Emily thought he was wonderful. She had never met anyone like him. Her own family had been so1 ordinary. and pale; her childhood had been so unexceptional. (His had been terrible.) They began spending all their time together-nursing a single Pepsi through an afternoon in the canteen, studying in the library with their feet intertwined beneath the table. Emily was too shy to appear in any plays with him, but she was good with lier hands and she signed on as a set-builder. She hammered platforms and stairsteps and balconies. She painted leafy woods on canvas flats, and then for the next play she transformed the woods into flowered wallpaper and mahogany-colored wainscoting. Meanwhile, it seemed that even this slim connection with the theatre was making her life more dramatic. There were scenes with his parents, at which she was an embarrassed observer-long tirades from his father, a Richmond banker, while his mother wiped her eyes and smiled politely, into space. Evidently, the universityhad informed them that Leon's grades were even lower than usual. If they didn't improve, he was going to flunk out. Almost every Sunday his parents would drive all the way from Richmond just to sit in Leon's overstaffed, faded dormitory parlor asking what kind of profession he could hope for with ahigh F average. Emily would rather have skipped these meetings, but Leon wanted her there. At first his parents were cordial to her. Then they grew less friendly. It couldn't have been anything she'd done. Maybe it was what she hadn't done. She was always reserved arid quiet with them. She came from old Quaker stock and tended, she'd been told, to feel a little too comfortable in the face of long silences. Sometimes she thought things were going beautifully when in fact everybody else was casting about in desperation for something to talk about. So she tried harder to be sociable. She wore lipstick and stockings when she knew they were coming, and she thought up neutral subjects ahead of time. While Leon and his father were storming at each other, she'd be running through a mental card file searching for a topic to divert them. "Our class is reading Tolstoy now," she told Leon's mother one Sunday in April. "Do you like Tolstoy?"
"Oh, yes, we have it in leather," said Mrs. Meredith, dabbing her nose with a handkerchief, "Maybe Leon ought to take Russian literature," Emily said. "We read plays too, you know."
"Let him pass something in his own damn language first," his father said.
"Oh, well, this is in English."
"How would that help?" Mr. Meredith asked. "I believe his native tongue is Outer Mongolian." Meanwhile Leon was standing at the, window with his back to them. Emily felt touched by his tousled hair and his despairing posture, but at the same time she couldn't help wondering how he'd got them into this. His parents weren't really the type to make scenes. Mr, Meredith was a solid, business-like man; Mrs. Meredith was so stately and self-controlled that it was remarkable she'd foreseen the need to bring a handkerchief. Yet every week something went wrong. Leon had this way o£ plunging into battle unexpectedly. He was quicker to go to battle than anyone she knew. It seemed he'd make a mental leap that Emily couldn't follow, landing smack in the middle of rage when just one second before he'd been perfectly level and reasonable. He flung his parents' words back at them. He pounded his fist into his palm. It was all too high-keyed, Emily thought. She turned to Mrs. Meredith again. "Right now we're on Anna Karenina" she said.
"All that stuff is Communist anyhow," said Mr. Meredith.
"Is… what?"
"Sure, this tractor-farming, workers-unite bit, killing off the Tsar and Anastasia…"
"Well, I'm not… I believe that came a little later."
"What is it, you're one of these college leftists?"
"No, but I don't think Tolstoy lived that long."
"Of course he did," Mr. Meredith said. "Where do you think your friend Lenin would be if he didn't have Tolstoy?"
"Lenin?"
"Do you deny it? Look, my girl," Mr. Meredith said. He leaned earnestly toward her, lacing his fingers together. (He must sit this way at the bank, Emily thought, explaining to some farmer why he couldn't have a loan on his tobacco crop.) "The minute Lenin got his foot in the door, first person he called on was Tolstoy. Tolstoy this, Tolstoy that… Any time they wanted any propaganda written, 'Ask Tolstoy,' he'd say. 'Ask Leo.' Why, sure! They didn't tell you that in school?"
"But… I thought Tolstoy died in nineteen…"
"Forty," said Mr. Meredith.
"Forty?" I was in my senior year in college."
"Oh."
"And Stalin!" said Mr. Meredith. "Listen, there was a combination. Tolstoy and Stalin." Leon turned suddenly from the window and left the room/They heard him going up the stairs to the sleeping quarters. Emily and Mrs. Meredith looked at each other.
"If you want my personal opinion," Mr. Meredith said, "Tolstoy was a bit of a thorn in Stalin's side. See, he couldn't unseat Tolstoy, the guy was sort of well. known by then, but at the same time he was too old-line. You knew he was pretty well off, of course. Owned a large piece of land."
"That's true, he did," Emily said. "You can see it must have been a little awkward."
"Well, yes…"
" 'The fact is,' Stalin says to his henchmen, 'he's an old guy. I mean, he's just a doddering old guy with a large piece of land.'" Emily nodded, her mouth slightly open.
Leon came pounding down the stairs. He entered the parlor with a dictionary open in his hands. "Tolstoy, Lev," he read out, "1828–1910," There was a silence.
"Born in eighteen twenty-eight, died in nineteen-"
"All right" said Mr. Meredith. "But where is this getting us? Don't try to change the subject, Leon. We were talking about your grades. Your sloppy grades and this damn-fool acting business."
"I'm serious about my acting," Leon said.
"Serious! About play-acting?"
"You can't make me give it up; I'm twenty-one years old. I know my rights."
"Don't tell me what I can or cannot do," said Mr. Meredith, "If you refuse, I warn you, Leon: I'm with-drawing you from school, I'm not paying next year's tuition."
"Oh, Burt!" Mrs. Meredith said. "You wouldn't do that! He'd be drafted!"
"Army's the best thing that could happen to that boy," Mr. Meredith said.
"You can't!"
"Oh, can't I?" He turned to Leon. "I'm driving home with you today," he said, "unless I have your signed and notarized statement that you will drop all extracurricular activities-plays, girlfriends…" He flapped a pink, tight-skinned hand in Emily's direction.
"Not a chance," said Leon.
"Start packing, then."
"Burt!" Mrs. Meredith cried.
But Leon said, "Gladly. I'll be gone by nightfall. Not home, though-not now or ever again."
"See what you've done?" Mrs. Meredith asked her husband, Leon walked out of the room. Through the parlor's front windows (small-paned, with rippling glass) Emily saw his angular figure repeatedly dislocating itself, jarring apart and drawing back together as he strode across the quadrangle. She was left with Leon's parents, who seemed slapped into silence. She had the feeling that she was one of them, that she would spend the rest of her days in heavily draped parlors-a little dry stick of a person. "Excuse me," she said, rising. She crossed the room, stepped out the door, and closed it gently behind her. Then she started running after Leon.
She found him at tiie fountain in front of the library, idly throwing pebbles into the water. When she came up beside him, out of breath, and touched Ms arm, he wouldn't even glance at her. In the sunlight Ms face had a warm olive glow that she found beautiful. His eyes, which were long and heavy-lidded, seemed full of plots. She believed she would never again know anyone so decisive. Even his physical outline seemed to stand MORGAN'S PASSING 71 out more sharply than other people's. "Leon?" she said. "What will you do?" *T11 go to New York," he said, as if he'd been planning this for months.