The Morels

by Christopher Hacker

  “Arthur?”

  “Over the past week or so.”

  She sighed and let the door go. The whistling of a teakettle had been sounding, which she now went into the kitchen to deal with. She emerged with a steaming mug, set it down on the kitchen table.

  While I cued the tape for playback, Penelope cracked a window and lit a cigarette. I handed her the camera. She sat down cross-legged on the couch and watched, making a visor of her hands over the small flip-out screen. I plugged in a set of earbuds for her, and she put them on. To give her some privacy I stepped out onto the patio. It was frigid. Their view faced west and allowed an unobstructed patchwork quilt of tar-black and silver-painted rooftops, not high enough to see the Hudson River but high enough to catch a glimpse of just how broad this tiny island was. The days were getting shorter. It was not yet four thirty, and the sun was already setting directly ahead. A little more than a dozen of these and it would be setting in another millennium. Until now, if you wanted to indicate a time far in the future, you placed it here, on this horizon—or just beyond it. I was still too caught up in the sci-fi novelty to think what this new dawn might really look like. And yet here we were, on the threshold, the merger of present and future, fact and fantasy. I looked south toward the carriage house and wondered what Doc and Cynthia were planning for dinner.

  I went back inside. “Poor Arthur,” Penelope said. She had taken the headphones off. “How could it be that for eleven years I never saw it?” She wiped her eyes and nose with a corner of her sleeve. “He really is crazy.”

  “I think the stress has gotten to him,” I said.

  “No, he’s still Art. That’s my Art. I just never put it together. But how could I not have seen? Between his mom and dad he looks like a big, goofy disabled kid.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  “I don’t have a choice but to believe it. My obligation is to Will. If he says this happened, then it happened. To keep second-guessing him like I have been—I can’t second-guess him anymore. I’ll go nuts. And I can’t afford to, as I said. My obligation is to my son.”

  “So you hope he’s convicted?”

  “I’m not like my parents. The things my father says, what he hopes will happen to Art in prison, are just awful. I don’t want these things to happen. And my mother is unforgiving. Art’s dead to her. She says it doesn’t matter whether he’s guilty or innocent. The damage is done.”

  “Could you ever forgive him?”

  “If he’s found guilty?”

  “Either way.”

  “I feel this thing has gotten out of hand. I’m not in control of it, Art’s not in control of it. Neither is Art’s brother or the prosecution. It’s taken on a life of its own. But once it’s over, we’ll be in control again, and once that happens, who knows how I’ll feel, what I’ll do.”

  Our return to the carriage house coincided with a visit from Benji, bursting with good news. We had been granted more time. The first day of trial had been pushed back three weeks, to the middle of January. “We have over a month now, which still isn’t enough time, but it’s more than we had.”

  This wasn’t all. He’d also been contacted by one of Arthur’s former students. A groundswell of support was growing at the university for Arthur’s “plight,” for what some saw as yet another vicious attack in Mayor Giuliani’s war against the arts. There were flyers everywhere around campus, a burgeoning Myspace page with thousands of fans. They wanted to help in any way they could. A legal defense fund was being created, and Benji had at his disposal a small army of smart young volunteers. Were these two bits of news related? Benji had to wonder. Did the judge (and the administration) see the futility in trying to keep a lid on this case and the danger of giving Arthur legitimate grounds for a mistrial or at the very least a guaranteed overturn on appeal? “Or maybe it was a schedule conflict. Who knows, who cares. I’ve got more than a month now and some extra hands. I’m happy.”

  Benji wasn’t the only one. Doc and Cynthia had news as well. They’d been contacted by a few former members of the Carriage House Players. Koko, Winston, and one of the Brooklyn Trio. “They’re coming out of the woodwork now that they know there’s a documentary about this place,” Doc said. “They’re an incorrigible bunch of hams.” How had these people learned we were making a documentary? This was really our first inkling, along with the student who’d contacted Benji out of the blue, that this thing, as Penelope put it, was taking on a life of its own.

