The Matter With Morris Read Free

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 marinelife. 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