Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

"All that stuff is Communist anyhow," said Mr. Meredith.

"Is… what?"

"Sure, this tractor-farming, workers-unite bit, killing off the Tsar and Anastasia…"

"Well, I'm not… I believe that came a little later."

"What is it, you're one of these college leftists?"

"No, but I don't think Tolstoy lived that long."

"Of course he did," Mr. Meredith said. "Where do you think your friend Lenin would be if he didn't have Tolstoy?"

"Lenin?"

"Do you deny it? Look, my girl," Mr. Meredith said. He leaned earnestly toward her, lacing his fingers together. (He must sit this way at the bank, Emily thought, explaining to some farmer why he couldn't have a loan on his tobacco crop.) "The minute Lenin got his foot in the door, first person he called on was Tolstoy. Tolstoy this, Tolstoy that… Any time they wanted any propaganda written, 'Ask Tolstoy,' he'd say. 'Ask Leo.' Why, sure! They didn't tell you that in school?"

"But… I thought Tolstoy died in nineteen…"

"Forty," said Mr. Meredith.

"Forty?" I was in my senior year in college."

"Oh."

"And Stalin!" said Mr. Meredith. "Listen, there was a combination. Tolstoy and Stalin." Leon turned suddenly from the window and left the room/They heard him going up the stairs to the sleeping quarters. Emily and Mrs. Meredith looked at each other.

"If you want my personal opinion," Mr. Meredith said, "Tolstoy was a bit of a thorn in Stalin's side. See, he couldn't unseat Tolstoy, the guy was sort of well. known by then, but at the same time he was too old-line. You knew he was pretty well off, of course. Owned a large piece of land."

"That's true, he did," Emily said. "You can see it must have been a little awkward."

"Well, yes…"

" 'The fact is,' Stalin says to his henchmen, 'he's an old guy. I mean, he's just a doddering old guy with a large piece of land.'" Emily nodded, her mouth slightly open.

Leon came pounding down the stairs. He entered the parlor with a dictionary open in his hands. "Tolstoy, Lev," he read out, "1828–1910," There was a silence.

"Born in eighteen twenty-eight, died in nineteen-"

"All right" said Mr. Meredith. "But where is this getting us? Don't try to change the subject, Leon. We were talking about your grades. Your sloppy grades and this damn-fool acting business."

"I'm serious about my acting," Leon said.

"Serious! About play-acting?"

"You can't make me give it up; I'm twenty-one years old. I know my rights."

"Don't tell me what I can or cannot do," said Mr. Meredith, "If you refuse, I warn you, Leon: I'm with-drawing you from school, I'm not paying next year's tuition."

"Oh, Burt!" Mrs. Meredith said. "You wouldn't do that! He'd be drafted!"

"Army's the best thing that could happen to that boy," Mr. Meredith said.

"You can't!"

"Oh, can't I?" He turned to Leon. "I'm driving home with you today," he said, "unless I have your signed and notarized statement that you will drop all extracurricular activities-plays, girlfriends…" He flapped a pink, tight-skinned hand in Emily's direction.

"Not a chance," said Leon.

"Start packing, then."

"Burt!" Mrs. Meredith cried.

But Leon said, "Gladly. I'll be gone by nightfall. Not home, though-not now or ever again."

"See what you've done?" Mrs. Meredith asked her husband, Leon walked out of the room. Through the parlor's front windows (small-paned, with rippling glass) Emily saw his angular figure repeatedly dislocating itself, jarring apart and drawing back together as he strode across the quadrangle. She was left with Leon's parents, who seemed slapped into silence. She had the feeling that she was one of them, that she would spend the rest of her days in heavily draped parlors-a little dry stick of a person. "Excuse me," she said, rising. She crossed the room, stepped out the door, and closed it gently behind her. Then she started running after Leon.

