The Morels (12 page)

In her dream, she is twelve and in braces, self-conscious of her breath and of being naked. She is in a stable, shivering. There are horses stamping and farting around her. Something terrible has just happened, or is about to happen, but she can’t figure out what. She wakes herself so that she can remember and finds that her coat is on the ground and her shirt is hiked up and she is freezing.

She finds the book, which has fallen under the bench. She returns to the last page she remembers reading and continues, but she can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. Her dream has entered the atmosphere of the book, or maybe she is picking up a subtle atmosphere from the book itself? It’s hard to tell now. She puts her coat back on and zips it up and continues reading.

In the manner of other contemporary fiction, there’s little story to speak of—the dilemmas of everyday life—and yet it’s also
compelling. It’s the sentences, the train of thought—it’s persuasive. So she turns the pages to see where it all might lead, because it does seem to be leading somewhere, each scene a preparation for some defining moment. How could he call this a novel? She checks the cover again.
The Morels: A Novel
.

The main character is named Arthur Morel, who is married to a character named Penelope, and their child’s name is Will. The voice is conversational, less formal than the I-voice of his previous book, closer to Arthur’s own. Main-character-Arthur works as an administrative head at a university library, a job real-Arthur had for a short while, before being let go. It had not been a good time for them. Arthur was miserable. This was three years ago, before his first book was published. Will was eight.

We find ourselves at the beginning of
The Morels
with Arthur struggling to make meaning from what has become a mundane domestic existence—he works; he comes home; he washes dishes and bundles garbage. The burden of fatherhood puts a strain on him, on the marriage. Manhood does not come naturally; he is not a natural father. What to say, how to behave. His father-in-law tells him not to worry, that it’s eighteen years of on-the-job training, to follow his heart and he would be okay.

The only problem for Arthur is that his heart is a mystery to him. Most of the time, Arthur doesn’t know what to feel and suspects that deep down he feels nothing—for anyone. In the meantime, he fakes it. He watches Penelope for clues, imitating her expressions of affection, her declarations of love—and as such, Arthur feels as though he’s making up his feelings, inventing them as he goes along—careful to feel whatever is appropriate for the situation. His job brings him little satisfaction—it requires a kind of leadership he does not possess—he must motivate his staff as well as those he answers to. He dreads work, feels in over his head daily—the suits he’s required to wear have been given to him by Penelope’s father, his father’s suits, as it were. He looks in the mirror to see that he is no longer himself, but with every
passing week, living the life he is living, he is no longer sure who that is anymore.

D
EVOTED HUSBAND, LOVING FATHER
. It feels like an epitaph.

His thoughts turn morbid. He feels like the walking dead. A man of no consequence. He has given up the immortality of Visionary Artist for the mortal and inconsequential role of Family Man, indistinguishable from eighty-three million others just like him. It is a long slow march toward the grave, no doubt on which will be written
DEVOTED HUSBAND, LOVING FATHER
. Within two years, less, his family will have moved on, forgotten him. It would be as if he’d never existed. His struggles at his job and at home take on the proportions of life and death—it’s a struggle he is waging—and losing—for his own survival.

In lieu of lunch, Arthur goes into the library stacks, and here he can finally breathe again, a fish returned to water. He drifts among the sea of words, stopping randomly at an unfamiliar or interesting title. Opening the book, he allows himself to dream for a while inside, and when it’s time for him to make his way back to work, he feels as though he is leaving a part of himself there—that part of himself has become trapped within the covers of the book he’d been browsing—and so he must go back the next day, and the next.

He tests his limits. He skips meetings in which he is not expected to speak. He spends entire days lost in the stacks or behind his desk, holding all calls, in front of his computer. When someone enters, he does not look up.

He begins writing e-mails to himself.

