“What kind of signals?”
“Oh, embarrassment, for one. Usually, a child will not readily admit to something like this, and if they do, it is a deeply cathartic experience, bringing about great shame. But Will seems—nonplussed by it. A little nervous maybe. This doesn’t mean he’s lying, however. It’s a tricky business. I would be very wary of contacting the police at this point—before I’ve spent more time with him. Their default position I’m afraid is to take the testimony of the child at face value—admirable, I’m sure, but one which unfortunately leads to a miscarriage of justice in too many cases. Not denigrating the important work they do. They’re heroes, many of them. I happen to be married to one, and he has put away some very bad people and saved countless children from some pretty awful situations. It’s just that the bureaucracy of the Justice Department has no use for the subtleties of the adolescent heart. It takes time to get to the bottom of these things, to piece together what’s really going on. The memory plays tricks. And there are any number of reasons for Will to make something like this up.”
“Because he’s angry.”
“Perhaps. ‘I hate Daddy, he makes Mommy cry all the time, he’s the reason they’re getting the divorce.’ And so forth. If you can think of a reason, there it is. The mind is a very complicated place. I have to say, however, as concerning as this is, I’m just as concerned about your husband. So he’s written about this in a book?”
“It’s a work of fiction, he says.”
“Still—it’s quite disturbing. Quite disturbing. Well, maybe Will’s getting back at your husband for writing lies—in a book that pretends to be the truth. But it’s not the truth. So he decides to tell the lie right back at him. To get even.”
After struggling unsuccessfully with a broken seat belt (This is totally illegal, you know!), Penelope ordered the driver to take them across town.
Will was concerned. When they arrived at the apartment, he followed her around asking what he could do to help. God, he was so much like Arthur! When Penelope was angry or upset, Arthur would always ask, What can I do to help? Even though usually it was something Arthur had done to piss her off in the first place. What can I do? What can I do to help?
She said to Will, You know what would help tremendously? If you’d empty the dishwasher and load up what’s in the sink.
Will needed a specific task; his eyes, wide and wet and overblinking, were asking her for help. Will seemed relieved. He went through the swinging door of the kitchen and, soon after, the clatter of plates, the rushing of the sink, the knocking of cabinet doors.
Penelope paced. She sat down. Will’s colored pencils were strewn on the dining room table, sheets of paper with half-finished drawings inspired by the book he was reading in school, an abridged version of The Odyssey: Telemachus with a machine gun, Zeus in a helicopter—the world of ancient Greece processed through the mind of a twentieth-century child. She was reminded of the craft works she’d seen recently from a street vendor near work: traditional baskets and jewelry done by women in tribal Africa—using electrical cord and Coke cans.
Penelope took a pencil and on the blank sheet of drawing paper in front of her drew a question mark, filled it out, gave it shape, until it became a long curved road, the point at the bottom the final destination.
She had to talk to Arthur. She needed—she hated herself for having this thought—she needed him to tell her what to do. If this were television, she would be disgusted with her character’s weakness. Grow some balls! she might yell at the screen.
She took her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed Arthur. He would be out of class now—he might have turned his phone back on. She got halfway through the automated instructions before she realized she wasn’t listening to Arthur’s voice mail but rather customer service for Avis rental car.
She looked at her phone’s faceplate. Strange wrong number to have gotten—then saw that it was an adjacent entry in her contact list.
She was about to hang up when an operator came on to ask how she could help. This was a sign. This was what to do.
I’d like to reserve a car, she said.
For which dates?
For right now.
She went into the bedroom and pulled open dresser drawers at random. She counted out one, two, three balled sock pairs—a fistful of underwear, stockings. She upended the drawers onto the bed. She added to it an entire hugged armful of clothes on hangers from her closet. This activity developed a momentum, the physical act of doing it brought on a kind of desperation. She lugged a suitcase from under the bed.
Will was standing in the doorway.
Penelope said, We’re taking a little trip.
Mom?
I need you to do me another favor, honey.
Mom?
Get down your suitcase for me and pack like you were going to Magic Mountain.
