The Morels

by Christopher Hacker

  Whatever it was, and whatever the reason Arthur wrote it, it was something in their lives that they couldn’t resolve, that couldn’t be settled, as most unsettling things in their world were settled, with one of Frank’s conversational one-liners. Global Warming: Buy property in Siberia—it’ll be worth a fortune! The Massacre in Texas: Is it Waco or Wacko? Somehow, at the end of the day, having done their moral obligation of watching the news open eyed to its daily dose of horror, mulling over the tragedies of the day, to have Frank pronounce his one-liner was a real comfort. It was a way of closing the door on the world’s sadness, for the time being. It meant that they were no fools; they knew how cruel and hopeless humanity could be, and by addressing each sadness they were paying tribute to it. Joking about it was a way of distinguishing their own lives from the lives of others. She would groan at Frank’s bad joke, tell him to knock it off, these weren’t issues to joke about, but this just part of the ritual, a way to have Frank say that if you couldn’t joke about something serious, then you were really in trouble—if you couldn’t laugh at the world, then you might as well put a bullet in your head. She didn’t know what this meant, but Frank said it in a way that seemed powerful and true.

  There was, however, no one-liner for what Arthur had done. The matter remained in the air, unsettled, floating between every pause in conversation.

  Her friends grew conspicuously quiet on the subject of the book. But Frank’s “buddies,” the men at the veterans’ lodge, were a different matter. She didn’t know why he insisted on going to that hole-in-the-wall twice a week—three times a week, now that he was retired. It was the stomping grounds of the local bigmouths. She refused to learn any of their names—they were not friends of the family; they were men Frank drank with, nothing more. And unlike the people she counted as her friends, these men were not quiet on the subject of Arthur or his book.

  For a while, Frank cast himself as Arthur’s staunchest defender. You should hear what they’re saying, he said. Bunch of ignoramuses. Ignorami? You’d think the kid was another Hitler. I said, Ever heard of Oedipus? If these guys had their way, the only books in the library would be car-repair manuals. I mean, thank God for Arthur, am I right?

  But then Frank stopped relating these arguments to her; even though she was fairly certain the talk about Arthur at the lodge hadn’t stopped. Three times a week now, Frank came home in a dark mood and fell asleep in front of the television. He avoided talking to Arthur on the phone. He would call Penelope’s cell to speak with her and had her put his grandson on. If Mrs. Wright was talking with Arthur, Frank would wave the phone away when she tried handing it to him.

  “You should talk to him, I tell him. What is he supposed to say, he wants to know. Say you’re angry. You’re confused. But Frank’s not the type.”

  As we sat around the table with our empty plates waiting for Penelope, Will rallied us into a game. “We played it on our first day at school,” he said. “You don’t need a board or to learn any complicated rules. It’s simple. We go around the room and tell three facts about ourselves. Two of the facts are facts, and one of the facts is a lie. Then everybody has to guess which one is the lie. It’s fun, you’ll see.”

  Upon hearing this, Penelope—who had just come out of the kitchen with the turkey—looked on the verge of dropping the platter. From the flurry of wordless looks—for reasons that will in a moment become clear—you would have thought we were all in a Bergman film. Had Will read the book, in spite of his claim to the contrary? Or was this just evidence of the emotional telepathy in children that allows them to ferret out the supposedly hidden affairs of grown-ups? Will said, “What’s the matter?”

  Arthur said, “We know too much about one another for it to work. That game’s best played with strangers.”

  Frank said, “I’m going to say no—for the same reason I say no to poker. Can’t bluff to save my life.”

  “And I’m no liar,” Mrs. Wright said, “so I’m afraid I will have to sit this one out as well.”

  Despite these protests, and despite Penelope’s attempt at diverting us with the front-page controversies of the day—developments in the Lewinsky scandal and a recent push by our mayor to cut funding for the arts—ten minutes later Will had us bluffing our way around the table.

  I went first. I told them I had never learned to ride a bicycle, which was the truth. I told them I had once found Robert De Niro’s wallet at Katz’s Delicatessen—also true—and that I had been arrested twice: the lie. There was unanimous consent that nobody didn’t know how to ride a bicycle—and so I managed to fool them. Will reminded us, looking sternly at me, that the game depended on everybody being honest about their lies. I assured him that my lie was the truth, and so we continued.

  Will went next. He told us that his math teacher had once been a famous R & B singer, that he had lied about doing his homework yesterday, and that he had just last week seen the ghost of the dead boy who haunted the school’s stairwells.

  Frank said, “Only two of those facts are verifiable.”

  Mrs. Wright said, “Obviously it’s the third one. There are no such things as ghosts.”

  Will protested vehemently at this and described the sighting in great detail. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  “God forbid!” Mrs. Wright clutched her heart.

  Penelope said, “You lied about doing your homework?”

  Will hopped off his chair excitedly, padded off to his room, and a few moments later returned with a xeroxed flyer of a black man with a large afro crooning into a microphone, and a loose-leaf sheet—the homework in question.

  Arthur said, “You lied about lying about doing your homework. So the lie’s the lie. Very clever!” He smiled approvingly at his son. “Okay, who’s next?”

