The Morels (15 page)

I went out onto the patio for a smoke, and to my surprise Mrs. Wright joined me. We stood side by side, looking out. I offered her a cigarette and, with a glance over her shoulder, she nodded. She kept her back to the door and her elbows tucked in and smoked with small movements so as not to betray what she was doing to those inside. Without looking at me, she began to talk about the predicament the Wrights found themselves in with their son-in-law.

Although they both had their reservations about Arthur’s left turn into fiction and worried over his ability to be a financial asset to their daughter and grandson, they were nevertheless supportive of his need to express himself creatively and of his decision to make a go of the writing life. Especially Frank. Give the boy some room to breathe, he said. After all, the family had some money, and whatever drain it might be on their daughter’s finances to have a writer for a husband certainly would be made up for by the buzz it would bring.

“We are strivers, you know,” Mrs. Wright said. “Our friends, too. As a group, we’re a competitive bunch.” And the contestants in this competition, she explained, were the children. Whenever she would get together with her friends, they traded their
children’s achievements like they were playing a game of cards—a graduation, a new job, a child on the way—keeping the failures close to the vest. Arthur’s first bloom of success was a coup for her and Frank as well. There was something giddy about it she couldn’t explain and something generous that allowed their friends to participate without being jealous. So she perceived. Whereas Ethelyn Owen’s new grandson was a success only for the Owens, and subject to the petty jealousies that they were all helpless to, Arthur’s minor splash as a debut novelist was something they could all share in, as a community. And it was a success that promoted itself—neither she nor her husband ever had to mention it—their friends would come to them with news, sightings of the book in a magazine or in a bookstore. It was the prestige felt at the blackjack table during a winning streak—proud in a shy way of the table’s attention—even though you knew it was only luck that brought this about. They admired Arthur’s success in a way they wouldn’t have had it been their own child. Of their children’s success, they felt differently. They would have counted it as their own, as owed—a success they were at least partly responsible for. But Arthur’s success was a gift, and for it they were grateful.

Then came the new book. That passage at the end.

She didn’t want to think what kind of recesses such writing had come from in Arthur, or what life experience had led him to write it. She wished she could undo having read it; she didn’t want to associate Arthur with those words on those pages.

What are we supposed to do about this? Frank had wanted to know. He was worried, as was she. They were together in this at first—in their concern, in their confusion at their son-in-law, in their attempt to reconcile this young man who married their daughter and of whom they were so fond, with the man he revealed himself to be in this book.

They tried out explanations on each other: he was merely voicing a part of himself we all have, the id. Or Arthur could have been abused as a child, and this was his way of coming to terms with
it. Frank reminded her that Arthur was an artist, and this is what artists did. They pushed buttons, pushed boundaries. And what about
Lolita
? she added. Wasn’t that book banned in this country? Maybe it hadn’t even been Arthur’s idea. There was an agent, after all, and a publisher. Maybe somebody along the way had told him his story wasn’t risky enough, “artistic” enough. They couldn’t sell some boring old book about a sad sack. And so they insisted he spice it up. Maybe Arthur didn’t even write the passage—it could have been added after the fact, to make it more marketable to a reading public who expected extremity in their literature. Or could it be that Arthur was referencing some other work of literature? Maybe it wasn’t at all about what it seemed to be about. It was an allusion—the real subject hidden, subtextual. The way Joyce was really writing about Greek heroes when it only seemed he was writing about drunk Irishmen. She had always been too literal minded when it came to literature.

Whatever it was, and whatever the reason Arthur wrote it, it was something in their lives that they couldn’t resolve, that couldn’t be settled, as most unsettling things in their world were settled, with one of Frank’s conversational one-liners. Global Warming: Buy property in Siberia—it’ll be worth a fortune! The Massacre in Texas: Is it Waco or Wacko? Somehow, at the end of the day, having done their moral obligation of watching the news open eyed to its daily dose of horror, mulling over the tragedies of the day, to have Frank pronounce his one-liner was a real comfort. It was a way of closing the door on the world’s sadness, for the time being. It meant that they were no fools; they knew how cruel and hopeless humanity could be, and by addressing each sadness they were paying tribute to it. Joking about it was a way of distinguishing their own lives from the lives of others. She would groan at Frank’s bad joke, tell him to knock it off, these weren’t issues to joke about, but this just part of the ritual, a way to have Frank say that if you couldn’t joke about something serious, then you were really in trouble—if you couldn’t laugh at the world, then you might as well put a bullet in your head. She
didn’t know what this meant, but Frank said it in a way that seemed powerful and true.

