The Matter With Morris Read Online Free PDF Page B

write you letters, Morris? Is there something secret about me that would still interest you? Or am I just like one of those animals she milks. A cow. Is that how you see me? Do you see me?”
    Morris shook his head throughout this entire speech, until she was finished, and then he said, “I do see you, Lucille. I see you.”
    Her eyes were clear and hard. She said, “I’m so glad Libby’s going to live with me. And I’m so glad that I already told you that I was leaving you. If I hadn’t, if I had found out about this affair and then left you, I’d be even more ashamed.”
    “It’s not an affair.”
    She laughed. “Yes. It is. And you called me a miser.”
    They had sex that night. They had talked throughout the evening and late into the night. At dinner, Libby had been aware of a tension, but then, she had become accustomed to this since Martin’s death. She ate quickly and excused herself. Morris watched her carry her plate to the kitchen and he felt sorry for her. Lucille asked again if she could see the letters, and Morris said that they were private.
    “No, they are secret,” Lucille hissed. “That’s different than private. Private is moral and honourable. A secret withheld from your wife is treachery.”
    How quick and good she was with her words. Hecouldn’t keep up, never had been able to argue adequately, except in hindsight.
    “I can’t betray Ursula,” he said.
    “You ass.”
    She left the room. He could hear her banging around in the kitchen as he sat cold and culpable in the living room.
    That night, in bed, her voice whispered, “What does she give you that I don’t? Is she stealing your heart?” It was a hot spring day, very humid, and the fan turned slowly above them. Lucille wore a thin T-shirt and no underwear and Morris was naked. Even though they were leaving each other, they still slept in the same bed. Neither of them disagreed with this. They lay under a sheet. Morris again told her that he had not met Ursula and so nothing about this was real. He thought, but didn’t say, that it was like doing card tricks without the cards. “She talks. I talk. There is no heart involved,” he said.
    “Talk to me,” she said. “I need you to talk.”
    He lay there, words falling abstractly through his brain, and he opened his mouth but now nothing came out. He thought some more. Opened his mouth again. Nothing. Finally, he said, “She’s a voice, that’s all. And an ear. I throw a ball at the wall and the ball bounces back. Something solid out there.”
    Lucille began to cry, deep sad sobs dredged up from her belly, and he held her head as she wept.
    She sat up suddenly and began to pummel his chest. “You set Martin up. Did nothing to stop him. You let him run off to a filthy country to shoot a gun at men who have a different God. And you don’t even believe in God.”
    She turned away from him and fell asleep quickly. She had always been adept at that. In the middle of the night she woke him and said, “Hold me.” He did this, and she kissed him and he kissed her back. So familiar she was, so easy. He knew her shape, what pleased her. At some point she climbed on top of him and put him inside her. She called out and pushed her face against his shoulder. Then she slid away and lowered her head and wet the pillow with her tears.
    When he had told his psychiatrist, Dr. G, that he was corresponding with a woman who was a dairy farmer, Dr. G asked, “Is she dangerous?”
    Morris chuckled. “How could she be dangerous? She’s sad. She’s broken up over the death of her son. She needs someone to talk to.”
    “And Lucille? She knows about this?”
    “There’s nothing to say. I don’t even know what Ursula looks like, smells like, how she walks, how big her breasts are.”
    “Why are you talking about her breasts?”
    “She’s a woman. She has breasts.”
    “Perhaps she’s had a double mastectomy. You haven’t seen her.”
    “Well, and perhaps she’s a seventy-year-old