Read Morgan's Passing for Free Online Page B

breath, even at the dinner table, even now while they were asking him these questions?
    He tried to stop humming. He briefly switched to a pipe, but the mouthpiece cracked in two when he bit it. And once he got a shorter haircut than usual and trimmed his beard so it was square and hugged the shape of his jaw. It looked artificial, they told him. It looked like a
wooden
beard, they said.
    He felt he was riding something choppy and violent, fighting to keep his balance, smiling beatifically and trying not to blink.
    â€œSee that? He’s barefoot,” Liz said.
    â€œHush and pour that coffee back,” Bonny told her. “You know you’re not allowed to drink coffee yet.”
    The youngest, Kate, came in with a stack of schoolbooks. She was not quite eleven and still had Bonny’s full-cheeked, cheery face. As she passed behind Morgan’s chair, she plucked his hat off, kissed the back of his head, and replaced the hat.
    â€œSugar-pie,” Morgan said.
    Maybe they ought to have another baby.
    With everyone settled around this table, you couldn’t even bend your elbows. Morgan decided to retreat. He rose and ducked out of the room backward, like someone leaving the presence of royalty, so they wouldn’t see the comics section he was hiding behind him. He padded into the living room. One of the radios was playing “Plastic Fantastic Lover” and he paused to do a little dance, barefoot on the rug. His mother watched him sternly from the couch. She was a small, hunched old lady with hair that was still jet black; it was held flat with tortoise-shell combs from which it crinkled and bucked like something powerful. She sat with her splotched, veined hands folded in her lap; she wore a drapy dress that seemed several sizes too large for her. “Why aren’t you at breakfast?” Morgan asked.
    â€œOh, I’ll just wait till all this has died down.”
    â€œBut then Bonny’ll be in the kitchen half the morning.”
    â€œWhen you get to be my age,” Louisa said, “why, food is near about everything there is, and I don’t intend to rush it. I want a nice, hot English muffin, split with a fork, not a knife, with butter melting amongst the crumbs, and a steaming cup of coffee laced with whipping cream. And I want it in peace. I want it in quiet.”
    â€œBonny’s going to have a fit,” he said.
    â€œDon’t be silly. Bonny doesn’t mind such things.”
    She was probably right. (Bonny was infinitely expansible, taking everything as it came. It was Morgan who felt oppressed by his mother’s living here.) He sighedand settled next to her on the couch. He opened out his paper. “Isn’t this a weekday?” she asked him.
    â€œYes,” he mumbled.
    She crooked a finger over the top of his paper and pulled it down so she could see his face. “Aren’t you going to work?”
    â€œBy and by.”
    â€œBy and
by?
It’s seven-thirty, Morgan and you don’t even have your shoes on. Do you know what I’ve done so far today? Made my bed, watered my ferns, polished the chrome in my bathroom; and meanwhile here you sit reading the comics, and your sister’s sleeping like the dead upstairs. What is this with my children? Where do they get this? By and by you say!”
    He gave up. He folded the paper and said, “All
right
, Mother.”
    â€œHave a nice day,” she told him serenely.
    When he left the room, she was sitting with her hands in her lap again, trustful as a child, waiting for her English muffin.

2
    W earing a pair of argyle socks that didn’t go at all with his Klondike costume, and crusty leather boots to cover them up, and his olive-drab parka from Sunny’s Surplus, Morgan loped along the sidewalk. His hardware store was deep in the city, too far to travel on foot, and unfortunately his car was spread all over the floor of his garage and he hadn’t quite finished putting