Morgan's Passing (16 page)

“Who gives this woman to be married?” the minister said. From the way the question rang in the silence, Morgan suspected it might have been asked once before without his noticing. He seemed to have missed part of the service. “Her mother and I do,” he said. It would have been more accurate to say, “Her mother does.” He turned and found his seat next to Bonny, who was looking beautiful and calm in a blue dress with a wide scoop neckline that kept slipping off one or the other of her shoulders. She laid a hand on top of his. Morgan noticed a gray thread of cobweb dangling from the ceiling.

Jim put a ring on Amy's finger. Amy put a ring on Jim's finger. They kissed. Morgan thought of a plan: he would go live with them in their new apartment. They didn't know a thing, not a thing. No doubt they'd have broken all their kitchen machines within a week and their household accounts would be a shambles, and then along would come Morgan to repair and advise. He would go as an old man, one of those really bereft old men with no teeth, no job, no wife, no family. In some small area he would act helpless, so that Amy would feel a need to care for him. He would arrive, perhaps, without buttons on his shirt, and would ask her to sew them on for him. He had no idea how to do it himself, he would tell her. Actually, Morgan was very good at sewing on buttons. Actually, he not only sewed on his own buttons but also Bonny's and the girls', and patched their jeans and altered their hemlines, since Bonny wasn't much of a seamstress. Actually, Amy was aware of this. She was also aware that he was not a toothless
old man and that he did have a wife and family. The trouble with fathering children was, they got to know you so well. You couldn't make the faintest little realignment of the facts around them. They kept staring levelly into your eyes, eternally watchful and critical, forever prepared to pass judgment. They could point to so many places where you had gone permanently, irretrievably wrong.

3

T
here'd been a compromise on the food. Bonny had ordered several trays from the deli, and then Morgan had picked up some cheese and some crackers which the girls had put together this morning. He'd been upset to discover that there was apparently no discount outlet for gourmet cheeses. “Do you know what these things
cost?”
he asked the groom's father, who had a hand poised over a cracker spread with something blue-veined. Then he wandered across the yard to check on the Camembert. It was surrounded by three young children—possibly Jim's nephews. “This one smells like a stable,” the smallest was saying.

“It smells like a gerbil cage.”

“It smells like the … elephant house at the zoo!”

The weather had turned out fine, after all. It was a warm, yellow-green day, and daffodils were blooming near the garage. A smiling brown maid, on loan from Uncle Ollie, bore a tray of drinks through the crowd, picking her way carefully around the muddy patches where the spring reseeding had not yet taken hold. The bride stood sipping champagne and listening to an elderly
gentleman whom Morgan had never seen before. His other daughters—oddly plain in their dress-up clothes—passed around sandwiches and little things on toothpicks, and his mother was telling the groom's mother why she lived on the third floor. “I started out on the second floor,” she said, “but moved on account of the goat.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Murphy, patting her pearls.

“This goat was housebroken, naturally, but the drawback was that I am the only person in this family who reads
Time
magazine. In fact, I have a subscription. And as coincidence would have it, the goat had only been trained on
Time
magazine. I mean, he would only … I mean, if the necessity arose, the only place he was willing to … was on a
Time
magazine spread on the floor. He recognized that red border, I suppose. And so you see if I were to lay my magazine aside even for a second, why, along this animal would come and just … would up and … would …”

“He'd pee all over it,” Morgan said. “Tough luck if she wasn't through reading it.”

“Oh
, yes,” Mrs. Murphy said. She took a sip from her glass.

At Morgan's elbow, in a splintered wicker chair, an unknown man sat facing in the other direction. Maybe he was from the groom's side. He had a bald spot at the back of his head; fragile wisps of hair were drawn across it. He raised a drink to his lips. Morgan saw his weighty signet ring. “Billy?” Morgan said. He went around to the front of the chair. Good God, it was Billy, Bonny's brother.

“Nice wedding, Morgan,” Billy said. “I've been to a lot, you know—mostly my own. I'm an expert on weddings.” He laughed. His voice was matter-of-fact, but to Morgan it was the misplaced, eerie matter-of-factness sometimes encountered in dreams. How could this be Billy? What had happened here? Morgan had last seen Billy not a month ago. He said, “Billy, from the back of your head I didn't know you.”

“Really?” Billy said, unperturbed. “Well, how about from the front?”

From the front he was the same as ever—boyish-looking, with a high, round forehead and dazzling blue eyes. But no, if you met him on the street somewhere, wouldn't he be just another half-bald businessman? Only someone who'd known him as long as Morgan had could find the bones in his slackening face. Morgan stood blinking at him. Billy seemed first middle-aged and anonymous; then he was Bonny's high-living baby brother; then he was middle-aged again—like one of those trick pictures that alter back and forth as you shift your position. “Well?” Billy said.

“Have some champagne, why don't you?” Morgan asked him.

“No, thanks, I'll stick to scotch.”

“Have some cheese, then. It's very expensive.”

“Good old Morgan,” Billy said, toasting him. “Good old, cheap old Morgan, right?”

Morgan wandered away again. He looked for someone else to talk to, but none of the guests seemed his type. They were all so genteel and well modulated, sipping their champagne, the ladies placing their high heels carefully to avoid sinking through the sod. In fact, who here was a friend of Morgan's? He stopped and looked around him. Nobody was. They were Bonny's friends, or Amy's, or the groom's. A twin flew by—Susan, in chiffon. Her flushed, earnest face and steamy spectacles reminded him that his daughters, at least, bore some connection to him. “Sue!” he cried.

But she flung back, “I'm not Sue, I'm Carol.”

