The Matter With Morris (25 page)

That same week he gathered his money together and returned it to the bank. Put half into his corporate account and kept the rest in American dollars. The bull in the pasture. Perhaps he would buy some gold as well, talk to Jonathan and get his opinion. Sitting across from Jake, he’d been acutely aware that he was a custodian, a protector of his own grandson. Who else would look out for the boy financially? Certainly not his
mother, who worked as a waitress in a lounge and was now marrying a mechanic who repaired domestic cars and had probably never looked under the hood of a Jaguar.

On Friday, when he finally picked up the phone, Leah’s voice whispered in his ear.

“Morris?”

Morris’s first thought was to hang up, but he didn’t. He waited.

She said again, “Morris?”

“Yes?”

“Morris, I’m so sorry. It was my cousin. He broke into your place. I guess I told him about your safe. I told him as a joke, like I was telling an interesting story. I didn’t expect him to break in.”

Her voice was so familiar, so easy and yielding. Morris held his breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. He took nothing. You owe me nothing.”

“But the damage. The embarrassment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m ashamed,” she said.

“Really? But you did nothing.”

A long pause, as if she were contemplating this, and then she surprised him by saying, “I saw you. At the hotel.”

“I was worried. And then I find you with a football player, of all things. Not a lot of intelligence there, Leah.”

She might have laughed, he could not be sure. She said, “I’m not looking for intelligence, Morris.”

“You should be. Conversation, thought, reflection, these things will save you.”

“The message you left sounded so angry. Was that it? Because of the football player?”

He ignored her question and asked, “Do you need money, Leah?”

“No. No.”

Too emphatic, this denial. Perhaps she was an addict and needed to support her habit. He tried to recall if she had shown any signs; track marks, runny nose, jittery movements. But no, it was he, Morris Schutt, who was the addict. Funny, how that felt so outside of himself. He hadn’t even masturbated this week. Where had his vigour gone?

“What about school?” he asked. “Australia.”

She laughed weakly. “I’m not going.” Then her voice brightened. “I got a job. A real one. At the Gap.”

“Clothes?” Morris said.

“Yeah. Pay’s lousy, but it will lead to something.” She paused and he imagined her biting her lower lip. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“Of course I’m pleased. Good for you.”

“I’m sorry, Morris, for all the trouble.”

“It wasn’t trouble. It was only a door.”

“Did you call the police?”

So, this was the reason for the call. He sighed and said no, he never had. There’d been no reason to. “We all have feet of clay, Leah. You. Your cousin. Ozymandias. Wee Willy. Me. Mistakes are made.”

“Oh, well.” A tiny stutter. Her throat clearing. She was unaware. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Morris.” “I don’t think so, Leah.”

And then she’d said goodbye, tenderly and hesitantly, yet happily, as if she were escaping. And she had, hadn’t she? Escaped the longing loins of Morris Schutt. Fortunate girl.

The following day two men in dark suits knocked on his door, and as he answered, he wondered, with a reeling sense of imbalance, if someone else dear to him had died. And when they said his name, Morris Schutt, and introduced themselves as RCMP officers, the panic deepened. They asked if he was Morris Schutt the journalist, and when he said yes, he had been, once, but now he was unemployed, they asked if he had written a letter to the prime minister in which he had threatened the prime minster and his son.

“You’re kidding,” Morris said. He felt such relief, and with that relief came astonishment at the stupidity of this visit.

“No, Mr. Schutt, we ‘re very serious.” This was the shorter officer, whose shoes, Morris noticed, needed polishing. Never trust a man who may be perfectly dressed in every way except for the shoes. The shoes are the groundwork, the root of everything good and evil. One of his laces was loose as well. Feet of clay. They stepped into his condo and pulled the door shut. Morris had not asked them to come in, and he found their aggression disconcerting. He stood his ground, taller than either of them.

“That letter was a lament,” he said. “It was not to be taken literally.” He moved his head to the side, as if dismissing
the plainness of everyone else’s imagination. Then he said, “So he read it? The prime minister read my letter?”

The one with the thicker neck spoke. He was slightly taller and he had a soul patch and his lips were wet. He said, “That’s irrelevant, Mr. Schutt. In fact, he did not. However, someone did, and the contents were considered incendiary, and we are here now to ask you a few questions.”

