Christopher Hacker - The Morels

A male teacher, who has been sitting on a bench, notices Penelope and saunters over. Hello, he says. You’re a parent, but I can’t remember whose.

Will Morel’s mom, she says.

That’s right, of course. Checking up on him?

Just making sure he’s safe.

I was coming out of Dave’s, done for the day, when I ran into Penelope ascending the subway’s stairs. She took me by the arm.

“What are you doing now? Let’s have coffee.”

She led me across the street into the Galaxy Diner and walked us toward the back. These were the last days of smoking in New York City, and there were a few reserved booths by the restrooms that were usually empty. She took a seat and asked me for a cigarette.

“I’m not the girlfriend type,” she said, lighting up. “Other women have girlfriends they complain to, go to for comfort. I have Art. And my parents. And I can’t talk to either of them about this. So who do I talk to?”

The waiter came with menus and a dishrag that he heaved in two swipes across our table, leaving behind a mildew stink. His borderline hostility brought my attention to the emptiness of the place. The cooks behind the counter were watching us as they sudsed down the griddle and mopped the floors. This was a lunch place, and lunch was over. I ordered a Coke. Penelope ordered a tuna melt. The waiter stiffened at this. “I’ll have to see if that’s still possible.”

“You do that.” She pulled on her cigarette, watching him go, then said, “Have you read it? Of course you haven’t, it came out this morning.” She put the book on the table. “Take it, I don’t want it. Shit. You need to read it, though, I’ve got to talk to someone.”

“Talk to me, now. What’s so wrong?”

She told me the story of her day — dropping Will off at school, buying the book, reading it in the park, then running back to the school to check on him — as if the solution to her dread were to be found here, in the minutiae of the day’s decisions. “I mean, the thing of it? It was exactly like I said. You were there. I called it a mile off. He set me up. That motherfucker set me up.” This word— motherfucker — it sounded in her cutesy voice as though she were invoking the name of a fairy-tale villain. “Now he can always say he gave me an out. But even if I had read it back then, I couldn’t have told him to destroy it. I wouldn’t have.”

“What’s so bad about it?” I turn the hardbound book over in my hands. The dust jacket showed a photograph of Barbie and Ken and Young Ken standing naked in a toy bathtub, genital areas blurred out.

“I don’t want to say. You’ll read it. You’ll find out, and you’ll probably like it — admire it for its unflinching whatever.”

“So you’re just mad that he wrote it.”

“Yes! And what am I going to tell my parents? Not to read it? They’ve been so happy Arthur’s finally made something of himself — they’ll be crushed. And furious.”

“That’s Arthur,” I said. “It’s not good unless he’s pissed someone off.”

“Ugh, I sound just like them. Listen to me. Falling for the same bait. My parents like art but have weak stomachs. They’re easily outraged. Mapplethorpe at the National Gallery, I tell them it’s supposed to provoke, but they don’t want to hear it.”

Penelope stubbed out her cigarette. “Ah, Christ. Art.”

“Whatever it is you don’t like about it,” I said, “remember, it’s just a story, words on a page. You said it yourself.”

“That’s just it, though. So much of it’s real. Our names, the locations, the situations. But I know. Even as I say it, I can hear how naïve it sounds. Of course it’s possible to have a book that uses the people in the author’s life as characters — and the author himself — and for every word of it to be made up. Right?”

Our order came, and Penelope went at her tuna melt hungrily with her hands, pizzalike, baring her teeth at it before each bite. My soda was flat, but I drank it in small nips through the straw.

“Art can’t know we’ve had this little chat.”

“Why not?”

“He needs to know that I support what he does a hundred percent. If he doubted it, that would be the end of his writing career.”

“You realize you’re describing a paradox.”

“I don’t want things to go back to the way they used to be. Before he was writing, he was miserable. When he thought he had to be the man of the house, he was such a sad sack. And my family was relentless. Holidays were an ordeal. ‘Still at the library?’ my mother would ask — half question, half accusation — knowing full well he was still at the library . The humiliation of having my brother offering Art career advice — a man who’s never worked an honest day in his life, who actually describes himself as an entrepreneur . My sister’s husband eventually joining in, Dad, too, and by the end of the evening, they’d all be at him with their advice . It was cruel. Oh, but they were being helpful . Their comments and suggestions were not veiled criticisms designed to point out Art’s ineptness, his lack of any practical skills. And what could Art do but thank them for their concern?

“Now he’s a star in their eyes. Oh, yes, my mother says, he’s a published novelist . She’s so funny. And I can’t say it wasn’t nice coming across Art’s writing for the first time. We’d been married some years, Will was six, maybe?”

To see all of Arthur’s hallmark qualities — fixating over odd moments, taking nothing for granted, coming at everyday objects like a tourist in his own life, his capacity to deconstruct even the simplest instructions into a paralyzing metaphysical dilemma — these qualities that made him a drag at cocktail parties and all but unemployable here on the page served him well, made for exquisitely rendered scenes, well-observed prose, good writing. It pleased her to be reminded of Arthur’s talents, to be surprised by him. Wasn’t it refreshing, after years of seeing everything Arthur wasn’t, of having pointed out to her everything Arthur could never be — and the kind of family she could never have — to be shown what her husband actually was?

“So, no. I don’t want to go back to an Art who doesn’t make art. I’d rather he offend my parents, offend me.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and tossed it onto her empty plate. In a flash the waiter swiped it and my empty cup and everything else on the table. The check had been waiting, stuck facedown on the damp counter, since the food had arrived. Penelope put down a twenty and got up.

The staff followed us out in their street clothes, and as soon as we were over the threshold, the shutter rattled down at our backs. I lit a cigarette, and Penelope had one more. We smoked, watching the big brass revolving door across the street trade one person for another, taking them in and letting them out in equal measure.

She said, “I feel a lot calmer now, thanks.”

I assured her that I’d done nothing.

“Well, you should continue to do nothing again. It will keep me sane through this. And bring your cigarettes.”

PENELOPE AND I MET SEVERALtimes over the next couple of weeks. She used the time to reminisce, determined to recover some more flattering image of herself and Arthur, of their life together. “I had a boyfriend when I met Art, but he was mostly a way of saying no to boys I wasn’t interested in — long distance, rarely saw each other, got a weekly call. When I told the guy that I was seeing someone else, he said, ‘What’s his name?’ ‘Art,’ I said. ‘Do you love him?’ ‘Yes,’ I said — and just admitting it felt like vertigo. Art was my secret. People thought he was an asshole, but that’s just because he doesn’t know what to say most of the time, especially when he gets nervous. People didn’t know him like I knew him, didn’t know his touch, never saw him at his tenderest or most vulnerable.”