“Now you got it.”
“Well, you see, Mr. Linthicum—”
“Durwood.”
“See, Durwood …”
Behind him, the door opened wider and Morgan stepped in, carrying a twenty-five-pound keg of powdered skim milk with a water stain at one edge. “Mr. Meredith!” said Durwood. “These are for you.”
“Eh?” said Morgan. He set down the keg and took the carnations. He was wearing his tropical outfit—white Panama hat and white suit. Next to all that white, the carnations were startling, too bright to be real, like a liquor ad in an expensive magazine. Morgan buried his beard in them and took a long, thoughtful sniff.
“I been wanting to meet you since I was thirteen, fourteen years of age,” Durwood said. “Any time we came near Baltimore, I begged and pestered my father to let me see one of your shows. Durwood Linthicum,” he said, producing the name with a flair. He held out a large, soft hand. Emerald and ruby (or colored glass) rings were embedded in his fingers. “I know you know me, all those letters you received.”
“Ah. Linthicum,” said Morgan. He shook the hand, looking past Durwood to Emily.
“Holy Word Entertainment Troupe,” Emily said.
“?h, yes.”
“Not to speak ill of the dead,” said Durwood, “but my father didn’t always have such very good business sense. Like, he saw one of your shows and thought right much of it, saw those articles about you in the papers, but all he thought was, ‘That fellow could put on some fine, fine Bible stories. Daniel in the lions’ den and Ruth and Naomi.’ Right? Why, I knew that you would say no! You do other things besides, you do ‘Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ I’m aware of that!”
Morgan stroked his beard.
“Could we maybe take a seat?” Durwood asked. “I got something to lay out before you.”
“Why, surely,” said Morgan.
He went down the hall to the living room, and Durwood followed. Emily came last, unwillingly. Some moment had slipped past her, here. She’d intended to clear all this up, but now it seemed too late.
In the living room Louisa was rocking and knitting. She glanced at Durwood and cast her yarn busily over her needle. “Mother,” Morgan said, “this is Durwood Linthicum.”
“It’s a pleasure,” said Durwood. He sat down on the couch and leaned toward her, lacing his fingers in front of him. “Ma’am, I guess you know what kind of son you got here.”
Louisa looked over at Morgan, her shaggy black eyebrows like two sharp roofs.
“I been telling my father for years,” Durwood said. “ ‘Daddy, you take that fellow however you can obtain him. We want to branch out, anyhow; nobody cares for this Bible stuff these days. With all our connections—schools, clubs, churches—we got a sure thing!’ I said. ‘We got everything we need!’ There’s this other group I like too—the Glass Accordion. I’m just crazy for their music. But he said no, we’re only booking gospel music here. Wouldn’t give them the time of day. Wouldn’t even come hear them. Well, that’s another story. I plan to pay them a visit right after I leave you folks. But it’s you I feel this special interest in. Mr. Meredith, sir, you are near about my idol! I been following all the news of you. I think you’re wonderful!”
“Why, thank you,” said Morgan, smelling his carnations.
“Only, it’s funny: you don’t much look like your photos.”
“I grew a beard, you see.”
“Yes, a beard will do it, I guess.” Durwood looked over at Emily. He said, “But I hope it don’t mean you’ve … gone hippie, or some such.”
“No, no,” Morgan said.
“Well, good! Well, good! Because, now, maybe me and my father didn’t always see eye to eye on every little thing, but, you know, I still want a Christian outfit, still want a fine, upstanding group we wouldn’t be ashamed to take to a school auditorium …” He trailed off, suddenly frowning. He said, “I surely hope those Glass Accordion folks are not on drugs. Do you think?”
“Oh, no, no, I shouldn’t imagine they are,” Morgan said soothingly.
“You’re going to like it in Tindell, Mr. Meredith.”
“Tindell?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to keep on living in Baltimore, would you? We got connections all over the state of Maryland, and clear through southern Pennsylvania.”
Louisa said, “I’ve been to Tindell.”
“Well, there now!” said Durwood.
