The Matter With Morris (23 page)

Morris began to limp back towards the car. “The wine. I was retrieving the wine. It’s
frizzante,
from Italy. It’s on my front seat. I wasn’t hiding.”

Lucille had stepped outside now and was walking down the driveway, calling to him. He reached his car, opened the door, and slipped behind the wheel. His heart attack symptoms had disappeared, but now his foot was shredded. Lucille tapped on the window and he lowered it.

“What happened, Morris? Are you okay? Where have you been? We’ve finished the main course already.”

“Why would Eleanor invite Patrice? Who are these people we’re spending time with? What do we have to say to each other? Christ, Patrice is a boring man. All he talks about is global warming.”

“He’s very intelligent, Morris. He speaks five languages.”

“Polyglots can be just as boring as mutes, Lucille. Does he speak Arabic, the language of our enemy, Lucille? We must know our enemy.”

“Don’t talk like that. Come inside. The food is wonderful. Jack made a beautiful tajine dish with prunes. Come.” She began to open the door. “Let me see your ankle.”

He shook his head. “I’ll get it checked. I’ll run over to the hospital, get tested for rabies, and if they don’t chain me to a tree, I’ll return.”

“No, you won’t.” She was wistful. A tendril of hair fluttered like a moth across her brow. He wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek. He resisted.

“I’ll call,” he said. “Tell Jack and Eleanor sorry. Tell them I’m not well. Tell Patrice I’m at home reading Cicero in the original. Tell him that this is just how foolish people behave:
they observe the faults of others and forget their own.
That’s a quote, by the way.” He started the car. A low rumble, not a tappet to be adjusted. What a gorgeous machine.

“That boy, Tyler. I got a letter from him last week,” Lucille said. It was as if she had just received the letter, as if she had just opened the envelope and read the letter in which he was asking for forgiveness. Her face in this light seemed confused, perplexed. She hadn’t liked the letter.

“Yes?” Morris said. “And what did he want?”

“What do you think he wanted?” Then she said, “You call me, okay? Promise?”

Morris nodded. Reached out the window, touched Lucille’s hip, and felt the soft velvet. “You’re wearing these. Nice.” And then he left.

He did not go to the hospital. He went up Wellington Crescent and then drove quietly through the park. Near the Pavilion, a couple was crossing the street, arm in arm. Morris
imagined that they must have just had dinner in the pavilion restaurant and were now heading home, intent on each other, having satisfied the necessary desires of eating and drinking, with the woman looking up into the man’s face and saying, “Take me doggy style, please.” Morris feared he had lost sight completely of what was necessary and unnecessary. At some point, his behaviour had gone beyond bounds. Reading Plato recently he had been troubled by the regimes of the soul, the idea that too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery. But now he saw that his own soul had descended into tyranny and gluttony of feeling, of revolt and chaos. His soul was sick, and therefore his body was sick. You are what you do, Morris, he thought, and you have been doing poorly. He had tossed aside all of his modern encumbrances, seeking liberation from technology and the free market. Storing his treasures on earth in the safe in his condo was a symptom of excess. He had become a slave to freedom. On Monday he would return his money to the bank and let the captains of commerce invest and worry about it. And then he would call up his editor and say that he was ready to return to his column, only he had no intention of revealing his private life anymore. He no longer believed that shamelessness was courage. He drove up around and past the botanical gardens and along the edges of the zoo, where beyond the chain-link fence he saw the dark shapes of buffalo and reindeer. Poor trapped animals. His foot throbbed. He felt feverish and his mouth was dry. Earlier, cornered by that dog, he had seen the folly of his ways. And then Lucille, leaning into his car window to study him, had shaken her
head, yet she had said nothing. But he knew her thoughts. Morris, she’d been thinking, what are you doing standing on the lawn looking in at a dinner party, when all you had to do was knock on the door and enter? Do you think that you are so special that you will not rub shoulders with or be tainted by humanity? That your thoughts are so elevated that no one else will understand you? You don’t even understand yourself. You have so successfully shut yourself off from human contact that you have begun to believe your own lies. These had been Lucille’s thoughts. He had seen the doubt in her eyes, only she’d been too kind to utter the words that he was now thinking. He retraced his route, passing once again by Jack and Eleanor’s, where the lights still blazed and where, still at the table, the company was talking about
poor Morris.
He continued down the Crescent and turned right on Hugo and then up towards his condo. He parked and climbed cautiously from the car, clutching his butter tarts and his bottle of wine. Glancing upwards, he noticed that the lights were on in his condo. He wondered if he’d forgotten to turn them off. Or perhaps Libby was visiting. She had a key to his place.

