The Matter With Morris (2 page)

Morris stepped back out onto his balcony and surveyed the street and the patio of the restaurant. The couple he had seen earlier must have just left, because their table was cluttered with dishes and napkins and the edge of the bill fluttered in the breeze. He examined the sidewalk, looking for them. He imagined that they would be heading home, that dinner and wine would be a prelude to a shot of liqueur or a glass of Scotch, which would lead to slow kissing and a removal of clothing and the sex that had been on their minds all evening. A couple of years ago he used to live like that. Now, he augmented his life with novels, occasional truncated sexual escapades, butter
tarts, Petrarch, and long evening walks that led him into the depths of a city where two muddy rivers met, where the homeless slept under bridges, and where cars slipped silently by, their occupants vague shadows. There were times, as he came upon another pedestrian, that he willed eye contact, and when this happened the connection was brief, a quick glance and then a turning away. Perhaps he was too forceful, his head too large; perhaps he appeared as just another derelict in a silent city. He found that as he walked his anxiety was released. Past the wide grounds surrounding the legislative building, the late-night coffee shops, stopping at the corner store where an elderly Korean woman in a pale yellow shift read from her Bible, and on down into the guts of the city where young people swam in and out of nightclubs and drunks gathered outside the Occidental Hotel, parrying, sharing cigarettes and ribald stories.

Not long after Martin died, Morris, in a painful and irrational attempt to justify his son’s death, had begun to stop people on the street and ask them, “Are you free?” It was not a casual question; in fact, it was a hard-found query, full of irony. Using the convoluted logic of politicians and generals, Morris reasoned thus: (1) Freedom is everything. (2) We are in danger of losing our freedom. (3) Our freedom must be defended. (4) We must seek young men to defend that freedom. (5) The young men will die doing so. (6) But they will preserve our liberty. (7) Therefore, we are free. And so Morris began to ask the question “Are you free?” which did not go well, because people misunderstood, thinking that they were being asked if they had a moment to talk, or as one young man said, backing up, “Get lost, fag.”
And then Morris began to ask, “Do you have freedom?” and this too was difficult, but it was both general and personal enough to make people think. Or so he thought. “Sir, sir, do you have a minute?” he asked a man in a suit carrying a briefcase near the Trizec Building at the corner of Portage and Main, certainly a banker or a lawyer, and when the man paused and Morris asked the question, the man shook his flat head and he moved on. Morris looked down at himself as if to understand whether he looked like a panhandler, or appeared to be mad. He was wearing jeans and a dark jacket. He had shaved, though he might have looked a little grey around the jaw. He attempted to talk to several more people, two women and an older man, but they too snubbed him, although the man, bald and with rheumy eyes, did say that he would be free when he won the lottery. Morris discovered that an answer, any answer, was more possible if he approached those working as the slaves of modern society: waitresses, bank tellers, the barista at Second Cup, taxi drivers. He also learned to couch the question in less obvious ways, as an offhand curiosity, or as part of a random survey. A few people patronized him but most thought him foolish. He was astounded by the indignation, the lack of thought. Of the two people who talked to him at length, one was a drunk standing outside the Sherbrook Inn, the other was a young man on a bicycle to whom Morris offered one hundred dollars to answer one question. The young man refused the money with a smile. He was a Christian, he said. And then he proceeded, over the next half-hour, to try to convert Morris.

Lucille, when she discovered what he was doing, said that of course no one, absolutely no one, would answer that kind of question, especially when it was asked by some stranger on a city bus. “People are just trying to make it through the day. They don’t want to be accosted,” she said.

“But it was Martin, and boys like Martin, who made it easier for those people to make it through the day. Martin died so that Ian, our neighbour, could buy a new Lexus every spring. So that your cousin Annalena could send her daughter to Juilliard. So that Libby can be free to choose what colour of iPod she wants.”

“Or so that,” Lucille said, “as a girl, Libby can choose whether or not to suffer circumcision. Or to be educated.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, come on. It was the Muslims who saved Plato’s writing from the Christian fanatics.”

“You’re sad and angry, Morris, and you’re taking it out on complete strangers.” She said she worried about him.

And still she worries, Morris thought. He sighed, went inside, picked up the phone, and dialled home. Libby picked up.

“It’s me,” Morris said.

“Hi, Dad.”

“What are you doing?” “Studying bio.”

“What’s that background noise?” “TV. My iPod.”

“Okay.”

