The Morels (39 page)

Benji has a room ready, as well as ground rules and a plan of action. You have to go to school, he tells Arthur. That’s rule one. As long as you’re staying with me, you will be a full-time student.
Now, where you go is up to you. Joel Braverman High is one option. It’s a short walk, and from the way my father talks, you won’t have to do much to distinguish yourself as a top student. But there are obvious drawbacks, namely getting the shit beat out of you on a daily basis. The other option—he’s been holding two textbook-shaped tomes and now he hands them to Arthur. Prepare for a GED and the SAT and send you to college. From the way my father talks, you wouldn’t have to work too hard to make this happen either. Advantages, obvious: you don’t get the shit beat out of you. Drawbacks, I’m not sure what kind of paperwork maneuvers we’ll have to do to make this happen.

As it turns out, however, option 2 is unmaneuverable, which leaves option 1 as his only choice. And despite the certainty with which Benji described his fate, Arthur manages in his year at the school to avoid coming to any violence whatsoever. He has two things going for him: entering as a senior offers him some status. Also, he is tall, towering over most students and many of the teachers. He attends every one of his classes with relish. He is perplexed by those who would choose to stay in the stairwells and bathrooms instead. Why would anyone want to miss out on this? It’s all so fascinating! He keeps to himself and comes home a roundabout way to avoid running into the few people who might want to do him violence, spending the waning afternoon in his room reading, typing out his assignments on Benji’s IBM Selectric.

In September of 1986, he enrolls in Queens College, and two and a half years later, as the fall semester comes to a close, he has earned enough credits to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in humanities. It was here, in his final semester, commuting from class one rainy morning, that he met a lovely young woman with a snake tattoo down the left side of her arm.

“Even now,” Arthur said, “after everything, I’d still board that bus. Take that seat, introduce myself.”

In writing
The Morels
, Arthur set out to research the mysteries of his own heart. Its central question: Did he truly love his wife
and son? His conclusion, which he was only able to draw once the book had done its work in the world, was yes! He did love Penelope and Will, more than he could ever have imagined.

“You’re just saying that because they’re lost to you,” I said.

“Does that invalidate my conclusion? Isn’t this sometimes how we learn what we feel about things? From the day I left this place, I have never once missed it or anyone in it. I feel no connection with my mother or her common-law husband.”

“Your father,” I said.

“If you wish. He has never been that to me.”

Cynthia and Doc stare straight ahead into the camera as Arthur speaks. Their faces register no particular reaction to what seem to me to be deeply cutting words.

“What about Annan,” I said. “The one from Afghanistan. The violinist.”

“Annan was different. I kept in touch with him after he left, after I left.”

“So he was more like a father to you.”

“He was a mentor.”

“And when did he leave?”

Arthur thought about it for a moment and then, sensing where I was headed with my questions, said, “You’re oversimplifying.”

“It was spring of ’85. Let me guess, a week before the concert? Two weeks?”

“About that, yes.”

“And you were angry.”

“Hell, yes I was angry! These two had driven everything that was good from my life. They didn’t know what they had there in that house, even when they lost it. Nothing had changed as far as they could tell. They were perfectly happy to be pounding away in those idiotic drum circles. Of course, they were high all the time, so what did they care?”

“And so you thought you’d, what—teach them a lesson? Get them in trouble? What were you trying to purge?”

“I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I’m looking for the truth.”

“The truth is more complicated.”

“Well, then explain it to me.”

But that was all he would say.

L
AST FOOTAGE OF THE NIGHT
. I wasn’t aware Suriyaarachchi had been filming until he played it back the next day. We are squatting in the basement, charging batteries, labeling cassettes. Dave says, “Aren’t you a little creeped out by all this? Basically, we’re palling around with a child molester.”

I say, “You think he’s guilty?”

Dave says, “His son claims he’s guilty. His wife thinks he’s guilty. The New York Department of Justice is betting that twelve jurors will think he’s guilty. Who am I to disagree? What do you think?”

I say, “He’s innocent.” Then, voicing a fear that has been brewing, one that Dave has just encouraged, I say, “Well, he’s convinced he’s innocent.”

Dave says, “He’s also a little nuts, isn’t he?”

We asked Cynthia the next day. “Do you think he’s guilty?”

