Christopher Hacker - The Morels

Will was standing in the doorway.

Penelope said, We’re taking a little trip.

Mom?

I need you to do me another favor, honey.

Mom?

Get down your suitcase for me and pack like you were going to Magic Mountain.

We’re going to Magic Mountain?

We’re not going to Magic Mountain.

Will said, I take it back.

Honey, it’s going to be okay. Listen to me. Hey. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just going on a little trip.

But I take it back! I take it back, I said.

It’s not something you can take back, Will.

But I don’t remember anymore. I forgot, okay?

That’s not the same as it not happening.

Why not? Before I remembered, it hadn’t happened. So I’ll just forget. We can go to a doctor, and he can hypnotize me. I don’t want to go on a trip.

Penelope walked over to Will and gathered him into her, pressed his head to her belly. It’s just a little vacation, a little break. You like it when we stay at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. We’ll talk about what you do or don’t remember later.

Will relented, packed a bag, but they became mired in the practical problems with leaving: What about piano — he had a lesson tomorrow afternoon — and the Harry Potter party Azucena was throwing — Will had campaigned for weeks to be invited to it — he was the only one in his grade who was going — and he was supposed to dog sit for a neighbor over the weekend — what about that? Penelope made the calls while Will gathered his books, his handheld video game. What about — and what about — and what about?

That was when I arrived, an encounter she was in no mood for.

Eventually, Penelope just ushered him out the door. He insisted on “helping” her with one of the suitcases, the results of which on any other day would have been endearing to watch: each crack in the sidewalk caused the thing to tip sideways and take Will with it. He tried pushing it in front of him like a wheelbarrow, tried facing forward and pulling it behind him like a rickshaw. It was crowded on the subway. Penelope lost sight of him for a moment and screamed his name, and the subway car went still. People looked up from their papers. But Will was standing right behind her.

She grabbed his wrist.

Ow!

Don’t do that again! she cried.

They walked to the rental-car lot in silence. It was bitter cold, and the wind out here in this neighborhood of low industrial buildings and parking lots and wide unprotected avenues was fierce. Though it was only three avenue blocks from the subway station to the rental lot, it took half an hour. Will stumbling over the suitcase on the cracked slabs of sidewalk, Penelope refusing to let go of his wrist.

It was dark when they arrived. The sign was a beacon of safety.

The woman behind the counter reported, without looking up from her screen, that there was no record of the reservation. But now there was no choice. She had to go, get out of town. You don’t understand, Penelope said, this is an emergency!

The clerk was unmoved.

What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t go back to the apartment, not now. She had to get out of this place, to get away. From Arthur. What am I supposed to do now, she said, to nobody in particular.

A man with a southern accent asked her where she was headed.

Thanks, Penelope said, but I’ll figure it out.

The man had a sunburn and no chin. He was wearing a yellow windbreaker. I’m headed to Atlantic City, so if you’re headed to points south along the Garden State Parkway, I can get you partway there at least.

Penelope stared at him for a moment before saying, You’ve got to be kidding me — I’m not getting into a fucking car with you. What do you think this is, the sixties? Come on, Will. Let’s go.

Penelope looked for a cab but couldn’t find one. A green Dodge Neon passed them, in the driver’s seat the man with the sunburn and yellow windbreaker — he looked at her and shook his head.

They walked the dozen blocks to Port Authority, and she bought them two tickets to DC. By this time, Will had stopped overtly fretting and seemed to be enjoying himself.

They ate at the Au Bon Pain in the terminal. Will wanted a chocolate croissant and a chocolate milk. Penelope didn’t fight it.

They sat in silence. Will used a plastic knife to cut his croissant in half and gave one of the halves to Penelope. This, more than anything else today, made Penelope want to weep.

That’s okay, honey, you save it for later, when you get hungry on the bus.

They went to a newsstand. Will chose Mad magazine. She paid for this and a copy of Us Weekly and they traveled the escalators down to their gate.

It was 5:45 by the time they shuffled through the line and took their seats. It was 11:05 by the time they arrived in DC. Her father met them at Union Station and drove them out to Annandale, to her childhood home.

Arthur’s postcard led us down into the cobblestone heart of Soho, to an unassuming carriage house that stood between two new clothing boutiques.

Arthur’s mother, Cynthia, greeted us from its open archway, ushering us inside. “Friends of Artie! I knew those postcards would hit their mark one day. Next time you can bring him, too. Doc! Where are you?”

Cynthia had an enormous amount of hair, a weeping willow of hair, and spoke expansively with her whole mouth, each word enunciated so that it might be unmistakable to people seated in a theater balcony. She was dressed in a flamboyant purple scarf, and her bony arms jangled and clacked with bracelets running up and down, arms that flailed as she spoke. Her teeth were large and perfectly white — perfectly fake, I could only assume.

Doc — Arthur’s father — was lean, pockmarked, and bald. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a backward Kangol hat. They were both old, but he was much older. If she was fifty, he was seventy, at least. But there was something about his eyes; he had the eyes of a teenager — mischievous, attuned to our smallest gestures. It was Cynthia who did most of the talking that first day. Doc was restless; he got up and disappeared for stretches of time before coming back, settling in, and listening to Cynthia — nodding, grunting assent, or frowning when something she said took a turn he didn’t like. It wasn’t clear that he knew — or cared — why we were here or what our relationship might be to his son.

They lived in squalor. Though their address carried with it New York prestige — neighbors with Robert De Niro and David Bowie — they embodied an older kind of city shabbiness, from a time when you could be a poor artist in New York. They used to have the whole building to themselves, Doc explained, but when property values exploded in the eighties, they were forced to rent out the upper floors to a graphic designer. They lived on the first floor, which opened via a garage door onto the street. At nine every morning, the door came up, and the elder Morels played host to all of downtown Manhattan, as they had done since moving in more than thirty years earlier. This open space was part living room, part artist’s studio; there was a broken-down couch, a lounge chair draped with a dingy sheet, a coffee table, as well as easels, a painter’s taboret, a wood block midsculpt in the corner. The floor was built up with overlapping threadbare rugs, irrevocably paint stained. On the wall hung paintings that varied wildly in style. Seeing me scan the walls, Cynthia said, “This is my trading post. Keith stayed with us for a while after his boyfriend kicked him out — paid for his stay by painting me that.” She pointed to a toilet seat hanging on the far wall that bore the unmistakable jigsaw graffiti of Keith Haring. “And that one?” She pointed to a blurry color photograph of a drag queen pursing her lips. “Let’s just say that one didn’t nearly cover the damage caused by those assholes Nan brought in with her.”