Christopher Hacker - The Morels

“You married a lunatic,” Frank said. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“Art has nothing to apologize for. It’s literature; it’s not real life. You’re all confusing the two.”

“Your mother’s not asking for an apology, Penny. She’s asking him to help her understand. But once again he offers this psychobabble. It’s meaningless. Arthur, don’t you see? We need to hear from you that this did not happen .”

“Of course it didn’t happen,” Arthur said, almost grudgingly, as though he were giving something away. “It’s fiction.”

“Then tell us why— why this was not just some pointless stunt.”

“They’re just words. Come on, Frank. I’m still me. Nothing’s changed.”

“I wish that were true, son. But saying something doesn’t make it so.” He stood, stared down at his plate. “I’ve got to get out of here. I need to think.” He grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and strode to the front door.

“Frank, you’ll freeze,” Mrs. Wright said.

As soon as Frank was gone, Will opened the door of his room. He stood there in his powder-blue pajamas and yelled, “Stop fighting about me! I didn’t do anything wrong!” He was crying. He held his pillow clenched in his fists as though he might smother any one of us seated at the table.

“Honey,” Mrs. Wright said, but Will had already retreated and slammed the door.

I looked at Penelope, who was looking down at her plate. Arthur was observing his mother-in-law steadily. She was shaking her head, looking back.

Arthur turned to me and said, “I think I might have a cigarette.”

I patted myself down and pulled a pack from my back pocket. “Two left.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, once we were out on the patio.

“I don’t. I tried once and found it disgusting. But the moment seems to require it, don’t you think?” I gave him one and lit it, watching as he sucked and coughed doggedly. He stepped out past the overhang and tilted his face to the misting rain. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Sorry to get you involved in the drama.”

“Looks like Penelope was right. You really did need an ally.”

“Don’t get them wrong about art. They like art. They’re genuinely curious people. To browse their bookcases is to know this about them. Edith Wharton, Hemingway, Michener, Mailer. Writers who tell us the story of ourselves as Americans. Who entertain and enrich our understanding of the world. They are avid readers of American literature. House on Mango Street, Interpreter of Maladies . Asian writers, gay writers, black writers. They allow in the great democratic bounty. They’re not snobs either. Tom Wolfe and detective fiction — Hammett and Chandler.” Their bookcase, Arthur said, was evidence of the usefulness of art, each book a powerful statement in support of its usefulness and, when it came down to it, damn fine reads, each and every one. If there were any evidence required to prove society’s enrichment through literature, one had only to look at the books in the Wrights’ bookcase. They were living proof of the relevance and power and usefulness of literature.

“So? What’s the problem?”

“What’s not there,” Arthur said. “The gaps in their collection speak for themselves.” There was Steinbeck but no Stein. Bellow but no Burrows. No Faulkner, no Pynchon. None of the great American experimenters. Gass or Gaddis, Barth or Barthelme. And with the exception of a single hardbound volume of the complete Frost, no poetry. “What good are they? They are books that tell difficult stories — if they tell stories at all! — that are difficult to follow and that don’t necessarily make you feel better for having read them. The Wrights’ belief about the usefulness of literature makes no room for these books. They are not useful books. They do not confirm our understanding of ourselves and in fact often leave us more confused about ourselves than we were to begin with. They are voices from the margins that are better left to the margins. Society would not be worse off without them.”

“So it’s the limits of their taste that prevent them from liking your book.”

Arthur smiled.

This talk pissed me off. At the time, I didn’t know why, but later when replaying the conversation in my head, I imagined myself shaking Arthur, just taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. Cut the intellectual bullshit! Your family’s in real trouble here! I said, “So what are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“They’re pretty upset.”

“Should I apologize?”

“What would be the harm in it? Even if you don’t see eye to eye, they’re important people in Will’s life, in Penelope’s life.”

“But I’m not sorry.”

“Does it matter? Convince them you are. For the sake of peace.”

“I can’t undo what I wrote, and apologizing won’t make it disappear. An apology is an admission I’ve done something wrong. It would only further justify their anger.”

“You don’t think you’ve done something wrong?”

“The book is good.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t see how anything else matters. We don’t read Hemingway any differently because he was a bully and an absentee father. Do we? The author is human and has human failings and eventually dies. He is irrelevant. Mortal. In the end the book is judged on its own merits. It is judged not against the author but against other books. The author is the husk, out of which the book sprouts.”

“This is an evasion, and you know it. I’m not talking about your book.”

“You think this is some quarter-life crisis.”

“I don’t know what to think, Arthur. Why do you need to make things so complicated? All these years have passed and, as far as I can tell, you haven’t changed a bit. Still squandering your good fortune. Still dumping on the people who champion you. Of all the subjects in the world available to write about, Arthur. Why would anybody choose to fictionalize the incest of his own prepubescent son? It’s self-destructive and, as a statement, opaque. What’s the point? I’m going to have to agree with your in-laws on this one — I get the fear part, voicing a fear in order to dispel it? Fine, so you see a therapist, or you write it down in your supersecret journal. And then burn that journal. You don’t publish it! I don’t understand it, Arthur. I mean, is Frank right? Are you mentally ill? Or is there something you’re not saying, some key to understanding all this?”

“He’s back,” Arthur said. Through the window we watched him as he was greeted by Mrs. Wright at the front door. He paced the room, saying something that only came to us out here as a deep humming. Penelope appeared from Will’s bedroom, and Frank stopped pacing and beckoned the two women to the dining room table. The ember of Arthur’s cigarette reflected on Frank’s chest.

“What’s going on?” I said. We watched through the sliding glass door as Frank unsheathed a stack of papers from the copy-shop bag he’d been holding. Frank looked up, and his eyes met Arthur’s.

“The other shoe,” Arthur said.

I suppose another explanation is required here. Why, after reading Arthur’s book, wouldn’t I have just walked away? Not only not walk away, but accept an invitation to a holiday dinner with his in-laws? And then, after that dinner, continue to subject myself to the family strife? (For to spend time with them — to be in the same room with them — was to know just how deeply in trouble they were.)

Here, I suppose, I will have to confess: I was in love with Penelope Morel.

It started the day after, Friday. On my way home after a busy matinee shift, I found myself passing Balthazar’s. I loitered by the bakery’s menu out front. I was about to leave when Penelope appeared from the back and, recognizing me, waved.