Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

As soon as the weather thawed, Emily started jogging. It was a strange thing for her to do, Morgan thought-not really her type of activity. She bought a pair of clumsy yellow running shoes and a pedometer that she strapped to her waist with an old leather belt of Leon's. Several times, when Morgan was on his way to see her, he caught sight of her approaching at the other end of the block, wearing her unrunner-like skirt from which her legs flew out like sticks. Her yellow feet seemed the biggest part of her. She always looked as if site just happened to be running-as if she had a bus to catch or had suddenly remembered a pot left boiling on the stove. Maybe it was her tripping gait, which lacked seriousness. Maybe it was the nip and swing of her skirt. As she drew near, she would call out, not breaking stride, "Be with you hi a minute! Once more around the block!" But when she stopped, finally, her pedometer would surprise him: four miles. Four and a half miles. Five. Always pressing her limits.

Once Morgan asked what she was running for, "I just am," she told him.

"I mean, your heart? Your figure? Your circulation? Are you training for a marathon?" Tin just running," she said.

"But why push yourself?"

"I'm not pushing myself." She was, though. After a run, there was something intense about her. She'd be glossy with sweat, strung up, a bundle of wiry muscles, vibrating. Her hair, loosened, flew out in an electric spray, each strand as crinkled as her amber-colored, crinkly hairpins. She was so different from other women that Morgan didn't know quite how to go about her. He was baffled and moved and fascinated, and he loved to slide his fingers down the two new, tight cords behind each of her knees. He couldn't imagine what it felt like to be Emily.

In the hardware store one afternoon he closed his eyes and said, "Tell me what you see. Be my seeing eye." She said, "A desk. A filing cabinet. A couch." Then she seemed to give up. He opened his eyes and found her looking helpless, wondering what he wanted of her. But that was all he wanted: her pure, plain view of things. Not that he would ever really possess it.

Morgan himself wasn't so fond of exercise. He hated exercise, to tell the truth. (Oh, to tell the truth, he was a much, much older man, and not in such very good condition.) And Leon had no interest in it either. Leon was one of those people who seem permanently athletic without effort. He was in fine shape, heavy and solid, sleekly muscled. He watched Emily's jogging distantly, with a tolerant expression on his face. "She's going about it all wrong," he told Morgan. "She's driving herself too hard."

"Ah! Didn't I say the same thing?"

"She has to be in charge so. Has to win." They were sitting on the front stoop of the apartment building on a sunny day in March. The weather felt tentative. After this bitter, shocking winter, people seemed to view spring as a trick. They went on wearing woolen clothes, and removed them piece by piece each day as they grew warmer. Bonny still had her boxwoods shrouded in burlap. She mourned for her camellia buds, which had been fooled into emerging and would surely drop off with the next freeze. But spring continued. The camellia buds opened out triumphantly, a vivid pink with full, bloused petals. Morgan and Leon sat in their shirtsleeves, almost warm enough, too lazy to go in for their jackets, and around the corner came Emily a little black butterfly of a person with yellow feet, far away. There was something about her running that seemed eternal. She was like the braided peasant girl hi a weatherhouse, traveling forever on her appointed path, rain or shine, endearingly steadfast. Morgan fell himself grow weightless with happiness, and he expanded in the sunlight and beamed at everything with equal love: at Leon and the spindly, striving trees and Emily jogging up and away and the seagull wheeling overhead, floating through the chimneys in a languid search for the harbor.

Leon's father had a heart attack, and Leon drove to Richmond to see him. Morgan visited Emily that evening. In the kitchen Gina was mixing a cake for her school's bake sale. She kept coming into the living room and asking where the vanilla was, or the sifter, or prancing around Morgan and checking all his pockets for the coughdrops she was fond of. Morgan was patient with her. He held his arms out passively while she searched him. Then when she returned to the kitchen, he and Emily made casual, artificial conversation. He might have lounged on the couch beside her in the old days, not giving it a thought, but now he was careful to sit some distance from her on a straight-backed chair. He cleared his throat and said, "Bonny told me to ask if you wanted to borrow her car."

"Oh, that's very nice of her. No, thank you."

"What if he's gone a long time? You might need it."

"No."

"What if he's gone through the weekend and it interferes with a puppet show?"

"I'll cancel it"

"Or I could come in Ms place. Why not? I'll come as Leon."

"I'll just cancel." They looked at each other. Emily seemed paler than usual. She kept smoothing her skirt, but when she saw him watching she stopped abruptly and folded her hands in her lap. The strain was affecting her, he supposed. She was not accustomed to deceit. Neither was he, really-not to this kind. He wished they could just tell everyone and have done with it. Leon would say, "I understand," and Morgan could move in and the four of them would be happy as larks, complete at last; they would laugh at how secretive they had been at first, how possessive, how selfish.

There was a blue tinge around Emily's eyes that gave her a raccoon look.

He stood up and said, "I have to go. Will you see me out?"

"Yes, certainly," Emily said, and she stood too, smoothing her skirt again with a nervous gesture that wasn't like her.

They went down the hall, passing the kitchen, where Emily poked her head in and said, "Gina, I'll be right back."

"Oh. Okay," Gina said. She was covered with flour and she looked harassed and distracted.

Morgan took Emily by the hand and led her out the door. But halfway down the stairs they heard footsteps coming up and he let go of her. It was Mrs. Apple in a bushy Peruvian poncho, briskly jingling her keys. "Oh! Emily. Dr. Morgan," she said. "I was just stopping in to ask about Leon's father. Is he going to be all right? Have you had any news?"

"Not so far," Emily said. "Leon said he'd: phone me tonight."

"Well, I know how anxious you must be." Morgan leaned against the banister, exasperated, waiting for this to end.

"Oh, but with modern medicine," Mrs. Apple said, "these things are nothing. A heart attack's so simple. Everything's replaceable; they'll give him a Teflon tube or a battery or something and he'll go on for years yet. Tell Leon he'll go on forever. Right, Dr. Morgan?"

"Right," said Morgan, staring at the ceiling.

If he inched his hand up the banister, he could just touch the back of Emily's skirt-a slink of cool, slippery cloth with a hint of warmth beneath it. His fingertips rested there, barely in contact. Mrs. Apple didn't notice. "If he's not home by tomorrow night," she was telling Emily, "you and Gina come for supper. Nothing fancy; you know I'm a vegetarian now…" When she finally let them go, Morgan strode rudely down the stairs and out the door without saying goodbye. Emily had to run to catch up with him. "I can't abide that woman," he said.

"I thought you liked her."

"She repeats herself." They walked fast, crossing the street and heading up the block toward Morgan's pickup. It was a cool, windy night with a white sky overhead. A few people were GUI' on the sidewalk-teenagers hanging around a lamppost, some women on their stoops. When Morgan reached the pickup, he took hold of the door handle and said, "Let's go someplace."