She said, “I know men. I can look into a man’s eyes and see what he wants, what he desires. And what he doesn’t desire. Men are transparent that way. I look into Arthur’s eyes and see he just doesn’t have it in him.”

We asked Doc and he said, “What if he did? I don’t see the big deal here. Fathers jack off. Sons jack off. They jack off together, and everybody wants to make a federal case about it. And to the
follow-up question that I know is coming—no. I never did, with Arthur. We took baths together occasionally. Did I ever get a hard-on? I mean, little boys aren’t my thing, but if you’re asking if I ever had a hard-on in this situation, my answer would have to be, I always had a hard-on, so maybe. But not for Artie. I mean, come on!”

When Benji came over, we asked him. Brushing off his jacket and stamping the snow off the bottoms of his shoes, he said, “It’s the most natural fear in the world, when your wife’s pregnant, when you hear you’re going to be a father, when your mind gets down into the deep dark thousands of ways there are to fuck—to mess—things up. That was certainly the way with me. I’m not an obstetrician, I’m not a nanny. I’m not used to being around naked children. What will it be like spending part of your day touching, washing, powdering a little vagina, a little penis? There are people who are turned on by such things. Could I be one? Or okay, you’re fairly sure you’re not in that rarefied category of weirdo, but what about when your child gets older? At what age will that natural attraction, that natural appetite for youth, at what age will I begin to feel that kind of desire for my child? But then of course your child is born, and then you’re a father, and it’s the farthest thing from your mind! You can’t believe you even thought such a thing.”

I said, “But Arthur didn’t write this book before Will was born. He wrote it when Will was what, nine? Ten? So what’s the book about? Is it a what-if scenario? What if that natural fear you describe never left? What if that fear came to pass? Or did he really feel these things?”

Benji said, “I thought you were on my brother’s side.”

“I’m just trying to understand.”

“Understanding isn’t going to keep him out of prison. Now get that thing out of my face.”

“Benji!” Cynthia cried. “Here to save the day!”

He offered her a disdainful squint.

Doc took Benji’s hand. “Good boy,” he said. “How’s your mother?”

Benji was burly, fat even, the same height as Arthur. All the Morel men shared a similar hairiness. Although Benji was clean shaved, his cheeks were dark with bristles just below the surface. He was balding and kept his hair shorn in a crew-cut ring around his head. He wore a solid blue tie with a matching blue shirt. When he sat down and shed his jacket, he rolled his sleeves up to reveal his furry arms.

The news he brought was not good. A grand jury had chosen to indict. He had to represent himself as Arthur’s attorney to dig up what was he able to find.

“But you are my attorney,” Arthur said.

“I’m not a trial lawyer, Arthur. I can help you, but I can’t try this case for you. You would be in better hands with a public defender.”

“I’ll represent myself then.”

“That’s ludicrous. You’re not representing yourself. Do you want to go to prison?”

“A public defender’s going to want me to compromise, to plead to a lesser charge.”

“Says who? Have you spoken to one?”

“I’ve spent the past ten years of my life watching
Law & Order
twice a week. I know how these things go.”

“From what I’ve heard they have a pretty good case. Will’s statement to the investigating officers. A psychologist if they need one. I’ll file a motion to see the rest. They haven’t decided if they’ll put Will on the stand yet. The guy I talked to said they were considering his welfare, but my guess is that if they’re saying that, he’s not as solid as they’d like him to be. In which case they may enter your book into evidence and spin it as an indirect confession. Their expert will be able to make that sound plausible.”

“What about our expert?”

“You mean like a literary critic?”

“A what? No! How about someone who can prove that Will can’t possibly remember something that didn’t happen!”

“Oh.” Benji thought about this. “There’s that lady in England. She’s kind of a crusader. She’s helped overturn a number of these
cases where twenty-five years after the fact the victim will suddenly remember an abuse from childhood? She gets all kinds of death threats and hate mail. But her thing is mostly about debunking hypnosis, that the way the therapists ask questions ends up suggesting false memories in these quote ‘victims.’ It’s worth a phone call, but I’m not sure it can really help us here.”

