The Morels (13 page)

“Yes! And what am I going to tell my parents? Not to read it? They’ve been so happy Arthur’s finally made something of himself—they’ll be crushed. And furious.”

“That’s Arthur,” I said. “It’s not good unless he’s pissed someone off.”

“Ugh, I sound just like them. Listen to me. Falling for the same bait. My parents like art but have weak stomachs. They’re easily outraged. Mapplethorpe at the National Gallery, I tell them it’s supposed to provoke, but they don’t want to hear it.”

Penelope stubbed out her cigarette. “Ah, Christ. Art.”

“Whatever it is you don’t like about it,” I said, “remember, it’s just a story, words on a page. You said it yourself.”

“That’s just it, though. So much of it’s real. Our names, the locations, the situations. But I know. Even as I say it, I can hear how naïve it sounds. Of course it’s possible to have a book that uses the people in the author’s life as characters—and the author himself—and for every word of it to be made up. Right?”

Our order came, and Penelope went at her tuna melt hungrily with her hands, pizzalike, baring her teeth at it before each bite. My soda was flat, but I drank it in small nips through the straw.

“Art can’t know we’ve had this little chat.”

“Why not?”

“He needs to know that I support what he does a hundred percent. If he doubted it, that would be the end of his writing career.”

“You realize you’re describing a paradox.”

“I don’t want things to go back to the way they used to be. Before he was writing, he was miserable. When he thought he had to be the man of the house, he was such a sad sack. And my family was relentless. Holidays were an ordeal. ‘Still at the library?’ my mother would ask—half question, half accusation—knowing full well he was
still at the library
. The humiliation of having my brother offering Art career advice—a man who’s never worked an honest day in his life, who actually describes himself as an
entrepreneur
. My sister’s husband eventually joining in, Dad, too, and by the end of the evening, they’d all be at him with their
advice
. It was cruel. Oh, but they were being
helpful
. Their comments and suggestions were
not
veiled criticisms designed to point out Art’s ineptness, his lack of any practical skills. And what could Art do but thank them for their concern?

“Now he’s a star in their eyes. Oh, yes, my mother says, he’s a
published novelist
. She’s so funny. And I can’t say it wasn’t nice coming across Art’s writing for the first time. We’d been married some years, Will was six, maybe?”

To see all of Arthur’s hallmark qualities—fixating over odd moments, taking nothing for granted, coming at everyday objects like a tourist in his own life, his capacity to deconstruct even the simplest instructions into a paralyzing metaphysical dilemma—these qualities that made him a drag at cocktail parties and all but unemployable here on the page served him well, made for exquisitely rendered scenes, well-observed prose, good writing. It pleased her to be reminded of Arthur’s talents, to be surprised by him. Wasn’t it refreshing, after years of seeing everything Arthur wasn’t, of having pointed out to her everything Arthur could never be—and the kind of family she could never have—to be shown what her husband actually was?

“So, no. I don’t want to go back to an Art who doesn’t make art.
I’d rather he offend my parents, offend me.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and tossed it onto her empty plate. In a flash the waiter swiped it and my empty cup and everything else on the table. The check had been waiting, stuck facedown on the damp counter, since the food had arrived. Penelope put down a twenty and got up.

The staff followed us out in their street clothes, and as soon as we were over the threshold, the shutter rattled down at our backs. I lit a cigarette, and Penelope had one more. We smoked, watching the big brass revolving door across the street trade one person for another, taking them in and letting them out in equal measure.

She said, “I feel a lot calmer now, thanks.”

I assured her that I’d done nothing.

“Well, you should continue to do nothing again. It will keep me sane through this. And bring your cigarettes.”

P
ENELOPE AND I MET SEVERAL
times over the next couple of weeks. She used the time to reminisce, determined to recover some more flattering image of herself and Arthur, of their life together. “I had a boyfriend when I met Art, but he was mostly a way of saying no to boys I wasn’t interested in—long distance, rarely saw each other, got a weekly call. When I told the guy that I was seeing someone else, he said, ‘What’s his name?’ ‘Art,’ I said. ‘Do you love him?’ ‘Yes,’ I said—and just admitting it felt like vertigo. Art was my secret. People thought he was an asshole, but that’s just because he doesn’t know what to say most of the time, especially when he gets nervous. People didn’t know him like I knew him, didn’t know his touch, never saw him at his tenderest or most vulnerable.”

