Christopher Hacker - The Morels

“It’s not a book of poems, Mom.”

“Still, there’s a rawness about the material. As though he were still working through it. That guidance counselor. You’ve got to deal with this thing or it will eat you alive . Dire pronouncements. It’s like the author’s giving himself this advice.”

I adjusted the pillows on my bed, leaned back. “I liked it. It’s creepy, in the way Beckett is creepy. And I think he’s kind of fascinating. Totally intense.”

“What do Suri and Dave make of him?”

“Oil and water.”

“Ha. I’d suspect so. Art and Commerce, at opposite ends of the hall.”

“They’re not as crass as all that, Mom. Maybe Dave is, but Suri wants more. You read the first draft of his script.”

“How about your script?”

“I gave it to him. He promised to read it. Once we’re done with this project.” I watched my mother run her hand along the closed lid of the piano. “It’s got to seem like a terrible waste,” I said, “me giving up on music after all those years. The money you spent on lessons. Not to mention the four years of college tuition.”

“If this is about Mrs. Brody’s daughter, forget I mentioned it. And forget money. You’re looking for something. I get it, honey. I do. It’s not music, and that’s fine. You’ll find it. Whatever it is. Whatever end of the hall it’s on.”

The realtors wanted nothing to do with me. My income did not meet most landlords’ minimum requirements, and my credit history revealed a long and contentious battle with my college lenders to collect monthly payments.

“What am I going to do now?” I was at Viktoria’s, in her kitchen preparing a dinner omelet while her dog snuffled at my crotch.

“You could stay here with me and Sammy. We’d love that, wouldn’t we? Oh, wouldn’t we? He could be our little slave, cooking and cleaning for us while we went about our business.” It actually didn’t sound bad at all.

I took the potatoes out of the oven, which I’d tossed with a little oil and rosemary and set up on a high rack to broil under some aluminum foil. I divided these on the plates with the eggs, which I set down on her rickety Ikea table. Viktoria opened the gate and let the puppy roam. “I think he can be trusted by now.”

I shook some ketchup into a small dish and set it between us for dipping our potatoes. I demonstrated.

She clapped. “Yay, like normal people!” She forked a potato and blew on it. “You really should be proud of yourself,” she said after a few bites. “I usually don’t eat, but this smells so good. My parents would be shocked.” Despite this claim, she only made it through a quarter of the omelet. Most of her potatoes remained untouched. It occurs to me now that on top of her other troubles, she might have been anorexic as well. I had no experience with this, as all the women in my life were good eaters. She was very thin, her hips narrow, her breasts the buds of a prepubescent girl. Her stunning beauty was not a voluptuous one but rather the angular, androgynous beauty of a runway model. Thin limbs that extended out to her very fingertips. Clumsy, but the clumsy of a swan on dry land, of Annie Hall. It wasn’t her breasts you noticed or her rear end. It was the graceful hollows, the scoop of her clavicle, the dimpled backs of her knees.

Viktoria lit a cigarette and dropped the match onto her plate, where it sizzled. I cleared and upon returning was struck by the distinct stench of dog shit. Viktoria smelled it, too. We followed it to its source.

On the little entryway rug, Sammy had left a wet-looking pile.

“Oh you stupid fuck!” Viktoria screamed at Sammy, who sat shivering on the bed.

ARTHUR AND PENELOPE HAD BEENexpecting me. “Here,” Arthur said, handing me a stack of paper held together with a binder clip. “Tell me what to do with this.”

“Him? You’re giving it to him? What does he have to do with this?” Penelope was holding a glass of white wine. She said, “Put that down and let me get you something to drink. It’s good cheap Fumé.” She left the balcony and went into the kitchen.

Arthur said, “Don’t put it down. Don’t put it down. I’m asking him a question, Penelope. One that you don’t seem to have the nerve to answer.”

She returned with two glasses and took a sweating bottle from the dining room table and poured some wine into each. She handed one to me and one to Arthur. “I’m assuming you want.” Her right hand was swaddled in gauze. “Work related,” she said when she saw me looking. “I’ll live. Let’s go onto the porch.”

I was wearing a turtleneck and a wool blazer — a yearning toward the professorial poise in Arthur, I suppose. It was crisp out — pure, I want to say. When you’re above the exhaust pipes and manholes and dry-cleaner steam, just breathing the air, New York City can smell as clean as a lungful from a ski lift in Vale. It’s a fairly short period, though, a week or two at most, after the garbagy musk of summer and before the burnt chestnut chill of winter.

Arthur brought out three dining room chairs, and we sat. I set the stack of pages on my lap. It was maybe three inches thick. The center of the top page read The Morels: A Novel .

“Is this your new book?”

“He wants me to read it.”

“And why don’t you?”

“I will. But not like this. Art thinks I won’t approve and — no way. I don’t want any part of that. You wrote what you wrote. I’m not going to be your conscience or your censor. Do that for yourself. And you know what? Fuck you. For trying to make me play that role. I don’t want to play that role. Anyway, what am I supposed to say? I read it, I don’t like it, I tell you, Art, don’t publish this. Burn it .”

“I’d burn it without a second thought.”

“But what about me? I’d be nothing but second thoughts. You’re saddling me with this burden? That’s fair. And like I would ever say such a thing. You know this. You know I would never tell you to do that, so what are you really doing here? You’re forcing my hand. It’s a bluff. You don’t want me to tell you what I really think. You want me to tell you to go ahead, and you know I’ll tell you to go ahead because what kind of supportive wife would tell her writer husband to burn his manuscript? It’s a free pass. You know how I know? Coming to me now. It’s sold, your agent has seen it, he’s gotten a publisher to agree to buy it — this thing is already out of your hands — why not come to me when you were still working on it? When you could have done something about it?”

I thumbed though the pages. On first glance, it appeared to be a string of e-mails. Three hundred and sixty-two pages of e-mails.

“But you don’t understand. That’s not it at all. I’m asking you for help. I don’t know what I’m doing. You give me way too much credit. I’m not in control over what I write. This isn’t some piece for a travel magazine or some restaurant review. It’s not a mystery, it’s not a romance, or what have you. This is — excuse the pretentiousness of saying it — literature. I’m looking for good, for true, for dangerous. This is my mandate, my only mandate. There is no formula. It’s a direction, the vaguest sort of destination, a kind of compass that, if I know how to use it, will show me the way. And here is this thing I found, and I know it’s all these things, but I also know it will hurt you and Will.”

“Art. They’re words. It’s a novel, yes?”

“Technically, yes.”

“There is no technically. It is or it isn’t.”

“I guess that will be the question, won’t it?”

“Look. You can’t please everybody. You can’t. You make sacrifices. You think this is any different than what a doctor goes through? A top surgeon? The procedure develops complications, and he has to miss his son’s graduation. Or I don’t know, at least that’s the way it goes on television, but it sounds about right. These are the trade-offs. This is what happens to a family man with a career. You’re not special. You just have to accept that your wife and son may never forgive you.”