  Ticulous was Samuel Weintraub, currently of New Haven, Connecticut. He had heard about Arthur’s arrest and sought out Benji to see how Arthur was holding up. It was interesting that he was not one of the “incorrigible bunch of hams” to call the carriage house. Several of the others, after getting in touch with Doc and Cynthia, contacted us directly to demand a part in our movie. Not Samuel “Ticulous” Weintraub. Samuel was reluctant to speak with us, and only after a hard sell would he agree to an interview. We took Metro North and were met at the station by his gunmetal-gray Camry.

  “You gentlemen may find you’ve wasted your time,” he said while we set our equipment in his trunk. “As I told you on the phone, I have no interest in reminiscing fondly about my youth or trashing those with whom I spent it. The past is the past.” We assured him that we were only interested in hearing him speak about whatever, and whomever, he wanted. If he was willing, we would also be interested in getting his thoughts on Arthur’s current situation.

  Samuel’s bald head was like shiny plastic; he had a bushy gray mustache. Under his down jacket he was wearing a suit and a tie. He was the director of Freshman Composition at the University of New Haven, which he described as a “glorified commuter school.” Area students attended to take degrees in forensic medicine and fire science. His wife was a Yale professor. They lived on a lovely tree-lined street off Whitney Avenue. We set up in the bay-windowed breakfast nook by the foyer, trying not to trip over a friendly gray cat who kept rubbing against our shins. Samuel was concerned about us filming his “good” side. He wanted to see how he looked in the monitor and shifted his seat several times on the padded banquet, trying different positions with his hands on the small antique table before he was satisfied.

  As promised, we refrained from asking questions, which worked out fine because he was a nervous talker, and this situation for some reason made him very nervous. He went on about a great many things having absolutely nothing to do with Arthur or the carriage house. He devoted a lot of time to the topic of national politics—Clinton’s impeachment, the upcoming election. He talked about the departmental politics his wife was forced to endure at the School of Management, as well as the politics of his own department.

  Eventually he did come around to the subject of the old days. “It’s a shame what became of them. What became of us, really. But that’s the problem of art in a country like ours. On the one hand you are stuck in a box. The only way to survive as an artist is to follow the market, no matter whether you’re a television scriptwriter or an MFA grad in plastic arts. And yet, on the other hand, you are free to do what you like. Free to do anything. Anything. And this makes some people crazy, this much freedom. In a sea of freedom, it’s easy to drown. Sometimes, when I was still a practicing artist, I found myself wishing that I was living in an oppressive totalitarian regime. It would be easy to create daring art under those circumstances. I would be a hero for saying anything that strayed from the party line. I could martyr myself. Such opportunities don’t exist in a free society. Here, it’s much more difficult to be a hero. Some think they can do it by becoming the iconoclast, that by declaring themselves an iconoclast, they are taking a stand, but here’s the irony. Isn’t it the single most quintessentially American gesture, this declaration of independence? To say you are different from other Americans is to say what every other American says about himself. Snowflakes. All unique, all identical. The American who declares himself an iconoclast ends up anything but—he’s a stereotype and, therefore, an oxymoron.


  “But who am I kidding? If I had been making art in an oppressive totalitarian country, I wouldn’t be the dissident. I don’t have the energy, the staying power. No, I would be one of those state-endorsed propagandists, extolling the patriotic virtues of the regime.”

  “You use the word hero. Do you think Arthur is a hero for writing that book?”

  “It was inevitable that he would write that book. His poor wife and son. They never had a chance. When I was in school, I was always skeptical of literary time—the way in those nineteenth-century British novels a character could be so single-minded, pining after some woman for an entire lifetime, or a single childhood experience determining the course of an entire career. This just doesn’t happen in real life. In real life we are not so singularly defined, so easily plotted. We pine, and then we forget; we fall in love with someone else. As children we want to be all sorts of things. I wanted to be at one time or another a fireman, a mail-man, a pilot, a tennis pro, a clown, an oil baron, and a veterinarian. For some reason I’m thinking of Great Expectations. The character Estella, orphaned as an infant and brought under the care of bitter Miss Havisham, jilted at the altar so many years prior, never to recover. She teaches Estella to hate men, to be as cruel and unfeeling as Miss Havisham is, so that she will never have to have her heart broken on her wedding day. Too neat. In real life, Miss Havisham would have gotten over her disappointment, and Estella wouldn’t have proved to be so entirely malleable to become the cruel mistress Miss Havisham had in mind. Estella would have rebelled or run away.

