The Matter With Morris (7 page)

In the morning, Ursula’s cellphone rang and rang, and then stopped. And rang again. She climbed from the bed and scrambled for her purse and found the phone. She flipped it open and said, “Hey, sweetie.” Her voice was husky, full of sleep.

Morris, when he’d finally felt tired in the middle of the night, had chosen to climb into the other bed beside Ursula’s, knowing that his own room would feel too blank. He was awake now, peering at Ursula who sat on the edge of her bed, her legs bare. She’d taken off her clothes at some point during the night and she was wearing black underwear and a black spaghetti-strap top. Her knees were round. Her shoulders
as well. Her fingernails were long and painted apple red, and they glowed against the black of the phone. She saw Morris watching her, and she rose and wrapped herself in a sheet from her bed and went into the bathroom and closed the door, and all he heard was her muffled voice. He stood and went to her purse and opened it. Looking inside, he thought, Morris, Morris, and then he saw the gun and he put the purse down and sat quickly and stared at himself in the mirror. It was comical, he thought, snooping through her purse as if he could find there some secret key to Ursula Frank. The toilet flushed and she came back into the room. She had put on a bathrobe and knotted it double at the waist. She was no longer on the phone and she carried it in one hand and with the other she tossed the sheet back onto the bed. She stood, confused, it seemed, by the intimacy and the domesticity of the room.

She lifted her chin. “You slept in your clothes.”

Morris regarded himself. He got up and went into the bathroom and sat down to pee. When he came out, she had dressed and started the coffee maker and she stood by the window.

“It’s Sunday,” she said. “People are going to church.”

He did not approach her. Instead, he sat and put on his shoes and tied them and thought this thought: Everyone is scuttling into temples. Then he stood and said he would be going down to his room.

“There’s coffee,” she said, turning to face him.

“I’m fine. I need to shower, brush my teeth. I’ll phone up later. Okay?”

“That was Wilhelm. He was throwing up. He wanted to know when I was coming home. Ever since Harley died, he does this when I go away. Makes himself sick so that I have to come home.”

“So, you’ll go?”

“Yes. Right away. I’m sorry.”

“Why? There’s no need. I should be the one apologizing.”

“Really? What happened last night?”

“Nothing. You went to sleep.”

“You were very sweet. Thank you.”

He laughed. “Now that’s something new. ‘Sweet.’“ He felt great desire for her. He moved towards the door.

She watched him and then lifted a hand and said, “I’ll write you.”

He did not hear from her for several months. And when she finally wrote, in late September, he had just lost his column and the weather was turning. Her letter picked up where they’d left off, as if the span of time had not been great, as if she had stepped out of the room for a moment and then returned to pick up the conversation. She said that she had talked too much about Harley.

Morris, you kept asking questions and so I talked and talked like a real blabbermouth, and only later did I realize
that you hadn’t really said anything about Martin. I feel that you were hiding something. Last Sunday, Cal and I finally spread Harley’s ashes down by the stream that runs behind the barn. Before we did this, we sat on lawn chairs and watched two whooping cranes fly in from the south, one behind the other, and coast silently along the path of the stream. They were maybe three inches from the water’s surface. The shadow of the first crane startled the fish in the stream and the second crane, following closely, caught those startled fish. The crane dipped his claws into the water, just like that, and scooped up the fish. The cranes did this three times in a row, and each time the second bird caught a fish. Cal said that the birds were like Cheney and Bush. Cheney’s the one who disturbs the life beneath the clean surface, and then Bush goes in for the kill. When Cal talks like this, I get scared. That day, there was a tiny wind blowing, and when we spread Harley’s ashes out over the water, after the birds had left, some of the ashes fell onto my boots and the ashes were still there in the morning and I didn’t want them to go away, so I wrapped the boots in Saran Wrap and laid them in the closet, up beside the strongbox where Cal keeps his important papers. Is that crazy? I want to see you again, even though Wilhelm hates me leaving. I can plan to be in Minneapolis whenever you’re free. Let me know.