“Do I need a lawyer?” This was said lightly, meant lightly, but these men did not walk through the world lightly.

“You may. However, at this point, we are simply following up on a request from Ottawa.”

Ahh, thought Morris. A request. No need for a lawyer.

The shorter one said, “Are you planning something?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you were full of rage and that you were provoked. This can lead to other things.”

“Did I say ‘full of rage’? I don’t think so. This is ridiculous.”

“The point is, Mr. Schutt, there was a sense of threat, however veiled,” the taller officer said.

Veiled, thought Morris. This man had a grasp of language. Perhaps he was also a reasonable man. He said, “Those were words. They were the wrathful words of a disheartened person. I’m not dangerous. I am a peaceful man. My son was killed in Afghanistan. Did you read that part of the letter? And it wasn’t even a letter. It was a column that I wrote, did not publish, and happened on a whim to send to the prime minister.”

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Schutt?”

“Of course not. I never have. I detest guns.” And when he’d finished speaking, he thought of Ursula’s gun in his safe. He held the eyes of the bully, the man with the thick neck. “The prime minister could have sent me a note. He could have said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Schutt, for sacrificing your son for our country.’ But I received nothing. Do you have a son?” The man turned away briefly and shook his head. “And you, sir?” He looked at the smaller officer who was standing, feet wide apart, as if prepared for a fight. “Do you have a son?”

“Yes, I do. But that’s not the point.”

“Oh, but it is the most important and only point. I lost a son. I’m not asking for your pity, but I want your respect. Now, unless you mean to arrest me, I’d like you to leave.”

The man with wet lips smiled weakly. He leaned forward and held Morris’s elbow. “We understand, Mr. Schutt. Please be aware that this was a call of inquiry only. We’ll go now.” And he turned to the other officer, who was surprised, nonplussed, and he led him from the apartment. The man, so bullish and predictable, had done the unpredictable, and set Morris free. Would that man be admonished by his superiors? Perhaps. How strange it was to be surprised by authority, as if authority did not have the capacity to surprise. But here it had. And what a surprise. And the gun. He had been foolish to steal it from Ursula. And to what end? Did he think she was going to kill herself or someone else? It was for protection, she had said, yet a gun was made to fire, was meant to maim and kill. It wasn’t meant to sit like a dumb animal in a dark safe.

His brother too had a gun nestled in amongst the cornucopia of lingerie and sexual toys. And so Samuel was unpredictable
as well. Well, he would call him now and ask what kind of gun he had exactly and how it compared to Morris’s, the one he’d stolen from his ex-lover, who wasn’t truly his lover. He phoned Samuel in the evening, when he knew he’d be home, and as Samuel answered, he felt a flood of love for him. Here is my blood, he thought, and he wondered why it was they spoke so rarely. “It’s good to hear your voice, Samuel,” he said. “I should hear it more often.”

A hint of suspicion in Samuel’s voice as he asked, “Where’s your energy coming from, Morris? You sound overexcited.”

“Do I? Well, I need you to check something for me. I need you to use your powers to find out if I’m in trouble here in Canada. I need to know if CSIS is watching me, if I’m going to be captured and tortured.”

“What are you talking about?”

And so he explained about the RCMP visit, the letter he had written, and when he was finished, Samuel said, “That was a foolish thing to do, Morris.”

“Well, maybe it was. And I’m sorry for it. We live in a fearful time, Samuel. A time and place where politicians ask for sacrifice yet refuse to step up and make sacrifices themselves. Do you remember the day Grandpa Schutt spanked me for stealing raspberry candies from his pocket? Well, I recall that you also stole a candy, yet I was the only one caught, and I was punished.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“It was something I thought of recently. Maybe I’m tired of being punished.”

“Nobody’s punishing you. You’re punishing yourself.”

“You think so? That’s interesting. And sobering. You sound like Lucille.”

And then they talked: of Grandpa Schutt, and of their father, and of their mother who used to listen to funeral announcements every Wednesday morning on the local radio station. And then she called up friends to discuss the recent demise of someone barely known. Until she herself died. And her death was announced on that same radio station, and she was buried, and beside her sat a vacant plot that would be her husband’s.