We’re going to Magic Mountain?
We’re not going to Magic Mountain.
Will said, I take it back.
Honey, it’s going to be okay. Listen to me. Hey. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just going on a little trip.
But I take it back! I take it back, I said.
It’s not something you can take back, Will.
But I don’t remember anymore. I forgot, okay?
That’s not the same as it not happening.
Why not? Before I remembered, it hadn’t happened. So I’ll just forget. We can go to a doctor, and he can hypnotize me. I don’t want to go on a trip.
Penelope walked over to Will and gathered him into her, pressed his head to her belly. It’s just a little vacation, a little break. You like it when we stay at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. We’ll talk about what you do or don’t remember later.
Will relented, packed a bag, but they became mired in the practical problems with leaving: What about piano—he had a lesson tomorrow afternoon—and the Harry Potter party Azucena was throwing—Will had campaigned for weeks to be invited to it—he was the only one in his grade who was going—and he was supposed to dog sit for a neighbor over the weekend—what about that? Penelope made the calls while Will gathered his books, his handheld video game. What about—and what about—and what about?
That was when I arrived, an encounter she was in no mood for.
Eventually, Penelope just ushered him out the door. He insisted on “helping” her with one of the suitcases, the results of which on any other day would have been endearing to watch: each crack in the sidewalk caused the thing to tip sideways and take Will with it. He tried pushing it in front of him like a wheelbarrow, tried facing forward and pulling it behind him like a rickshaw. It was crowded on the subway. Penelope lost sight of him for a moment and screamed his name, and the subway car went still. People looked up from their papers. But Will was standing right behind her.
She grabbed his wrist.
Ow!
Don’t do that again! she cried.
They walked to the rental-car lot in silence. It was bitter cold, and the wind out here in this neighborhood of low industrial buildings and parking lots and wide unprotected avenues was fierce. Though it was only three avenue blocks from the subway station to the rental lot, it took half an hour. Will stumbling over the suitcase on the cracked slabs of sidewalk, Penelope refusing to let go of his wrist.
It was dark when they arrived. The sign was a beacon of safety.
The woman behind the counter reported, without looking up from her screen, that there was no record of the reservation. But now there was no choice. She had to go, get out of town. You don’t understand, Penelope said, this is an emergency!
The clerk was unmoved.
What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t go back to the apartment, not now. She had to get out of this place, to get away. From Arthur. What am I supposed to do now, she said, to nobody in particular.
A man with a southern accent asked her where she was headed.
Thanks, Penelope said, but I’ll figure it out.
The man had a sunburn and no chin. He was wearing a yellow windbreaker. I’m headed to Atlantic City, so if you’re headed to points south along the Garden State Parkway, I can get you partway there at least.
Penelope stared at him for a moment before saying, You’ve got to be kidding me—I’m not getting into a fucking car with you. What do you think this is, the sixties? Come on, Will. Let’s go.
Penelope looked for a cab but couldn’t find one. A green Dodge Neon passed them, in the driver’s seat the man with the sunburn and yellow windbreaker—he looked at her and shook his head.
They walked the dozen blocks to Port Authority, and she bought them two tickets to DC. By this time, Will had stopped overtly fretting and seemed to be enjoying himself.
They ate at the Au Bon Pain in the terminal. Will wanted a chocolate croissant and a chocolate milk. Penelope didn’t fight it.
They sat in silence. Will used a plastic knife to cut his croissant in half and gave one of the halves to Penelope. This, more than anything else today, made Penelope want to weep.
That’s okay, honey, you save it for later, when you get hungry on the bus.
They went to a newsstand. Will chose Mad magazine. She paid for this and a copy of Us Weekly and they traveled the escalators down to their gate.
It was 5:45 by the time they shuffled through the line and took their seats. It was 11:05 by the time they arrived in DC. Her father met them at Union Station and drove them out to Annandale, to her childhood home.
Arthur’s postcard led us down into the cobblestone heart of Soho, to an unassuming carriage house that stood between two new clothing boutiques.
