The Morels (11 page)

“I’d burn it without a second thought.”

“But what about me? I’d be nothing but second thoughts. You’re saddling me with this burden? That’s fair. And like I would ever say such a thing. You know this. You know I would never tell you to do that, so what are you really doing here? You’re forcing my hand. It’s a bluff. You don’t want me to tell you what I really think. You want me to tell you to go ahead, and you know I’ll tell you to go ahead because what kind of supportive wife would tell her writer husband to burn his manuscript? It’s a free pass. You know how I know? Coming to me now. It’s sold, your agent has seen it, he’s gotten a publisher to agree to buy it—this thing is already out of your hands—why not come to me when you were still working on it? When you could have done something about it?”

I thumbed though the pages. On first glance, it appeared to be a string of e-mails. Three hundred and sixty-two pages of e-mails.

“But you don’t understand. That’s not it at all. I’m asking you for help. I don’t know what I’m doing. You give me way too much credit. I’m not in control over what I write. This isn’t some piece for a travel magazine or some restaurant review. It’s not a mystery, it’s not a romance, or what have you. This is—excuse the pretentiousness of saying it—literature. I’m looking for good, for true,
for dangerous. This is my mandate, my only mandate. There is no formula. It’s a direction, the vaguest sort of destination, a kind of compass that, if I know how to use it, will show me the way. And here is this thing I found, and I know it’s all these things, but I also know it will hurt you and Will.”

“Art. They’re words. It’s a novel, yes?”

“Technically, yes.”

“There is no technically. It is or it isn’t.”

“I guess that will be the question, won’t it?”

“Look. You can’t please everybody. You can’t. You make sacrifices. You think this is any different than what a doctor goes through? A top surgeon? The procedure develops complications, and he has to miss his son’s graduation. Or I don’t know, at least that’s the way it goes on television, but it sounds about right. These are the trade-offs. This is what happens to a family man with a career. You’re not special. You just have to accept that your wife and son may never forgive you.”

“I can’t do that. That’s unacceptable. It can’t be either-or.”

“You’re such an only child, Arthur.”

“I have half siblings!”

“You want it all, but you can’t have it all.”

“Okay,” he said. He took the manuscript from me, got up, and went inside.

Penelope crossed her eyes at me. “Do you see what I’m dealing with? He turns into a crazy person sometimes. I want to pull my hair out.”

Some people would say they avoid being around couples for precisely this kind of cross fire I was in, but I found it comforting. It made me feel closer to them, that they should have let me into their lives enough that I could see them argue. I took a mouthful of wine. “This is good,” I said.

Arthur came back empty-handed and sat down.

“So,” Penelope said quietly, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Doug in the morning and tell him to forget it.”

“Oh, Jesus! I didn’t realize I was talking to someone’s Catholic
mother. Poor Arthur! Going to martyr his magnum opus for the sake of the family.”

“What do you want from me, Penelope?”

“I want you to be realistic. You’ve brought this thing into the world. You can’t undo that. Destroying it—the original file, all copies, whatever—doesn’t change this fact. You wrote it. Period. Deciding not to publish doesn’t change this. Even if you could take it back, even if nobody had read it, it wouldn’t change a thing. It exists. What’s required of you now is to be a man about it. Own it. It’s yours. To hell with me. To hell with Will. Is that what you want me to say?”

“You should read it. You should know what you’re getting into before you say a thing like that.”

“I don’t care what it’s about. Do you love me? Do you love Will? Does this story change that? No, so go forth and publish.”

Arthur looked at his watch. “I need to go pick him up.”

In the elevator I said, “So Penelope doesn’t know anything about this new book.”

“Not from me withholding it, believe me. She doesn’t want to know. She wants to go out on the day it’s released, walk into a bookstore, take the thing off the new-arrivals rack, and pay top dollar for the hardcover. Be the first in line, as it were. It was the same with the other one.”