At night, unable to sleep, he fires up his laptop to find his inbox full. The messages are addressed to himself, from one part of his brain to another. Cries for help from a man in the trenches. He details his troubles at work. His restlessness, his suffocation. He used to be able to shut the stall door in the men’s room and with a visual cue of Dean Bartholomew’s secretary—her parted legs under her desk, the small patch of hair—masturbate to climax in less time than it took most men to wash their hands. These days it is a different story entirely. He works at his flaccid penis
there in the stall, trying to fully picture the space underneath the secretary’s desk—unsuccessfully—until the bathroom door bangs open, the sound of unzipping at a urinal, and Arthur’s concentration would be fully broken. What has he become, that he can’t even give his secret work crushes their proper due? That this last refuge of freedom, his sexual imagination, is closed to him?

Arthur reads these e-mails from himself in the monitor glow of the darkened bedroom, Penelope asleep not five feet away—addressed as though he were someone else, an estranged friend. So he does what any friend would do: he writes back.

He commiserates. He relates his various miseries on the home front. His life with Penelope and Will is just a series of small lies—from the moment he walks through the door.
I missed you
, she says, and he says,
I missed you, too
. But he has not in fact thought about Penelope throughout the day—should he have? He feels guilty, and so when he tells her that he has missed her, too, he is lying. Or maybe willing himself to have missed her, not so much a lie as it is a kind of apology. When he says,
I missed you, too
, what he really means is
I want to have missed you, too
. He means
I will try my hardest tomorrow to miss you too
.

She asks him how his day has been, and when he says that it was fine, when he doesn’t tell her that it was decidedly not fine, this is another lie.

These overtures about their day are no more prelude to a real discussion of their true feelings as the peck on the lips as he’s taking off his coat is a prelude to sex.

This is married life.

It isn’t what it used to be. Back when he was just shelving books—infant Will at the apartment with his mother-in-law—Penelope would show up in an easy-access skirt and no underwear, and they would fuck right there in the stacks. They used to get such a kick out of playing house, out of peeling the blistered skin off of a butternut squash and placing it in the new Cuisinart; add a little cream and look—soup! Now dinner is just another chore, the Cuisinart a tool like any other in the kitchen, no longer
a novelty. A pot of chili on Sunday for a week of leftovers. Frozen portions of split pea in individually microwavable containers. Life at home. Asleep by nine thirty, up at six to do it all again.

Back in his office, he shuts the door and checks his e-mails; deleting those from his boss, he opens the one from himself. He reads it over, then spends the rest of the morning crafting a reply.
Why is it so hard, just living?
he writes.
I am married, my wife is healthy and beautiful. I have a son who is healthy and beautiful. I, too, am healthy and have a job that supports us, that allows us to live in relative ease. So why am I not living with the ease in which I live?

His troubles at work, his miseries on the home front. With these out of the way, he moves on to other concerns, to the darker corners of his mind. He reminds himself of a passing childhood acquaintance, a boy his own age. Acts of sexual pleasure engaged in with this boy. How old had they been? Nine? Arthur used to worry over the thought of being gay. Did these acts he used to perform make him so? He would think of his time with this boy and become aroused. Even now—as a husband and a father—when he remembers these encounters, he becomes aroused. In fact, it’s the only image potent enough these days, sitting there in the men’s room stall, to get him off. What does this mean? How is he to reconcile this with the life he lives as an average family man?

Arthur finds that by pursuing this correspondence with himself, he feels better. The more he commiserates, the less miserable he feels. Airing dark truths help lighten his spirit; and writing obsessively to himself these long dark weeks cures him of the need to write obsessively to himself. In one long last e-mail, he talks about his new contentment, about how at peace with himself he has become. He thanks himself for listening, for commiserating. He describes venturing out of his office now to engage with fellow staff and administrators, a new desire to tackle the overflow on his desk. He tells of a home life in which he is now fully and happily engaged with Penelope, with Will. His heart is brimming with new love for them, a love he does not have to fake anymore. He
brings in pictures of them and tacks them up on the board above his desk, puts one in his wallet.

The big shock comes on the final pages, suddenly, although in some way it seems to be the culmination of all prior moments in the book, the destination that all sentences point to.

