Christopher Hacker - The Morels

As Officer Fields was leaving, he told the daughter and her parents that an investigator would be in touch. The three seemed at odds about this: Mr. Wright eager to get the ball rolling, Mrs. Wright and her daughter not so sure.

Are you going to arrest my husband?

At this point, no. We will make sure he leaves you all in peace tonight — but as to the other matter. That’s serious business. We will share what information you’ve provided with PD in your neck of the woods back in New York. They have special investigators to handle cases like yours.

Officer Fields bid them good night and rejoined his partner, who was chumming with the suspect. Officer Fields put on his best intimidating face and told the suspect to vacate the premises.

The suspect started in about his rights to see his son, and Officer Fields told him that he did not own that house and had no right to enter it without the owner’s permission, and if his wife and son didn’t wish to see him right now, it was their right to stay in a house in which he was not welcome — and if he persisted in loitering, they would issue him a desk-appearance ticket, and he’d have to spend the rest of the week going between the police station and courthouse to deal with it.

Penelope is contacted some days later by phone. Detective Ramirez , she writes down on the back of an envelope. He would like to speak with Penelope and Will, to determine whether or not there is merit in pursuing a criminal complaint against her husband.

A week has passed. Penelope has been getting a seven-day earful from her father. It’s having an effect; his rants are beginning to sound like sense. She’s angry now. Furious. At Arthur and at herself. How could she have let this happen? She should fight for the apartment, insist Arthur find a place to stay, but she doesn’t want to negotiate with him. She doesn’t have the strength at the moment, and the truth is she’s not sure she wants to bring her son back there. She calls Rachel, an old high school friend who lives in Brooklyn Heights. Senior year they’d smoke joints on the gym’s roof and gossip about pregnant classmates. As adults, they got together over coffee occasionally to discuss their ailing marriages. Penelope had helped shepherd Rachel through her divorce some months earlier, and Rachel is thrilled now to return the favor — and insists Penelope and Will come stay with her.

Penelope goes to the precinct with Will. The investigators question her about her statement to Officer Fields in Virginia. They want Will to speak with one of their psychologists. Penelope’s not so sure. What if it’s all a mistake? She’s already spoken with a psychologist, and Will has gone back and forth about it.

Has he been known to lie?

No, she says.

Would he have any reason she could think of for making this up?

Because he’s mad at his father.

Detective Ramirez laughs. I can remember being all sorts of mad at my father. Kids fantasize about doing terrible things to their parents. But they don’t actually do them.

Or for the same reason my husband would have for making it up, she says. I don’t know. Statements, psychologists. I just don’t know if this is a good idea. And a trial? I don’t know if I want to put my son through all that. The family through it.

Are you afraid?

Of what?

That if it’s true you’ll be held responsible for letting it happen, presiding over it.

But I’m not responsible.

You’re not? When your husband published his confession, you did nothing.

He said it was a fiction.

And you believed him? You just — took his word for it without asking your own son if it was true?

I didn’t want to confuse him, didn’t want to hurt him!

Who — your son or your husband? Who were you trying to protect? If this goes to trial and your husband’s convicted, you can be tried afterward for negligence — and, if you refuse to cooperate here, obstruction as well.

Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?

I’m laying out your options here.

Do I need a lawyer?

You’re not a suspect, relax. If you cooperate, let us do our jobs, we could make certain guarantees down the line, what avenues we do or don’t pursue if this goes to trial, if your husband is found guilty.

She goes with Will to a room and is joined by a young man — how old is this kid? He asks Will questions. Will answers. There are toys. They have him sitting at a low table. Paper, Crayola pens. Will tries to use several of the pens, but they’re dry.

You need new pens, Will says.

The psychologist hands Will the pen in his pocket. It’s a fountain pen. Have you ever used one of these before?

It’s heavy, Will says. He hefts it in the tips of his fingers. Can I have it?

It was given to me as a gift, the psychologist says. He explains how a fountain pen works — the inkwell, the split nib. He encourages Will to try it out, to write something. Was this a ploy? Was Will given dry markers on purpose? Penelope has to wonder.

Will writes the words: copy, cat, tail , and tattle .

Are you worried about tattling, the psychologist asks. Being a tattletale? Will is reluctant to speak. Tattling on your dad?

His name is Art, Will says.

Is that what you call your father: Art?

That’s his name, isn’t it?

Why don’t you tell me a little about him, the psychologist suggests. What is he like? What do you two enjoy doing together?

I’m not going to say masturbate , Will says. I know that’s what you’re really asking. Do we like to masturbate together, but I’m not going to say that.

Nobody’s asking you to say anything but what you know to be the truth. The psychologist asks Will if he feels embarrassed, if he might be worried about saying the wrong things in front of his mother.

Will says maybe.

The psychologist takes Penelope aside and urges her to let them speak alone for a few minutes, that her presence might be a stressor keeping Will from speaking more freely.

Is there a way I can watch?

Watch?

Through like a two-way mirror or something?

This isn’t an interrogation room.

Penelope agrees. When she is gone, Will says he likes to play the Game Boy with his father, but that his father is not very good. He likes to help his father make pasta and peas, though neither of them is very good at this either. Will doesn’t look at the psychologist; he doodles with the fountain pen. In our apartment we have a roof we can go up on. I have a radio-controlled UFO, which is an unidentified flying object. People believe they’re real, but the government says it’s weather balloons. That’s what I read anyway, and I have to agree. Isn’t that easier to believe? The other option is an entire race of beings from another galaxy, which scientists say is impossible, coming light-years — that’s miles that are so big they measure it in time not space — to get here and do what? Crash-land in a cornfield? You would think if they had the technology to fly all that way they’d be smart enough to know how to land safely. But I guess what if the government shot them down? I’d still say it’s weather balloons. Anyway, we went up on the roof sometimes and flew it out over the edge, which you weren’t supposed to do, but Art said if I wouldn’t tell, he wouldn’t tell.

The drawing that Will has just finished looks unmistakably like a penis, though when the psychologist asks, Will writes the words WEATHER BALLOON with an arrow pointing at its shaft. People think they’re round like a balloon, which in reality they aren’t. They look like enormous penises. Floating in the sky.

Tell me about your father’s book.

It’s supposed to be fiction, but it has a lot of true-life details in it. Like?