He hobbled up the stairs, reached the landing of the third floor, and saw that his door was slightly open. He approached tentatively, perplexed. The jamb was broken, the door splintered near the lock. He pushed the door open cautiously and called out Libby’s name. He stepped down his hallway into the living room and found not Libby but Ursula sitting on the couch, a suitcase at her feet. She held a gun in her lap.

“Morris,” she said, and she stood, the gun in one hand, and walked towards him.

He stepped backwards. “Ursula, what are you doing? Put that away.”

She paused and looked down at her hands and she smiled as if surprised by the gun she held. She said, her voice shaking, “I thought he’d come back.”

“Who’d come back? What are you talking about? Why are you here?”

“Oh, I know, I was asking myself that same question just now. I’m sorry to surprise you, Morris.” She dipped her head and lifted her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Morris looked at the broken door and back at Ursula.

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know. I was outside, by your entrance, when a small man ran out wildly, carrying a bag. He pushed by me. I came in and found your place and the door was broken.” She paused and looked at him tenderly, her eyes wide. “I hope it’s okay that I came in. I didn’t know what else to do. Where to go. I’m leaving Cal.”

Behind her, against the wall, the safe was closed. “Look at that,” Morris said, and he limped past Ursula and stooped towards his safe, pulled out his wallet, took the key and slid it into the slot, turned the combination, and opened the safe. Nothing had been touched. “Look at that,” he said again. Then he stood and went into the bedroom. His closet had been torn apart. Clothes everywhere. He bent and lifted his futon and saw his cash neatly laid out beneath it. He dropped the futon and turned. Ursula stood in the doorway, still holding her gun. “You sleep on it?” she said.

“Christ,” he said. “You realize how lucky I am?” He grinned merrily. “So lucky.” Then he said, “Do you still need that?” and he gestured at the gun.

“Oh,” she said, and she shrugged, almost helplessly, as if she had suddenly realized that she was in the wrong place. Her face was smoother, Morris thought, as if she’d perhaps gained weight. Thin eyebrows, the slight glitter of blue dust on her eyelids, red lipstick. Her hair was lighter; she’d dyed it dirty blonde. He saw that she was wearing a red dress that pressed against her hips. She had fixed herself up for this meeting and now she lifted her shoulders helplessly again and said, “It’s me, Morris. I’m sorry.”

“Of course it’s you. Why sorry?” He went to her and walked her back to the kitchen, took the gun from her hand, felt its inadequate weight in his own palm, placed it on the windowsill, and then said, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

She began to weep, and as she wept, Morris thought, Be careful of tears, they might mean something completely different than you think. And then she stopped. “You told me to go away,” she said. “You wrote and you said goodbye and I was devastated. What have I done?”

“Nothing. You’ve done nothing, Ursula.” Morris paused and reflected and then asked, “Did I tell you to go away? Truly? Or did I talk about myself. You know that I think only of myself, don’t you, Ursula?” He felt he should go to her, do something, but he simply stood, aware that he must choose his words more carefully. “Here,” he said, and he sat her on one of the yellow vinyl chairs at the kitchen
table, and while he made tea Ursula described how she had arrived to find the door broken down and then she’d had to decide should she stay or leave, not knowing, of course, if this was even his place, though she thought it was, and then how she’d stepped inside and seen a photo of Morris and a young man on the bookshelf and she’d known then that this was his condo. “And I sat down and waited, though I was afraid that man would come back. Shouldn’t you call the police?”

Morris shook his head. “I know who it is. The police don’t need to be involved. Nothing was taken.”

“You have money, Morris,” she said. Her voice was meek.

“That’s all of it. My life fits into a safe the size of a filing cabinet. Ha.”

