Christopher Hacker - The Morels

“Everybody has to learn to be part of society,” Mrs. Wright said, “or they end up in the nuthouse or in jail.”

“Or an artist,” Arthur said. “Picasso spent his whole life trying to recapture the free spirit of his five-year-old self before he’d learned to paint.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! The free spirit is a myth. Even the artist has his place in society.”

“The artist who works for society isn’t an artist; he’s a propagandist. A real artist is an outsider. If he has any hope of making real art, he needs to remain that way.”

“You are a father and a husband,” Mrs. Wright said. “Where does that fit into the model of the real artist? And what’s so bad about being useful? The propagandist is a craftsman. He serves a valuable purpose. We need slogan makers as much as we need slogan busters.”

“There will always be someone to make slogans. Everywhere we turn, we’re being sold something, via slogan. And dissent is only heard when it’s made palatable by actors and rock stars. Real dissent? Real dissent is marginalized.”

“And what are you protesting exactly? The rights of pedophiles?”

“Lower your voice, Dad.”

“I have no message.”

“Arthur, you don’t have to explain yourself. He doesn’t have to justify what he writes to anybody.”

“Oh, come off it, Arthur’s employed by the university. Art is a mill, just like any other. You’ve got a market, a demographic. Just because it’s smaller doesn’t mean it’s more legitimate.”

“For God’s sake, Arthur!” Mrs. Wright said suddenly.

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

“Why did you have to go and—? What kind of smug, self-indulgent — I’m sorry, Penny. I can’t pretend anymore. It’s disgusting, what he wrote. Where is the self-respect? The decency?”

More silence. My instinct, of course, always to smooth things over. A joke, a non sequitur, anything to lighten the mood, anything to right this train that had suddenly gone off the rails. I could think of nothing.

Arthur said, “What good are those traits? Will they make me a better writer?”

“You have disgraced your family. You are aware of that, aren’t you? What you have done is disgraceful. Do you have any idea what Frank has to put up with when he goes to the—”

“Constance, don’t.”

“He should know. He should know how it affects us. We live in a small community. You have the luxury of living in an anonymous place. Nobody cares what you do here. But fine — forget about us. What about your wife? What about your son? How could you do this to them? Explain it to me so that I can understand.”

It’s the last scene in the book.

Arthur is taking a bath with Will. Will is eight. They sit facing sled fashion in the tub, Arthur in front, Will behind. Will plays with his Hot Wheels, using Arthur’s hairy back as an island. Will asks for the shampoo, with which he sudses Arthur’s back. He whips up some clouds on the bathwater. It’s a recurring setting — bath time in this bathtub — which makes these final pages feel like a culminating moment.

Will announces that he is done, and they stand and shower off the suds. Shower spray at Arthur’s back, the bathwater drains at their ankles, toy cars floating and sunken underfoot.

Quite out of the blue, Will reaches for Arthur’s penis. He caresses it. Arthur flinches, but does not pull away.

It’s soft, Will says.

Yes, Arthur says.

Mine is small.

You’ll grow up and it will be just like mine, Arthur says.

It looks like a mushroom.

It does, kind of, doesn’t it?

Will lets go of Arthur’s penis and touches his own, a newborn gerbil of a thing.

The prose is vivid here, in stark contrast to the rest of the book. It is the only scene described in this much detail, the only full conversation that takes place between two people. The rest of the book is just thoughts, interiors. It comes on almost like awakening from a dream.

Is it whack that my penis grows when I touch it? Will asks. Lamar says it’s whack that my penis grows. I told him that it’s perfectly normal. It is perfectly normal, right?

It’s perfectly normal.

Everybody’s penis does this. That’s what I said. Even yours, right? That’s right.

And when you make it grow on purpose it’s called whacking off .

As Will is talking, he is fingering his own penis and walnut scrotum, and when he takes his hand away, his small hard-on is as stiff as a pencil shaft.

It feels good when I touch it, Will says.

Yes, Arthur says.

The air fills with Will’s boy breaths and Arthur’s own thumping heartbeat. The moment becomes strangely charged. In the way that an enticing smell can make someone aware suddenly that he is ravenous, this moment stirs in Arthur an appetite that has lain dormant until this very moment. Arthur becomes aware that his hand has been mirroring Will’s at his own penis. He looks down at it, the speckled mushroom cap of the head poking through his fist. Arthur lets go and it stands out stiff, quivering. He is aware of himself as a father, of Will as his son, but they feel like arbitrary designations, suddenly, or as Arthur puts it in the text, he loses the moral relevance of their roles for a moment.

There is only arousal.

He feels the bulge of ejaculate, wanting release, and when Will reaches out and touches the underseam of Arthur’s penis, a single soft stroke, it comes — an initial startling shot of sperm that hits Will in the face.

The rest pulses out into the now-empty tub.

MY FACE HAD BECOME HOTand my heart hammered in my chest. I felt like I should excuse myself from this moment but feared that, if I did, Mrs. Wright would cast the spotlight of her fury on me, that I’d be called on to defend Arthur, to explain his actions. And at this moment, I couldn’t. Arthur, on the other hand, seemed relatively calm. I was reminded of his easy demeanor at the Concerto Concert, just moments before he pulled down his pants.

The refrigerator shuddered, cycled off. In the new silence I sensed Will behind the closed door of his room, listening.

“I was writing out a deep-seated fear I had.” Arthur looked down at his plate. His sleeve was still rolled up, hairy arm bared. “By writing about it, I was hoping to dispel it.”

Frank said, “You’re afraid that you might molest Will?”

“Dad,” Penelope said, “it’s a work of fiction .”

“It’s got his name, your son’s — our grandson’s —name. Don’t tell me about fiction. Your husband’s telling me he’s worried about molesting your son. Doesn’t that alarm you?”

“No,” Arthur said. “What I mean to say is — okay, take this knife.” He reached across the table to the platter and picked up the carving knife. Everyone flinched. At his empty plate, he began slicing imaginary vegetables. “You’re going about the ordinary business of making dinner. You’re chopping and you’re cutting — and the knife slips, almost slitting open your thumb. But it doesn’t slit open your thumb. So you continue about the business of slicing and dicing, dicing and slicing, and yet now you’re thinking about your thumb, slit open by that knife. It’s an image, suddenly, that you can’t shake — it’s visceral, gory — it makes your gums ache, makes your knees weaken with its bloodred vividness. You try thinking of something else, you turn on the radio, but that image persists, still in your mind as you continue to chop and chop and chop. At times like these, when your brain is stuck like this, the only way to get that image out of your mind is to touch that knife to your thumb”—and here Arthur touched the carving knife to his thumb—“lightly, so that it doesn’t draw blood, because after all you don’t want to cut yourself, but just firmly enough to satisfy whatever compulsive itch your brain can’t seem to scratch. And once you do, once you’ve pantomimed that act of cutting yourself, the image vanishes. Do you see?”