Unless.
What if Will weren’t lying? What if he believed he was telling the truth? Was it possible that Arthur’s writing was so effective—so authentic, so vivid, so lifelike—it had actually convinced the boy he had lived it? Wasn’t this, after all, the aim of a certain kind of fiction? Realism, the hypnotic spell, the continuous dream. A couple of his colleagues at the college took it for granted that the writer’s work was that of the hypnotist, the spell caster—exhorting their students toward ever-more-vivid words, ever more “authentic” renderings of a place, an object, a person—Geppetto trying to turn a block of wood into a real-live boy. What if Arthur’s spell had worked? His block of sentences had somehow transformed into the memories of a real-live boy?
Or here was a thought: What if what Will said was true? What if it was he, Arthur, who had forgotten? What if this had all happened, but both had repressed the memory because it was too awful? And when Arthur was spinning this fiction out of what he imagined to be thin air, he was merely recalling it? Reading the passage had jogged Will’s memory. And now, the boy’s claim to its veracity was doing the same for Arthur; in a sense, they were reminding each other about something they’d both tried to forget.
But how was Arthur to know? The scene in the bathtub now existed in his mind vividly, for he had dreamed it up. How was he to distinguish this from factual pieces of the past? What were “real” memories but fragments of remembered sense impressions glued together with, made coherent by, imaginative invention. And what was fiction but the inverse of this? Imaginative invention was made plausible by fragments of remembered sense impressions. On one extreme there was fiction, and on the other a memory. And in the middle? For this reason, perhaps, memory was so unreliable. It was suggestible, colored by emotion, infinitely mutable.
One of Arthur’s most vivid childhood recollections was of a summer afternoon in a playground in the city—he first figured the event to be memorable because of its rarity. His parents seldom took him places as a child. For some reason, he placed the playground in Washington Square Park, though it could have been anywhere. He was holding an ice-cream cone his mother had just purchased for him from a truck nearby. It was a hot day, and the ice cream, soft to begin with, had immediately begun to melt. He was perhaps four or five at the time, and in a rage he cried out to his mother, full of blame, Make it stop! The sun is melting my ice cream! His mother laughed and handed him some napkins as it continued to melt down around his hand, and Arthur cried and cried, bitterly, blaming his mother for this misfortune. It was a favorite story of his mother’s. As he got older, whenever he complained about something beyond his or his mother’s control, she would cry out, Oh! The sun is melting my ice cream! Arthur learned much later from Doc that this event had not happened, or at least had not happened to him. This was an anecdote about Doc’s son Benji, years before Arthur was born, in New Jersey. Cynthia had so liked the story, with its neat lesson about surrendering to things beyond one’s control, that she co-opted it. It wasn’t even clear that she had done this on purpose. It could have been that, in the jumble of stories she would tell about herself and those she told about other people, she had simply gotten mixed up about this one. And yet the memory remained—the hot sun, the vanilla ice cream dripping across his dirt-caked little knuckles, the hot honeysuckle air of the playground trees, the despair, the rage and blame—this memory was undiminished by the discovery that it was a fake.
But what were these sense impressions? Were they bits of other childhood occasions brought together by the suggestion of this anecdote? Perhaps. So it would follow that, if Arthur had made up the scene in the bathtub with Will, Will’s “memory” would have to have some basis of truth, wouldn’t it? If Arthur had never in his life visited a playground or eaten an ice-cream cone, would he have been as susceptible to his mother’s suggestion? Which left him with a troubling thought: Where in Will’s young life had he seen what Arthur had described in his book in such vivid detail?
Was it possible that Will had been abused, just not by Arthur? But surely this wouldn’t exist as a detached fragment in Will’s mind. It would be an indivisible part of that singular event. Well, Arthur certainly hadn’t exposed Will to those things he claimed to have seen, on purpose at least, but what if it was something Will had glimpsed on his own, blocked out because it was too disturbing, and then somehow unconsciously paired the image with the one Arthur suggested in his book?
But of course all this speculation about memory is founded on nothing but notions picked up from Hollywood thrillers and television soap operas. And in any case is irrelevant. Arthur can learn nothing without talking to Will, and it seems Penelope is determined not to let that happen.
He can’t blame her, really. What choice has he given her?
He clicks open the pen and writes:
Once upon a time there was a man who sought peace and happiness.
He sat under a banyan tree because this was where wise men told him that they had come to attain the lasting peace and happiness they themselves enjoyed—where, in fact, the original Enlightened One had come many generations ago. So the man sat up against the tree’s base and crossed his legs and placed his hands upon his knees. He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind of all thought. These were the instructions of the wise men, who had received their wisdom from other, wiser men who had received their wisdom from the original Wise One many generations ago.
Once the man’s mind was empty of all thought, he was free to feel the warm afternoon breeze with its scent of earth and lilac bloom; he was free to feel the rough bark of the tree through his robes, the tickle of branches on his arm, the leaves whispering at his ear; he was free to see the dance of shadows that the sunlight made as it shone through the trees, the shapes that played across his eyelids so like a living thing.
