The Morels (38 page)

“What does she think I’m going to do,” he said. “But it’s okay, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.”

While Arthur had been on the phone, I asked Jeeves at the computer in my cubicle why the carriage house was of any interest to the people of Japan and discovered that in Tokyo there was a rather famous sex club modeled after it. The walls of this club
were plastered with snapshots of Japanese faces between Doc and Cynthia.

“I know where you can stay,” I said.

Arthur looked at my browser window. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“We have nothing to say to one another.”

“I find that hard to believe. It’s been more than a decade.”

“You met them. Why would you want to send me back into that?”

“You brokered the deal. You wouldn’t have introduced us if you didn’t intend on using that introduction later on.”

“It was a gift. I knew they’d prove willing subjects for your movie.”

“I think you were building a bridge you knew you needed to cross. You see, you want to see them again but don’t know how to get over the gap of those fourteen years.”

“Are you sure you visited the right house? Didn’t they tell you about how I was forced to fend for myself while they had orgies in the basement? It can’t be those people you think I’m anxious to reunite with, can it?”

“I’m sorry, Arthur, but you have to. The narrative requires it.”

“The narrative.”

“Things must be seen to have traveled full circle. Your return to where you were born. Reconciliation with your parents. You’d agree that it makes sense.”

“It has a certain Aristotelian logic to it, yes.”

“I don’t know why you’re arguing. It’s an inevitability.”

“Fine.”

“But we have to wait for Suriyaarachchi. He’s got the equipment.”

The footage of the reunion is wonderful. Suriyaarachchi sets up across the street so that the entire archway is visible in the frame, a blue postbox off on the left. Arthur walks into the shot from camera right, crosses the street, and stops dead center, looking
around from the edge of the doorway. It’s Cynthia who sees him first. She bounds out from inside and embraces him. Then Doc emerges, tentatively, smiling a kind of nervous smile, leans in—Cynthia still embracing her son, rubbing his back—and shakes Arthur’s hand. Dave is out of frame with a directional mic pointed at them and catches Doc saying, “The prodigy returns, the prodigy returns!” Arthur towers over them. They welcome him in with all the ordinary, unmitigated gratitude of a pair of suburban parents. The light is diffuse, the last light in an overcast day, and covers everything in rich blues and violets. The light falloff from the open threshold is steep, so when they usher Arthur inside, the effect is stark—the three of them disappearing into the gloom. We linger here for a while. A woman enters from camera right with a stack of letters in her hand. She slows at the carriage house’s threshold to see what’s inside, then crosses past it to the postbox to drop off her letters. She double-checks to see that the letters haven’t gotten stuck, and it’s a kind of echo of her gaze into the carriage house’s darkness, which itself echoes Arthur’s peering moments earlier, and suddenly this gesture, flowering into a symbol, reveals itself to us: peering into the darkness.

Unforeseen cost, for which Dave must sell both his high-end Beta decks: settling the carriage house’s Con Ed bill. In order to shoot, one needed light, and not just household light, but industrial-grade light. We replaced all the bulbs in the apartment with high-lumen daylight-balanced compact fluorescents, the highest wattage we dared, filling in the shadows by affixing several fluorescent strips on the ceilings. It took some getting used to. Much of the initial interior footage shows Arthur and his parents blinking glassy eyed at the glare.