She was offering him a form of deliverance, this is what it felt like, and he wanted to crow call out to his neighbours, a young couple he met on the stairway every morning as they went off to work, very slickly, both of them in colourful coats, like Joseph before he was thrown into the well by his brothers, she in high heels, he in long-toed black polished shoes. A beautiful couple, without children, no worries, no one to lose, their future brightly beckoning them. He had talked to the woman, Beth Ann, at some length one afternoon, a conversation about food because Morris had just stepped over to the Happy Cooker to buy himself a new toaster, and now he was returning to his apartment to prepare a bagel. Beth Ann said that she and Tom preferred toaster ovens. And then they’d talked of grilled things and salmon and finally books. She was reading
Madame Bovary.
She felt sorry for Hippolyte, the one with the club foot. She felt not a spot of pity for Emma: “Emma deserved everything that fell down upon her head.” Morris had been surprised and dismayed at Beth Ann’s vehemence. Such moral indignation. He wondered if it should be “fell down
around
her head,” but he didn’t correct her. He said that interestingly he had just reread
Anna Karenina
and he’d always felt that there was a very natural bond between the two books; both about women who are trapped. Beth Ann smiled and said, “Well, they do both kill themselves, don’t they? Anyways, Emma traps herself.” And then she said that she and Tom were having a party on Saturday night, would he like to come? He had hummed and given an indefinite answer. Now he stepped out into the hallway, as if Beth Ann might miraculously appear and want to continue the conversation about nineteenth-century
women, but he saw no one. He stepped back inside and phoned Mervine, from the men’s group.

Mervine, in a moment of vulnerability, had recently asked Morris to help him write letters to his ex-wife. Mervine had said that he wasn’t a very good writer, he didn’t have a way with words, and he figured if Morris wrote something persuasive and forgiving and not too elegant, then his wife might be convinced to come back to him. And if not convinced of that, she might at least be persuaded that she shouldn’t have left a man who could write such fine words. There was no answer and so Morris left Mervine a message and said that they should get together to play pool, or maybe have a bite to eat, lunch or dinner, it didn’t matter to him. He had all the time in the world. He’d just been fired from his job. He sat in his leather chair, aware that his own flesh and blood, his family, existed out there in the city, living their lives, and he wondered if Libby was with Shane. He pondered this and as he pondered his anger grew. The man was an outright charlatan. Morris picked up the phone and called the university. The switchboard transferred him to Dr. McKibben’s voice-mail, and when the message cut in, Morris waited and then said: “Mr. McKibben, this is Morris Schutt. A while back I left you a note about my daughter, Libby Schutt. I pushed the note under your door, and as I have not heard back from you, and as I know that you are still with my daughter, I can only imagine that the note was vacuumed up by a janitor and you did not see it, or I can assume that your silence is an admission of guilt on your part. What you are doing is wrong. You know that. Look at it this way. If you were seventeen years
old, she would be a one-year-old. Would a teenager date a one-year-old? You see what I mean? Perhaps you are having trouble with attachment, or perhaps you suffered as a child, you didn’t get enough love, or something was broken at a tender age. Figure that out, sir, but figure it out with the help of a shrink, or talk to a friend, or talk to your mother. Don’t use my daughter to assuage your sickness. I will keep calling and I will leave notes, and if you don’t act in a proper manner, I will have to take further action, the kind of action that cannot please you. Though I am a pacifist, in this case I would be willing to meet you in a back alley and use my fists. There are people I can talk to, sir. The ethics board. The president of the university. I know him. I could easily write a column about you, Mr. McKibben, and it would not be flattering. How would you like that? I didn’t think so. In fact, you might try to sue me. Good luck with that. Anyway, that’s all for today. I look forward to you making the right decision.” Morris hung up. He was breathing heavily and his mouth was dry. He stood and poured himself some juice and drank it quickly, feeling the cold deep in his chest.

He still felt the need to talk and so he phoned Samuel in Idaho, which would surprise his brother because they rarely spoke. No answer there either. His brother was a teacher of Arabic who worked secretly for the CIA. He had done this for a number of years now, ever since the Americans had suffered that terrible loss on September 11 and then had decided that whoever was not for them was against them. And they proceeded to pillory all things Muslim. And Samuel, his brother, had benefitted. He had told Morris this when he’d
last come to visit their father, leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially that he now worked for the CIA. This did not surprise Morris. As a young man, Samuel had studied to be a missionary and had learned Arabic as an aid worker in the Sudan and then he’d married an American woman, become an American citizen himself, divorced, and found a job in the States where he could apply his Arabic. Samuel had always loved America and things American. He considered Canadians to be weak and dependent. Morris left Samuel a message on his machine: “Samuel, Morris here. I’m thinking of converting to Islam. Give me a call.”