The shadows were so like a living thing that the man was tempted to open his eyes, if just to convince himself that it was indeed only the play of sunlight on the leaves.
But he was just being foolish, he thought—for what else could it be? What living thing could cast such a shadow? Such a large shadow, too. He had traversed these woods by foot—the tree stood alone in a wide clearing and, as of moments ago, there wasn’t a soul around.
He tried to clear his mind once more, to feel the warm afternoon breeze with its scent of earth and lilac bloom, the rough bark of the tree at his back, the tickle of branches on his arm, the whisper of leaves at his ear.
What could it be, he wondered.
What could appear out of the sky from nowhere and cast such a large shadow as was playing on his eyelids?
A dragon?
He laughed off the notion—tried to, at least—as childish, as pure fantasy, and returned to the breeze, the bark, the branches, the leaves. But once conjured, the image of the dragon was difficult to dismiss. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more the breeze felt on his face like the creature’s hot breath, the bark like its scales, the branches claws, the leaves its terrible voice whispering its beastly, ancient language in his ear. The man was gripped with fear. He opened his eyes.
And was promptly devoured.
Arthur puts down the pen. Soon after, Ramirez returns, this time without the other detective. How did it go? He asks, picking up the pad. He reads it, then tosses it back on the table, looking disappointed. You’re not doing yourself any favors, he says.
So am I done here?
What you are, Ramirez says, is under arrest.
14
REUNION
ARTHUR IS LED OUT OF the room and down a hall, then handed off to a uniformed officer who cites the Miranda warning to him.
I already signed a waiver when I came in, Arthur says.
Better safe than sorry.
At a bench, Arthur works on catching his breath. Next to him is a handcuffed man with his eyes closed, fingers laced on his lap. This is a main thoroughfare. Uniformed officers escorting handcuffed men and women in suits speaking in a code of cop ja
rgon. Someone in an orange jumpsuit swabbing down the floor with a mop at the far end of a hall. This, he learns later, is what the police call processing. He is being processed. It’s a peculiar combination of terror and boredom. The dangerous beyond that waits for him makes it hard to walk, hard to understand the most basic phrases people say to him.
Your name.
My name, Arthur repeats dumbly.
State your name!
Yet the bureaucratic formality through which he is guided has all the familiarity of a trip to the DMV and makes him, instinctively, impatient. Impatient for what? To sit in a jail cell for the next forty-eight hours?
After fingerprinting, he is invited to clean his hands with a hand-pump sanitizer that smells like Will’s favorite orange soda. He is handed a white board with his name and some numbers on it and made to stand against a wall. A woman snaps a picture, asks him to turn, snaps another.
An officer hustles Arthur down a flight of steps to another room to wait at the end of a short line. Before long, he is in front of a booth where he is made to hand over his briefcase and empty the contents of his pockets, to take off his watch and his wedding ring. He is given, of all things, a receipt, presumably for all that he has surrendered, though the handwriting on it is illegible. When he is given an opportunity to use the pay phone, he dials Penelope’s cell. To his surprise, she answers.
I’m in jail, he says.
I know, she says. I’ve spoken with the woman who is going to prosecute you.
Arthur’s face grows suddenly hot, his throat closes, and he cannot speak.
Penelope says, When they release you, if they release you—the prosecutor said that depending on who the judge turns out to be they might or might not—you can’t see me. Or Will. We’re moving back into the apartment. You’ll need to find another place to stay. They’re going to petition for an order of protection.
Arthur says, I don’t know what to do. I need help. I don’t know what’s happening, how to fix it.
You do need help, Penelope says evenly but not meanly, only I’m not the one to help you. Good-bye, Arthur. We won’t be—and here her voice broke—we won’t be speaking again. Oh God, Arthur! Okay? We can’t speak anymore.
No, Arthur weeps. It’s not okay. Please! But she has already hung up.
His jail cell, when he is finally escorted to it, is already occupied by two other men, both Hispanic. They do not speak to him, nor to each other, which comes as a small relief to Arthur. They seem as ashamed to be here as he is.
The cell is quite large and flooded with even fluorescent light. Two long white plastic benches attached to opposite walls serve for seating and sleeping. There is a stainless-steel contraption in the corner that appears to be one part water fountain, one part toilet. The men each have a bench.
Arthur sits on the floor.
There are no clocks. Terror and boredom. He waits for something to happen, anything to happen. He grows attuned to the noises. People in other cells, one man in particular, talking, it seems, to himself, a monologue of menace and threats. Drainpipes whoosh overhead, and every few minutes far in the distance the solid clink-clunk of a heavy door opening and closing. Time grows wildly out of control—hours and minutes exchange places. A moment is an eternity—and then the lights dim. Night, apparently.
But he does not sleep. There is shouting nearby—a scuffle, the nauseating wet slap of a body hitting concrete. Arthur’s heartbeat goes wild. One of his cell mates gets up to use the toilet, and the space fills with an eggy garlic stink. He drifts, dreams that the lights have come back on and an officer has come to release him.