Penelope reads the final scene, then reads it again, and before she is aware of what she is doing exactly, she is on her feet, running out of the park. The people she passes stare at her. She can hear herself panting. She is jogging down Central Park West, past Lincoln Center, past the Theater District, past Port Authority, left at Madison Square Garden toward Manhattan East Middle School.

Will does not appear to be among the small clusters of children playing here. It is a brisk autumn day. The sun is overhead, warming her shoulders and gleaming off the windshields of parked cars. The air is still. There is a basketball hoop, boundary lines painted on asphalt. Older kids are yelling their way through a game, though in the long moment that she stands there, nobody seems to be able to make a basket. Those about Will’s age are involved in some version of tag at the far end of the yard by a muraled wall. A pair of girls sitting down is tagged, then leaps up and join the fray, letting out blood-chilling screams; others, who have been leaping around, dodging outstretched hands, lose focus and drift off. And then Penelope sees him, sitting against the wall with three Hispanic girls. She searches Will’s face for any trace of trouble. What is she looking for? He seems to be enjoying himself, totally at ease with these girls. This always surprises her about Will, his ease with people, it didn’t matter who. Was that a function of his age? He certainly didn’t get it from Arthur. Even around people he knows, Arthur is shy and stern. At parties, he suffers from social exhaustion, his tolerance for small talk low; before long he grows restless and needs to be home again with her and Will. He doesn’t like meeting new people. Will, on the other hand, can talk to just about anybody. He is charming, precocious in that way of only children. It breaks her heart how at ease he is with people.

A male teacher, who has been sitting on a bench, notices Penelope and saunters over. Hello, he says. You’re a parent, but I can’t remember whose.

Will Morel’s mom, she says.

That’s right, of course. Checking up on him?

Just making sure he’s safe.

I was coming out of Dave’s, done for the day, when I ran into Penelope ascending the subway’s stairs. She took me by the arm.

“What are you doing now? Let’s have coffee.”

She led me across the street into the Galaxy Diner and walked us toward the back. These were the last days of smoking in New York City, and there were a few reserved booths by the restrooms that were usually empty. She took a seat and asked me for a cigarette.

“I’m not the girlfriend type,” she said, lighting up. “Other women have girlfriends they complain to, go to for comfort. I have Art. And my parents. And I can’t talk to either of them about this. So who do I talk to?”

The waiter came with menus and a dishrag that he heaved in two swipes across our table, leaving behind a mildew stink. His borderline hostility brought my attention to the emptiness of the place. The cooks behind the counter were watching us as they sudsed down the griddle and mopped the floors. This was a lunch place, and lunch was over. I ordered a Coke. Penelope ordered a tuna melt. The waiter stiffened at this. “I’ll have to see if that’s still possible.”

“You do that.” She pulled on her cigarette, watching him go, then said, “Have you read it? Of course you haven’t, it came out this morning.” She put the book on the table. “Take it, I don’t want it. Shit. You need to read it, though, I’ve got to talk to someone.”

“Talk to me, now. What’s so wrong?”

She told me the story of her day—dropping Will off at school, buying the book, reading it in the park, then running back to the school to check on him—as if the solution to her dread were to be
found here, in the minutiae of the day’s decisions. “I mean, the thing of it? It was exactly like I said. You were there. I called it a mile off. He set me up. That motherfucker set me up.” This word—
motherfucker—it
sounded in her cutesy voice as though she were invoking the name of a fairy-tale villain. “Now he can always say he gave me an out. But even if I had read it back then, I couldn’t have told him to destroy it. I wouldn’t have.”

“What’s so bad about it?” I turn the hardbound book over in my hands. The dust jacket showed a photograph of Barbie and Ken and Young Ken standing naked in a toy bathtub, genital areas blurred out.

“I don’t want to say. You’ll read it. You’ll find out, and you’ll probably like it—admire it for its unflinching whatever.”

“So you’re just mad that he wrote it.”