Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

"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 'hi 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, urn, Polly," she said-motherly, matronly, indistinguishable from any other woman.

Sometimes she thought the trouble was, she and Leon were too well acquainted. The most innocent remark could call up such a string of associations, so many past slights and insults never quite settled or forgotten, merely smoothed over. They could no longer have a single uncomplicated feeling about each other.

Then she heard footsteps behind her. They kept coming. She slowed, and the corners of her mouth started turning up without her say-so, but when she looked back it was no one she knew-a man on his way to someplace in a hurry. He kept his face buried in his collar. She let him pass her. Then she looked back again. But no matter how long she stood watching, the sidewalk was empty.

She took a right on Meller Street and walked with more purpose. She crossed another street and turned left. Now there was a-stream of people bundled up, intent, rushing home to supper. It occurred to her that Cullen Hardware might be closed by now. She slowed, frowning. But no, its windows were still lit with that faded light that always seemed filmed by dust. She pushed through the door. Butkins was bent over a sheet of paper at the counter, "Has Morgan gone home?" she asked him.

Butkins straightened and passed a hand across his high forehead, "Oh. Mrs. Meredith," he said. (He was so determinedly formal, though she'd known him for years.) "No, he's up in his office," he said, She headed down an aisle of snow shovels and sidewalk salt, and climbed the steps at the rear. Every board whined beneath her feet. On the landing, Morgan's office seemed unusually still-no sawing, hammering, drilling, no flurry of wood chips. Morgan was lying on the maroon plush sofa. He was hatless, for once, and wore a satin-lapeled smoking jacket that very nearly matched the sofa. His hair looked flat and thin. His face was a pale glimmer in the dusk. "Morgan? Are you sick?" Emily asked. "I have a cold," he said.

' "Oh, just a cold," she said, relieved. She took off her coat and laid it on the desk.

"Just a cold! How can you say that?" he asked her. His energy seemed to be returning. He sat up, indignant. "Do. you have any idea how I feel? My head is like a beachball. This morning I had a temperature of ninety-nine point nine, and last night it was a hundred and one. I lay awake all night, and had fever dreams."

"You can't do both," Emily said. "Lie awake, and dream as well."

"Why not?" he asked her.

He always had to throw his whole self into things — even into illness. His office looked like a hospital room. A Merck Manual lay open on the filing cabinet, and his desk was a jumble of medicines and cloudy drinking glasses. On the floor beside the couch were a bottle of cough syrup, a sticky teaspoon, and a cardboard box spilling papers. She bent to pick up one of the papers. It was a photograph of the oldest, homeliest washing machine she'd ever laid eyes on, the kind with a wringer attached. Model 504A, she read, can easily be connected to any existing… She replaced the paper and sat down in the swivel chair at the desk. Morgan sneezed.

"Maybe you ought to be home in bed," she told him.

"I can't rest at home. It's a madhouse there. Liz is still fiat on her back trying to hang on to that baby. She gets the wicker breakfast tray; I end up with the tin meat platter. And people have already started arriving for Thanksgiving." Butkins called something. Morgan said, "Eh?"

"I'll be going now, Mr. Gower."

"He ought to know I can't hear a thing with this cold," Morgan told Emily.

"He says he's going," Emily said. "Do you want me to help lock up?"

"Oh, thank you. It's true that I'm not myself." But he went on sitting there, blotting his nose with a handkerchief. Emily heard the front door shutting behind Butkins.

"When Butkins leaves the store," Morgan said, "I sometimes wonder if he dematerializes. Ever thought of that?" She smiled. He watched her soberly, not smiling himself. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"What? Nothing," Emily said.

"The tip of your nose is white."

"It's nothing."

"Don't lie to me," he said. "I've known you nine years. When the tip of your nose is white, something's wrong. It's Leon, I suppose."

"He thinks I'm narrow-minded," Emily said.

Morgan sneezed again.

"He thinks I'm rigid, but he's the one. He never tries out for plays now, and that gospel-troupe man is still after us but Leon won't even talk to him. I'm getting claustrophobic. I can't drive after dark any more because the space is too small-you know, the lighted space the car travels in. I think I must be going crazy from irritation, just from little petty nameless irritations. Then he says that I'm the one who's narrow." Morgan shook a cigarette from an unfamiliar green pack. "See? We'd better elope," he said.

"Do you think you ought to be smoking?"

"Oh, these are all right. They're menthol." He lit up and started coughing. He stumbled to his feet, as if reaching for more air, and wandered around the office, coughing and thumping his chest. Between gasps, he said, "Emily, you know I'm always here for you."

"You want some Robitussin, Morgan?" He shook his head, gave a final cough, and settled on his desktop. Medicine bottles clinked all around him. Emily wheeled her chair back slightly to allow him more room. His socks, she saw, were translucent black silk, and he wore pointy black patent-leather slippers that reminded her of Fred Astaire. He was sitting on her coat, rumpling it, but she decided not to point that out.

"I know you must find me laughable," he told her.

"Oh, well, I wouldn't say laughable, really-"

"But I'm serious," he said. "Let's stop fooling, Emily. I love you." He slid off his desk, disentangling himself with difficulty from her coat, which had somehow twisted itself around one of his legs. Emily stood up, (What did he have in mind?) He was, after all, a grown man, real, lean-bodied. The hunger with which he drew on his cigarette caused her to step behind her chair. But he went on past her. He was only pacing. He walked to the railing, looked over the darkened store below him, and walked back.

"Of course," he said, "I don't intend any harm to your marriage. I admire your marriage very much. I mean, in a sense, I love Leon as well, and Gina; the unit as a whole, in fact… Who is it I love? But you, Emily He flicked his ashes onto the floor. "I am fifty-one years old," he said. "You're what, twenty-nine or thirty. I could easily be your father. What a joke, eh? I must look ridiculous." Instead he looked sad and kind, and also exhausted. Emily took a step in his direction. He circled her, musing. "I think of you as an illness," he said. "Something recurrent, like malaria. I push the thought of you down, you see. Whole weeks go by… I imagine that I'm somehow deeper when I manage to overcome it. I feel stronger and wiser. I take some pleasure, then, in doing what I'm supposed to do. I carry the garbage out; I arrive at work on time…" She touched his arm. He dodged her and went on pacing, head lowered, puffing clouds of smoke.