After Doc and Cynthia had gone to bed, we spent some time with Arthur’s old things. He knelt on the floor, sorting through a large cardboard box, arm in up to his elbow. “Something must have spilled on these,” he said, pulling out a stack of old photos. “They’re stuck together.” He gingerly peeled the top one off and set it on the ground in front of him. He did this with the next one, and the next, as though he were dealing out a game of solitaire. “It’s hard to know where to begin. They make this place sound like some kinky commune paradise out of a John Irving novel. But it wasn’t, certainly not for me, and I wish I could somehow dispel that myth. Okay, now here’s one.” He held it out to me. It was a photograph of a young Cynthia passed out in a chair, the whites of her eyes showing, skirt hiked up to her lap to expose a thatch of pubic hair. It was forensic, the image of a cadaver. “My mother, ladies and gentlemen. Or here.” He handed me a blurry snapshot of a younger Doc holding a boy of about seven. Doc is laughing; the boy is wailing. “There was a thug that lived with us who for some reason disliked me tremendously. He would mete out all sorts of unkindnesses. He would claim the others in the house were jealous of my talent or would whisper in the ear of someone he was talking to and stare at me while he did it. He would tell me of something wonderful I just had to see; excited, I peered into the corner to discover a rat, disemboweled in the teeth of a trap, its body still moving. I suppose he wasn’t that different than a mean older brother. But one who had just returned from Vietnam, a little unstable, whose parents were never around to keep him in check. My father, if you want to call him that, tried to get me to laugh off his pranks, thought they would toughen me up. Here, I believe—you can just make it out in the background, that footlocker? I have just emerged from it after nine hours locked inside.”
“This guy stuffed you inside?”
“Oh, no. He told me something about the cops being after me and that I should hide. And then he clicked the padlock on the lid and walked away.”
“And your mother?”
“I believe she’d been trying to get in his pants at the time. Her words. And the threat of cops was not far-fetched. There was some tension there.” He handed over a series of lurid close-ups of busted lips and ugly inflamed bruises. “A raid like that. The bellowing, my mother screaming, the sounds of splintering furniture, shattering glass. Truly frightening. There’d be outraged talk afterward about police brutality, and someone would take pictures—evidence—and threaten to sue, but it would quickly peter out.”
“What were they after?”
“The cops? Who knows. Money? Some other thing? I tried to shut it out. Here.” A photograph of a mutt. “That was Handsome. I loved Handsome. One day he trotted out through the front gate into the street and was hit by a car.”
“You were there?”
“I held his limp body in my arms. And this was Candy.” Another photo, a cat. “I was less partial to her than I was to the dog, but not so much that I’d have wished on Candy the horror that befell her: found in the back of a closet on the second floor, dead of starvation. Her and her litter of nine newborn kittens. But hold on, you say. How could this happen in a house overrun with people? Wouldn’t somebody have heard the cries? Heard the scratching at the door? Smelled the accumulation of urine and feces—or at the very least the ten rotting corpses? These are good questions, ones you ought to keep in mind as you consider the paradise those two describe.”
As he sat there picking through his things, silhouetted against the lamplight that pooled around the strewn contents of several boxes, the image of the teenage Arthur reemerged before me—the gangly kid, unwieldy with his limbs, Adam’s apple bobbling as he searched for a word or phrase. Lost, tormented, in his own home. He went on to describe other everyday horrors at the carriage house, the homeless junkies wandering in off the street, the state of perpetual, almost violent neglect—the kitchen counters crawling with mold and maggots, the bathrooms in a continual state of overflow, swarming with blowflies, the stench of rot and raw sewage in every corner of the house, inescapable—aware of it but unable to control it. The stark difference between his life and the lives of others became especially clear once he began his Saturday visits to the conservatory.
“It was a home without walls,” he said. “There was little separation, little privacy. At that age when I began to develop a sense of modesty—seven or eight—I did what I could. I put up a curtain, changed my clothes when I was sure I was alone. I don’t think my mother knew what to make of me. She thought of this bacchanalia of hers as a gift. She wanted to treat me to a childhood of limitless pleasures, but the more I saw of it, the less I liked. The only pleasures I truly enjoyed were those that I had to earn. This is what my own experience taught me. The fruits of a piece well learned, the pleasure in the muscles of each finger, the piece itself and its ability to bring about the stern approval of a jury committee. Even the pleasures of an unrequited crush were sweet. The borders made it pleasurable, what I couldn’t have, so that pining in a sense was an earned pleasure. I wanted to remain a virgin, to remain virginal, and earn the fruition of that pleasure. But how could I, in that place? With those hairy bodies everywhere, the stink of sex in the air along with the rot. For all their talk of pleasure, those people engaged in theirs with the enthusiasm of a nap. The moaning sounded like snoring to me; it was perfunctory, robbed by its daily indulgence of any appeal. The infantile revelry that my mother and my namesake engaged in, this was cheap and ugly, even at the age of twelve I could see it. I wanted out. To purge myself of it.”