Arthur explained that the release date of a book is a rather anticlimactic affair. There are launch parties and readings and three-way conference calls about first-week numbers, but this is somehow beside the point. With a movie premiere, the auteur has the satisfaction of sitting in a back row and seeing the effect his efforts have, connecting the dots of that triumvirate uppercase
A—
Artist, Art, Audience—the reaction is immediate, visceral. He can stand with the ushers as the moviegoers file out and hear just how enthralled or bored they were. A gallery opening, although more of a ceremony, achieves this same function, plugging together viewer and object for the benefit of its maker, so she can see her
achievement realized. And likewise with the composer, the choreographer, the architect, the chef. The spaces they describe are traversable such that the artist can witness the traversing. Not so for the novelist. The book launch, though it pretends to accomplish this—invited guests, signed books stacked on a foldout table, a reading, and, at the end, applause—is a sham. Because books are different. They can’t be consumed in one sitting. The narrative arc takes many hours, days if you’re a slow reader, to travel, and it’s a journey that happens alone. This was the other difference about literary art. Theater, music, dance, dining, are all communal arts, the experience enhanced when shared with others. Reading is an entirely solitary activity. Even a subway car full of straphangers all reading the same bestseller is a hundred separate people alone with a book. So where does that leave the writer? He can’t watch over the shoulder of a stranger, gauging his reaction. And the author’s wife has likely already read a draft or two, or at the very least knows too much about the endeavor and its author to enjoy any pure reading experience.

But this is exactly what Penelope wanted to do: enjoy a pure encounter with Arthur’s book. To be told nothing about it, and on the day of its release buy a copy in the bookstore, spend all day reading it, and return through the apartment door so he could have the satisfaction of seeing her reaction—helping him to close that circuit. Audience. Artist. Art.

It occurs to me that Will’s absence from these get-togethers may seem like a writerly convenience. The truth is, though, the only memorable conversations I had with them, as a couple and individually, were those that happened in Will’s absence—indeed, were only possible
through
Will’s absence. There were any number of other occasions when I might encounter Will and his mother in the hall or the three of them in the elevator, and I would hear how they were off to see
Star Wars: Episode One
for the third time or were just coming back from Leandra Williams’s birthday party. Will would be the focus of these encounters—children, I’ve
noticed, become the center of gravity in a room—talking rapidly about something
hilarious
Tyler said at the party or demonstrating the proper way to avoid the jaws of a T. rex. It wasn’t that Will was especially precocious or that what he was saying was especially interesting; it was just that he was the one with the most energy and with it he commanded the most attention. It was like this on the few occasions I knocked unannounced, to encounter the three of them preparing for a typical evening in: Will on the floor staring up at the television, Arthur at the table trying to concentrate on a stack of papers and Penelope picking up stray clothes and toys around the apartment and yelling at Will to
turn it down!
Even with Will occupied, it was hard to keep the thread of a conversation going, as our attention would gravitate to what he was watching. When Will wasn’t at the television, he wanted to be a part of our talk, and soon enough we would find ourselves learning about something hilarious Tyler had said about Mr. Boinkman today or the absolutely true story he’d heard about the vampire living in the school basement.

And it’s not that I don’t like kids. It’s that they make me nervous. They’re unpredictable. Their problem with personal space is no different than that of a crazy homeless person’s. One minute they’re saying you remind them of creepy Freddy Krueger and the next they’re trying to shimmy your torso for a piggyback ride. Other people don’t have this problem. Dave, for instance. He had a rapport with Will, which began, I suppose, that night on the roof. Will would show up randomly, without notice, to discuss movies or video games, and Dave would let him in, offer him a soda, as though he were Seinfeld and Will were Kramer.

“The kid’s got pretty sophisticated taste for an eleven-year-old. His favorite movie?
Reservoir Dogs
. He says
Pulp Fiction
is too stylized for his tastes. He used that word: ‘stylized.’ I asked him, ‘So your parents let you watch movies like that?’ I mean, this is pretty violent stuff. And he’s like, ‘I get to make my own decisions.’ He’s a funny kid.”

Will would appear while the three of us were working in the
editing suite and plop right down on the couch next to us. Suriyaarachchi didn’t seem to mind. He liked Will too. Will would be in his costume, black suit and tie with a badge that read FBI. Orange gun in one hand and a large policeman’s flashlight in the other. “Trick or treat,” he said the first time I encountered him at the door.