She found him at tiie fountain in front of the library, idly throwing pebbles into the water. When she came up beside him, out of breath, and touched Ms arm, he wouldn't even glance at her. In the sunlight Ms face had a warm olive glow that she found beautiful. His eyes, which were long and heavy-lidded, seemed full of plots. She believed she would never again know anyone so decisive. Even his physical outline seemed to stand MORGAN'S PASSING 71 out more sharply than other people's. "Leon?" she said. "What will you do?" *T11 go to New York," he said, as if he'd been planning this for months.

She had always dreamed of seeing New York. She tightened her hand on his arm. But he didn't invite her along.

To escape his parents, in case they came hunting him, they walked to a dark little Italian restaurant near the campus. Leon went on talking about New York: he might get something in summer stock, he said, or, with luck, a bit part Off-Broadway. Always he said "I," not "we." She began to despair. She wished she could find some flaw in his face, which seemed to give off a light of its own in the gloom of the restaurant. "Do me a favor," he told her. "Go to my room and pack my things, just a few necessities. I'm worried Mom and Dad will be waiting for me there."

"All right," she said.

"And bring my checkbook from the top dresser drawer. I'm going to need that money."

"Leon, I have eighty-seven dollars."

"Keep it."

"It's left over from the spending money Aunt Mercer gave me. I won't have any use for it."

"Will you please stop fussing?" Then he said, "Sorry."

"That's all right." They walked back to campus, and while he waited beside the fountain, she went to his dorm. His parents weren't in the parlor. The two armchairs they had sat in were empty; the upholstery sighed as it rose by degrees, erasing the dents they had left.

She climbed the stairs to the sleeping quarters, where she'd rarely been before. Girls were allowed here, but they didn't often come; there was something uncouth about the place. A couple of boys were tossing a soft-ball in the corridor. They paused grudgingly as she edged by, and the instant she had passed, she heard the slap of the ball again just behind her. She knocked at the door of 241. Leon's roommate said, "Yeah."

"It's Emily Cathcart. Can I come in and get some things for Leon?"

"Sure." He was seated at his desk, tilted "back, apparently 'doing nothing but shooting paper clips with a rubber band. (How would she ever love another boy after Leon left?) The paper clips kept hitting a bulletin board and then pinging into the metal wastebasket underneath it. "I'll need to find his suitcase," Emily said.

"Under that bed." She dragged it out. It was covered with dust.

"Meredith leaving us?" he asked.

"He's going to New York. Don't tell his parents."

"New York, eh?" said the roommate, without much interest.

From the closet by Leon's bed Emily started taking the clothes she'd seen him wear most often-white shirts, khaki trousers, a corduroy packet she knew he was fond of. Everything smelled of him, starchy and clean. She was pleased by the length of his trousers, in which she herself would be lost.

"You going with him?" the roommate said.

"I don't think he wants me to Another paper clip snapped-against the bulletin board.

"I would if he asked me, but he hasn't," Emily said.

"Oh, well, you've got exams coming up. Got to get your A's and A-pluses." *Td go without a thought," she said.

"The man wants to travel light, I guess."

"Is this his bureau?" He nodded and let his chair thud forward. '

'You don't think your picture'd be on my bureau," he said. "No offense, of course." She glanced at the picture-her Christmas present to Leon. It stood behind an alarm clock, still in the deckleedged cardboard folder supplied by the studio. The person it showed only faintly resembled her, she hoped. Emily hated being made to feel conscious of her physical appearance. She walked around most of the time peering out of the eye holes of her body without giving it much thought, and she found it an unpleasant shock to be pressed onto a piano bench with her head held at an unnatural angle, forced to reflect upon her too light skin and her pale lashes that had a way of disappearing in photographs. "Smile," the photographer had told her. "This is not a firing squad, you know." She had given a quick, nervous smile and felt how artificially her lips stretched across her teeth. When the man ducked behind his camera, she'd wiped the smile off instantly. Her face emerged sober and peering, netted by worry, the mouth slightly pursed like her spinster aunt's.