Doc had put together a pot of frankfurter stew so that we could get him on tape making it. Benji accepted a teacup of the stuff and slurped and chewed it while he talked to Arthur. Doc said, “Packet of franks, can of sauerkraut, can of tomato paste, potatoes, and water. That’s it. A couple of bucks and you’ve got dinner for eight.”

“It’s very good actually,” Benji said, “thanks.”

Benji’s connection with the city administration (“law school buddy”) told him that Arthur’s case would be prioritized on the docket. Giuliani had taken a special interest in it, rumor went. That fall there had been a group show at the Brooklyn Museum with controversial pieces apparently funded by the NEA, photographs of a crucifix in a glass of urine, a collage of the Madonna constructed with bits of dried elephant dung. The mayor was further galled to learn that these reprehensible nobodies’ new notoriety, thanks to him, had caused their artwork to skyrocket in value. He was in no mood to hand out any other such gifts during his tenure. He was looking to take care of this quickly and quietly, before the city tabloids got wind of it.

“If this is true, you’re actually in a good position to plead,” Benji said. “But you don’t want to do that. Right.”

They parted ways at the open arch, agreeing to meet at the arraignment in two days. In the meantime, Benji would figure out what was involved in filing pretrial motions and file everything he could get away with.

They hugged.

For the rest of the afternoon I went around with Benji’s brusque admonishment in my head.
I thought you were on my brother’s side!
While Suriyaarachchi and Dave were helping Cynthia prepare dinner, I tiptoed down to the basement with the camera. Rewinding
to the spot from last night, I watched myself sneer,
Well, at least he thinks he’s innocent—
playing the moment over several times. What
did
I believe? Arthur had never struck me as a particularly sexual person—what mystified me as much as anything else was that he would be moved to any procreative urges at all. The idea he had gotten a woman pregnant took me by surprise at first, and some time to wrap my head around. Penelope’s talk of their young lives together—the abandon with which they would give themselves over in the bedroom—was like being told of a grandparent’s youthful exploits. Something that existed in an altogether different plane of reality—the distant past, another age. I had no trouble believing that passage was fiction. But then, I was just as mystified by why he would write it. There seemed no good explanation—the death of literature,
The Satanic Verses
, the French book on catharsis—all the intellectualizing in the world couldn’t get at the specificity of that hallucinatory scene. There were any number of taboo topics equally as shocking. So why this? Because, Will claimed, it was true. It seemed to offer the missing piece that made everything fit. But
fit
in this case meant
child molester
. And to see Arthur talk was to know he believed firmly in his innocence.
Well, at least he thinks he’s innocent
. I didn’t know what to believe. I let my finger linger for a while over the
RECORD
button before finally erasing all outward evidence of my doubts.

After Doc and Cynthia had gone to bed, we spent some time with Arthur’s old things. He knelt on the floor, sorting through a large cardboard box, arm in up to his elbow. “Something must have spilled on these,” he said, pulling out a stack of old photos. “They’re stuck together.” He gingerly peeled the top one off and set it on the ground in front of him. He did this with the next one, and the next, as though he were dealing out a game of solitaire. “It’s hard to know where to begin. They make this place sound like some kinky commune paradise out of a John Irving novel. But it wasn’t, certainly not for me, and I wish I could somehow dispel that myth. Okay, now here’s one.” He held it out to me. It was a
photograph of a young Cynthia passed out in a chair, the whites of her eyes showing, skirt hiked up to her lap to expose a thatch of pubic hair. It was forensic, the image of a cadaver. “My mother, ladies and gentlemen. Or here.” He handed me a blurry snapshot of a younger Doc holding a boy of about seven. Doc is laughing; the boy is wailing. “There was a thug that lived with us who for some reason disliked me tremendously. He would mete out all sorts of unkindnesses. He would claim the others in the house were jealous of my talent or would whisper in the ear of someone he was talking to and stare at me while he did it. He would tell me of something wonderful I just had to see; excited, I peered into the corner to discover a rat, disemboweled in the teeth of a trap, its body still moving. I suppose he wasn’t that different than a mean older brother. But one who had just returned from Vietnam, a little unstable, whose parents were never around to keep him in check. My father, if you want to call him that, tried to get me to laugh off his pranks, thought they would toughen me up. Here, I believe—you can just make it out in the background, that footlocker? I have just emerged from it after nine hours locked inside.”