Christopher Hacker - The Morels

WERE IT NOT FOR THEtwin poles of Thanksgiving and Christmas to guide me, I’d remember all this as having happened over several seasons. But it was days, not months, from the holiday blowout around the Morels’ dining room table to my time with Penelope on Balthazar’s outdoor bench — from Viktoria’s first relapse to her haunting messages on my answering machine. The weather was no help; wild swings had gusts of sleet blowing through in the morning and snowmelt streaming in the gutters, baking hot by the afternoon — a time-lapse development to match the overclocked developments in my own life.

It was the first week of December.

Here was another thing: Will no longer made me nervous. His maturity amazed me. Were all eleven-year-olds like this — like little men? He seemed fully formed, with thoughts and feelings very much his own. The way he furrowed his brows when worrying over his parents. The way he sighed and rolled his eyes when I failed to understand a point he was making. The way he said actually , the way he said by the way and maybe so and just between you and me . And yet he still had all the features of a little boy; he could fit his fist easily inside my hand. Still thrill at the rifle crack of an empty heel-stomped juice box and make kazoo sounds with his empty lunch-sized box of raisins. He would say, “Do you think they’ll get a divorce?” With eyes that said, Say no .

I told him that everything would be okay.

“It’s no big deal if they do. Twenty-one out of the thirty-three kids in my class have divorced parents. I asked them. That’s more than half. Statistically, it makes sense.”

“Both of your parents love you very much.”

“It would work out better for them if they did. They wouldn’t have to fight anymore. And they could marry other people. Most of the divorced kids in my class have four parents. I figure that’s twice the number of presents at Christmas.” I remember giving my uncle the same spiel when he tried having a heart-to-heart about my own parents’ divorce. He told me that it was okay to be angry, to be sad — but I gave away nothing. I told him that it was for the best, that they’d be happier, and that I was better off if they were happier. Two homes were better than one, I said, using the same equation Will used to solve this terrible unsolvable mess.

But divorce was not our usual topic. Mostly we tackled the more complicated problem of the Smoking Man and the Syndicate — the great mysteries Mulder and Scully struggled every week to unravel. Will orchestrated his life around that hour of television — abandoning all else at exactly nine every Friday evening for a front-and-center position on the couch, remote in hand. It was a needed retreat from the hardships and humiliations of being eleven. I’d forgotten how hard, how humiliating, until spending time around the boy. You could see it on his face after a full day at school. The puffiness around the eyes, the sweat-dried hair that clung to the sides of his face. They spoke of the punch to the stomach for no reason whatsoever. They spoke of the dark-eyed Maria Gutierrez who didn’t (not once!) look at him yesterday. They spoke of the stack of comics that disappeared from his backpack between lunch and recess, and the unsuccessful attempt — after a soccerball to the face — of not crying in front of his entire class. Despite the saying to the contrary, time resolves none of our wounds; it only occludes with more recent ones, one on top of the next, burying what was once so painful until at last we forget. And his parents weren’t helping any with their living room storms. Although I couldn’t see him behind his closed door, I had no doubt he was sitting on his bed, comic book in his lap, trying to shut his ears to what he was hearing — yet craning to hear every word. On the occasions when he needed a partner in make-believe, I found myself caught up in action-figure dramas about young heroes rescuing women from mad-scientist husbands.

Penelope said that Arthur had planned a date night. “Any chance you’re free?” It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t asking me along but rather if I’d take care of Will. “A sinking ship still needs its water bailed. That’s something my father likes to say. I’m not sure he’d agree in this particular case, though. Art got us tickets to something at the Circle Rep. Dinner beforehand, maybe drinks afterward.” She rolled her eyes. “We’ll see how it goes.”

We started out at Dave’s, navigating big-breasted, narrow-waisted Lara Croft across a mossy precipice toward the promise of ancient Mayan treasure, but Will bored of this activity soon enough. Dave offered to show him our festival-ready cut of Dead Hank’s Boy , but Will declined. He suggested instead that we follow him back to his room so he might show us something totally hilarious .

We sat down on his bed while he rifled through his backpack and pulled out his Discman. He popped the lid and fumbled the CD into the boom box on the shelf above his desk. He hit PLAY and the room filled with the caricature voices of Johnny Brennan and Kamal, better known as the Jerky Boys. As we listened, we laughed along with Will. But it was because of Will we laughed. He was the main attraction here: trying desperately and unsuccessfully to control his giggling fits as Big Ole Badass Bob the Cattle Rustler berated a lawn-mower salesman or Nikos, the Greek-immigrant delicatessen owner, mumbled incoherently to a bewildered telephone operator or the nebbish Sol Rosenberg complained to a nurse about his acute case of genital warts.

“Isn’t it the funniest thing ever ?”

We told him that it was indeed the funniest thing ever, which seemed to please Will and extend him the permission he needed to really abandon himself to his laughter, great weeping hysterics of it.

“Okay,” he said after it was over, taking a shuddering breath to calm himself — followed by a giggle — then by another breath, “let’s do one ourselves.” He left the room, giggling as he went, and returned with a cordless phone.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Dave?” Imagining Dave would support me in putting the kibosh on this mischief.

But Dave said, “Who would you call?”

Will said, “You can call anybody you want. You tell me. Who would you call?”

Dave and I looked at each other — and moments later Dave was giddily dialing Suriyaarachchi’s cell. Though Will made out like this was his first ever attempt at this, he took the veteran’s precaution of dialing in the ID-block code before handing Dave the phone.

When Suriyaarachchi answered, Dave in a high falsetto stuttered, “Hello? Is this the famous Suri — yaar — yaaraah—” before erupting in a fit of giggles.

“Hang up!” we hissed. “Hang up! Hang up!”

Dave handed me the phone. “You try.”

I called the theater and asked to speak to the general manager, discovering my throat constricting quite naturally around the froggy voice I used to use for just this sort of thing when I was Will’s age. Back then, pay phones were a wonderful free source of entertainment. There was a pair just outside the playground where I spent most of my childhood and at which my friends and I would routinely harass the unlucky operators who answered our calls. After a pause, the theater’s general manager was on the line. “This is Nelson, how may I help you?”

“Who the hell is this,” I demanded. Will covered his face with a pillow. I went on to lodge a complaint about the Almodóvar film currently showing there. “That movie’s nothing but titties titties titties, as far as the eye can see! And let me tell you something else — they’re not speaking any language I ever heard. What is that, Chinese or something?”