  Mrs. Wright went next, despite her earlier protests. A momentum had developed. She told everyone that she had never been to Europe, that a close childhood friend of hers had only recently learned she was adopted, and that her favorite color was blue.

  After we had exhausted our guesses, Mrs. Wright revealed that all three of these things were in fact true.

  “That’s not the game!” Will protested.

  “I told you,” Mrs. Wright said, “I’m no liar.”

  Penelope, during her turn, lied about a latent allergy to eggplant, and Frank—who seemed to have missed the point of the game—kept trying to fool us with little-known facts about Abraham Lincoln. Then it was Arthur’s turn.

  He sat at the head of the table, a mischievous twist of a smile, in his element. He said, “I have thirty-four teeth. I have a vaccination scar on my left upper arm. I have a bruise on my right shin.”

  Penelope said she knew Arthur’s vaccination scar intimately—it was on his right arm, not his left. Frank said that thirty-four teeth sounded like too many and checked this hunch against his own teeth, which totaled thirty-two. My money was on the bruise. When we were all done guessing, Arthur opened his mouth and confirmed a vowely thirty-two, just as Frank had said.

  “But I know that scar,” Penelope said. Arthur rolled up his right sleeve to confirm that Penelope too was right. “That’s two lies,” she said. “You’re only allowed one.”

  “Three lies, actually,” Arthur said, showing us his hairy, unbruised shins.

  Will said to me, exasperated, “Didn’t I explain the rules clearly enough to these people?”

  Arthur said, “For the sake of symmetry—Constance’s three truths to my three lies.”

  Dessert was served: apple cobbler and Linzer cookies that the Wrights brought with them. “In my luggage,” Mrs. Wright said. “I’m amazed they survived.” Penelope brought out coffee and cut fruit.

  Will took some coffee, refused the fruit. “I think I’m ready for bed,” he announced, and got up.

  “Is it that time already?” Penelope said.

  He hugged his grandparents, patted his mother and father on their heads.

  Once Will had gone into his room and closed the door,
Mrs. Wright said, “Is bedtime really a question, dear?”

  “We’ve been letting him make his own decisions.”

  I took another cookie. The center was pure Smucker’s, so sweet it made my fillings hurt. I ate around the edges and left the middle on my plate—I did this with all three of the cookies I took. Frank watched me do this.

  “What sorts of things are you letting him decide about?”

  “You can’t let him decide everything. He’s a child.”

  “It’s an experiment. We haven’t set limits on what he can and can’t decide. If this is going to be a lesson about the responsibility of free will, what kind of example are we setting by telling him, essentially, there are times when you can’t think for yourself? Times when, arguably, it’s most important to use good judgment.”

  “Penny, darling,” Frank said, “I love you but that’s absurd. If he decides he wants to take up smoking, obviously you’re not going to let him. So what’s the point?”

  “Hold on,” Arthur said, “not so obvious. So what if he wants to try out smoking? Okay, he’s a little young—but all the better, really. His lungs won’t be able to handle it, and he’ll find it repulsive. Lesson learned. Why would I deny him that experience?”

  Something in both the Wrights’ demeanors changed. Mrs. Wright frowned and looked down at her hands. Frank opened his mouth for a moment and then closed it again. Their expressions registered something, a fear confirmed.

  “I wouldn’t hand him one,” Arthur said, “and good luck finding a smoke shop that will sell to someone Will’s age.”

  Penelope gave Arthur a sharp look. “Anyway, it’s illegal. We’re mostly talking about decisions within legal boundaries.”

  “And your book?” Frank said, quietly.

  “This hasn’t changed,” Penelope said. “He’s agreed to wait until he’s older.”

  “He’s agreed,” Mrs. Wright said.

  “Well, we can’t very well stop him, Mother. If he wants to read it, he will find a way to read it. The best we can do is help him see the wisdom in waiting.” This seemed to be a subject they’d talked about at length, judging from Penelope’s exasperated tone.

  “Look,” Frank said, “I don’t want this to become a territory issue. We know our place, and we don’t want to step on your toes here, and Lord knows your mother and I understand better than you would think that raising a child isn’t a black-and-white issue. But the boy is eleven years old.”

  “And.”

  “And he needs—”

  “Discipline?”

  “He needs structure. He needs to not be the one driving the ship. He can’t be his own role model.”

  “I refuse to brainwash my son,” Arthur said. “I want him to have the courage to make hard choices, to think for himself.”

  “He needs limits, boundaries. You can’t just do and say whatever you want!”

  “Everybody has to learn to be part of society,” Mrs. Wright said, “or they end up in the nuthouse or in jail.”

  “Or an artist,” Arthur said. “Picasso spent his whole life trying to recapture the free spirit of his five-year-old self before he’d learned to paint.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! The free spirit is a myth. Even the artist has his place in society.”

  “The artist who works for society isn’t an artist; he’s a propagandist. A real artist is an outsider. If he has any hope of making real art, he needs to remain that way.”

