Read Online The Matter With Morris by David Bergen - Free Book Online Page A

room.
    “There’s coffee,” she said, turning to face him.
    “I’m fine. I need to shower, brush my teeth. I’ll phone up later. Okay?”
    “That was Wilhelm. He was throwing up. He wanted to know when I was coming home. Ever since Harley died, he does this when I go away. Makes himself sick so that I have to come home.”
    “So, you’ll go?”
    “Yes. Right away. I’m sorry.”
    “Why? There’s no need. I should be the one apologizing.”
    “Really? What happened last night?”
    “Nothing. You went to sleep.”
    “You were very sweet. Thank you.”
    He laughed. “Now that’s something new. ‘Sweet.’“ He felt great desire for her. He moved towards the door.
    She watched him and then lifted a hand and said, “I’ll write you.”
    He did not hear from her for several months. And when she finally wrote, in late September, he had just lost his column and the weather was turning. Her letter picked up where they’d left off, as if the span of time had not been great, as if she had stepped out of the room for a moment and then returned to pick up the conversation. She said that she had talked too much about Harley.
Morris, you kept asking questions and so I talked and talked like a real blabbermouth, and only later did I realizethat you hadn’t really said anything about Martin. I feel that you were hiding something. Last Sunday, Cal and I finally spread Harley’s ashes down by the stream that runs behind the barn. Before we did this, we sat on lawn chairs and watched two whooping cranes fly in from the south, one behind the other, and coast silently along the path of the stream. They were maybe three inches from the water’s surface. The shadow of the first crane startled the fish in the stream and the second crane, following closely, caught those startled fish. The crane dipped his claws into the water, just like that, and scooped up the fish. The cranes did this three times in a row, and each time the second bird caught a fish. Cal said that the birds were like Cheney and Bush. Cheney’s the one who disturbs the life beneath the clean surface, and then Bush goes in for the kill. When Cal talks like this, I get scared. That day, there was a tiny wind blowing, and when we spread Harley’s ashes out over the water, after the birds had left, some of the ashes fell onto my boots and the ashes were still there in the morning and I didn’t want them to go away, so I wrapped the boots in Saran Wrap and laid them in the closet, up beside the strongbox where Cal keeps his important papers. Is that crazy? I want to see you again, even though Wilhelm hates me leaving. I can plan to be in Minneapolis whenever you’re free. Let me know.
    She was offering him a form of deliverance, this is what it felt like, and he wanted to crow call out to his neighbours, a young couple he met on the stairway every morning as they went off to work, very slickly, both of them in colourful coats, like Joseph before he was thrown into the well by his brothers, she in high heels, he in long-toed black polished shoes. A beautiful couple, without children, no worries, no one to lose, their future brightly beckoning them. He had talked to the woman, Beth Ann, at some length one afternoon, a conversation about food because Morris had just stepped over to the Happy Cooker to buy himself a new toaster, and now he was returning to his apartment to prepare a bagel. Beth Ann said that she and Tom preferred toaster ovens. And then they’d talked of grilled things and salmon and finally books. She was reading Madame Bovary. She felt sorry for Hippolyte, the one with the club foot. She felt not a spot of pity for Emma: “Emma deserved everything that fell down upon her head.” Morris had been surprised and dismayed at Beth Ann’s vehemence. Such moral indignation. He wondered if it should be “fell down around her head,” but he didn’t correct her. He said that interestingly he had just reread Anna Karenina and he’d always felt that