“I took a longevity test on the Internet the other day,” Morris said. “You type in a bunch of answers, your calorie intake, whether you smoke or not, your weight, your height, age, how much you exercise, and when all is said and done, you find out how long you’ll live. I’ll be ninety-seven when I die. I don’t want to live that long.”

“You might.”

“That’s forty-six more years. Already my pectorals are failing me. Can you imagine what they’ll look like at ninety-seven? What kind of gun do you have, Samuel?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You have a gun. I found it when I was visiting in the summer.”

A pause and then, “You were snooping through my drawers?”

“Guilty,” Morris said. “I was bored, restless. Maybe I wanted to find who my brother was. We don’t really know each other, Samuel.”

“Then ask me who I am. Don’t riffle through my stuff.”

“Riffle,” so close to “rifle.” Unfortunate choice of words. “I’m sorry. And all that other stuff, Samuel. Those toys. I didn’t know that about you.”

“Enough, Morris. Those were Dorothy’s.” A short silence and then Samuel said, “I kept them when she left.”

Now they were getting somewhere, moving below the surface to a deeper and more painful place. This was good, thought Morris. His brother probably never talked to anyone. Morris said, “I’ve been seeing this psychiatrist. It’s really useful, Samuel. You should try it sometime.” And then he asked again what kind of gun Samuel had. “Who’s the manufacturer? Not a Colt, is it?”

“No, it’s not a Colt. What kind of question is this? Are you okay?”

Yes, he was fine. More than fine. “That’s good, Samuel. I’m good. Listen, about those men. Do you mind checking?”

Samuel hesitated, shifted the phone, and then said that Morris was far too worried, but that he would check into things.

He phoned back two hours later. Morris was soaking in the bath when the phone rang. He got out and put on a bathrobe and stood in the kitchen, water dripping onto the cork floor.

“Do you know a Cal Frank?” Samuel said. “Your name comes up with a connection to his wife, Ursula. Who is she, Morris?”

“Christ. My name?”

“Yes. Who is she?”

“A woman from Minnesota. She wrote me after Martin died. She had a son who was killed in Iraq. Why?”

“Are you friends?”

“I don’t know what we are. She writes me. I write her back.”

“Well, her husband is on a security list. Seems that, like you, he’s made threats against the government.”

“I never made threats. I wrote a letter. What kind of threats?”

“That’s unimportant. The thing is that he’s a security risk, you’ve spent time with his wife, and so your name is attached to his. You just wrote to her?”

Morris tried not to sound indignant. This would not help. His brother’s tone was no longer brotherly, it had become officious.

“I drove down to see her,” Morris said. “In Minneapolis. What, I’m going to be accused of talking to a woman whose husband has every right to be angry? You people keep lists of names? For what? And how did they get
my
name?”

Samuel ignored this and went into speech mode. “Her husband’s what we call an ‘idler.’ He’s like a car that idles in a garage. The threat might be imperceptible until it’s too late, so we keep an eye on him, which is like opening the garage door slightly. Usually the engine peters out. A man like Cal Frank is a non-threat. Like you, Morris. We watch. We don’t approach. I’m surprised those officers came to see you.”

“Ursula’s a threat? I don’t think so.”

“Probably not. She’s just one of a million in the system. The world is full of rot, Morris.”

“How do you do it, Samuel? It must poison you.”

He was quiet. Then he told Morris not to be foolish.

“I’m more sad than foolish,” he said. “You can’t arrest a man for being sad.”

“No one’s going to arrest you. You’re not that important. Are you okay? Do you want me to come up for a visit?”

What was essential, he thought, was to not let Samuel get too concerned. And so he told him that he was fine, everything was good. In fact, he’d said goodbye to that Ursula woman. “I’m going to try to be alone, without impediments,” he said. “I have lots to learn in that department. I have a two-month plan. I expect to be back at my writing by Christmas. December will bring fresh ideas, snow, a biting wind that will clear my mind. Remember the hockey rink we built in the backyard, that year we came back from Africa? Maybe I’ll take up skating again. Use Martin’s skates.”