Arthur’s mother, Cynthia, greeted us from its open archway, ushering us inside. “Friends of Artie! I knew those postcards would hit their mark one day. Next time you can bring him, too. Doc! Where are you?”
Cynthia had an enormous amount of hair, a weeping willow of hair, and spoke expansively with her whole mouth, each word enunciated so that it might be unmistakable to people seated in a theater balcony. She was dressed in a flamboyant purple scarf, and her bony arms jangled and clacked with bracelets running up and down, arms that flailed as she spoke. Her teeth were large and perfectly white—perfectly fake, I could only assume.
Doc—Arthur’s father—was lean, pockmarked, and bald. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a backward Kangol hat. They were both old, but he was much older. If she was fifty, he was seventy, at least. But there was something about his eyes; he had the eyes of a teenager—mischievous, attuned to our smallest gestures. It was Cynthia who did most of the talking that first day. Doc was restless; he got up and disappeared for stretches of time before coming back, settling in, and listening to Cynthia—nodding, grunting assent, or frowning when something she said took a turn he didn’t like. It wasn’t clear that he knew—or cared—why we were here or what our relationship might be to his son.
They lived in squalor. Though their address carried with it New York prestige—neighbors with Robert De Niro and David Bowie—they embodied an older kind of city shabbiness, from a time when you could be a poor artist in New York. They used to have the whole building to themselves, Doc explained, but when property values exploded in the eighties, they were forced to rent out the upper floors to a graphic designer. They lived on the first floor, which opened via a garage door onto the street. At nine every morning, the door came up, and the elder Morels played host to all of downtown Manhattan, as they had done since moving in more than thirty years earlier. This open space was part living room, part artist’s studio; there was a broken-down couch, a lounge chair draped with a dingy sheet, a coffee table, as well as easels, a painter’s taboret, a wood block midsculpt in the corner. The floor was built up with overlapping threadbare rugs, irrevocably paint stained. On the wall hung paintings that varied wildly in style. Seeing me scan the walls, Cynthia said, “This is my trading post. Keith stayed with us for a while after his boyfriend kicked him out—paid for his stay by painting me that.” She pointed to a toilet seat hanging on the far wall that bore the unmistakable jigsaw graffiti of Keith Haring. “And that one?” She pointed to a blurry color photograph of a drag queen pursing her lips. “Let’s just say that one didn’t nearly cover the damage caused by those assholes Nan brought in with her.”
As we talked, we were interrupted constantly by people walking in off the street. Doc insisted on getting up and greeting each as a potential customer, yet it didn’t appear as though anything was for sale. “Come on in,” he said, “look around!” And we’d resume our conversation with these strangers loitering silently behind us. “Mostly what we get these days is tourists—they come, snap a few pictures. It’s okay. The Japs especially—we’ve been told we’re in a guidebook: ‘hidden gems’ or something like that. The old days was different. We had real guests, all kinds. Neighbors, drifters, politicians, artists. Come to stay an afternoon or a week. Real orgies.”
Orgies? Dave and Suriyaarachchi gave each other wide eyes.
Though they’d been here for years, and its furnishings seemed a part of the place for as long as they’d lived here, the arrangement felt temporary, ramshackle: there was a hot plate in the corner on which sat a charred espresso pot. Doc, always moving, unscrewed the pot and filled it with water and a few spoons from a coffee can nearby. A floral bedsheet separated this public living room from the rest of the apartment, which consisted of a kitchen and a sleeping loft perched over a desk space cramped with books and antiquated office equipment, including an old mimeograph, a typewriter, and a spiral-bookbinding machine. Dave helped himself to a peek into the sleeping loft—a rickety construction of unpainted two-by-fours. I think Dave must have realized a step or so too late up the ladder that he was intruding into a stranger’s “bedroom” and came quickly back down. He gave a shake to one of the ladder rungs. “Sturdy,” he said.