“Who are you supposed to be?”

“Special Agent Fox Mulder, he said, shining the flashlight in my face.

“You look like a Jehovah’s Witness.”

“Jehovah? He’s under federal protection because he knows too much.”

“You’re lucky I’m not a truant officer. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Half day. I’m looking for Agent Suriyaarachchi and Agent Dave. They around?”

Dave told me that Penelope would occasionally call on him to babysit last-minute, which entailed getting twenty bucks to have Will come over to do what he normally did. Dave used the money for takeout, which the two of them would eat while blasting the limbs off of zombie hordes.

Will took after his mother, slightly plump with thick black hair and the delicate lashes of a pretty girl. He liked to eat and often came prepared with a knapsack of Tupperwared food Penelope had packed for him.

Will said to me one day, quite out of the blue, “Mom and Art are fighting a lot.” I was looking through the sublet listings in the
Voice
. Dave and Suriyaarachchi had gone out to the post office. Will had come in during their absence and asked if it would be okay if he played a video game. It had been intended as a rhetorical question—he was already kneeling in front of the console—but I said that he would have to ask Dave’s permission when he got back from his errand.

“When will he be back?” Will was used to being adored by
adults, but I had made it clear I was immune to his charms. He would often find himself blinking at me, unsure of how to proceed. I had hoped my answer would discourage him from sticking around, but instead he took a seat next to me and picked up the entertainment circular of the paper and held it out in front of him, as if to read. Cute. I resumed my task of starring any long-term sublets within my budget—there weren’t many—when Will said what he said about Penelope and Arthur fighting. I waited for him to go on, bracing myself for a discussion about how he shouldn’t worry, sometimes parents fight but it doesn’t mean that, et cetera.

Will said, “Mostly it’s Mom who does the yelling. Art listens. I think it’s because she loves him more than he loves her.”

“What makes you say that?”

Stray hair floated up off his head from the static of the hat he’d just removed. A crust of mucus ringed his left nostril. He set down the paper and opened his knapsack, removing a round bin that contained apple slices, a little browned. “I’ve always thought that. She does the hugging and the kissing. He accepts it. It’s not like he doesn’t like it. He’s like me that way. And I don’t hear them doing it anymore, which is another thing. Not since we moved here.”

“You know what ‘doing it’ sounds like?”

He rolled his eyes and popped an apple slice into his mouth.

“What kind of son are you, who doesn’t hug his mother?”

“I hug her. Of course I hug her. But sometimes I need to play it cool.”

Suriyaarachchi and Dave returned. “Will, my man,” Dave said. “Let me score some of that apple. I’m surprised to see you just sitting there. Thought for sure I’d find you warming up the PlayStation for me.”

Will looked over at me as if to say,
See?

After dropping Will off at school, Penelope stops in at Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Arthur’s new book. Crinkly green bag in hand, she heads up and east along Sixty-Sixth Street, into Central Park. She’d planned to find a quiet spot under a tree, but the
benches are wet from the overnight rain. Somewhat at a loss, she wanders around and ends up ordering a pretzel from a vendor cart even though it isn’t yet ten in the morning. It’s an autumn smell, it beckons her, but the pretzel leaves a pasty taste in her mouth with overtones of ashtray and makes her instantly sleepy. She finds a line of dry benches under an eve, above and behind the old proscenium band shell around which people Rollerblade to music on their headphones in bright colored spandex. There is the distant treble of a faraway boom box. She sits and shrugs off her coat, humming a tune that takes her a moment to realize is the song on the boom box. She slips the book from its bag and cracks it open, giving it an involuntary sniff before turning to the first page.

She is shocked anew by the power of Arthur’s writing, its ability to take her in. Is this just the power all authors have? The mere mention of a
red shawl
—like a command you are powerless to resist—and there it is, the chenille soft in your hands. Even though the title prepares her somewhat, it’s also a shock to be taken into the fictionalized realm of her own life—a version of déjà vu, not unlike hearing her own voice on an answering machine. She reads, and winces, reading, and reads on, and then falls asleep.