Suriyaarachchi was smart. He sat the three of them down and talked frankly about what it meant to be in a documentary, that the camera would always be on, that there would be no privacy. This wasn’t for Doc and Cynthia so much. Total exposure had been their ethos for the past thirty years. This was for Arthur. Suriyaarachchi waited until he had seen some footage before sitting down like this,
so that Arthur could get a sense of the project’s worth, aesthetically. For all of his failings, Suriyaarachchi had a great eye. The little footage we’d collected was beautiful. His was an instinctive feel for the limits of the digital medium, its tendency to blow highlights, its need for a narrower spectrum of lights to darks; he insisted on spending extra for a video camera that could shoot cinema-standard twenty-four frames a second and a zoom that allowed a wider aperture so he could get that filmlike look of sharp foreground against a lush background blur. Even on the camcorder’s tiny screen, the playback was gorgeous. With this seed planted, Suriyaarachchi offered the ultimatum: all or nothing, in or out. He would have enough on his plate without having to worry about Arthur’s hand going up whenever he was feeling shy or annoyed. This was the buy-in. Total access. Savvy, having Doc and Cynthia there, too. They acted like plants in a grift, leading the momentum of assent. “Absolutely,” they said. “Understood. Total access.” And so, Arthur agreed. Suriyaarachchi then had them sign exclusivity agreements. At the time, I thought this part was overkill, but a month from now at the height of it, I would look back at this moment and think he had been prophetic. They were not to talk to any other media outlets. This required a sales pitch. Here he talked numbers: dollars and points and box-office profits. “This film will be huge,” he said. “People will be lining up to hear what you three have to say. Guaranteed. But only if they haven’t already heard you say it. You start taking interviews with morning talk shows, syndicated media, you will be depleting the demand for this movie and hence any profits you might see from it. It’s in your hands. You can do what you want, play your chips however you like. You won’t be surprised to hear that I think you should let me hold on to them, that I will play them wisely. But it’s up to you. Just remember, your silence is a very valuable thing. Don’t give it up too easily.”

I was sold. We all signed the papers and shook hands, and then Doc passed around the pipe, and we got high. Even Arthur. We sank into our seats and listened to Doc go on about how great Arthur’s book was.

“You sound like the dust jacket,” Arthur said. “I hate those raves they put all over it, like subliminal messaging.
This book is
fantastic.
You will
love
this book. The writer is a
genius. You know? It’s like they don’t trust readers to come to their own conclusions or the book’s ability to sell you on its own merits.” But Arthur seemed pleased. We ordered takeout from the Indian place up the street, and Cynthia brought us down to the basement to drum up bedding and a spare mattress or two.

It’s interesting to watch Arthur and Cynthia interact in this footage. She’s watching him almost continuously, touching him, caressing his face, even as she is directing us in the search. Arthur stands somewhat stiffly, not rejecting the affection, weathering it, accepting perhaps that this is how it must be, eyes down, gauging for a moment when she is not watching and only then a quick glance up, eyes bleary with pot and exhaustion, and then back to his shoes.

With the lights on, the basement seemed less like a serial killer’s lair and more like a basement. Cynthia looked through the junk. “This mattress”—she patted it, leaning against the wall, went in for a sniff—“with clean sheets shouldn’t be too bad. Artie, look.” She tapped three large boxes, stacked precariously. “Your old stuff. We had to put it down here when we let go of the upper floor.” Looking for bedding, which she swore was down here, we negotiated past percussion instruments of all types, stacked paintings, half-finished sculptures, office chairs, printing supplies, and dusty darkroom equipment, eventually locating some blue sheets inside a large Styrofoam cooler.

Although we hadn’t planned or discussed the matter, the Morels assumed we would all be staying with them. We took a wordless poll, a shrug and an eyebrow wag, and agreed. The best place to make our beds, we decided, was down here, out of the way. We would keep our equipment boxes here as well, neatening and personalizing a strip of wall directly under two dim basement windows.

After the others headed back upstairs, Arthur said, “I’m glad you came. I wouldn’t want to be here alone.”

When we emerged from the basement, Doc was unboxing our Indian food. He seemed overjoyed at the occasion. “It’s like old times, Cyn. It’s like we’ve got our collective back.”

Cynthia said, “A carriage house reunion!”

We knew there was a chance that Arthur might not return from the arraignment if the judge decided against posting bail, so we took the opportunity to get as much footage of this reunion as we could. We followed them around for the next few days, asking questions, getting them to interact. We set up the camera as we had last time, at the doorway facing in, and set up three chairs. Dave had the idea to bring up Arthur’s boxed things as a tool to get him talking. Doc had found a thick snarl of Christmas tree lights in the basement that he spent an entire morning untangling—checking and replacing bulbs until the whole string was lit—and put it up around the archway. It was a pretty sight, especially when it began to snow.

They sat side by side, coats on, appreciating the general holiday swirl. To a passerby, they would have appeared to be like any ordinary nuclear family: son, shoulders hunched, between two proud parents. It was an illusion I myself indulged as I listened to them tell the rest of their story.