He picked up a score from a stack on the floor, a bright yellow Schirmer edition, dog-eared, its cover torn along the spine. Penciled fingerings and one-word invectives, likely scrawled in haste by his teacher: Lightly! Fingerboard! Throat! A foldout sheet of linen paper taped to the last page on which was typed:
CADENZA
Accept all offerings of food [24 hours prior];
Refrain from defecation [24 hours prior];
Ingest one dose laxative [39 minutes prior];
Remove pants and squat;
Think impurest thought imaginable;
Empty bowels completely.
“Lest you think it was merely an improvisatory whim up there on that stage. As you can see, it took planning. I practiced for days, so that I could better know my digestive tract and how those laxatives worked. You see? On that stage, it wasn’t anger. I wasn’t trying to get anybody in trouble. It was transformation I was after. Le Pur. Blood washing blood. And you know what? It worked. Less than a week later, I found myself living with Benji, in a normal, quasi-suburban house, enrolled in a normal, quasi-suburban school, pining after normal quasi-suburban girls. Alchemy, I tell you! Those Greeks were really onto something.”
“But when I hear purge,” I said, “I think vomit. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just stick your finger down your throat? Wouldn’t vomiting have been more like what you were after?” God help me, I was beginning to think like Arthur!
“Absolutely,” he said. “And yet as much as I would have liked to rid myself completely of that place, I wasn’t so naïve to think that I might purge it as though it were a poison. I knew it was already in me, partially digested, a piece of bad meat lodged in a fold of my intestine. And my only chance would be in showing it the other door, hoping that whatever I had absorbed already wasn’t fatal.”
I spent much of the night tossing and turning, thinking about that casually tossed-off litany of terrors Arthur had endured here and his unique—and uniquely disturbing—trapdoor exit from the place, yearning for what must have been to him a holy grail—a normal life with a wife and child. But by the time he found it, he was just too irrevocably broken to hold on to it.
Despite our talk about the possibility of Arthur not returning after the arraignment, we all assumed that he would not be remanded without bail. Benji suggested to the judge, quite reasonably, that as a respected educator at one of the city’s top schools and born-and-bred New Yorker with parents wh
o owned property in Manhattan, Arthur posed no flight risk. He had every intention of sticking around for the trial; there was no reason to burden taxpayers with his room and board. The ADA presenting the case, Joanna Brady, was as tall as Arthur, with sharp features and eyes whose natural wideness left her looking perpetually surprised. She conceded Arthur’s status as a New Yorker but none of these other things. He had been fired from his position at the university, was estranged from his parents, estranged from his wife and son. He had threatened his in-laws and broken an order of protection. There was no telling what the man was capable of. We had been prepared for a high bail. Doc and Cynthia had calculated using the carriage house as collateral. But the figure uttered by the judge dwarfed this offering, an absurd sum that meant to keep Arthur behind bars for the duration of the trial.
We also assumed that after obtaining a press pass at the Mayor’s Office we would be able to join the section set aside in the courtroom for those with such passes and be allowed to film the trial. Our worst-case scenario had only one official “pool” camera, and we would have to get permission afterward to use the footage. Trials were being videotaped in every courtroom in the country and aired around the clock on cable; it was the age of Court TV. But it was also the age of O.J. Simpson, and in the aftermath of that case judges were becoming shy of cameras, afraid of having to play ringleader in a high-profile circus. And if Benji’s source was to be believed, perhaps the judge was feeling pressure to keep proceedings as low-key as possible. We considered sneaking in a hidden camera, but Benji assured us that we could be in a lot of trouble if the footage was ever made public. So, no cameras.
The last footage we have of Arthur—ever, as it turned out—shows him dressing for court in the bathroom at the carriage house: shaving, washing his face, combing his hair, tying his tie. But it’s clear from the nervousness that leaves several nicks he has to stem with tiny bits of toilet paper, that has his fingers trembling as he struggles with the silk loops around his neck, that there is more to this than appearing clean-cut before a judge. He is dressing for Penelope and Will.
We have a shot of the three Morels as they exit, a kind of reversal of the exterior from a few nights before. We are inside, looking out. We don’t have the whole archway in the frame—the lens doesn’t go wide enough to capture it all—but along the bottom of the frame we have the rugs, a milk crate, the corner of a chair. The Morels are centered, exposed correctly, their backs to the camera, facing the street. Outside is bleached white, a bright glare made brighter by the snow. And as they walk out, the effect is one of disappearing into a brilliant field of white.
At the arraignment, Arthur stood with Benji while the charges were read. They seemed to go on forever. Arthur and Benji said in unison, “Not guilty.” Arthur kept turning back to scan the room, but Penelope and Will were not here. With the exception of his petition for discovery, all other requests that Benji had filed were denied. The judge was a jowly codger who didn’t seem to have full physical control of his head. It would jerk back and forth, side to side, and he would move his body around in an effort to catch up with it. He lectured from his high perch in a nasal sneer.