“Hated the place.”
“Hated Tindell?”
“Didn’t seem truly populated.”
“Well, I don’t know how you can say that.”
“Empty as a graveyard. Stores all closed.”
“You must have gone on a Sunday.”
“It was a Sunday,” she said. “Sunday, March sixth, nineteen twenty-one. Morgan had not been born yet.”
“Who’s Morgan?”
“Him,” she said, jabbing her chin at Morgan.
“It’s a family nickname,” Morgan said. “A sign of affection. Emily, could you show Mother off to bed now?”
“Bed?” said his mother. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”
“Well, you’ve had a hard day. Emily?”
Emily rose and went over to his mother. She set a hand under her wiry arm and helped her gently to her feet. “What’s got into him?” Louisa said. “Don’t forget my knitting, Emily.”
“I have it.”
She led the old woman down the hall and into her room. Brindle was already there, writing in her diary. She looked up and said, “Bedtime already?”
“Morgan has a guest.”
Louisa said, “I wish we were back at Bonny’s house. A person had breathing room at Bonny’s house. Here I’m shunted around like an extra piece of furniture.”
“I’m sorry, Mother Gower,” Emily said. She went to the closet for Louisa’s nightgown, which hung on a hook. Brindle’s and Louisa’s silky dresses packed the rod. At the far end were Gina’s things: two school jumpers, two white blouses, and a blue quilted bathrobe. It made Emily sad to see them. She removed the nightgown from its hook and closed the door. “Can you help her with her buttons?” she asked Brindle. “I’d better get back to the living room.”
But when she left, she didn’t go to the living room after all. She stood in the hall a moment, listening to Durwood’s breathy voice—Mr. Meredith this, Mr. Meredith that. “Used to be I didn’t even like a puppet show, never liked that Punch-and-Judy stuff, but your puppets, Mr. Meredith, they’re another matter altogether.”
She crossed the hall and went into her own room. First she closed the door partway, so that only a thin crack of light showed, and then she changed into her nightgown and slipped between the sheets. Across from her, Joshua stirred in his crib and gave a snuffling sigh. The window was open and she heard all the sounds of summer—a police siren, someone whistling “Clementine,” music from a passing radio. Durwood said, “Think how it’d free you! Think on it, Mr. Meredith. We do the booking; we do the billing, let you attend to more essential things. Why, we even got Master Charge. Got BankAmericard. Got NAC, I tell you.”
There was something about a sound heard from a lying-down position: it was smaller, but clearer. She even heard Morgan’s match strike when he lit a cigarette. She smelled his sharp smoke. She was reminded of houses she had visited as a child—the rough, ragged smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes and the smells of fried fatback and kerosene in the Shufords’ and Biddixes’ kitchens, where she had been ill at ease, an outsider. Shrinking inwardly, as her family would have expected her to, she had waited barely within the door for some schoolmate to snatch up a spelling book and a couple of cold biscuits for lunch. But she had longed, all those years, to step farther into those kitchens and to have them open up to her. She smiled now, in the dark, and fell asleep listening to Morgan’s rumbling answers.
Then the apartment was suddenly still and Morgan was in the bedroom. He stood in the light from the hall, gazing into the mirror above on
e bureau. His Panama hat was still on his head. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He emptied his pockets of change, a crackling pack of Camels, and something that rolled a short distance and fell to the floor. He stooped for it, grunting. She said, “Morgan?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Has he gone?”
“Yes.”
“All this ‘Mr. Meredith’ business,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Oh, well, if it makes him happy …”
He came to sit on the edge of the bed. He bent over to kiss her (still in his hat, which seemed about to topple onto her), but just then, slow, unsteady footsteps started across the hall. He straightened up. There was a tiny knock.
In the lighted doorway Louisa stood silhouetted. Her long white nightgown outlined two stick legs. “Morgan?” she said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“I fear I may have trouble sleeping.”
“Jesus, Mother, you’ve barely got to bed yet.”
“Morgan, what was the name of the man we used to see so much of?”