The girl was wildly talented. She was eighteen, in grade twelve, and she had none of her father’s greed and calumny, or her mother’s severity. She was interested in fish and marine
life. Morris liked to call her Cousteau, a nickname she accepted with equanimity. The truth was that he had never used Libby in any of his columns, and he never would, though she would be the least likely to complain. She was innocent; a stark contrast to her brother, Martin, and her older sister, Meredith, who was twenty-five and angry and full of entitlement. Meredith lived with a younger man named Glen who disliked Morris. Or perhaps Glen was afraid of him. One couldn’t be certain, though he thought that Glen was doltish and immature and had every reason to fear his girlfriend’s father. Glen and Meredith had a child, a son of four, whom Morris adored, but he could only adore him from a distance. In a column, written almost a year ago, he had talked with affection about his grandson, Jake, and then he had described Glen as rabbit-like, soft and pale with a curious nose that twitched. When he wrote the column he had believed that it was more humorous than withering, but Meredith was furious and cut him off from seeing Jake. If he saw his grandson at all now, it was when Lucille had him and Morris happened to drop by. Mystified by his daughter’s anger, he had refused to understand the strife he had caused. He missed the boy and now, on the phone, he thought he heard Jake in the background.

“Is Meredith there?” he asked.

“She is,” Libby said.

“With Jake?”

Libby said yes. She said that Glen was there as well. Morris heard the warning in her voice and he suffered a moment of empathy for her. She shouldn’t have to be privy to all this nonsense.

“Give Jake a hug, okay. Tell him it’s from Grandpa.” “I will.” Libby’s voice was soft and low. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Just checking in. Doing a father’s job. How are you?” He wanted to keep her on the phone, hear her voice. She was the only one in his life who did not judge him, who did not see something dire in him, who did not want to wring repentance from him.

“I’m good.”

“School?”

“Good.”

“You still seeing that Mr. McKibben?”

“His name’s Shane. He’s actually a doctor of English, Dad. And we aren’t
seeing
each other. He’s just a friend.”

“Of course. That’s what I meant. It’s just, now that you’re over there and I’m here, I don’t know what’s going on. Not as much.” He stopped talking, aware that he was asking for more than she wanted to give. Mr. McKibben was an older man, almost twice her age, who was a professor of English at the university, and Morris knew that they spent time together and were perhaps having sex. This worried him. Several times he had dropped by the university and gone to the English department in order to talk to the man, but all he’d discovered was a closed door and on the door the man’s name: Shane McKibben. One time, late on a Thursday after his men’s group, a sliver of light showed from under the door and he’d knocked and called out, but no one answered. He’d scribbled a note on a scrap of paper. He wrote:

Mr. McKibben, my name is Morris Schutt and I believe you are spending time with my daughter Libby, who is eighteen and in grade twelve. How old are you, Mr. McKibben? What do you imagine can come of this relationship other than some superior damage to my daughter? I am not threatening you, Mr. McKibben, I am simply advising and my advice is that you gently and kindly tell my daughter that you have made a mistake and that you will not see her again. Thank you. Morris Schutt.

Such restraint and decorum. He was pleased with himself. He folded the paper and slipped it under the door and then went down on his hands and knees to see if there was indeed someone in the room, if he might be able to glimpse a passing shadow. He saw nothing. He had expected that Shane would tell Libby about the note, but she said nothing. And they still kept seeing each other. Now, hearing his daughter say that she was only a friend with Dr. McKibben, Morris held back any speech he might have prepared and he said, “The debating team? That going well?”

She made a sound that was soft and very Libby-like, and he imagined that she was busy with something electronic, perhaps looking for a song, or texting someone, maybe sending Shane a message. He felt himself sink as he recognized that she might be pitying him.

“Is your mother there?”

“Hang on.”

He heard her holler and then there was silence and finally the static of the phone being handed over and Lucille said,
“Don’t you have your men’s club tonight?” She sounded breathless, disappointed, as if she’d run a long distance, anticipating perhaps someone else.

“Tomorrow night. Thursday. And it’s a men’s group, not a club. Robert called. He said that my columns have become wistful and disjointed.”

“Yes?”

“He said he talked to you.” “He did. Yesterday.”

“So you knew this already. You knew I was being laid off and you didn’t let me know.”

“Morris, you aren’t laid off. A hiatus—that’s what they’re calling it.”

“And you agree? That I’m wistful?”

