by David Bergen
Eight months ago, before Lucille had left Morris, the two of them had come to this house and sat at that exact table, with these same people, except back then another couple had also been present, a film director named Darko and his lover Maria. That evening had turned into a disaster that centred on an argument that had begun just after dessert. Patrice, heart so soft and useless, had brought up torture and then used the word “Gitmo” and Morris had said, “Don’t say ‘Gitmo.’ It trivializes, like ‘9/11.’ It diminishes everything that our soldiers are fighting for.” Lucille, sitting beside him, said his name, but he had not paid heed. Patrice had earlier been talking about Afghanistan and the breaking of international laws and the futility of the conflict, and most of the group had agreed. Except for Lucille. And Eleanor, who was gauging the conversation and Morris’s reaction; she kept glancing at him. And then Morris had gotten started and he was not to be stopped. He said that Patrice had no idea what sacrifice meant. How many French soldiers had died in Afghanistan? And how many Canadians? And where did he get off saying that the protection of land and schools and hospitals for the local Afghani people was pointless? And whose children were dying? All along, Morris had been aware of the film director’s lover. He’d been aware upon arriving that Maria was too beautiful to pay attention to, and he imagined that in arguing drunkenly like this with Patrice that he was trying to impress her. Or perhaps to repulse her. If he made himself unattractive, then she would dislike him and there would be no reason to even fantasize about her. He should not have come here. But he had, and now he needed to finish what had been started. He tilted forward to pour more wine into his glass. He felt giddily out of control, yet he knew that he was standing on very solid ground and that the moral indignation of Patrice could not withstand his own virtuous stance. After all, Morris’s son had died as a soldier. Morris lifted his glass and drank, and as he did so he raised his free hand, and then lowering his glass he looked at Darko rather than Patrice and he said, “Let me tell you about a boy named Tyler.” And as he said this, he saw Darko’s dark eyes, and he wondered how it was that this man had acquired such a beautiful woman and such a laughable name. He was short and had a pockmarked face and his upper lip was chubbier than the lower, and he didn’t seem very intelligent, at least from what Morris had perceived throughout the evening, but then what was intelligence truly, an ability to hold one’s own at a dinner party? But of these things, Morris was certain: the man had power and he had money. He knew that what he was about to do was quite wrong, and Lucille, beside him, had placed her hand on his thigh and was whispering, “Don’t, Morris,” but he charged on, perhaps because he wanted to imagine Maria, later that evening, raising her sharp small face in astonishment and sucking in a deep breath of pity for Morris Schutt. He said, “Tyler Goodhand joined the Canadian Forces and was sent to Afghanistan in February 2006, and while on one of his first patrols his gun went off accidentally and he killed one of his fellow soldiers. Every day, Tyler relives this incident, and every day, he wishes to go back to Afghanistan and fight the Taliban. Tyler is twenty years old now. He will never forgive himself. But Tyler, rightly or wrongly, wants to act. Because, as he told me, if we don’t act, then what are we doing?”
Morris paused and looked up at the ceiling. He wondered if he was going to cry. He said, “I love Tyler. He might be completely deluded, but he is sincere and honest and he isn’t afraid to ask for forgiveness and I love him.” Morris pushed away from the table, excused himself, and went to the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and fell asleep, until Lucille’s hesitant knock woke him.
That evening, eight months earlier, had not ended so badly. He had returned to the dinner table and Patrice had apologized. And Morris had apologized in turn for his self-abandonment. “I do not want to seem a victim,” he had said, “though that is exactly what I’m doing.” He drank an espresso that Eleanor had handed him, and by the end of the evening there had been a semblance of forgiveness and perhaps even forced joviality.
And tonight, here was almost the same situation, as if Eleanor had conveniently forgotten the fiasco of the last dinner. Only this time Morris was out on the lawn, looking in, and Darko and Maria were absent, perhaps making a film in Rio, perhaps no longer together. But Patrice was present once again, his mouth moving, pontificating. And Suzanne lifting her head, white teeth shining, and no doubt talking about the cruise they were taking up the British Columbia coast to Alaska. Lucille speaking then, looking at the hostess, exclaiming about the delicious halibut. A light came on at the neighbouring house and a man stepped out on the verandah. Morris slipped behind a tree. The bark of a dog, a voice calling, “Angel,” and suddenly Morris was cornered by the tiniest ball of fury, yapping shrilly, snapping at his ankles, and then the dog lunged and bit deep into the Achilles tendon of his right ankle. Morris swung his leg out violently and the little ball of fury flew sideways, hit the tree, and yelped. The neighbour, in a panicky voice called out, “Angel, Angel,” and stepped through the hedge, onto the driveway, and found Morris with his back up against the bark of a rotten elm, holding his foot. An old man, dressed in pyjama bottoms and a dark blue overcoat. A sparse halo of white hair. Slippers. A plastic bag clutched in his left hand. “Who are you?” the old man asked. Angel continued to bark and yelp and whimper. A light came on above Eleanor and Jack’s porch and Eleanor pushed her face out into the cold. “Harry?” she called.
