Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

Simply take a cardboard box, carry it through the rooms, load into it everyone's toys and dirty clothes and such, and hide it all in a closet. If people ask for some missing object, you'll be able to tell them where it is. If they don't ask (now, here is the important part), if a week goes by and they don't notice the object is gone, then you can be sure it's nonessential, and you throw it away. You would be surprised at how many things are nonessential. Throw everything away, all of it! Simplify! Don't hesitate! All my love, sweetheart, Daddy That night, after the others had gone to bed, Morgan sat at the kitchen table and wrote a postcard to Potter, the musical-instrument man…. weather has been fair and warmt a high in the 80's all three days… must thank the good Lord for in Rehoboth I hear they had 13/4 inches of rainfall in 47 minutes… Yours in Christ, Gower Morgan, SJ. He wrote Todd, his three-year-old grandson, a fine, masculine letter: The new pickup is doing well and the baggage space comes in handy, believe me. Was able to take our entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica to the beach. Now have 15,010 miles on the odometer with the fuel cost per mile being 2.1$ and total operating cost? per mile being 4.76$. If you assume a 30 % depreciation each year…

He addressed the letter to Todd and laid it on top of Potter's postcard. He sat there blankly for a moment. Then he reached for another sheet of paper. Dear Emily, Leon, and Gina, he wrote. Have been having pleasant weather and temperatures in the 80's…

But it never helped to write the same things over. He crossed the sentence out and wrote, Why not come Friday for the weekend? Simply take the Bay Bridge and continue to Wye Mills, switching there to Highway 404 and then to Highway 18…

Late Thursday morning Brindle showed up. No one had expected her. Morgan was on the front porch, slouching in a painted rocker and leafing through a volume of the encyclopedia. He happened to glance toward the street and there, just coming to a halt, was the little red sports car that Robert Roberts had given Brindle on their wedding day. Brindle yanked the emergency brake and got out, streaming tears. Her head was swathed in the white chiffon scarf she always slept in to calm her hair down, and she wore some kind of oversized, ankle-length white coat. In fact, she reminded Morgan of an early automobile driver. "Oh, I like that very much," he told her as she climbed the porch steps. "The veil, the duster…"

"It's not a duster, it's a bathrobe," Brindle said. She blew her nose in a soggy-looking Kleenex. Crying had turned her soft and full, almost pretty. Her eyelids were shiny and her sallow skin had a faint pink glow. She sank into the chair next to Morgan's and folded her Kleenex to a dry spot. "I got it last week at Stewart's," she said. "Sixteen forty-nine, marked down from thirty-two ninety-eight."

"Half-price; not bad at all," said Morgan. "Here, dear, have a cigarette."

"I don't smoke," she told him.

"Have one, sweetheart. It'll do you good." He extended the pack and shook it invitingly, but she only blotted her eyes. "I can't stand it any more," she said. "1 must have been out of my mind, marrying that… tree, that boulder; all he does is sit there mourning. I can't stand it."

"Have a Rolaid. Have a coughdrop. Have some Wrigley's spearmint gum," Morgan said. He tore through his pockets.

"He keeps my graduation photo on the television set. Half the time that he pretends he's watching TV, he's really watching my photo. I see him clicking his eyes back in focus when I walk into the room. When he thinks I'm busy with something else, he'll go over to the photo and pick it up and study it. Then he'll shake his head and set it down again." Her face fell apart and she started sobbing. Morgan gazed off toward the street. He wasn't exactly humming, but he went, "Mm-mm, mm-mm," from time to tune, and drummed his fingers on his open book. A little boy rode by on a bicycle, tinkling a bell. Two ladies in skirted swimsuits carried a basketful of laundry between them.

"Of course, every situation has its difficult moments," Morgan said. He cleared his throat.

Then Bonny came out on the porch. "Brindle!" she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Bonny, I just can't stand it any more," Brindle said.

She reached out her arms, and Bonny came over to hug her and tell her, "There now, Brindle, never mind." (She always knew better than Morgan what to say.) "Never you mind, now, Brindle."