There was, however, no one-liner for what Arthur had done. The matter remained in the air, unsettled, floating between every pause in conversation.

Her friends grew conspicuously quiet on the subject of the book. But Frank’s “buddies,” the men at the veterans’ lodge, were a different matter. She didn’t know why he insisted on going to that hole-in-the-wall twice a week—three times a week, now that he was retired. It was the stomping grounds of the local bigmouths. She refused to learn any of their names—they were not friends of the family; they were men Frank drank with, nothing more. And unlike the people she counted as her friends, these men were not quiet on the subject of Arthur or his book.

For a while, Frank cast himself as Arthur’s staunchest defender. You should hear what they’re saying, he said. Bunch of ignoramuses. Ignorami? You’d think the kid was another Hitler. I said, Ever heard of Oedipus? If these guys had their way, the only books in the library would be car-repair manuals. I mean, thank God for Arthur, am I right?

But then Frank stopped relating these arguments to her; even though she was fairly certain the talk about Arthur at the lodge hadn’t stopped. Three times a week now, Frank came home in a dark mood and fell asleep in front of the television. He avoided talking to Arthur on the phone. He would call Penelope’s cell to speak with her and had her put his grandson on. If Mrs. Wright was talking with Arthur, Frank would wave the phone away when she tried handing it to him.

“You should talk to him, I tell him. What is he supposed to say, he wants to know. Say you’re angry. You’re confused. But Frank’s not the type.”

As we sat around the table with our empty plates waiting for Penelope, Will rallied us into a game. “We played it on our first day at school,” he said. “You don’t need a board or to learn any
complicated rules. It’s simple. We go around the room and tell three facts about ourselves. Two of the facts are facts, and one of the facts is a lie. Then everybody has to guess which one is the lie. It’s fun, you’ll see.”

Upon hearing this, Penelope—who had just come out of the kitchen with the turkey—looked on the verge of dropping the platter. From the flurry of wordless looks—for reasons that will in a moment become clear—you would have thought we were all in a Bergman film. Had Will read the book, in spite of his claim to the contrary? Or was this just evidence of the emotional telepathy in children that allows them to ferret out the supposedly hidden affairs of grown-ups? Will said, “What’s the matter?”

Arthur said, “We know too much about one another for it to work. That game’s best played with strangers.”

Frank said, “I’m going to say no—for the same reason I say no to poker. Can’t bluff to save my life.”

“And I’m no liar,” Mrs. Wright said, “so I’m afraid I will have to sit this one out as well.”

Despite these protests, and despite Penelope’s attempt at diverting us with the front-page controversies of the day—developments in the Lewinsky scandal and a recent push by our mayor to cut funding for the arts—ten minutes later Will had us bluffing our way around the table.

I went first. I told them I had never learned to ride a bicycle, which was the truth. I told them I had once found Robert De Niro’s wallet at Katz’s Delicatessen—also true—and that I had been arrested twice: the lie. There was unanimous consent that nobody
didn’t
know how to ride a bicycle—and so I managed to fool them. Will reminded us, looking sternly at me, that the game depended on everybody being
honest
about their lies. I assured him that my lie was the truth, and so we continued.

Will went next. He told us that his math teacher had once been a famous R & B singer, that he had lied about doing his homework yesterday, and that he had just last week seen the ghost of the dead boy who haunted the school’s stairwells.

Frank said, “Only two of those facts are verifiable.”

Mrs. Wright said, “Obviously it’s the third one. There are no such things as ghosts.”

Will protested vehemently at this and described the sighting in great detail. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“God forbid!” Mrs. Wright clutched her heart.

Penelope said, “You lied about doing your homework?”