  “But I have to marvel at just how direct a trajectory those two have sent Arthur on. That boy was wound up from conception, destined wherever he went, whatever he did in the world, to go off in somebody’s face—in this case quite literally. He was Cynthia’s own Exploding Inevitable, wreaking havoc wherever he went. Destined to destroy his own family.”

  Benji—too busy now with preparations and the particulars of his own life to visit us at the carriage house—offered his updates by phone. He had been forced to subcontract his work at the software company so that he could work full-time on the case, a cost defrayed somewhat by the legal fund. He was in to see Arthur at the detention center at Rikers every other day and was becoming concerned about his brother’s well-being.

  “He said a few things today that brought me over to the inhouse psychologist to see about some kind of suicide watch for him. He says things that I don’t understand. There needs to be a ‘final confrontation,’ that the only way to resolve this was by ‘the son slaying the father.’ I tell him nobody’s killing anybody, that we’ve got a good case and soon enough he’ll be a free man again, that he just has to hang on and trust me. Then I try to get tough and say, ‘Listen, if you don’t want to fight this thing, then just make a deal with the prosecution and be done with it. Stop wasting my time.’ He’s not shaving. The circles under his eyes lead me to believe he’s not sleeping, and his cheeks are sunken, which leads me to believe he’s not eating either. I thought he’d be happy about these breaks we’ve been given—the time, the support—but each new bit of good news hits him like a blow. The only strategy he wants to talk about is taking the stand. We’ve got a team of Columbia Law students who think Arthur would be his own worst enemy, but he’s adamant.”

  Taking the stand? This was troubling news, when one considered what sorts of things Arthur had done in the past with a platform and an audience.

  16

  CADENZA

  CHRISTMAS EVE, NEW YEAR’S EVE, voir dire.

  Soon enough, the first day of trial was upon us.

  Each day leading up to this day, it seemed inevitable that we would be saved from having to climb these stairs, if by nothing else the apocalypse, but January 1 came and went without incident. It was surreal. The broad flight before us, the massively looming courthouse blotting out the sun. There were newsvans out, telescoping satellite poles fully extended; they didn’t appear to be here for us, though. Dave remained outside with the video camera, and the rest of us took up the back of the line. Doc panicked when he saw the metal detector, but Suriyaarachchi and I talked him down enough to see him safely through it. Cynthia did a little dance as the guard wanded her down. We traveled several echoey loops of marble hallway to the room Benji had given us.

  The place had none of the grandeur of a Law & Order set. No varnished oak banisters, no ceiling-high windows blazing great shafts of dusty light. This place was small, windowless; the acoustic-tile drop ceiling deadened sound, and the fluorescent banks did the same to people’s faces, making this place look more like a hospital waiting room. It was packed, which isn’t really saying much, as there weren’t many seats. We thought we’d arrived with time to spare, but the line at the metal detectors must have eaten through it; the bailiff had just finished his spiel, and the judge was gaveling for people to be seated. We slipped into the back row by the door.

  Who were all these people who had come to watch the trial? I looked for familiar backs of heads. Penelope was up front in an aisle seat; I recognized her wild black hair. Her father sat next to her. Will was not in evidence. The familial math suggested that he was spending the day with his grandmother.