Then he sat down and typed a letter to Ursula. He said that he would be delighted to join her in Minneapolis. Perhaps in late October, a month from now, though there was nothing in his life at the moment to keep him from seeing her sooner, should she prefer. “This letter,” he wrote, “will arrive at your house in a few days, and then your response, should you decide to respond, will take another week, and so it seems practical to plan for a month from now.” He said that her letter had pleased him greatly. He missed her. He said that he was less aware these days of Martin’s absence, but that might be because he was filling his life with material things and material thoughts, and what a distraction this could be. He said that he had much to tell her, some things that might surprise her. “I am a difficult man,” he wrote. Then he wrote “Love, Morris,” as if that would compensate for admitting that he was difficult. Or perhaps he wanted to scare her. He did not understand himself. Ever since he had spent that night with her, first smelled her from head
to toe, and then slept on the bed next to hers, he had had little desire for anyone else. She kept appearing in his mind. On the back of his eye. She surrounded him and this was frustrating his erotic life. There was a need to clear up the problem and his sense of relief made him feel capricious and volatile.

When he had told Dr. G that he paid women for sex, Dr. G had shifted in his chair and looked slightly bored.

“It’s only been a while now,” Morris said. “I started, almost by chance, after Lucille left me.”

Dr. G lifted his head. “When you say things like ‘by chance’ and ‘Lucille left me,’ you make yourself out as a puppet.”

Morris ignored this. “You’re not shocked? You don’t find me pathetic? Dirty?” “Should I?”

“Well, most people would find it reprehensible. And yes, I do enjoy it. Most of the time.” “And you’re not most people.” Morris shrugged. “No, I’m not.”

“Why stop there? Why don’t you drive downtown on a Saturday night and pick up a fourteen-year-old girl? Or hire three women at the same time?”

Morris sighed. “Lucille says I gorge myself. On grief and sex. She says that I was unprepared for Martin’s death. That I should have seen that Martin was going to a death-dealing event, not a feast. She prepared herself, as if she knew that some rehearsal was required. I didn’t, and so I was surprised by the unexpected.” He paused, then said, “She’s right.”

“You’ve told her about hiring women?”

“Oh, no.” He brightened. “Chekhov hired prostitutes.”

“So you and Chekhov, you’re equals. And your daughters? What about them? Wouldn’t they be surprised?”

Morris leaned forward and touched the dog lying at his feet. A shudder. The wet mournful eyes pondered him. You poor fucker.

On Saturday, he picked up Libby at her mother’s house and took her to a Vietnamese restaurant. They ate
pho
and spring rolls and drank green tea and they talked about Libby’s debating team; she was the leader, and she told him about argument and riposte and speech. She said that often the content was inconsequential, like political debates, where flow and ebb and smoothness of the words could beat out intelligence. She didn’t like that. She thought she might quit. It was taking time away from her reading, her pre-cal, her volunteer work. She was wearing a soft brown sweater, a turtleneck, and her hair was cut short, and she looked like her mother, same chin, though her nose was sharper and she was prettier than Lucille. Her eyes were brighter and she was more willing to smile and try to please people. Morris thought that that might be a problem, this need to please, which was why when she said she might quit the debating team, he didn’t argue.

“Might be a good thing,” he said.

“Mrs. Kualla, our supervising teacher, says I can’t quit.
The team needs me. She’s a Nazi but she’s a good Nazi. You know what I mean?”

He didn’t know, but he said he did.

She talked about her work at Deer Lodge Centre, where she read to a ninety-year-old woman called Minnie Pishker. “She has no idea what I’m reading, but she likes the sound of my voice. Her arms are like sticks, Dad, and she knows when I’m there as soon as I walk in. Lifts her skinny arms and says, ‘Libby.’ She makes a sucking sound with her mouth. She’s blind yet she senses everything. No one visits her. I think her daughter comes at Christmas. It’s so sad.” She blinked and Morris imagined that she might cry. But she didn’t. She continued, “She reminds me of Grandpa. Has a foul mouth like he does. She swears at me in Yiddish. Calls me
kurveh.
Mr. Fox, down the hall, told me what it means. But she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”