The Morels

by Christopher Hacker

  The officer cleared his throat and repeated his question, more forcefully this time, and Arthur reluctantly described the scene at the back porch. I don’t want to press charges, if that’s an option even.

  These sorts of things rarely come to that, the officer said, returning his notepad to his pocket.

  They were silent for a while. Nice ride, the officer said.

  It’s a rental.

  That’s the way to do it. In style. The officer stirred up some small talk to pass the time. He spoke enthusiastically of the car: his uncle had an earlier model, same color; how the man had been bequeathed the car by a dead relative and spent his spare time modifying it. He’d gotten to comparing his uncle’s earlier model with this current one when the other officer emerged from the house.

  He approached them, nodded to his partner, was abrupt with Arthur. No question which one was the bad cop here. He wondered what the Wrights had told him. Bad cop didn’t let on. He told Arthur that he’d have to move along, that loitering here was forbidden, anticipating an argument, but Arthur didn’t argue. He bid the officers a good night, opened the driver’s side door, and stuffed the gifts in back. He stalled twice on his way out of the subdivision. He watched the police cruiser in his rearview, colored lights flashing silently, all the way to the highway.

  He got himself most of the way back to the airport before turning off 267 and into a motel. He sat on the bed and called his wife. This time, she answered.

  Arthur, she said.

  Penelope, thank God!

  It’s over, she said. She told him to stop calling her parents, that they were all tired and needed to get some sleep. He begged her to stay on the line, to listen to what he had to say but was relieved, in spite of himself, when she said she couldn’t and hung up. Because, the truth was, he didn’t know what to say. He would apologize, he would say whatever she wanted him to say, but after his encounter with the police and the barrel of her father’s shotgun, he was feeling defensive.

  To apologize for what he had written was tantamount to apologizing for what he was thinking, and could he, in all honesty, do that? He could be sorry for allowing it to be published, but Penelope admitted that she had encouraged him. He could be sorry for allowing himself to be encouraged, but that was just a passive-aggressive apology: Sorry you feel that way, sorry you’re displeased. These were no longer apologies.

  If he couldn’t be sorry, what could he do? He couldn’t recall the book as though it were a faulty laptop battery; the publisher had made this clear. He couldn’t unwrite it. Penelope would have to set the terms of the amends, but she was refusing to speak to him.

  Arthur called the airline and booked the first flight out the next morning. Afterward, he opened the door to his room and stood out on the balcony that overlooked the parking lot. Three shadows by a red pickup truck—two men and a woman—smoking cigarettes and drinking from a shared bottle. He watched them for a while—the woman sat cross-legged on the hood, the men leaning deeply onto the passenger side door, discussing something serious. Arthur watched them long enough to decide that getting drunk looked like a good idea.

  He found his keys and got on his jacket and, asking directions from the trio by the pickup, drove to a nearby liquor store where he purchased a bottle of something called Duff Gordon, which turned out to be cooking sherry.

  By the time he returned to the motel parking lot, the red pickup was gone. He uncapped the bottle and had a swig. This was what you were supposed to do when your wife and child left you; you got drunk in a motel parking lot. The circumstances required it. He adjusted his seat, turned off the engine, but kept the key in so that he could listen to the radio. He found a station playing “Waiting for the Man,” by the Velvet Underground. He thought of his mother.

  He was woken by the sound of an electronic bleating that turned out to be his cell phone. It was his agent. He flipped open the phone. Hello? The morning’s glare from the windshield aggravated the cracked plates of a headache.

  Arthur, it’s Doug. Are you sitting down? I hope you are, friend, because I have some news that’s going to knock you off your feet.

  10

  MEMORY

  “HOLY SHIT,” I SAID. “CONGRATULATIONS!”

  “You sound like my agent. Lord. I haven’t won anything. I’ve been short-listed. Besides, it’s not a real prize. It’s a vanity award, the kind they give out to small-press books in order to make us feel better for our dismal sales numbers.”

  “Still, it sounds very prestigious.”