"It's getting so I'm jealous of my own self," Brindle said, muffled. "I'm jealous of my photograph, and the silver-plated ID bracelet I gave him when I was thirteen. He never takes that bracelet off. He sleeps with it; he bathes with it. 'Let it go' I feel like saying. 'Can't you ever forget her?' He sits in that TV room staring at my photo… there's times I've even seen tears in his eyes. I say, 'Robert, talk to me, please,' and he says, 'Yes, yes, in a minute.' " Bonny smoothed a lashing of Brindle's hair back under the white scarf. Morgan said, "Oh, but surely this will pass."

"It will never pass," said Brindle, sitting up and glaring at him. "If it hasn't passed in two years, how can you think it ever will? I tell you, there's nothing worse than two people with the same daydream getting together, finally. This morning I woke up and found he hadn't come to bed. I went down to the TV room and there he was, sound asleep with my photo in the crook of his arm. So I picked up my keys from the counter and left. I didn't even bother dressing. Oh, I was like someone half-crazy, demented. I drove all the way to your house and parked and got out before I remembered you were in Bethany. Do you know that idiot paper-boy is still delivering your papers? They were everywhere, clear across the lawn. Sunday's was so old and yellow, you'd think it was urine-stained- and maybe it was. Listen, Morgan, if you're burglarized while you're gone, you have every right to sue that paper-boy. You remember what I said. It's an open invitation to any passing criminal."

"But things started off so well," Morgan said. "I had so much hope when Robert Roberts first came calling. Ringing the doorbell, bringing you roses-"

"What roses? He never brought roses."

"Of course he did."

"No, he didn't."

"I remember he did."

"Morgan, please," said Bonny. "Can't you let this be?"

"Oh, very well. But sweeping you into his arms… remember?"

"It was all an act," said Brindle.

"An act?"

"If he'd been halfway truthful," she said, "he'd have swept my graduation photo into his arms. And kissed it on the lips. And given it a sports car." Her chin crumpled in again, and she pressed the damp knot of Kleenex to her mouth. Bonny gazed over Brindle's head at Morgan, as if expecting him to take some action. But what action would that be? He had never felt very close to Brindle; he had never understood her, although of course he loved her. They were so far apart in age that they were hardly brother and sister. At the time of her birth he already had his school life, and his street life, and his friends. And their father's death had not drawn them together but had merely shown how separate they were. They had mourned in such different ways, Brindle clinging fiercely to her mother while Morgan trudged, withdrawn and stubborn, through the outside world. You could almost say that they had mourned entirely different people.

He sat forward slowly, and scratched the crown of his sombrero. "You know," he said, "I was certain he brought roses."

"He never brought roses," Brindle sard.

"I could swear he did: red ones. Armloads."

"You made those roses up," said Brindle. She tucked the Kleenex info her bathrobe pocket.

"What a pity," Morgan said sadly. "That was the part I liked best of all." For lunch he made spaghetti, which was Brindle's favorite dish. He put on his short-order-cook's clothes-a dirty white apron and a sailor cap-and took over the kitchen, while Bonny and Brindle sat at the table drinking coffee. "Spaghetti a la Morgan!" he said, brandishing a sheaf of noodles. The women merely stared at him, blank-faced, with their minds on something else. "I had hints from the very beginning," said Brindle, "but I wouldn't let myself see them. You know how it is. Almost the first thing he said to me, that first day he showed up, was… he pulled back from me and took both my hands and stared at me and, 'I can't understand it,' he said. 'I don't know why I've kept thinking of you. It's not as if you're a beauty, or ever were,' he said. 'Also I'm getting older,' I told him, 'and my dentist says my teeth are growing more crooked every year.' Oh, I never held anything back from him. I never tried to be what I wasn't." Bonny clicked her tongue. "He doesn't properly appreciate you," she said. "He's one of those people who's got to see from a distance before he knows how to feel about it-from the past or out of other people's eyes or in a frame kind of thing like a book or a photo. You did right to leave him, Brindle." Morgan felt a little itch of anxiety starting in his temples. "But she didn't leave him; she's just taking a little holiday from him," he told Bonny.