“Sturdy enough.” Cynthia gave him a sly smile. I noticed in the course of our conversation that she had a tendency to hold eye contact a few beats more than was comfortable, something I only later connected with Arthur, who had a similar tendency. With Arthur the effect was one of frankness, that he was seeing into you, past what you were saying with your words and into what you meant in your heart; whereas Cynthia’s lingering eye contact suggested something sexual and gave the words she was saying the quality of innuendo. Disconcerting, being hit on by Arthur’s mother.
Doc, after opening the fridge and walking away, said, “Help yourself to whatever you find that’s edible.” Not much was, as the fridge wasn’t on. It was being used as a pantry. Room-temperature cans of root beer, a net bag of clementines, rolls of toilet paper. The freezer—also warm—stocked batteries of all shapes and sizes.
“Doc worked it out,” Cynthia explained, “that it was cheaper to just let Con Ed go and live on portable power.”
“You know how much those cocksuckers wanted from us? How much was it, Cyn?”
“I don’t remember. Three thousand?”
“At least! Can you imagine?”
“A month?”
“A month? No, that was over how many years? Lost count.”
“You haven’t paid your Con Ed bill for years?”
“Years.”
“And they didn’t cut you off?”
“Eventually they did. Which is the situation we find ourselves in at present.”
“Off the grid.”
As we continued on our tour, I noted just how much of their lives ran on batteries: TVs, fans, radios, clocks, lights—heavy-duty flashlights fitted with shades. The hot plate and the makeshift hot-water heater, which Doc showed me with great pride, ran on butane. Once we got out of the chill of the open-air living room, my senses thawed. It smelled like dirty socks in here and something I couldn’t identify until I saw one: cat. Cynthia claimed there were six, though I saw only one during our time here. She picked it up on our way down to the basement, an explosion of gray fur. “And this is my pussy-pussy!” She brought it to her breast and buried her face in it. The cat i
ndulged this sleepily, limbs drooping down as though it were a stole.
We descended a narrow wooden staircase and found ourselves in an open concrete space that felt like a parking lot. “This is what we refer to as the Permission Room. Down here you have permission to do anything you want.”
“It was Artie’s idea.”
“What do you want to do?”
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out a solid mass of things, all hugging the wall—broken furniture, tangled clothing, musical instruments, boxes collapsing under their own weight. An accretion of years of neglect.
“You can scream to your heart’s content,” Cynthia said and let out a piercing shriek. The cat who had been in her arms bolted. “Nobody can hear.”
“Or,” Doc said, and lit a flat ceramic pipe that he’d been holding in his hand. We all waited as he held his inhale, eyes squinched, holding our own breath until finally he exhaled a cloud of pot smoke. He held out the pipe. Suriyaarachchi shook his head, but Dave took it with a shrug before having a hit.
Though the suggestion was that this place was for sex and drugs, the Permission Room gave me the serious creeps. There was something of the serial killer’s lair about it, and I was relieved to be escorted back upstairs.
When we finally got around to explaining who we were and what we wanted from them, Cynthia said, “That’s great, look at that. Artie’s got people who want to do a movie of him.”
Doc said hoarsely, “As long as it’s making him happy.”
“That’s the important thing, it’s true,” she said. “Doing what makes you happy. How is Artie? Is he happy?”
I said, “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Oh, Doc, how long’s it been?”
“What is it now, thirteen years?”
“At least.”
After we had done a full circuit of the house, we stood outside the open garage door’s threshold on the sidewalk. It was cold, and I wondered how these two survived the winter on battery power, one of their four living room walls essentially flung open to the wind and rain. Neither wore outerwear. Cynthia was in sandals, Doc in socks. Neither did they seem fazed by the wind that had me digging my hands in my coat pockets. Doc was pointing to the windows on the second floor. Suriyaarachchi and Dave looked up, making visors of their hands. “It was nice having the whole place to ourselves, but the taxes? Forget it! With Con Ed, the worst thing they’ll do is leave you in the dark. The tax man will put you in jail. This guy’s done wonders up there, all glass and bare hardwood. Brand-new computers, top of the line. Nice guy. I check in on him most days, we chat. One of the new breed. Been here several years now, but still I don’t think he’s figured out what to make of me.”
The Morels Page 20