Basement auditorium of the Queens College Film Club, circa 1988. First date. Showing is an Australian release about neo-Nazis that has caused some controversy. It features the debut performance of an actor who will become Hollywood’s baddest bad boy. In it, everyone’s head is shaved. Not a single woman actor. Penelope notices this and holds on to the observation for something to talk about afterward. Staying focused is hard, like watching opera—the main thrust of the plot has to be gotten through body language. With those accents, it’s anyone’s guess what people are
actually saying. This is made more difficult by the two men sitting directly in front of them, talking full volume. The small auditorium is full, and its attention, she can feel, is tangled around this disturbance. There is shifting, mumbling from all corners.

After some time, Arthur leans in between their heads. Hey, he says. Be quiet. Both men are bald; one is wearing an earring that glitters in the dark from the light of the projector.

Penelope’s stomach tightens. She knows where this will go. These guys are older, not like grad students. Like people with jobs, who go to bars and beat people up.

The men pause, and Arthur leans back. Penelope tries to relax, to focus on what is happening on-screen. But after a few moments the men start up again.

Arthur leans forward again and says, Did you hear what I just asked?

The two pause again. Maybe we should go, Penelope whispers, although she doesn’t want to go. She is out on a date; she is watching a movie. Why should they be the ones to leave? Who do these assholes think they are! Suddenly she is trembling with rage.

Yeah, one of the men says, maybe you should listen to your lady.

Maybe you should just shut up and let us enjoy this movie, Arthur says.

This seems to be the cue the men are looking for.

Okay, he says, now we’re talking. The one who says this swivels in his seat. What do you propose, huh? Interestingly enough, the man is whispering now.

But Arthur laughs. Oh! What do I propose! You mean, “What do you propose to do about it,
punk
?” Isn’t that your line? You cannot be serious.

Serious as they come, the man says, and stands. Get up, he says.

Arthur stands. Some brave soul from a far corner shouts,
Shut up already! All of you!
The images on-screen flash. There is a chase, the shuffle of feet, camera wobbly, disorienting. But Arthur seems entirely undisturbed. He is nose to nose with the man. It is like they are on the verge of kissing.

Come on, the man says. Let’s go.

Arthur says, That’s right, you and me. I’ll meet you outside. But first I’m going to finish watching this movie.

How about I break your nose right now and get it over with?

Arthur snorts. If it will shut you up.

Two sounds follow: a snap of fabric, like someone quickly shrugging on a jacket, and a crack, like someone cracking their knuckles.

Arthur stands cupping his face.

Enjoy, the man says, and clomps with his friend out of the row—perhaps not as gracefully as they might have liked—and down the aisle. One takes a bow before banging open the double doors.

Arthur sits.

Here, Penelope says, let me help. She digs in her purse, for what she doesn’t know. Her words come out hollow, like she is acting them out. She can feel everyone’s attention on them. She urges him to go. Arthur is bleeding; she can see the glistening down his lip on his chin and neck. His nose is swollen; even in the dark she can see this. They need to go to a hospital.

But he refuses. He wads her scarf, which she has handed him, and puts it in front of his mouth and faces the screen with wet eyes. I just want to finish watching this movie. Okay?

That was Arthur. He wore his hair long in those days. It was wavy and hid half of his face, while the rest was tucked behind one of his large ears. He was pretty, even in his unshaved scruff, and the crush Penelope had on Arthur had about it the crush for a girlfriend, a crush of envy—what she wouldn’t do to have that jawline, those eyes, those thick natural curls! His nose never healed correctly after the punch. She tried getting him to go to Health Services for it, but he refused. What’s done is done, he’d said. It went from a nauseating gray that first night, to olive, to jaundice. The swelling of course receded, but it was still bent oddly, and a knot under the skin at the bridge remained. Penelope thought of it as her nose. Its new shape marked the beginnings of their lives together. She would touch it sometimes and shiver.