  Arthur said, “I got off the phone. As I said, blinding headache. I turn the key, and chug-chug-chug, goes the engine. It won’t turn over. I’m late for my flight, my wife has left me, taken my son. I have a hangover, and I miss my plane waiting for a tow truck to jump-start my car.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s the bad news. The good new is your career’s taken off!” I meant it as a joke but felt genuinely jealous as I said it. “I’d trade places with you.”

  “You would because you’re used to hangovers and because you have neither a wife nor a child, so you have no idea what it means to lose them.”

  “Right, and I have no career to speak of. Thanks a lot. I feel much better now.”

  “What I mean is be happy with what you haven’t got to lose. And I don’t have the career you think I do. Fiction writing is not a career. Adjuncting at a university, I don’t care what its pedigree, isn’t a career either, despite what my wife thinks. This isn’t my office. We adjuncts get to share the space left unoccupied by the full-timers on sabbatical.” He looked at the Tupperware by my elbow. “And I’m not liked. I haven’t made the effort. I’d be surprised if I were teaching here in the fall.”

  Arthur walked me out, and I don’t know whether it was Arthur’s suggestion or if it really was in the air, but I felt us being stared at by those we passed, a curiosity that bordered on malice. Arthur stopped at his cubby and looked through the various notices and flyers. The woman at the reception desk offered a tight smile. She didn’t say hello to Arthur, and Arthur didn’t introduce me. At the door, we shook hands.

  I said, “Have you explained to Penelope this notion of art you have?”

  “An explanation won’t do what she wants it to. To give her comfort. No explanation will do that.”

  “Maybe I don’t envy your misery,” I said. “But I do envy your spine. The way you follow through with your idea about art—strange though it is—is impressive.”

  “Okay,” he said, “out with it. You didn’t come here to listen to me talk, and you didn’t come here because you were worried. You came to ask me something. So ask.”

  “Fine. Here it goes—how would you like to be in a movie?”

  Arthur snorted. Then he said, “You’re serious.”

  “You could be yourself because it would be a documentary.”

  “About?”

  “About you.”

  Arthur seemed ready to refuse—he tipped his head back and made a sour face—but he didn’t refuse. “Documentary,” he said, measuring the word. He said it a few times, sounding out its syllables. “Come back to the office for a minute,” he said.

  We retraced our way upstairs, and I stood outside the door while he rummaged around the top of the desk. “She’s always sending me these things here at the school, but now for the life of me I can’t—aha!”

  He held aloft a postcard, brought it over to me. On it was a photograph of a necklace made from what looked like human molars. On the other side: Cynthia Bonjorni, Artist @ Carriage House Crafts, Greene & Grand. Cutout letters, mixed fonts like the liner notes of a Sex Pistols album.

  “Cynthia Bonjorni?”

  “My mother. If you want to make a movie about me, she would be the best place to start.”

  On the subway ride downtown, turning over Cynthia Bonjorni’s card in my hand, I puzzled over Arthur’s explanation—his modus operandi—pieces of ancient art theory I didn’t fully grasp. It all seemed so arbitrary. That quote of
Aristotle’s, for instance, that Arthur should put the emphasis on the word action. He wrote it down for me when I asked him to repeat it. I looked at it now. First of all, wasn’t the real key word here tragedy? Aristotle was describing an ancient form of dramatic art, not literary art. And in emphasizing action, he seemed to be overlooking the more important word: imitation. Surely Aristotle wasn’t advocating that novelists write novels that brought about their ruin. And anyway, what was he was trying to purge?

  The day she left, Penelope had received a call from Will’s fourth-grade teacher. She got the call while she was brushing her teeth. It would be years before the act of toothbrushing—mint lather, bristles on gums—would decouple itself from the ugliness this phone call would bring.

