Christopher Hacker - The Morels

“I can’t do that. That’s unacceptable. It can’t be either-or.”

“You’re such an only child, Arthur.”

“I have half siblings!”

“You want it all, but you can’t have it all.”

“Okay,” he said. He took the manuscript from me, got up, and went inside.

Penelope crossed her eyes at me. “Do you see what I’m dealing with? He turns into a crazy person sometimes. I want to pull my hair out.”

Some people would say they avoid being around couples for precisely this kind of cross fire I was in, but I found it comforting. It made me feel closer to them, that they should have let me into their lives enough that I could see them argue. I took a mouthful of wine. “This is good,” I said.

Arthur came back empty-handed and sat down.

“So,” Penelope said quietly, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Doug in the morning and tell him to forget it.”

“Oh, Jesus! I didn’t realize I was talking to someone’s Catholic mother. Poor Arthur! Going to martyr his magnum opus for the sake of the family.”

“What do you want from me, Penelope?”

“I want you to be realistic. You’ve brought this thing into the world. You can’t undo that. Destroying it — the original file, all copies, whatever — doesn’t change this fact. You wrote it. Period. Deciding not to publish doesn’t change this. Even if you could take it back, even if nobody had read it, it wouldn’t change a thing. It exists. What’s required of you now is to be a man about it. Own it. It’s yours. To hell with me. To hell with Will. Is that what you want me to say?”

“You should read it. You should know what you’re getting into before you say a thing like that.”

“I don’t care what it’s about. Do you love me? Do you love Will? Does this story change that? No, so go forth and publish.”

Arthur looked at his watch. “I need to go pick him up.”

In the elevator I said, “So Penelope doesn’t know anything about this new book.”

“Not from me withholding it, believe me. She doesn’t want to know. She wants to go out on the day it’s released, walk into a bookstore, take the thing off the new-arrivals rack, and pay top dollar for the hardcover. Be the first in line, as it were. It was the same with the other one.”

Arthur explained that the release date of a book is a rather anticlimactic affair. There are launch parties and readings and three-way conference calls about first-week numbers, but this is somehow beside the point. With a movie premiere, the auteur has the satisfaction of sitting in a back row and seeing the effect his efforts have, connecting the dots of that triumvirate uppercase A— Artist, Art, Audience — the reaction is immediate, visceral. He can stand with the ushers as the moviegoers file out and hear just how enthralled or bored they were. A gallery opening, although more of a ceremony, achieves this same function, plugging together viewer and object for the benefit of its maker, so she can see her achievement realized. And likewise with the composer, the choreographer, the architect, the chef. The spaces they describe are traversable such that the artist can witness the traversing. Not so for the novelist. The book launch, though it pretends to accomplish this — invited guests, signed books stacked on a foldout table, a reading, and, at the end, applause — is a sham. Because books are different. They can’t be consumed in one sitting. The narrative arc takes many hours, days if you’re a slow reader, to travel, and it’s a journey that happens alone. This was the other difference about literary art. Theater, music, dance, dining, are all communal arts, the experience enhanced when shared with others. Reading is an entirely solitary activity. Even a subway car full of straphangers all reading the same bestseller is a hundred separate people alone with a book. So where does that leave the writer? He can’t watch over the shoulder of a stranger, gauging his reaction. And the author’s wife has likely already read a draft or two, or at the very least knows too much about the endeavor and its author to enjoy any pure reading experience.

But this is exactly what Penelope wanted to do: enjoy a pure encounter with Arthur’s book. To be told nothing about it, and on the day of its release buy a copy in the bookstore, spend all day reading it, and return through the apartment door so he could have the satisfaction of seeing her reaction — helping him to close that circuit. Audience. Artist. Art.

It occurs to me that Will’s absence from these get-togethers may seem like a writerly convenience. The truth is, though, the only memorable conversations I had with them, as a couple and individually, were those that happened in Will’s absence — indeed, were only possible through Will’s absence. There were any number of other occasions when I might encounter Will and his mother in the hall or the three of them in the elevator, and I would hear how they were off to see Star Wars: Episode One for the third time or were just coming back from Leandra Williams’s birthday party. Will would be the focus of these encounters — children, I’ve noticed, become the center of gravity in a room — talking rapidly about something hilarious Tyler said at the party or demonstrating the proper way to avoid the jaws of a T. rex. It wasn’t that Will was especially precocious or that what he was saying was especially interesting; it was just that he was the one with the most energy and with it he commanded the most attention. It was like this on the few occasions I knocked unannounced, to encounter the three of them preparing for a typical evening in: Will on the floor staring up at the television, Arthur at the table trying to concentrate on a stack of papers and Penelope picking up stray clothes and toys around the apartment and yelling at Will to turn it down! Even with Will occupied, it was hard to keep the thread of a conversation going, as our attention would gravitate to what he was watching. When Will wasn’t at the television, he wanted to be a part of our talk, and soon enough we would find ourselves learning about something hilarious Tyler had said about Mr. Boinkman today or the absolutely true story he’d heard about the vampire living in the school basement.

And it’s not that I don’t like kids. It’s that they make me nervous. They’re unpredictable. Their problem with personal space is no different than that of a crazy homeless person’s. One minute they’re saying you remind them of creepy Freddy Krueger and the next they’re trying to shimmy your torso for a piggyback ride. Other people don’t have this problem. Dave, for instance. He had a rapport with Will, which began, I suppose, that night on the roof. Will would show up randomly, without notice, to discuss movies or video games, and Dave would let him in, offer him a soda, as though he were Seinfeld and Will were Kramer.

“The kid’s got pretty sophisticated taste for an eleven-year-old. His favorite movie? Reservoir Dogs . He says Pulp Fiction is too stylized for his tastes. He used that word: ‘stylized.’ I asked him, ‘So your parents let you watch movies like that?’ I mean, this is pretty violent stuff. And he’s like, ‘I get to make my own decisions.’ He’s a funny kid.”

Will would appear while the three of us were working in the editing suite and plop right down on the couch next to us. Suriyaarachchi didn’t seem to mind. He liked Will too. Will would be in his costume, black suit and tie with a badge that read FBI. Orange gun in one hand and a large policeman’s flashlight in the other. “Trick or treat,” he said the first time I encountered him at the door.

“Who are you supposed to be?”

“Special Agent Fox Mulder, he said, shining the flashlight in my face.