“There’s a man out here,” the old man said. “A peeping Tom. Call the police, Eleanor. Angel’s got him cornered. She’s wounded him.”
Eleanor stepped down onto the grass and approached the tree, moving carefully on high heels. When she saw Morris she said, “Is that you, Morris? What are you doing? We’ve been waiting for you. Did you knock?”
“Hi, Eleanor. Yes, I did. No, actually, I was about to, and then realized I’d forgotten my wine and was heading back to the car when this man’s mad dog attacked me.”
“She didn’t,” Harry said. “That man was skulking.” He stooped to pick up Angel and, holding her to his chest, he said, “Atta girl, good girl, there’s a girl. Good job.”
“I wasn’t skulking,” Morris said. He pointed at the window, beyond which Lucille stood, peering out into the darkness. “That’s my wife in there. Eleanor is my friend. We ‘re about to have a convivial dinner and your sweet little Angel bit me.”
“He bit you?” Eleanor asked.
“Punctured my Achilles,” Morris said. He would sue this man, and he’d have the nasty bitch put down.
“Nonsense,” Harry said. “Angel doesn’t bite. Look at her.” He held her up for inspection and then drew her back under his chin and turned to Eleanor. “He was hiding behind the tree.”
Morris began to limp back towards the car. “The wine. I was retrieving the wine. It’s frizzante, from Italy. It’s on my front seat. I wasn’t hiding.”
Lucille had stepped outside now and was walking down the driveway, calling to him. He reached his car, opened the door, and slipped behind the wheel. His heart attack symptoms had disappeared, but now his foot was shredded. Lucille tapped on the window and he lowered it.
“What happened, Morris? Are you okay? Where have you been? We’ve finished the main course already.”
“Why would Eleanor invite Patrice? Who are these people we’re spending time with? What do we have to say to each other? Christ, Patrice is a boring man. All he talks about is global warming.”
“He’s very intelligent, Morris. He speaks five languages.”
“Polyglots can be just as boring as mutes, Lucille. Does he speak Arabic, the language of our enemy, Lucille? We must know our enemy.”
“Don’t talk like that. Come inside. The food is wonderful. Jack made a beautiful tajine dish with prunes. Come.” She began to open the door. “Let me see your ankle.”
He shook his head. “I’ll get it checked. I’ll run over to the hospital, get tested for rabies, and if they don’t chain me to a tree, I’ll return.”
“No, you w
on’t.” She was wistful. A tendril of hair fluttered like a moth across her brow. He wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek. He resisted.
“I’ll call,” he said. “Tell Jack and Eleanor sorry. Tell them I’m not well. Tell Patrice I’m at home reading Cicero in the original. Tell him that this is just how foolish people behave: they observe the faults of others and forget their own. That’s a quote, by the way.” He started the car. A low rumble, not a tappet to be adjusted. What a gorgeous machine.
“That boy, Tyler. I got a letter from him last week,” Lucille said. It was as if she had just received the letter, as if she had just opened the envelope and read the letter in which he was asking for forgiveness. Her face in this light seemed confused, perplexed. She hadn’t liked the letter.
“Yes?” Morris said. “And what did he want?”
“What do you think he wanted?” Then she said, “You call me, okay? Promise?”
Morris nodded. Reached out the window, touched Lucille’s hip, and felt the soft velvet. “You’re wearing these. Nice.” And then he left.
He did not go to the hospital. He went up Wellington Crescent and then drove quietly through the park. Near the Pavilion, a couple was crossing the street, arm in arm. Morris imagined that they must have just had dinner in the pavilion restaurant and were now heading home, intent on each other, having satisfied the necessary desires of eating and drinking, with the woman looking up into the man’s face and saying, “Take me doggy style, please.” Morris feared he had lost sight completely of what was necessary and unnecessary. At some point, his behaviour had gone beyond bounds. Reading Plato recently he had been troubled by the regimes of the soul, the idea that too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery. But now he saw that his own soul had descended into tyranny and gluttony of feeling, of revolt and chaos. His soul was sick, and therefore his body was sick. You are what you do, Morris, he thought, and you have been doing poorly. He had tossed aside all of his modern encumbrances, seeking liberation from technology and the free market. Storing his treasures on earth in the safe in his condo was a symptom of excess. He had become a slave to freedom. On Monday he would return his money to the bank and let the captains of commerce invest and worry about it. And then he would call up his editor and say that he was ready to return to his column, only he had no intention of revealing his private life anymore. He no longer believed that shamelessness was courage. He drove up around and past the botanical gardens and along the edges of the zoo, where beyond the chain-link fence he saw the dark shapes of buffalo and reindeer. Poor trapped animals. His foot throbbed. He felt feverish and his mouth was dry. Earlier, cornered by that dog, he had seen the folly of his ways. And then Lucille, leaning into his car window to study him, had shaken her head, yet she had said nothing. But he knew her thoughts. Morris, she’d been thinking, what are you doing standing on the lawn looking in at a dinner party, when all you had to do was knock on the door and enter? Do you think that you are so special that you will not rub shoulders with or be tainted by humanity? That your thoughts are so elevated that no one else will understand you? You don’t even understand yourself. You have so successfully shut yourself off from human contact that you have begun to believe your own lies. These had been Lucille’s thoughts. He had seen the doubt in her eyes, only she’d been too kind to utter the words that he was now thinking. He retraced his route, passing once again by Jack and Eleanor’s, where the lights still blazed and where, still at the table, the company was talking about poor Morris. He continued down the Crescent and turned right on Hugo and then up towards his condo. He parked and climbed cautiously from the car, clutching his butter tarts and his bottle of wine. Glancing upwards, he noticed that the lights were on in his condo. He wondered if he’d forgotten to turn them off. Or perhaps Libby was visiting. She had a key to his place.