  She was escorted to Will’s classroom by a tall black girl in a full-leg cast, swinging ahead of Penelope on her crutches. Through the small square window in the door, she could see the class in session. The teacher, a wiry woman with cornrow braids, was enthusiastically telling them something while the students at their desks—popping up and down, bursting with energy—passed around a pail into which they dropped slips of paper. Will was in a seat toward the front. Penelope’s heart leaped. When the teacher saw Penelope, she instructed one of the students to stand up front while she opened the door and stepped out.

  Mrs. Santiago, Penelope said.

  Angie, please. She looked at her watch. Five minutes to lunch. She directed Penelope to wait for her in her “office,” which was a cubicle, one of a dozen created from low carpeted partitions set up in an unused classroom. Penelope took a seat at one of two chairs to one side of a small desk. As predicted, the period bell went off, an earsplitting electronic buzz, and a few moments later Angie returned with Will.

  I’m not in trouble, he said to Penelope, though from the look on his face she could see he wasn’t so sure. He sat down in the empty seat next to her.

  Angie took the desk chair, setting down the book she was holding. She said, We had speaking skills today and Will here gave us a report on Dad’s book.

  Will picked up a block puzzle from the desk and began fiddling with it. Penelope put her hand on his knee, the little knob.

  During one of the many conferences Arthur and Penelope had attended this fall, they brought up the topic of Arthur’s new book. Angie explained back then the futility of trying to control the flow of information around the school. They could lock down their Internet portals as well as hard sources that might come through the doors, but they had no control over what students told one another. The spirit of keeping Will from the book wasn’t about the words in the book but rather the scene that the words evoked, and this couldn’t be kept from Will. Ideas and images were airborne things, carried and spread by his classmates or anyone else with whom Will might come into contact. A mere Google search of Arthur Morel pointed to online reviews that paraphrased the scene in all its disturbing detail. What sort of inoculation could they provide against it? They considered telling Will about the scene but couldn’t think of a way of describing it—or why his father would have written it—that would make any sense to him. They decided instead to do nothing but be prepared for the moment, whenever it came. Which appeared to be today.

  Why don’t you tell your mom what you told the class about the sex part, Will.

  I was joking, Will said. I was just messing with everybody.

  Angie said, It didn’t sound like you were joking.

  Will’s knee jittered under Penelope’s palm. She squeezed it to reassure him, but Will tugged his leg away. He looked down at his puzzle—for some moments it appeared as though he’d shut them out, this whole situation, and devoted himself entirely to solving it. It looked simple—there were only four pieces, discrete shapes that would, when fit together correctly, form a neat cube.

  Penelope and Angie looked at each other. Angie’s shimmery green eye shadow matched exactly her green running shoes, which in turn matched her green nails. Though Angie seemed buoyant and easygoing, there was something else about her—a fastidiousness that suggested she was barely keeping it all together. Or maybe Penelope was thinking of herself. Angie nodded at Penelope, indicating some kind of cue, but Penelope wasn’t sure what she was being asked to do.

  She cleared her throat and turned to Will. Honey, she began. What were you only joking about?

  Will said, not looking up, I read it.

  This she was prepared for. This she had an answer for. What she wasn’t prepared for, what she had no answer for, was when Will told her what he had told the class before Penelope had arrived, what prompted Angie to call Penelope in, and what prompted Penelope to say to Will, You what?

  Remember. It’s okay, right, Angie? You said I wasn’t in trouble.

  You’re not in trouble, Will.

  What exactly do you remember, honey?

  I was just showing him how. I asked him to.

  Him who?

  Art.

  Art. You were showing Art how to what?

  To you know.

  I don’t know, Will honey. You have to tell me.

  Penelope. I think it might be best if—

  Are you joking? Are you messing with me?

  I guess not. You’re mad, though.

  Will, I’m not mad, but I need you to tell me—exactly—what you mean when you say that you remember.

  Will, your mother and I will be back in a moment—you work on that puzzle.

  Angie took Penelope out into the corridor and said, We have to be very careful here. If I can make a suggestion? I think before we jump to conclusions, Will should speak with someone about this.

