"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?" 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
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. Z 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 Cower, and…
MORGAN GOWER, HAIIDWARE STORE MANAGER
Morgan Gower, 53, who maintained a home at the Tindell Acres Trailer Park, died yesterday after a lengthy illness.
Mr. Gower had served as manager of the downtown branch of Cullen Hardware, in Baltimore.
He is survived by…
He raised his head and looked around him. The drugstore was of old, dark wood, its shelves sparsely stocked. In some spots there was only one of an item- one box of Sweet 'n Low packets, its corners dented; one tube of Prell shampoo with a sticky green cap. It was definitely a real place. It smelled of damp cardboard. The saleslady was ancient, her skin so wrinkled that it seemed quilted, and her glasses hung on a chain around her neck.
… is survived by his wife, the former Bonny Jean Cullen; seven daughters, Amy G. Murphy, of Baltimore; Jean G. Hanley, also of Baltimore; Susan Gower, of Charlottesville, Virginia…
"Sir," the saleslady said, holding out his change.
He closed the newspaper and pocketed the money.
Outside, a cold, damp wind hit him. It was Sunday morning. The streets were empty and the sidewalks seemed wider and whiter than usual. All the other stores were closed-the little dimestore, the grocery store, the barbershop. He walked past them slowly. His pickup was parked in front of the Hollywood Stars Beautician. The red plywood box constructed over its truckbed (MEREDITH PUPPET co. arching across each side) creaked in the wind. Morgan climbed into the cab. He opened his pack of cigarettes and lit one. Coughing his habitual, hacking cough, he spread out the paper again.
… Carol G. Haines, also of Charlottesville; Elizabeth G. Wing, of Nashville, Tennessee… He set it down and started the engine.
Fool paper; fool backwoods editors. Even they, you'd think, would have the common sense, the decency, to check a thing like that before, they printed it. Where were their standards? You call that journalism?
He drove up Main Street, puffing rapidly on his cigarette. At Main and Howell the traffic light was red. He braked, and glanced sideways at the paper.
… Molly G. Abbott, of Buffalo, New York; Kathleen G. Brustein, of Chicago…
Someone behind him honked, and he started off again. He veered from Howell into an alley, a moonscape of bleached, stubbled clay with a few empty beer bottles tossed in the weeds, and from there to the state highway. Up ahead lay the trailer park. A flaking metal sign spelled out TINDELL ACRES MONTHLY RATES J. PHOUTT PROPRIETOR. He turned left on the gravel road and passed the office-a streamlined aluminum trailer whose cinderblock steps and flowerboxes attempted to give it a rooted look. Also his mother, Louisa Brindle Gower, a persistent voice continued in his mind; a sister, Brindle G. T. Roberts, and eleven grandchildren. Behind the office, a dozen smaller trailers sat at haphazard angles to one another. They might have been tossed there by a fractious child, along with the items of scrap all around them-discarded butane tanks, a rust-stained mattress, a collapsed sofa with a sapling growing up between two of its cushions. Morgan drove past an old woman in a man's tweed overcoat. He parked in front of a small green trailer and got out. The woman turned to look after him, brushing wisps of gray hair from her eyes. It was obvious she planned to start a conversation. Morgan would not admit she was there. He rushed toward the trailer, keeping his head ducked. His mouth felt too large. He had, he observed detachedly, all the physical symptoms of… shame; yes, that was it. How peculiar. He felt insufficiently shielded by his cap, which was trim, narrowly visored, of no particular character. He turned up the collar of his jacket before he fumbled at the door.
"Cold enough for you?" the woman called in a thin, carrying voice.
He bowed lower over the lock. "Yoo-hoo! Mr. Meredith!" Services will be private.
Emily was cooking breakfast. He smelled bacon, a special Sunday treat. Josh was toddling through the living room in a pair of sodden corduroy overalls with one strap trailing. Morgan scooped him into his arms and Josh chuckled.
"Did you get the paper?" Emily asked. He set Joshua down again. "No," he said. He had left it in the truck. He would dispose of it later on.
There was no reason to feel so embarrassed. Bonny was the one who ought to feel embarrassed. (For it was Bonny who had done it, he assumed. Of course it was. Wasn't it?) What a silly reaction to have! He considered himself with a remote, bemused curiosity. Even his posture seemed furtive-the way he walked the length of the trailer with as little noise as possible, stooped, head ducked, as if trying not to disturb the air. He went from the living room (one couch beneath a small, louvered window) through the narrow aisle between a table and the counter that was their kitchen. Sidling past Emily, he kissed the back of her neck. She had a ripple of bones down her nape that reminded him of the scalloped spines of some seashells.
He continued into the bedroom, with its single built-in bureau and bed, A Port-a-Crib took all the remaining space. To reach the little curtained closet in one corner, he had to clamber across the bed. He took his cap off and set it on the shelf next to Emily's suitcase. He took his jacket off and hung it on a hanger. He had bought the jacket last November at a place called Frugal Fred's. Having left his extra clothes behind when he fled Baltimore, he had found himself with nothing warm enough to get him through the winter, and he'd paid five dollars for this heavy blue jacket that must once have been part of an Air Force uniform, although it was bland and dull now, undecorated. All the insignia seemed to have been removed, leaving empty stitches on the sleeves and across one pocket. He supposed that was some sort of regulation. They wouldn't want anyone impersonating an officer, naturally. Yes, it was only sensible. But sometimes he liked to imagine that the insignia had been ripped away. He pictured a scene in a field-the ranks of men standing at attention, the bugle call, the drums, Morgan stepping smartly forward, his commanding officer stripping him of his stripes in a single dramatic gesture. Whenever he thought of this, he walked straighter in his jacket and took on an impassive expression: the look of a man who had willfully, recklessly directed his life on a collision course toward ruin. However, he knew it was a jacket that no one would glance at twice. And his cap was what they called a Greek sailor cap, but not really Greek-looking, not seaworthy-looking; everybody wore them nowadays, even teenaged girls at the local high school, tilting the visors over their jumbles of curls.