“Your foot,” she said, pointing at his ankle. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. “A dog bit me.”

“Oh, Morris. Let me see.”

He waved her away. This was too intimate, and it might lead to other things.

She studied him carefully. “Were you serious, Morris? In your letter?”

Again, Morris tried to recall his exact words. Had he been cruel? Perhaps he should have been crueller. He said, “Why are you leaving Cal, Ursula? Where’s your son?”

“Wilhelm’s safe. He’s with his aunt.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her cellphone and laid it on the table. “He’ll call soon. Before he goes to bed.”

“And Cal?”

“He’s become wild and unpredictable. I’m afraid of him.” She paused and looked up at Morris. “And now that I’m here, I’m afraid of you, of what you will say.”

She was lying, testing his strength, his moral resolve. She had escaped Cal and run to Morris, and now she would try to charm him. He would not allow that. He couldn’t afford any more commotion in his life. He would name himself as the culprit; he was dishonest and wrong-headed and more errant than she would believe. He slept with whores, he had alienated his family, he was a liar, he jigged and ambled, and he was full of sophistry and games. He was untrue, both to those who loved him and to himself. He no longer loved himself. Not true, not true, he loved himself too deeply, and this was why he was shunning her. Get away from me. Do not ask a dissembler to join you. He will bring you down. That is all. I am done with you. Do not contact me again. Go. Goodbye.

“Ursula, I’m not going to throw you out on the street. You’re tired. It’s hard to think clearly.”

“Can I take a shower?” she asked.

He stood and showed her where the towels were. While she showered, he boiled water and poured it into a large stainless-steel bowl, and then added two tablespoons of salt. He removed his right sock and rolled up his pant leg and inspected his ankle. It was bruised, four neat little marks where Angel’s teeth had clamped down on his tendon. There appeared to be no puncture marks. Still, to be safe, Morris eased his foot into the bowl of hot water. He winced, counted to four, and removed his foot. Tried again, and then again, and finally managed to keep his foot soaking. He did not
think while he did this. His mind refused to operate. He was aware of the heat of the water and the pain in his foot, and of the sounds Ursula made as she showered and puttered in the bathroom. When she returned, dressed in jeans and a sweater, she kneeled and held his foot and said, “When you’re afraid of a dog, the dog smells this and it makes him aggressive and so he bites you. All animals are like this. Even cows can smell fear.”

Dove soap on her skin. She had brushed her teeth; he could smell this as well. She must have packed a whole kit of toiletries.

“Cal knows where you are?”

“Oh, no.”

“And your son?”

“I told him I would be away for the night. Morris, oh, Morris, I know you said goodbye to me, but I felt that you weren’t telling the truth. There was something between us, something much bigger than ourselves. You are a kind man. You could have taken advantage of me in Minneapolis, but you didn’t. You slept in the bed beside me, you didn’t touch me. I don’t know many men like that. You’re reliable. That’s what I love about you. I can rely on you.” She took a tea towel and wrapped up his foot. Sat down on a chair beside him. Asked if she could hold his hand.

What a cunning speech, Morris thought. He let her take his hand. How was it that he always found that women were better with words than he was? She was so willing. He looked into her eyes. Ah, he thought, is she still thinking that I am reliable? And it was this singular thought, the fact that
he might not be trustworthy, that halted him. “Okay,” he whispered. And he stood and said that she must be hungry. He could fry her eggs, make some toast. Or pasta, he could whip that up. She said that she wasn’t hungry, that food didn’t interest her these days. He asked if she wanted a drink then, any kind of drink, and she hesitated, her lips wet, and then she said, “Some wine?”

He poured her a glass of wine and then sat across from her and confessed that in trying to find order for his soul, he had been thinking and reading and thinking again, and he felt at times that he might be on the brink of an epiphany, but then it always slipped away. He was not wise enough. He said that his life was driven by desire. He admitted to sleeping with escorts and she said that she found this fascinating, though her face seemed disturbed. “What do they do for you?” she asked, and he did not know the answer. “You see?” he said. “I’m false. You think I’m good and true, but I’m artificial, a man who does not know how to care for himself, and so how can I care for others? Martin, for instance.”