His lecture that day went, “The case before us has high potential for antics, to become a grad seminar in ethics and the elusive and ultimately unknowable line between truth and fiction.
“Bah! This court will not tolerate irrelevance. The truth is plain, earthbound, knowable. The line is clear. This accused is either innocent of the charges or he is guilty of them. We are talking about a man’s freedom and professional reputation. We are talking about the violation of a young boy’s innocence. The stakes are high, too high for such antics. So to minimize the chance, and out of respect for the stakes involved, this court will proceed carefully but expeditiously. It is Monday, December thirteenth. I will hear opening arguments the twenty-seventh, two weeks from today. Two weeks for voir dire and discovery and all matters of preparation. Happy holidays indeed.”
Benji protested, said that more time was needed.
The judge said, “What’s the problem? This week you line up your ducks, next week you pick a jury, and then we begin. As far as I understand it, there will be no forensic rigmarole and the prosecution will supply you whatever you require toot sweet, yes? We can continue this discussion in chambers, but you’ll see I’m quite stubborn in these matters.”
Arthur was remanded until he could post bail. The bailiff cuffed his hands in front of him and led him out a side door, Benji following on his heels, talking in his ear until the bailiff warned him off.
Benji came by some hours later filled with theories and rage. “Two weeks? It’s absurd! Judges allow more time to traffic cases. This is a man’s life! I’ll tell you what I think. I think they’re in cahoots, judge and prosecution. Why didn’t she object? Because she doesn’t want more time. She’s ready to roll. She tries several of these kinds of cases a week. She’s a specialist. The judge knows I’m not a trial lawyer, knows I’m out of my depth. He’s trying to force my hand, get us to plead. Make this thing go quickly into that good night, it’s exactly like Tomlinson said. Two weeks! But Arthur doesn’t want to plead—what am I supposed to do? Fucking Giuliani. You know that prick used to be the New York DA, right? He was notorious for all sorts of underhanded shit. During those junk-bond cases back in the eighties, he didn’t have enough to prosecute these guys, but he would have the police come down to where they worked and drag them out in handcuffs, out through the front door, and put them in a squad car. Just for the show of it, just to humiliate them. That’s who we’re dealing with here. And it’s not only about the time; it’s about the timing, too. Trying to squeeze us in before the end of the year. What’s coming? The millennium. Oooh! This thing is generating so much noise now, with all the stockpiling and the Walmart rednecks crapping their pants over it, that’s all you’re going to be hearing about for the next month. By then, this case will be over and done with. But what would happen if he set the trial after the New Year? Millennium bullshit blows over, now the media’s looking for something to fill the vacuum, and there it is, ‘Art on Trial,’ front-page news. That’s why he set the bail so high. Keep Arthur away from the press, away from book signings. High potential for antics. Or maybe this old fucker is actually scared about the coming millennium. Maybe he wants to put away one more pervert before the lights go out. All I know for sure is timingwise, this thing stinks. How am I supposed to prepare for this? Christmas is coming, my wife’s on me about gifts and cocktail parties, my son wants me to take him to Santa this weekend. I’m a legal counsel for a software company, for Christ’s sake! I need more time!”
We returned to Dave’s. The editing suite looked like a crime scene, the command center dismantled, rack of blinking equipment an empty shell, leather sofa gone, brushed-steel coffee table and matching coasters gone, cockpit chair gone. All that remained was a computer, a monitor, a few stray cables, and neat divots in the carpeting where the rest had been. I was sent down the hall to see if Penelope was in the mood to talk or, at the very least, to not call the police. They wanted an interview. I told them that she wouldn’t be interested, but they kept after me until I relented.
She answered the door as though she had been expecting me and, as it turned out, she had. The prosecutor’s office had instructed her to make available to the defense Arthur’s effects. She let me in.
“I went ahead and packed up his desk drawers. There were also a few shoe boxes on the top shelf of the closet, a plastic bin under the bed.” It was all stacked neatly against the wall by the door.
We both considered the boxes for a moment, then she said, “You’re not here for Arthur’s things.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“Really, don’t.” She opened the front door. “I’m in the middle of—and I have food on the stove.”
“Tell me what I can do to get you to look at me, Penelope. Just look at me.”
She looked at me.
“Okay, now kiss me.�
�� I puckered up. At this, a slight smile. “Just kidding,” I said.
“You weren’t.”
“I wasn’t. It was worth a shot.”
“I’m not mad at you. I know it seems like I am, but I’m just trying to survive this. I figure if I can just get through the next six months with my head down—I’ll look up, and things will be saner. They’d have to be. It can’t get any more insane than it is right now.”
“Where’s Will?”
“With my parents. They’ve taken him to a show. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that Trojan horse you’re holding very nonchalantly at your side. There’s no way you’re coming any farther into my house with that thing.”
I held out the video camera. “I thought you might want to see what’s on it.”
The Morels Page 31
