The Matter With Morris Read Online Free PDF

purchase of new flatware, a haircut, and a bikini wax. When Lucille flashed the letter and threw it at Morris, he feigned astonishment, as if it had dropped from the sky, and then he said, “Oh this,” and then he used the word “innocuous.”
    “Innocuous? What are you saying, Morris? She’s talking about a bikini wax. Who is she?”
    “She’s one of my readers.”
    “And you send each other billets-doux? What century are you living in, Morris? What does she look like?” “I don’t know. I’ve never met her.” “You’ve never met her.” “That’s right.”
    Lucille paused, calculating. When she did this she bit her upper lip, and this annoyed Morris because it made her look childish and wanting. “You have no clue if she’s fat or short or ugly or old?”
    “She’s five eight. That’s what I know.”
    “How old?”
    “Fifty. Forty-five.”
    “Which one?”
    “Forty-five.”
    “Oh, Morris, have you gone stupid? I see this kind of behaviour too much not to recognize it. And I always thought that you and I were somehow above all that. Now who’s the stupid one?”
    “I haven’t done anything.”
    “You write her letters. She writes you back. How many times?” Her hands were beginning to wave in the air, her face had become slightly pinched.
    “A few.”
    “I want to see them. How long has this been going on?”
    Morris looked away. He sighed and said, “Half a year.”
    Lucille dropped her hands into her lap and folded them, and as she did this, she closed her eyes. She looked quite old at that moment and Morris had to turn away so as not to be too pleased with how ugly she appeared, which would be another level of deception. Absurdly, he was happy that she had told him that she was leaving him before she found out about Ursula. And yet he was not happy to discover that she could in fact be surprised; it made her appear unguarded, and this saddened him. Her eyes came open. She was raging again. “You—you spend the last six months talking to a strange woman, and yet you can’t say a word to me? We don’t talk anymore, Morris. Haven’t you noticed? I certainly noticed. I always thought it was all my fault, but now I find out you’retelling secrets to a strange woman who’s not so strange that she can’t tell you she just had a bikini wax. You want me to get a wax? I’d be glad to.” She began to cry.
    Morris reached for her. “I never asked her to get a wax.”
    “You prick.” She pushed him away. “Who is she?”
    “She’s from Minnesota. She lost her son in Iraq, and when she read my piece on Martin, she wrote me about her dead boy. That’s all.”
    Lucille had wiped her face, her cheeks and her eyes, which suddenly brightened with rage. “You talked to her about Martin? You told her about me, about our life, our children, our sadness? It wasn’t enough that you told the world, but then you had to go and tell this woman you say you barely know. What were you thinking?”
    “It’s not important, Lucille. You’re important.” Was this the truth? he wondered.
    She pointed her finger at him. “I never lied to you, Morris. I gave everything back to you. I tried to talk, I wanted to find a way back to you, I wanted to cry with you, to hold you, to talk about Martin, but instead you were talking to her. All your energy was going down there.” She waved her hand south. She looked up, astounded. “You’ve slept with her?”
    “No, no. I told you, we’ve never met.”
    “But when we were having sex, you were thinking about her. You were. I could feel it. I remember now. You had gone away.”
    “That’s not true, Lucille. Ask me if that’s true. Don’t tell me what you think is true.”
    She nodded slowly. “You love her, don’t you. And I mean that in the biggest way. Even if you haven’t met her, you love her for what she writes, for how she talks to you, for the secrets she tells you. You whisper secrets to each other, and how can I compete with that? Should I