“Did I say that? I never did. You know I don’t read your column anymore. I don’t need to read fiction that is passed off as truth. I don’t need to read about myself. Meredith was right to challenge you.”

“How long do you think she’ll stay angry? I miss Jake.”

“You might try apologizing. Talking to her. And then talking to Glen and showing some kindness to him. Don’t you get lonely, Morris? I feel for you.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I don’t need your amazing capacity to pretend to understand. And as far as the column goes, I told Robert that I was finished. I won’t be writing anymore.”

“I wonder sometimes.” Lucille’s tone crept upwards, ever so slightly, and Morris knew that she was standing, back arched, chin raised, with her left hand, the one free of the phone, held out from her body, bent a little, as if to ward off
a blow. “I wonder if that woman hadn’t lost her son, if you hadn’t corresponded with her, if I had been more vigilant, if I hadn’t settled into my own sadness, and if I had forgiven you, whether we would still be living in the same house.”

“That’s such an interesting word,” Morris said.
“If.”

“Why can’t you answer the question, Mo? Why can’t you dip a little into your thinking? Are you thinking?”

“Too much. Though my thinking is shallow. I have to think about my thinking.”

“And you don’t cry.” Lucille’s voice was softer now, as if she had sat down. He imagined her in the kitchen, or perhaps the soft red-leather chair in the den. “What will you do?” she asked. “It isn’t good for you to have all this time. You’re only fifty-one, Morris.”

“Oh, I’ll keep writing my columns for myself. Bob said that at some point I would move past the nonsense and rediscover the path of righteousness. The money path, as he calls it. He’s a parasite.”

Lucille ignored this. “You’re taking Libby out for lunch Saturday. Don’t forget.”

“Hnnh. I remember.” He studied his hand and said, “My right palm is all flaky. There’re cracks on my fingertips, sometimes they bleed.”

“Go to a clinic. It might be eczema.”

“It was way easier when we lived together, don’t you think? We’d play doctor. Give Jake a hug from me, okay?”

“I do. I always do. Lunch on Saturday. Pick Libby up at noon. Bye, Morris.” And she hung up.

Ursula was an American woman who wanted to be but was not yet his lover. She was six years younger than he was and he had come to know her in December of 2006, when she sent him a letter in response to one of his syndicated columns that he had written ten months after his son died. The column, one of the hardest he had ever written, and something he had put off for a long time, had been about a young soldier who was killed in Afghanistan. He had described the soldier’s fear and his bravery, and he had referred to the boy’s e-mails and phone calls to his parents in which he had talked about the good that the army was doing. He had also mentioned his own fear and the boy’s doubt, the sense that people at home didn’t truly believe or support what the soldiers were doing. “There are times, Dad, when
I’m
not even sure. I get scared, Dad. Scared that I’m going to be killed over here.” The whole column was written in the third person, and only at the end did Morris write, “This boy? This beautiful twenty-year-old with his life ahead of him? This boy who was killed? This was my son.”

He received Ursula’s letter via his agent. She wrote:

Dear Mr. Schutt,

My name is Ursula Frank and I live on a dairy farm two hours from Minneapolis. This is not far from where you live, and though an international border
separates us, I feel very close to you today. I just finished reading your column about your son who was killed in Afghanistan. My heart broke as you described your son’s death. I also had a son who was killed during the war, only he was in Iraq. His name was Harley. He was nineteen and he was killed last year by a bomb that exploded underneath the Humvee he was driving. He died immediately. When I heard about my son’s death and felt that first wave of shock, and then waited and waited and finally watched his casket being lowered from the transport plane, all of that was easy compared to what came after, and that’s why I’m writing you. It’s amazing to hear from someone who has lost a son to war like me and who is able to write about it in such a public way. I’ve read your column before but I’ve never thought, Oh, I should write him. And then, when I read your last column, I felt that you were sitting right beside me, telling me the story of your son. I’m not sure how to talk about your son or how to talk to you. Oh, I know that you are famous and that I’m just small fry and that you probably won’t even read this letter, but I wanted to send it, I wanted to write it on actual paper, using a pen, and I wanted to fold it and push it into an envelope and put a stamp on the envelope and drop it into a mailbox. These small things are what save me these days from my constant fear. Even though the worst thing that can happen has happened, the death of my child, I’m still very angry.
And I’m afraid. In your article you mentioned the word “fear” and I thought to myself, Oh, he might be afraid as well. Is that true? Thank you for listening.