“What man, Mother?”
“He was always around. He lived in our house. Morgan, what was his name?”
“Mother! Christ! Go to bed! Get out of here!”
“Oh, excuse me,” she said.
She wandered away again. They heard her in the living room—first in one part, then in another, as if she were walking without purpose. The springs in the sofa creaked, directly behind their heads.
“You shouldn’t be so rude to her,” Emily told Morgan.
“No,” he said. He sighed.
“Shouting like that! What’s wrong with you?”
“I can’t help it. She never sleeps. She’s down to three hours a night.”
“But that’s the way old people are, Morgan.”
“We don’t have any chance to be alone,” he said. “Mother, Brindle, the baby … it’s like a transplant. I transplanted all the mess from home. It’s like some crazy practical joke. Isn’t it? Why, I even have a teenaged daughter again! Or near teenaged; nowadays they’re adolescents earlier, it seems to me …”
“I don’t mind,” Emily said. “I kind of enjoy it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he told her. “It’s not your problem, really. You stay unencumbered no matter what, like those people who can eat and eat and not gain weight. You’re still in your same wrap skirt. Same leotard.”
Little did he know how many replacement leotards she had had to buy over the years. Evidently, he imagined they lasted forever. She smoothed his hair off his forehead. “You’ll feel better when we move,” she told him. “Naturally, it’s difficult, six people in two bedrooms.”
“Ah! And what will we use for money, for this move?”
“I’ll find some other places to sell my puppets. I don’t think Mrs. Apple pays me enough. And I’ll start making more of them. And Brindle—why can’t Brindle work?”
“What doing? Pumping gas?”
“There must be something.”
“Emily, hasn’t it occurred to you that Brindle’s not all that well balanced?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say—”
“We’re living in a house of lunatics.”
She was silent. It was as if he’d twisted some screw on a telescope.
“Anyway,” he said, more gently, “she has to help out with Mother. She may be a total loss other ways, but at least she saves you some of that—Mother’s little mental lapses and her meals and pills.”
He nudged her over on the bed and lay down next to her, fully dressed, with his head propped against the wall. “What we want to do,” he said, “is desert.”
“Do what?”
“Just ditch them all,” he said, “and go. We want a place that’s smaller, not bigger.”
“Oh, Morgan, talk sense,” she said.
“Sweetheart, you know that Gina would be better off with Leon.”
She sat up sharply. “That’s not true!” she said.
“What kind of life is this for her? Strange ladies in her bedroom … You mark my words. After that luxury camp, after she’s visited Leon a couple of days and gone out sailing with Grandpa Meredith and shopping for clothes with Grandma, she’s going to call and ask to stay. You want to bet? She’s at that age now; she disapproves of irregularity. She’ll like Leon’s apartment swimming pool and tennis courts and whatever else. He may even have a sauna bath! Ever thought of that?”
“I can’t do without Gina, Morgan.”
“And the others,” he said. “Mother and Brindle. You think Bonny wouldn’t take them back? If we walked out of here and left them, Brindle would be on the phone to Bonny before we hit the pavement. ‘Bonny, dear, they’ve left us!’ ” Morgan said in a high, gleeful voice. “ ‘Goody, now we can get back to color TV and civilization!’ And Bonny would say, ‘Oh, God, I suppose it’s up to me now,’ and here she’d come, rolling her eyes and clucking, but secretly, you know that she’d be pleased. She likes a lot of tumult. A lot of feathers flying in her nest. I’d ask her for a divorce again and this time she’d agree to it. No, I can’t do that, I don’t want her knowing where we are. I don’t want her driving after us with hats and dogs and relatives. I’ll bring one suit, one hat, and you and Josh. We’ll just clear out—pull up our tent and go.”
“Yes? Where to?” Emily asked. She was lying flat again, with her eyes closed. There was no point taking him seriously.
“Tindell, Maryland,” he told her. “Join up with that fellow Durwood.”
“It was Leon he was asking for.”
“I am Leon, for all he knows.”