  The ADA stood and pointed at Arthur, presumably—I couldn’t see him over other people’s heads—and said, “Some would say that this man is a monster. How else can one explain what would move a person to commit an act of incest with his nine-year-old son? To then write a book which recounts this act in all of its lurid detail, publishing it under the guise of fiction. Some might guess that this was a sadistic act meant to torment his family, to rub their noses in what he had done. But the evidence will show us that he is not a monster. Arthur Morel is a man. A very troubled man, who did something awful in a moment of confusion three years ago. The evidence will show that he wrestled with himself about this act for three long years and finally, in a way, using the publication of his book, decided to turn himself in.” Penelope’s mother was right. The damage had already been done. Even if Arthur was found innocent on all charges, even if Will recanted everything he had said, there was no going back from this.

  After the ADA had concluded her opening statement, the judge granted a short recess so that Benji could adjust his remarks. We moved up a few rows for a better view of Arthur’s orange-jumpsuited back. For a week and a half now there had been enough money in the legal defense fund for Arthur to post bail, but Arthur had argued, quite reasonably, that it would be better to have the city hosting him with room and board; every dollar spent should be going toward securing Arthur with the best defense he could afford. While they were on the subject, Benji brought up the possibility of replacing himself with any of the half-dozen private defense firms who offered to try this case pro bono, but Arthur wouldn’t hear of this either.

  Benji stood. Even from where we were sitting, it was clear he was terribly nervous. His eyes were glassy, and the notepad he held highlighted the trembling of his hands. He approached the jury box. “The prosecutor is right about one thing. Arthur Morel is not a monster. But not because she says he isn’t, but because Arthur Morel is innocent. I don’t know what would possess a man to write such a strange story, whether it was a self-destructive streak in him or a touch of the crazies, and I’ll leave it to the critics to explain what kind of merit there is in such a book, but I do know this. The man before you, my brother, is no child molester, and I intend to show you how and why beyond all reasonable doubt.” By the end of his remarks, Benji’s face was pouring sweat.

  True to his word, the judge sped the proceedings along, and after a break for lunch, the prosecution began laying out its case. There wasn’t much to it: Will’s testimony, Arthur’s book, an expert witness. The court clerk played Will’s recorded statement and read the relevant passage from the novel into evidence. It seemed that Will hadn’t been subpoenaed to testify, which Benji’s experts interpreted as good news. It meant that Will had become shaky as a witness for some reason. Either his story had changed
since he’d talked to the police, or there was something wrong with his manner—that he seemed to be lying or was unsympathetic in some way. Benji considered calling him to the stand for the defense, against the prosecution, but Arthur stood in the way of this, too. “Is he trying to get himself convicted? Is that what this is? Somebody please tell me!” The fact of Will’s absence was more good news. Just sitting there, Will was a persuasive tool in the courtroom. His presence would have meant the mother was of the same mind as the prosecution or that the prosecution had enough pull with the mother to make her do it. His absence suggested the opposite. It meant Penelope had become uncooperative.

  Day 2 opened with the prosecution’s psychologist, who had spoken to Will, testifying to the cues Will gave that indicated his story was not a fabrication. He also gave his opinion of Arthur’s book, which he saw as enough like Will’s version of events to be mutually corroborative. He had also spent time with Arthur at the detention center; in his deteriorated state, Arthur seemed to him very much a man wracked by self-loathing and guilt. The psychologist admitted that, on first reading, the book was perplexing, and he hadn’t known what to make of it, but after interviewing Arthur it became clear to him that it was a cry for help. Arthur couldn’t turn himself in, for whatever reason, so his unconscious had done the job for him.

  On cross, Benji said, “Is it possible, in your educated opinion, that William Morel is somehow confused? That he is mixing up what he’s read with a memory?”

  “No. That’s just not feasible.”

  “Yet in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry you write about a man who became convinced that Garrison Keillor was bugging his phone. Can you tell us how the man came to this conclusion?”

  “He was an avid listener of A Prairie Home Companion and grew suspicious that the skits he heard resembled the contours of events in his own life. Eventually, the man came firmly to believe that the shows were direct transcriptions of conversations that he’d had throughout his day. The only explanation for this, he reasoned, was that Garrison Keillor was somehow recording his life.”