Of course she was. He hadn't made that mistake in years. He walked on, shaking his head. Under the dogwood tree, three uncles in gray suits were holding what appeared to be a committee meeting. “No, I've been letting my cellar go, these days,” one of them was saying. “Been drinking what I have on hand. To put it bluntly, I'm seventy-four years old. This June I'll be seventy-five. A while back I was pricing a case of wine
and they recommended that I age it eight years. ‘Good enough,' I started to say. Then I thought, ‘Well, no.' It was the strangest feeling. It was the oddest moment. I said, ‘No, I suppose it's not for me. Thanks anyway.' ”

At a gap in the hedge, Morgan slipped through. He found himself on the sidewalk, next to the brisk, noisy street, on a normal Saturday afternoon. His car was parked alongside the curb. He opened the door and climbed in. For a while he just sat there, rubbing his damp palms on the knees of his trousers. But the sun through the glass was baking him, and finally he rolled down a window, dug through his pockets for the keys, and started the engine.

These were his closest friends: Potter the musical-instrument man, the hot-dog lady, the Greek tavern-keeper on Broadway, and Kazari the rug merchant. None of them would do. For one reason or another, there wasn't a single person he could tell, “My oldest daughter's getting married. Could I sit here with you and smoke a cigarette?”

He floated farther and farther downtown, as if descending through darkening levels of water. All's Fair Pawnshop, Billiards, Waterbeds, Beer, First House of Jesus,
SOUL BROTHER DO NOT BURN
. Flowers were blooming in unlikely places—around a city trashcan and in the tiny, parched weed-patch beneath a rowhouse window. He turned a corner where a man sat on the curb flicking out the blade of his knife, slamming it shut with the heel of his hand, and flicking it out again. He traveled on. He passed Meller Street, then Merger Street. He turned down Crosswell. He parked and switched the engine off and sat looking at Crafts Unlimited.

It was months since he'd been here. The shop window was filled with Easter items now—hand-decorated eggs and stuffed rabbits, a patchwork quilt like an early spring garden. The Merediths' windows were empty, as always; you couldn't tell a thing from them. Maybe they'd moved. (They could move in a taxi, with one suitcase,
after ten minutes' preparation.) He slid out of the car and walked toward the shop. He climbed the steps, pushed through the glass door, and gazed up the narrow staircase. But he didn't have what it took to continue. (What would he say? How would he explain himself?) Instead, he turned left, through a second glass door and into the crafts shop. It smelled of raw wood. A gray-haired, square-boned woman in a calico smock was arranging hand-carved animals on a table. “Hello,” she said, and then she glanced up and gave him a startled look. It was the top hat, he supposed. He wished he'd worn something more appropriate. And why were there no other customers? He was all alone, conspicuous, in a roomful of quilted silence. Then he saw the puppets. “Ah, so!” he said. “Ze poppets!” Surprisingly, he seemed to have developed an accent—from what country, he couldn't say. “Zese poppets are for buying?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” the woman said.

They lay on a center table: Pinocchio, a princess, a dwarf, an old lady, all far more intricate than the first ones he'd seen. Their heads were no longer round, simple, rubber-ball heads but were constructed of some padded cloth, with tiny stitches making wrinkles and bulges. The old-lady puppet, in particular, had a face so furrowed that he couldn't help running his finger across it. “Wonderful!” he said, still in his accent.

“They're sewn by a girl named Emily Meredith,” the woman told him. “A remarkable craftsman, really.”

Morgan nodded. He felt a mixture of jealousy and happiness. “Yes, yes,” he wanted to say, “don't I know her very well? Don't I know both of them? Who are you, to speak of them?” But also he wanted to hear how this woman saw them, what the rest of the world had to say about them. He waited, still holding the puppet. The woman turned back to her animals.

“Perhaps I see her workroom,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“She leeve nearby, yes?”

“Why, yes, she lives just upstairs, but I'm not sure she—”

“Zis means a great deal to me,” Morgan said.

Across from him, on the other side of the table, stood a blond wooden cabinet filled with weaving. Its doors were wavery glass, and they reflected a shortened and distorted view of Morgan—a squat, bearded man in a top hat. Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course! He adjusted the hat, smiling. Everything black turned transparent in the glass. He wore a column of rainbow-colored weaving on his head and a spade of weaving on his chin. “You see, I also am artiste,” he told the woman. Definitely, his accent was a French one.

She said, “Oh?”

“I am solitary man. I know other artistes.”

“But I don't think you understand,” she said. “Emily and her husband, they just give puppet shows to children, mainly. They only sell puppets when they have a few extras. They're not exactly—”

“Steel,” he said, “I like to meet zem. I like you to introduce me. You know so many people! I see zat. A friend to ze artistes. What your name is, please?”

“Well … Mrs. Apple,” she said. She thought a moment. “Oh, all right. I don't suppose they would mind.” She called to someone at the rear, “Hannah, will you watch for customers?” Then she turned to lead Morgan out the side door.

He followed her up the staircase. There was a smell of fried onions and disinfectant. Mrs. Apple's hips looked very broad from this angle. She became, by extension, someone fascinating: she must speak to the Merediths every day, know intimately their schedules and their habits, water their plants when they went on tour. He restrained the urge to set a friendly palm on her backside. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and he gave her a reassuring smile.

At the top of the stairs she turned to the right and knocked on a tall oak door. “Emily?” she called.

But when the door opened, it was Leon who stood there. He was holding a newspaper. When he saw Morgan, he drew the paper sharply to his chest. “Dr. Morgan!” he said.

Mrs. Apple said, “Doctor?”

She looked at Morgan and then at Leon. “Why,” she said, “is this the doctor you told me about? The one who delivered Gina?”

Leon nodded.

“But I thought you were an artist!” Mrs. Apple said. “You said you were an artist!”