He hobbled up the stairs, reached the landing of the third floor, and saw that his door was slightly open. He approached tentatively, perplexed. The jamb was broken, the door splintered near the lock. He pushed the door open cautiously and called out Libby’s name. He stepped down his hallway into the living room and found not Libby but Ursula sitting on the couch, a suitcase at her feet. She held a gun in her lap.
“Morris,” she said, and she stood, the gun in one hand, and walked towards him.
He stepped backwards. “Ursula, what are you doing? Put that away.”
She paused and looked down at her hands and she smiled as if surprised by the gun she held. She said, her voice shaking, “I thought he’d come back.”
“Who’d come back? What are you talking about? Why are you here?”
“Oh, I know, I was asking myself that same question just now. I’m sorry to surprise you, Morris.” She dipped her head and lifted her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Morris looked at the broken door and back at Ursula.
“Who did this?”
“I don’t know. I was outside, by your entrance, when a small man ran out wildly, carrying a bag. He pushed by me. I came in and found your place and the door was broken.” She paused and looked at him tenderly, her eyes wide. “I hope it’s okay that I came in. I didn’t know what else to do. Where to go. I’m leaving Cal.”
Behind her, against the wall, the safe was closed. “Look at that,” Morris said, and he limped past Ursula and stooped towards his safe, pulled out his wallet, took the key and slid it into the slot, turned the combination, and opened the safe. Nothing had been touched. “Look at that,” he said again. Then he stood and went into the bedroom. His closet had been torn apart. Clothes everywhere. He bent and lifted his futon and saw his cash neatly laid out beneath it. He dropped the futon and turned. Ursula stood in the doorway, still holding her gun. “You sleep on it?” she said.
“Christ,” he said. “You realize how lucky I am?” He grinned merrily. “So lucky.” Then he said, “Do you still need that?” and he gestured at the gun.
“Oh,” she said, and she shrugged, almost helplessly, as if she had suddenly realized that she was in the wrong place. Her face was smoother, Morris thought, as if she’d perhaps gained weight. Thin eyebrows, the slight glitter of blue dust on her eyelids, red lipstick. Her hair was lighter; she’d dyed it dirty blonde. He saw that she was wearing a red dress that pressed against her hips. She had fixed herself up for this meeting and now she lifted her shoulders helplessly again and said, “It’s me, Morris. I’m sorry.”
“Of course it’s you. Why sorry?” He went to her and walked her back to the kitchen, took the gun from her hand, felt its inadequate weight in his own palm, placed it on the windowsill, and then said, “I didn’t know you were coming.”
She began to weep, and as she wept, Morris thought, Be careful of tears, they might mean something completely different than you think. And then she stopped. “You told me to go away,” she said. “You wrote and you said goodbye and I was devastated. What have I done?”
“Nothing. You’ve done nothing, Ursula.” Morris paused and reflected and then asked, “Did I tell you to go away? Truly? Or did I talk about myself. You know that I think only of myself, don’t you, Ursula?” He felt he should go to her, do something, but he simply stood, aware that he must choose his words more carefully. “Here,” he said, and he sat her on one of the yellow vinyl chairs at the kitchen table, and while he made tea Ursula described how she had arrived to find the door broken down and then she’d had to decide should she stay or leave, not knowing, of course, if this was even his place, though she thought it was, and then how she’d stepped inside and seen a photo of Morris and a young man on the bookshelf and she’d known then that this was his condo. “And I sat down and waited, though I was afraid that man would come back. Shouldn’t you call the police?”
Morris shook his head. “I know who it is. The police don’t need to be involved. Nothing was taken.”
“You have money, Morris,” she said. Her voice was meek.
“That’s all of it. My life fits into a safe the size
of a filing cabinet. Ha.”
“Your foot,” she said, pointing at his ankle. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “A dog bit me.”
“Oh, Morris. Let me see.”
He waved her away. This was too intimate, and it might lead to other things.
She studied him carefully. “Were you serious, Morris? In your letter?”
Again, Morris tried to recall his exact words. Had he been cruel? Perhaps he should have been crueller. He said, “Why are you leaving Cal, Ursula? Where’s your son?”
“Wilhelm’s safe. He’s with his aunt.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her cellphone and laid it on the table. “He’ll call soon. Before he goes to bed.”
“And Cal?”
