Morgan's Passing by Anne Tyler

Author:Anne Tyler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307788375
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-26T10:00:00+00:00

4

In the past few years Morgan had become a letter-writer. He couldn’t have said exactly why. It just seemed, sometimes, that he grew restless and ill-contained; he couldn’t sit still; there was something he wanted to tell someone, but he couldn’t think what it was and he had no particular person in mind. Then he would sit down and write letters—although even that was not quite it; it was only second best. At work, he used his Woodstock typewriter, which produced an uneven, sooty print that danced all over the page. He plodded away with two index fingers, stopping after every word or so to pry up the A key, which wouldn’t spring back on its own. At home, he wrote with a leaky fountain pen whose cartridge he refilled with a plastic hypodermic needle. (He’d salvaged the needle from an emergency-room wastebasket during one of the children’s accidents. Buying cartridges already filled was an extravagance, he felt.) He wrote all his daughters, even those still living in Baltimore. He wrote the traveling salesmen who came to the store, and his friends Kazari and the Greek tavern-keeper. Because he did not often have anything to say, he gave advice, as a rule. It has come to my attention that your company’s plant-sprayer bottles work exceedingly well for dousing fireplace logs at bedtime. Simply fill the bottle with water, adjust the nozzle to setting 4 …

* * *

Or:

Dear Amy,

I notice that you appear to be experiencing some difficulty with household clutter.

Understand that I’m not blaming you for this, your mother has the same problem. But as I’ve been telling her for years, there is a solution.

Simply take a cardboard box, carry it through the rooms, load into it everyone’s toys and dirty clothes and such, and hide it all in a closet. If people ask for some missing object, you’ll be able to tell them where it is. If they don’t ask (now, here is the important part), if a week goes by and they don’t notice the object is gone, then you can be sure it’s non-essential, and you throw it away. You would be surprised at how many things are non-essential. Throw everything away, all of it! Simplify! Don’t hesitate!

All my love, sweetheart,

Daddy

That night, after the others had gone to bed, Morgan sat at the kitchen table and wrote a postcard to Potter, the musical-instrument man … weather has been fair and warm, a high in the 80’s all three days … must thank the good Lord for in Rehoboth I hear they had 1¾ inches of rainfall in 47 minutes … Yours in Christ, Gower Morgan, S.J. He wrote Todd, his three-year-old grandson, a fine, masculine letter: The new pickup is doing well and the baggage space comes in handy, believe me. Was able to take our entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica to the beach. Now have 15,010 miles on the odometer with the fuel cost per mile being 2.1¢ and total operating costs per mile being 4.76¢.

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