on his helmet, and darted through a door reading LU-RAE'S FINE COIFFURES.

Emily felt absurd. She felt how open and glad she must look, preparing to call his name. But what had she done wrong? Why didn't he like her any, more?

He had seemed so taken with the two of them, back when Gina was born.

She didn't tell Leon. It would make him angry, maybe; you never knew. She decided that, anyhow, it had only been one of those unexplainable things- meaningless, not worth troubling Leon about.

So it got offon the wrong foot, you might say. There was a moment when they could have dealt with it straightforwardly, but the moment slipped past them. After several of these incidents (spaced across weeks or even months) in which one thing or another prevented them from going up to the man and greeting him naturally, it began to seem that the situation had taken a turn of its own. There was no way they could gracefully set it right now. It became apparent that he must be crazy-or, at least, obsessed in some unaccountable way. (Emily shivered to think of Gina's delivery at his hands.) Yet, as Leon pointed out, he did no harm. He never threatened them or even came within speaking distance of them; there was nothing to complain of. Really, Emily was taking this too fancifully, Leon said. The man was only something to be adjusted to, as a matter of course. He was part of the furniture of their lives, like the rowhouses looming down Croswell Street, the dusty, spindly trees dying of exhaust fumes, and the puppets hanging in their muslin shrouds from the hooks in the back-bedroom closet.