The Matter With Morris by David Bergen

someone blonde?”
    This startled Morris. He found it forward and accusing, as if she were sensing something about him that he himself did not yet know. But as the evening progressed he discovered that she was also clear-headed and guileless. They bothspoke of their sons, but Ursula was more vocal, more willing to reveal herself. In fact, at some point Morris felt that her son was sitting near them.
    “My friends are tired of me,” she said. “All I do is talk about Harley. Even my husband’s tired of me.”
    “My wife and I had nothing left to say to each other,” Morris said, and immediately he was sorry. He had not meant to say anything about Lucille and here he was, talking about her again. He wanted her to be gone. What a feast she would make of this. If he could be brave enough to enter her lair, the office on the fifteenth floor of that glass building, where her corner windows gave south onto the river and west to the Great West Life edifice, and beyond that the spire of the Westminster United Church whose bells pealed merrily out of key every lunch hour, announcing death and more death and then death again and finally life—if he could slip past her door and have her inspect his heart and soul, she would happily point out what was on his back. A big lie, a load for the beast. She wouldn’t help him get rid of the burden. She would just point it out and say, “There you are, there it is.” She wouldn’t even say that it was a burden. She would cunningly let him discover it for himself. It wasn’t her burden after all, it was his. He was the one who slept with it, who walked around the city with it, unaware, though all and sundry could see the malformed bundle; he was like the man who has suffered polio as a child and now must stoop his way through to death. The burden was many things: his tremendous pride, his fear, his love of sex and high-heeled shoes, his envy and rage, his shame.
    He pushed away these thoughts and watched Ursula’s mouth as she spoke and imagined kissing her.
    She said, “My husband, Cal, he’s always believed in the army. It’s how he grew up. And it’s how he raised our son. But now he’s angry. The government’s failed him and he’s angry. He has guns.” She shrugged, almost imperceptibly.
    “What do you mean?”
    “He’s always had a gun, but now he has a whole sack-ful. One day he goes to Cabella’s and he buys a hunting rifle and then the following week he buys another, an automatic. He has six in total, with ammunition and cases. He spends his evenings cleaning the guns and breaking them down. He shows Wilhelm the guns. They work together and Cal talks to Wilhelm about velocity and wind and distance. I don’t think an eleven-year-old needs to know about this, and I tell Cal, but he won’t listen to me anymore. He used to play music in the barn, milking the cows. But nowadays there’s no music, just the sound of the milking machine and the bucket bunters knocking pails of feed around. Everything’s changed since Harley died.”
    Morris said, “My father was a pacifist. He passed this idea on to me and I accepted it, and then I tried to pass it on to my son, Martin, who because he needed something to push against, I suppose, laughed at me and joined the army. I’m not against taking care of myself, of protecting my own, but I cannot accept, as you people seem to, that billions need to be spent on a war machine.”
    “Nobody’s a pacifist.” She smiled in the slightest way. He loved her voice.
    She had one crooked eye tooth and Morris thought that this was very attractive. It made her seem more vulnerable. She excused herself and made her way to the bathroom at the far end of the lobby and he watched her cross the marble floor. She wore jeans and a light green short-sleeved sweater, and high black boots that made her legs appear longer than they were, and he saw her arms and her shoulder blades and her backside, and he wanted her. Imagination was the ultimate