The Morels (29 page)

I’d rather live with them knowing than live with this lie buried inside me. Look, I’m on my way into the heart of total liberation, man. I don’t want to meet Andy Warhol with this thing on my—

Fuck Andy Warhol! Will you get real for a minute? This is my life, okay? It would be my life you’d destroy.

There is another long pause, after which Cynthia says, You’re the one who needs to be real. Call me back when you’re ready to do that. She hangs up.

He sets the phone back gently in its cradle. When he returns to the dining room, everyone has gone. Dolores stands in the kitchen sudsing the pots in the sink. Benji is shuttling dirty dishes to her side from the dining room table. He looks like he is going to cry.

Dolores says, I’m trying here. You see that I’m trying, don’t you?

I see that you’re trying.

And I’m willing to try harder, as hard as I can to bring us back together. But I can’t do this alone. You have to want this, too. Do you want it, too?

Look, he says, babe. He is about to say something, some autopilot reassurance to end this discussion—nonsense that he doesn’t even believe—but stops himself. He looks at his wife, who has turned to face him.

They have known each other for so long—since they were kids, almost Sarah’s age now. They are kids no longer. She looks so old, so tired and sad. Maybe it’s the booze—her eyes are droopy, her hair matted to her forehead—she has taken off the sombrero, but it’s left a thin red line across her forehead. Her face has become so wrinkled—under her eyes, around the corners of her mouth. When had that happened? She isn’t old, yet she has the face already of the old woman she will become before long. She has always insisted on a full face of makeup—it’s something his mother has been warning her about for years, whenever she visited.
All that
makeup, dear. It’ll make you old before your time. You’re young. A little love is all you need to make those cheeks rosy. A kiss from that fine man—that’s all you need to get color in those lips
. It seems his mother was right—the products are taking their toll on her. Her hands hang at her sides, dripping suds.

A year ago—a month ago!—he would have welcomed this moment, would have rejoiced in it, would have gladly taken his wife into his arms, kissed her, and said whatever he had to say.

She says, I’m not stupid. And I’m not deaf. I don’t want any admissions, any explanations either. Not interested. Keep it between yourself and whoever. I’m only interested in hearing if this is something you want, something you want to work.

It is, he says. I do want this to work. Which is true enough. But it won’t, which he knows, too.

Dolores looks so relieved at hearing him say it, and so on the verge of collapse, that he has no choice but to take her into his arms.

He lies awake the entire night. He watches day brighten the window, hears the birds begin their morning noises. He had his opening. He could have said,
No—it’s over
. He could have told her the truth. But to do so would have been to end the marriage, end their lives—the lives of the four of them—as they all know them. Harder than it seems, to utter the word
no
. To tell the truth.

And what is he to do about Cynthia? She is threatening to end his marriage, this life as he knows it, even if he can’t do it himself. He finds himself plotting her murder, something that, when he thinks about it, is actually easier than getting rid of the fetus. He would have to convince her to let him perform the procedure. Have her sneak out in the middle of the night to his office. He would put her under a general anesthetic and then give her a second, lethal, injection. He wouldn’t have to go as far as North Carolina for all this either. Drive out to Newark Bay to dispose of the body. But where would that get him? He’d be without Cynthia. So instead he plots his wife’s murder, which then brings him around to the easiest solution of all: suicide.

“All of which he tells me about the next time we’re alone! The man was not well. It was clear he hadn’t slept in days. He hadn’t called me back. The thing about him turning himself in, I don’t know that I was totally serious about it. I mean, what did I want? I didn’t know that either. Lying, sneaking. That was all I was opposed to. I hate secrets. They make me ill. I was sure he’d call me back later that night, try to convince me of some plan or other. But he didn’t call. A week I didn’t hear from him. I was getting concerned. I thought maybe he’d actually done it, gone to the police, because I didn’t see him around. Then I thought maybe the lab results came back, and the mouse was still alive! Maybe I wasn’t pregnant after all.