  Someone? Penelope couldn’t think; she was aware that her mouth was open, aware of the thought, Close your mouth. She closed her mouth. She thought, This is it, though she wasn’t sure what it was just yet. She needed to call Arthur, yet she was afraid to. She was, in fact, trembling, though her forehead was perspiring. Her mouth had gone dry, she could barely swallow, she could still taste the toothpaste, its grit coating the roof of her mouth. This woman, the teacher, was still talking. She was handing Penelope a card. She wanted Will to talk to this person, a child psychologist. She was waiting for Penelope to respond, but Penelope couldn’t respond. She was done talking; she needed to go now. She needed to get her son and go.

  They left out the side exit into an alley off York Avenue. She hustled Will along (Where are we going, Mom?), pulling him by the hand, Will’s backpack jiggling on his back like an excited monkey. (I’m in trouble, aren’t I? You’re not in trouble, honey.) She had the urge to pick him up and carry him in her arms.

  Where were they headed? What was she supposed to do?

  Arthur was teaching. He turned off his cell phone when he was in class. She could call the office, and the work-study girl who answered the phones could go to Arthur’s classroom, get him to come speak with her. Or. She could go up there with Will now, in person, pull him out of class. But what would she say?

  Not with Will. She should have let Will finish the day, as Angie had suggested. Anyway, what was there to say to Arthur? Plenty, although she couldn’t think, she couldn’t think—she needed to think! (Mom, the light’s green!)

  No. She couldn’t talk to Arthur now.

  Besides, there was nothing Arthur could say that would make this better. The psychologist. Maybe the psychologist could help.

  Joyce Mandelbaum, Ph.D. Did Dr. Joyce take walk-ins? It was worth a shot.

  Dr. Mandelbaum explained over the phone that her next free appointment for new clients wasn’t until the end of February, but when Penelope explained why she was calling, she found herself an hour later sitting in a waiting room, arranging a wicker nest of Condé Nast Travelers at her side by country. Italy was overrepresented. There were several closed doors and a small dim window across from her that let in the cooing of pigeons and the occasional groaning of a passing truck. A side table by the entrance held a dried-flower arrangement that gave the place a mentholated smell.

  When Dr. M
andelbaum emerged, she did so without Will, ushering Penelope through one of the closed doors and into an empty office. Dr. Mandelbaum told her to sit.

  “Will is angry,” she said, taking a seat herself, “that much is clear. Most of which seems directed toward his father.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It’s not so much what he said as what he did. You see, in my practice, unstructured play speaks louder than words.” Dr. Mandelbaum was holding a stack of Polaroids that she now handed to Penelope. “Working with children is different than working with adults. The tools one uses are different. With adults you have a couch and a box of tissues. With children, tissues won’t cut it. You need things, a closetful of things. Dolls and toy trucks and water pistols. You need clothing for dress-up, hats and scarves, pocket mirrors and long cigarette holders. You need kitchen utensils and buckets and mops and a full porcelain tea service for eight. I often say very little. I’ll just open the closet and watch them play. Today, a stuffed dummy, a plastic knife, and a Polaroid camera. As you see, this can be very revealing.”

  What Penelope was holding were “crime scene” photos. Will had set up the scene, Dr. Mandelbaum said, and then took the pictures as if he were an investigator. Various angles on a stuffed human-sized dummy sitting in an armchair. The dummy is wearing a dinner jacket, gloves, no pants. His head lolls back, and out of his lower abdomen protrudes a plastic knife, the dummy’s mitt of a hand touching the hilt. Several closeups of the wound. “I asked who did this to the man, and Will told me the man did it to himself.”

  Penelope must have looked alarmed because Dr. Mandelbaum said, “Don’t worry. This kind of play is perfectly normal. Healthy, well-adjusted kids at one time or another will fantasize about offing their parents.”

  “Do you think Will is telling the truth?”

  “I put the question to him directly, and he answered quite straightforwardly. Yes, he insists. It’s true. And while he showed no obvious signs that he was trying to deceive me, neither did he exhibit the sorts of signals I’m used to seeing that help to confirm such abuse.”