The way he towered over her. She was reminded of a school trip to a farm, the way she felt putting her twelve-year-old hand on the flank of a horse. The damp hair, the shiver and twitch of that muscle’s power beneath her hand, a synchronous twitch in her own groin. This moment formed the basis of her early sexual fantasies. She wasn’t one of those horse girls who read
Misty of Chincoteague
and collected Breyer models; she had girls in her grade, in art class they drew nothing but horses, at lunch they carried their horse lunch boxes and horse backpacks, in their rooms they papered their walls with horse posters. Penelope made fun of those girls. Hers wasn’t an interest in horses, or even this horse per se, but rather this particular moment in this particular stable, with the brute feel of horseness in general. It was a small grain of shame that she worried over and returned to until her interest in boys replaced it, and she later learned somewhere, overheard from someone once at a party, that this was a common girlhood phenomenon, and when she felt Arthur hovering just over her, or when being drawn into the power of his writing, she felt that old twitch. He shared that equine contradiction of beastly and pretty—the beautiful monster—blind trampling power of hoof at the end of each slender, precarious leg. She liked to think of Arthur as a green stallion, barely broken, the one the ranchers called her crazy for even bothering with. He was wild; he had fire and terror in his eyes.

Arthur was an infuriating kind of ecstasy. As the baby of the family, Penelope had always been cooed at and coddled, showered with encouragement. And even though in time Penelope came to understand that much of this attention was a form of condescension, she nonetheless grew up with a healthy sense of self and an expectation from a loved one of a certain amount of coo. So Arthur was a rude awakening. His affections were sporadic, unpredictable. He had the ability to undo her with a single word. With Arthur, she became a wallflower and found herself craning toward any glimmer of affection as though her survival depended on it. Her brother, never known for pulling punches, had told her she could have done a lot better. She had the goods. She knew this
about herself, and even without her own esteem there was proof in the stares she got, not to mention the offers. Stopped on the street or alone in a café. Even pregnant, even afterward with her postpartum paunch. They just couldn’t help themselves, they would say. Then how was it Arthur could? The one person from whom it mattered. Cruel irony! And this indifference, these surprise attacks of affection and long stretches in anticipation of affection, made her hypersensitive to Arthur’s needs, quick to compliment him on the simplest accomplishment, quick to come to his defense.

They honeymooned—she eight months pregnant—in her parents’ timeshare in Maine, an A-frame cabin with a wood-burning stove and a steep set of steps that led from the deck to the clear blue lake the cabin overlooked. They drank water out of a well and shat in a shack without a door into a hole onto which they’d sprinkle lye from a bucket when they were done. A Boston whaler and a kayak tapped against the dock, a reassuring sound at night that lulled them to sleep.

She came home to their brand-new empty apartment in Queens fully invested in her brand-new life. She indulged her role as wife, unpacking the registry gifts that were waiting for them, setting them away in the cupboards, in the sideboard, in the closet. It was a fairy tale, and she indulged it. She was never one to play house or dream about weddings. Her childhood was spent in tomboy competition with older boys, proclaiming her disdain for all things girlie. Girlishness, when it came in her late teens, was about dress up—black lace and black eyeliner, an ironic subscription to
Cosmo
—but now she saw what she’d been missing out on. Playing house was fun! She enlisted her mother’s help, which her mother was thrilled to offer.

And in this way, maternity was a kind of surrender, too. A giving in. She relinquished her body to this being inside her and found the rest of her following suit. This was uncharted territory. She was vulnerable and in need of help. Wasn’t there something thrilling in this life she suddenly found herself in? Something oddly transgressive? In the kitchen, pregnant, barefoot? So this was the thrill
her mother got out of her winning jello molds and Tupperware parties. And finally her surrender to Arthur. She tried out different cocktails on him: sidecars and martinis and sours—when he came home after a full day at work—and sipped her virgin versions of them, gauging his reaction. She cooked for him and was thrilled when he asked for seconds, hurt when he didn’t. She washed his socks and his boxers and his T-shirts and his sweats and folded everything neatly into the dresser drawers for him to discover and marvel at, gratefully. She was grateful for his gratitude. This was the idyll of newlyweds Arthur and Penelope.