“Sarah had been keeping her distance, but I still spent time at the house, out of habit, I suppose. I should have had it out with her. Well, we would have it out soon enough. Instead, we said awful things about other people who thought they were our friends. I think it made Sarah feel better about hating me, and it made me feel better about not opening up about this whole affair with her father.

“We heard the car in the driveway, and then he was in the room with us. ‘Out,’ he said to Sarah, and she obeyed. He closed the door. He told me he’d been contemplating murder, he’d been contemplating suicide.”

He tells her these are not good options. But neither is going to the police. Has she really thought this through? (She hasn’t.) Has she considered that it will involve a trial, in which she will have to testify? (She hasn’t, no.) That it could drag on for months? Longer, with appeals? That she won’t be free to go to New York to become a Superstar until this is all over? He won’t give in, he tells her. It’ll be his word against hers. What evidence does she have, besides her word? He will fight it every step of the way. And whom will people believe? He is a respected member of the community, the friendly neighborhood dentist—and what is she? A promiscuous young girl who dresses like a hooker. It will be months before she can get the abortion—if she somehow manages to win, and by then
it will be too late. The rape clause pertains only to first-trimester abortions. She will be forced to keep the baby and now be center stage in a messy trial. She will be famous—people will talk—but is this how she wants to spend her fifteen minutes?

No, she says meekly.

He feels sick. This is not how he meant for this to go. He botched a routine filling that morning, badly, and, after canceling the rest of his appointments for the day, had been driving around aimlessly. He pulled into the driveway expecting to throw himself on her mercy, to beg her not to make him turn himself in. He was on the verge of tears when he burst into Sarah’s room. He watches himself talk. He hardly knows the man who is saying these words, the man who is standing over this poor girl and browbeating her half to death.

So what do we do, she says.

He doesn’t know. He has to think. He will call her later.

When he leaves, Sarah returns, “And we finally had the fight that had been brewing for weeks. By the end of it, we were no longer friends, at least as far as Sarah was concerned. She called Lou Reed a fag and snapped my Velvet Underground album in half. She kicked me out of her house before I had developed a full-enough head of steam to storm out on my own. I went across the street, back home, slammed the door, stomped upstairs, and proceeded to trash my room.

“If I wasn’t quite ready to call this town quits, after that afternoon I certainly was. There was nothing left for me here.”

“What about your parents?”

“You mean my mother and her string of boyfriends? I would have moved out of her house at the age of twelve if I had the means—or knew where my father had run off to.

“I packed a duffel. If I hadn’t gotten the call from Doc that night, I would have left on my own. He asked me how long it might take me to be ready to leave and not come back. I said, ‘I’m already packed.’ He said to meet him out front at midnight.

“I left out the front door. I got into Doc’s car, which was idling
in his driveway with the lights off. Anybody could have seen us leave, but I didn’t see any lights come on—in either of our houses—as he pulled away, and I watched out the back window. Where were we going?”

Delaware, he says.

What’s in Delaware, I ask.

A bus to New York.

“Like James Bond, this guy! His plan was to ditch the car outside of Wilmington. And once at the bus station, pay some wino to buy us two tickets to the city. Why all the secrecy?”

“People didn’t need to know our whereabouts.”

“I said, ‘I can’t get an abortion in New York,’ and he said, ‘You’re not getting an abortion. You’re keeping this baby.’ ”

It’s the first time he has referred to the thing growing inside of Cynthia as a “baby.” And doing so is like casting a spell. They both can feel it. After he utters the word, it’s no longer something to be gotten rid of, to be dealt with. It’s a life—to make room for, to figure out.

Okay, Cynthia says. But you’re not leaving your wife for me. That’s not what this is—you’re not ending one family just to start another. I’m not going to be your wife. And this is not going to be your son.

Fine, he says. But I’m coming with you, wherever you go.

Fine, she says. You can be a Superstar, too.