The afternoon following the Spring Concert, a Sunday, Cynthia and Doc receive a visitor at the carriage house, a fellow mother who had been in the audience to witness Arthur’s performance. She is concerned. For many years, she explains, she was employed by the New York City Division of Child Protection as a caseworker, and although she is now in private practice and no longer working for the city, she still feels it her moral obligation to investigate and, if necessary, report her findings.

It is not a good time for a visit. The plumbing in the century-old house is in perpetual disrepair and finally, two weeks prior to the woman’s visit, reached a critical state of failure. A pipe on the second floor has sprung a leak and flooded the floor below. Nothing has been done to address the problem, save cutting off the water
supply. After two weeks, the smell of mildew has become unbearable, as has the smell of human waste because, though the toilets no longer flush, visitors to the house continue to use them.

But even were it not a bad time to visit, it wouldn’t have been a good time to visit either. As the concerned former caseworker sits on a couch on the ground floor, two wooden milk crates end to end at her shins forming a makeshift coffee table, she counts fifteen small prescription bottles and a confetti of pills, all in plain view. Men and women stark naked saunter up from the basement and disappear into other parts of the house. From above, a sound presiding over all, the thin strains of a Bach solo partita.

Cynthia is perplexed by the stony manner in which the woman relates what Arthur has done onstage. It was a prank, she says. How brilliant! My son’s like a young Duchamp, painting mustaches on the
Mona Lisa
, or that other one of his, the urinal, rubbing elbows with the
Venus de Milo
. Don’t you see? Why are you looking at me like that? Oh this—Cynthia is in a robe that, despite her efforts, keeps falling open to expose her bare breasts. Should have worn a bra. Cynthia laughs.

When Doc had invited her in, the woman asked for a glass of water, and Doc is in the kitchen now, straining cloudy, particle-rich rainwater from a jug through a coffee filter, to little effect. He returns with the glass just as the woman is attempting to rise from the couch. It’s on our list to have fixed, Cynthia says. There’s a lot that needs fixing around here as you can see.

Doc holds out the water, which the woman takes. The three of them watch the delicate swirl of silt settle in the glass. The woman hands back the glass and tells them that she has seen plenty, too much to ignore, and that the next visit they should expect will be from Child Protective Services.

Doc would occasionally receive calls from Benji, who was all grown up and living in Queens. During that first one, he told Doc he was tired of being angry and wanted to have a relationship with his father, despite his father’s unrepentant wretchedness. Doc had been overjoyed to hear from his son and asked after Sarah
and Dolores. Sarah was teaching at Rutgers, and Dolores was happily remarried to a man Benji described as “well meaning.” They spent almost two hours during that first phone call reminiscing about happy times, Benji filling him in on what kind of life he had lived without his father around. Benji gave Doc his number, said to ring whenever the urge struck. Doc had been moved and grateful for the call, and yet he never reciprocated. The months would go by, and eventually he would receive another call from Benji. Doc would explain that their phone service was limited to incoming numbers, which was true enough. The phone bill was among the utilities on which they were perpetually delinquent. A flimsy excuse, but Benji accepted it, not seeming to mind the one-sidedness of things.

And so Benji is surprised to receive Doc’s call that Sunday and listens with dismay at their predicament. What can I do, Benji asks. I’m not a lawyer yet, and I’m not in any position, financial or otherwise, to help you fix up your house.

There’s no time for that, Doc says. They could be banging on our doors tomorrow!

Arthur packs a bag, several changes of clothes, and a few books from the carriage house library. The rest he leaves in his “room,” the back half of the top floor, curtained off with a sheet. The ceilings are low, and if he stands on his toes he can press the crown of his head hard against it. The windows are made of a pebbly opaque glass reinforced with wire that forms a diagonal diamond pattern on the panes. They do not open but glow most mornings with a warm light that fills the room. A music stand is planted in the center like a street sign. Mattress in a corner against the wall, above it poster reproductions of Picasso’s Stravinsky and Delacroix’s Paganini. Against the other wall, the old saloon upright. His violin in its case on top of it, along with a clutter of personal effects. He offers a last look but takes nothing with him.