Then he wakes—the lights have come back on, and an officer has come to their cell, but instead of releasing him, he hands them sandwiches through a slot in the bars with a latex-gloved hand. Arthur finds he is starving and devours his in a few bites. Tuna or perhaps chicken salad. It doesn’t matter, nor does it do much for his hunger. He looks on gloomily while his two cell mates savor each bite.
He goes to the fountain toilet for a drink, but pressing the button merely brings about a weak drool from the spigot.
Returning to his spot on the floor—both his cell mates are up and about, pacing the perimeter, but it’s understood that the bench beds still belong to them—he draws his knees up and rests his head on the shelf they form and in this position drifts off into a deep sleep.
When he opens his eyes, an officer is nudging him awake with his boot.
There is a kind of exit interview. It is here that he learns what charges he is being held on: sexual abuse in the first, second, and third degrees, as well as course of sexual conduct against a child in the first and second degrees. The man is from the Criminal Justice Agency. He says he is here to help the judge decide whether to set bail, to release him on his own recognizance, or to remand him. He asks Arthur how he intends to plead to these charges and Arthur says, Not guilty, although it felt, just hearing the charges read to him here, as though a sentence has already been declared. He encourages Arthur to obtain a lawyer as soon as possible. He asks questions about his employment, about his living situation. The man is in a hurry. Though, like all those Arthur has so far encountered in this long nightmare, polite, professionally poised. The questions seem designed to get at whether he is going to—if released on bail—kill his wife, his kid, himself, or flee the country.
Afterward, he is escorted back to his cell. One of the Hispanic men is gone. He nods at the remaining man, but the man does not nod back. More waiting. New people arrive over the course of hours, half a dozen. Arthur finds himself longing for the good old days, when it was just the two silent Hispanics. One of the new arrivals, a bald kid with an angry clotted cut across the bridge of his nose and many earrings up the spine of his left ear, stares nonstop at Arthur, and whenever Arthur looks back, the kid asks Arthur what the fuck he’s looking at.
Some hours later, he is released. No explanation, at least not to him. The uniformed officers say to one another in his presence something that sounds like Aro ard. He learns later this is an acronym. He has been ROR’d: released on his own recognizance.
He is given papers to sign and keep track of, information about his arraignment. He learns later that a technical hitch is preventing the prosecution from moving forward with the case until late the following week and habeas corpus grants him the courtesy of his freedom in the meantime. He is given back his clothes, his backpack, the contents of his pockets, his watch, and his wedding ring in a ziplock bag. He receives these items like the artifacts of a former life—curious, once filled with meaning, now obsolete. His clothes feel heavy on him now, ill fitting.
He walks out into the afternoon half expecting to see Penelope and Will, despite everything, and finds himself devastated that nobody’s there to meet him. He puts the ziplock along with the paperwork he’s accumulated into his briefcase, in with the class handouts and marked-up drafts of student work.
His classes!
What day is it? He hurries against the anonymous Midtown crush until he finds a newspaper stand. Thursday. It’s two in the afternoon, already a half hour into his three-hour workshop!
He fumbles for his cell phone, but the battery is dead. He hails a cab, a mistake on two fronts: with the traffic, it takes nearly an hour to get uptown—and, two, he has no cash. The driver stops in front of a deli on 114th street with a neon-red ATM sign in the window. By the time Arthur walks through the doors of the Writing Division, out of breath, it is nearly three thirty.
Here, too, he is expecting to be met—by students, colleagues—with some sort of fanfare. After all, it isn’t every day a professor gets arrested! But there is no one here to greet him. The work-study receptionist today is a young man he has never seen before, and from the blank look on his face, it seems he doesn’t know Arthur either.
I didn’t bother checking in on my class, Arthur says. I’m an hour and half late and assume it has been dismissed.
You’re a teacher? I’m sorry—I’m usually at
the undergrad office.
I’m Arthur Morel.
The young man’s face registers this. Oh, yes. I mean, they’re expecting you. Let me—here he picks up the phone and unsticks several pink sticky notes on the desk to examine them. Here it is—just a minute.
Arthur doesn’t bother waiting.
He walks into the chairman’s office. He is with a student. They both look terrified to see Arthur, on their faces the same confused sick look the young man gave him when he announced himself. The chairman, Richard is his name, dismisses the student, who seems grateful to be released.
Arthur sits in the vacated seat.
What are you doing? Richard says. Don’t sit down. You can’t sit down. Didn’t you get the messages? I left three messages. I’m sorry, it’s been a rough morning—but who am I to talk about rough, huh? Oh, boy. I’m sorry. But it’s been handed down from on high. It kills me, really. I do everything I can for my fellow instructors. I do. This is a rotating chair, and you never know who will be in it next, so. But even before this latest, there’d been rumblings, up there—I’ve done a lot of wrangling behind the scenes for you already—which you would know if you ever came to visit! Impolitic, Arthur. But that’s over with, done. It doesn’t matter. We’re beyond that now.
He stands, and so Arthur stands as well. Richard holds out his hand, and Arthur has little choice but to shake it. Richard seems greatly relieved to be walking Arthur to the door. He pats Arthur on the back. He shakes Arthur’s hand several more times, using both hands to do it.
The Morels Page 28