T
HEY ARRIVE AT PORT AUTHORITY
a little after six in the morning on Tuesday, May 31. They find a motel room on Forty-Ninth Street and Tenth Avenue. The rates are designed for use by the hour, more time than most customers seem to require, from all the coming and going. They sleep in a windowless room that smells like a urinal and bad breath. The bed is narrow and surprisingly clean for what this place is—the sheets bleach white and fresh. They sleep next to each other but do not touch.

When they wake, it’s night. The place has suddenly become very active.

They go out to a nearby diner. We need a plan, he says, and outlines his idea for how to proceed. The day before they left, he withdrew half the family savings—he slides the cashier’s check across the counter to her now. And I have enough cash in my wallet for us to get by for a couple of weeks without making use of this, he says.

Will he start up a practice here in the city?

No, he is through with that life. It’s time for something new. He wants to make something, to use his hands, tools on a large scale—use picks and drills that aren’t all designed to fit in a person’s mouth. He has heard of a man who went into business for himself restoring rundown properties and then reselling them at
enormous profit. He can buy a place with the money, and they can live in it while he fixes it up—then they could sell it, which would net them enough for another place and enough left over to live on while they fix the new one up. And so on. It would be a self-sustaining way of life. There is something graceful about its logic—from the micro to the macro—restoring cavities in the face of a block. He’ll learn as he goes. He already knows quite a bit from being a homeowner—it’s surprising what you pick up intuitively about structural engineering from managing your own home repairs. And when the baby is born, he—or she—will have a roof over his head. Cynthia meanwhile can do whatever she wants—sing, dance, act—anything her little heart desires.

See, she says, I knew this is what you would do.

Do what?

You’re making a family. You are not my husband. And you are not going to be a father.

Honey, in seven months I am, like it or not. Fine. So let’s hear your plan.

You do what you want. My plan is simple and hasn’t changed since tenth grade.

Do you even know where this place is? (She doesn’t.)

And what do you imagine will happen once you get there? He waves his fairy magic wand—presto, you’re a superstar! You still don’t have a place to live. (She’ll figure something out.)

You’re still going to need to eat. (She’ll manage.)

They walk along Forty-Second Street, among a rough crowd of transients and prostitutes. They lug their belongings with them because they don’t trust them in the motel. Cynthia insists on stopping every vagrant with a cup of change to ask where she can find Andy Warhol’s factory. She has heard somewhere that Ultra Violet and Candy Darling—and most of the other superstars—were, at the time of their discovery, bohemian eccentrics with
no fixed address
.

Why don’t you just look it up in a phone book?

Don’t be stupid—he’s not going to put his phone number and
address out there for just any person to see. The place is
underground
, man! (In fact, she has no idea whether or not it would be listed in the phone book. Thinking about it now, she imagines that it probably was.)

One man Cynthia asks leads them to a place several blocks away. The Factory? Sure, I know it, he says. But it turns out to be a jazz club called the Factory. Inside, it reeks of sweat and furniture polish. The three of them slide into a booth and listen—Cynthia enthralled, Doc skeptical—to the man’s life story over the cacophonous quintet of musicians onstage.

When the man gets up to go to the bathroom, Doc says, He’s just milking us for free whiskey.

Cynthia looks at him blankly. So? He’s broke. What else is he going to do?

They stay until the place closes at two and then wander, drunk, back to their motel, which, when they arrive, is being raided by the police. An officer at the entry tells them to move along, and they happily comply.

They book a room at the motel next door, which isn’t being raided. (“A stupid, stupid thing to do,” Doc said. “It was just dumb luck the cops didn’t—when they were done with the one place—move on and raid this place, too. I would have been toast. Cynthia would have gotten what she asked for—cops find a forty-year-old man and a fifteen-year-old girl in a motel room? They would have driven Cynthia back and locked me up and thrown away the key.”)

This place isn’t as well maintained. The carpet is stained; the sheets are not clean; a haze of cigarette smoke hangs in the air from the previous occupant, who seems to have vacated only minutes before their arrival—the cigarette butt stubbed out on the windowsill is still damp with saliva.