“Oh, Morgan, really.”
He was silent. He seemed to be thinking. Finally he said, “Isn’t it funny? I’ve never changed my name. The most I’ve done is reverse it. My name has been the one last thing I’ve hung on to.”
She opened her eyes. She said, “I mean this, Morgan. I do not intend to leave Gina.”
“Oh, all right, all right.”
“I absolutely mean that.”
“I was only talking,” he said.
Then he rose and went to the closet, and she heard his Panama hat settle among the other hats with a dim, soft, whiskery sound.
8
“It’s all very easy for you,” Bonny said, “because Morgan’s in a position of certainty by now. You know what I mean? He’s … solidified. You inherited him when he was old and certain. You have never got lost in a car together and yelled at each other over a map; he will always seem in charge, to you.”
Emily stood in pitch dark, lifting first one foot and then the other from the cool, slick kitchen floor. She said, “Bonny, why do you keep calling?”
“Hmm?”
“This is just not natural. Why are we always on the phone this way?”
Bonny let out a whoosh of smoke. She said, “Well, I’m worried about his eyes.”
“His eyes?”
“I’m reading this book. This book by some Japanese expert. Everything’s in the eyes, it says. If you can see a rim of white below someone’s iris, you can be sure that person’s in trouble. Physically, emotionally … and you know Morgan’s eyes. That’s not just a rim of white, it’s an ocean! His lower lids sag like hammocks. I don’t think he’s eating right. He needs more vegetables.”
“I feed him plenty of vegetables.”
“You know he has a sweet tooth. And he drinks so much coffee, chock-full of sugar. Deadly! Refined white sugar, processed sugar. It’s a wonder he’s lasted as long as he has. Oh, Emily! He should be eating alfalfa sprouts and fresh strawberries, organically grown.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Morgan’s diet.”
“He should cut down on red meats and saturated fats!”
“I have to hang up now, Bonny.”
“If he were properly fed,” said Bonny, “don’t you think he’d act different? I mean, basically he’s a good man, Emily. Basically he’s warm-hearted and open. Openness is his problem,
in fact. Oh, Emily, if I had him back, don’t you think I would feed him better now?”
9
Emily felt her way down the dark hall, stubbing her toe against the wicker elephant. She arrived in the bedroom and found Morgan wide awake, propped against the wall, silently smoking a cigarette. He didn’t say anything. She got into bed beside him, smoothed her pillow, and lay down. The telephone rang in the kitchen.
“Don’t answer,” Morgan said.
“What if it’s someone else?”
“It’s not.”
“What if it’s Gina? An emergency?”
“It won’t be. Let it ring.”
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“I’m almost sure.”
At this hour, in this mood, “almost” seemed good enough. She took the chance. She didn’t get up. There was something restful about simply giving in, finally—abdicating, allowing someone else to lead her. The phone rang on and on, first insistent, then resigned, faint and forlorn, rhyming with itself, like the chorus of a song.
1979
1
He was standing in Larrabee’s Drugstore, waiting for his change. He’d bought a pack of Camels, a box of coughdrops, and a Tindell Weekly Gazette. The saleslady rang up his purchases, but then fell into conversation with another customer. It surely was cold, she agreed. It was much too cold to be March. Her cat wouldn’t leave the stove and her dog was having to wear his little red plaid coat. She kept Morgan’s change in her cupped hand, jingling it absently. Morgan stood waiting—an anonymous, bearded, bespectacled man of no interest to her. Finally he gave up and opened out his paper. He liked the Gazette very much, although it didn’t carry Ann Landers. He scanned the personals. I will not be responsible, I will not be responsible …
In the Lost and Found he learned that someone had lost a rubber plant. The things that some people mislaid! The carelessness of their lives! A complete set of Revereware cooking pots had been found in the middle of North Deale Road. A charm bracelet in the high-school parking lot.
Now for the obituaries. Mary Lucas, Long-Time Tindell Resident. Also Pearl Joe Pascal, and Morgan Gower, and …