  “You are a father and a husband,” Mrs. Wright said. “Where does that fit into the model of the real artist? And what’s so bad about being useful? The propagandist is a craftsman. He serves a valuable purpose. We need slogan makers as much as we need slogan busters.”

  “There will always be someone to make slogans. Everywhere we turn, we’re being sold something, via slogan. And dissent is only heard when it’s made palatable by actors and rock stars. Real dissent? Real dissent is marginalized.”

  “And what are you protesting exactly? The rights of pedophiles?”

  “Lower your voice, Dad.”

  “I have no message.”

  “Arthur, you don’t have to explain yourself. He doesn’t have to justify what he writes to anybody.”

  “Oh, come off it, Arthur’s employed by the university. Art is a mill, just like any other. You’ve got a market, a demographic. Just because it’s smaller doesn’t mean it’s more legitimate.”

  “For God’s sake, Arthur!” Mrs. Wright said suddenly.

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  “Why did you have to go and—? What kind of smug, self-indulgent—I’m sorry, Penny. I can’t pretend anymore. It’s disgusting, what he wrote. Where is the self-respect? The decency?”

  More silence. My instinct, of course, always to smooth things over. A joke, a non sequitur, anything to lighten the mood, anything to right this train that had suddenly gone off the rails. I could think of nothing.

  Arthur said, “What good are those traits? Will they make me a better writer?”

  “You have disgraced your family. You are aware of that, aren’t you? What you have done is disgraceful. Do you have any idea what Frank has to put up with when he goes to the—”

  “Constance, don’t.”

  “He should know. He should know how it affects us. We live in a small community. You have the luxury of living in an anonymous place. Nobody cares what you do here. But fine—forget about us. What about your wife? What about your son? How could you do this to them? Explain it to me so that I can understand.”

  It’s the last scene in the book.

  Arthur is taking a bath with Will. Will is eight. They sit facing sled fashion in the tub, Arthur in front, Will behind. Will plays with his Hot Wheels, using Arthur’s hairy back as an island. Will asks for the shampoo, with which he sudses Arthur’s back. He whips up some clouds on the bathwater. It’s a recurring setting—bath time in this bathtub—which makes these final pages feel like a culminating moment.

  Will announces that he is done, and they stand and shower off the suds. Shower spray at Arthur’s back, the bathwater drains at their ankles, toy cars floating and sunken underfoot.

  Quite out of the blue, Will reaches for Arthur’s penis. He caresses it. Arthur flinches, but does not pull away.

  It’s soft, Will says.

  Yes, Arthur says.

  Mine is small.

  You’ll grow up and it will be just like mine, Arthur says.

  It looks like a mushroom.

  It does, kind of, doesn’t it?

  Will lets go of Arthur’s penis and touches his own, a newborn gerbil of a thing.

  The prose is vivid here, in stark contrast to the rest of the book. It is the only scene described in this much detail, the only full conversation that takes place between two people. The rest of the book is just thoughts, interiors. It comes on almost like awakening from a dream.

  Is it whack that my penis grows when I touch it? Will asks. Lamar says it’s whack that my penis grows. I told him that it’s perfectly normal. It is perfectly normal, right?

  It’s perfectly normal.

  Everybody’s penis does this. That’s what I said. Even yours, right? That’s right.

  And when you make it grow on purpose it’s called whacking off.

  As Will is talking, he is fingering his own penis and walnut scrotum, and when he takes his hand away, his small hard-on is as stiff as a pencil shaft.

  It feels good when I touch it, Will says.

  Yes, Arthur says.

  The air fills with Will’s boy breaths and Arthur’s own thumping heartbeat. The moment becomes strangely charged. In the way that an enticing smell can make someone aware suddenly that he is ravenous, this moment stirs in Arthur an appetite that has lain dormant until this very moment. Arthur becomes aware that his hand has been mirroring Will’s at his own penis. He looks down at it, the speckled mushroom cap of the head poking through his fist. Arthur lets go and it stands out stiff, quivering. He is aware of himself as a fa
ther, of Will as his son, but they feel like arbitrary designations, suddenly, or as Arthur puts it in the text, he loses the moral relevance of their roles for a moment.

  There is only arousal.

  He feels the bulge of ejaculate, wanting release, and when Will reaches out and touches the underseam of Arthur’s penis, a single soft stroke, it comes—an initial startling shot of sperm that hits Will in the face.

  The rest pulses out into the now-empty tub.

  7

  ENDING

  MY FACE HAD BECOME HOT and my heart hammered in my chest. I felt like I should excuse myself from this moment but feared that, if I did, Mrs. Wright would cast the spotlight of her fury on me, that I’d be called on to defend Arthur, to explain his actions. And at this moment, I couldn’t. Arthur, on the other hand, seemed relatively calm. I was reminded of his easy demeanor at the Concerto Concert, just moments before he pulled down his pants.

  The refrigerator shuddered, cycled off. In the new silence I sensed Will behind the closed door of his room, listening.

  “I was writing out a deep-seated fear I had.” Arthur looked down at his plate. His sleeve was still rolled up, hairy arm bared. “By writing about it, I was hoping to dispel it.”

  Frank said, “You’re afraid that you might molest Will?”