Will hopped off his chair excitedly, padded off to his room, and a few moments later returned with a xeroxed flyer of a black man with a large afro crooning into a microphone, and a loose-leaf sheet—the homework in question.

Arthur said, “You lied about
lying
about doing your homework. So the lie’s the lie. Very clever!” He smiled approvingly at his son. “Okay, who’s next?”

Mrs. Wright went next, despite her earlier protests. A momentum had developed. She told everyone that she had never been to Europe, that a close childhood friend of hers had only recently learned she was adopted, and that her favorite color was blue.

After we had exhausted our guesses, Mrs. Wright revealed that all three of these things were in fact true.

“That’s not the game!” Will protested.

“I told you,” Mrs. Wright said, “I’m no liar.”

Penelope, during her turn, lied about a latent allergy to eggplant, and Frank—who seemed to have missed the point of the game—kept trying to fool us with little-known facts about Abraham Lincoln. Then it was Arthur’s turn.

He sat at the head of the table, a mischievous twist of a smile, in his element. He said, “I have thirty-four teeth. I have a vaccination scar on my left upper arm. I have a bruise on my right shin.”

Penelope said she knew Arthur’s vaccination scar intimately—it was on his
right
arm, not his left. Frank said that thirty-four teeth sounded like too many and checked this hunch against his own teeth, which totaled thirty-two. My money was on the bruise. When we were all done guessing, Arthur opened his mouth and confirmed a vowely thirty-two, just as Frank had said.

“But I know that scar,” Penelope said. Arthur rolled up his right sleeve to confirm that Penelope too was right. “That’s two lies,” she said. “You’re only allowed one.”

“Three lies, actually,” Arthur said, showing us his hairy, unbruised shins.

Will said to me, exasperated, “Didn’t I explain the rules clearly enough to these people?”

Arthur said, “For the sake of symmetry—Constance’s three truths to my three lies.”

Dessert was served: apple cobbler and Linzer cookies that the Wrights brought with them. “In my luggage,” Mrs. Wright said. “I’m amazed they survived.” Penelope brought out coffee and cut fruit.

Will took some coffee, refused the fruit. “I think I’m ready for bed,” he announced, and got up.

“Is it that time already?” Penelope said.

He hugged his grandparents, patted his mother and father on their heads.

Once Will had gone into his room and closed the door, Mrs. Wright said, “Is bedtime really a question, dear?”

“We’ve been letting him make his own decisions.”

I took another cookie. The center was pure Smucker’s, so sweet it made my fillings hurt. I ate around the edges and left the middle on my plate—I did this with all three of the cookies I took. Frank watched me do this.

“What sorts of things are you letting him decide about?”

“You can’t let him decide everything. He’s a child.”

“It’s an experiment. We haven’t set limits on what he can and can’t decide. If this is going to be a lesson about the responsibility of free will, what kind of example are we setting by telling him, essentially, there are times when you can’t think for yourself? Times when, arguably, it’s most important to use good judgment.”

“Penny, darling,” Frank said, “I love you but that’s absurd. If he decides he wants to take up smoking, obviously you’re not going to let him. So what’s the point?”

“Hold on,” Arthur said, “not so obvious. So what if he wants
to try out smoking? Okay, he’s a little young—but all the better, really. His lungs won’t be able to handle it, and he’ll find it repulsive. Lesson learned. Why would I deny him that experience?”

Something in both the Wrights’ demeanors changed. Mrs. Wright frowned and looked down at her hands. Frank opened his mouth for a moment and then closed it again. Their expressions registered something, a fear confirmed.

“I wouldn’t hand him one,” Arthur said, “and good luck finding a smoke shop that will sell to someone Will’s age.”

Penelope gave Arthur a sharp look. “Anyway, it’s illegal. We’re mostly talking about decisions within legal boundaries.”

“And your book?” Frank said, quietly.

“This hasn’t changed,” Penelope said. “He’s agreed to wait until he’s older.”

“
He’s
agreed,” Mrs. Wright said.

“Well, we can’t very well stop him, Mother. If he wants to read it, he will find a way to read it. The best we can do is help him see the wisdom in waiting.” This seemed to be a subject they’d talked about at length, judging from Penelope’s exasperated tone.