This is married life.
It isn’t what it used to be. Back when he was just shelving books — infant Will at the apartment with his mother-in-law — Penelope would show up in an easy-access skirt and no underwear, and they would fuck right there in the stacks. They used to get such a kick out of playing house, out of peeling the blistered skin off of a butternut squash and placing it in the new Cuisinart; add a little cream and look — soup! Now dinner is just another chore, the Cuisinart a tool like any other in the kitchen, no longer a novelty. A pot of chili on Sunday for a week of leftovers. Frozen portions of split pea in individually microwavable containers. Life at home. Asleep by nine thirty, up at six to do it all again.
Back in his office, he shuts the door and checks his e-mails; deleting those from his boss, he opens the one from himself. He reads it over, then spends the rest of the morning crafting a reply. Why is it so hard, just living? he writes. I am married, my wife is healthy and beautiful. I have a son who is healthy and beautiful. I, too, am healthy and have a job that supports us, that allows us to live in relative ease. So why am I not living with the ease in which I live?
His troubles at work, his miseries on the home front. With these out of the way, he moves on to other concerns, to the darker corners of his mind. He reminds himself of a passing childhood acquaintance, a boy his own age. Acts of sexual pleasure engaged in with this boy. How old had they been? Nine? Arthur used to worry over the thought of being gay. Did these acts he used to perform make him so? He would think of his time with this boy and become aroused. Even now — as a husband and a father — when he remembers these encounters, he becomes aroused. In fact, it’s the only image potent enough these days, sitting there in the men’s room stall, to get him off. What does this mean? How is he to reconcile this with the life he lives as an average family man?
Arthur finds that by pursuing this correspondence with himself, he feels better. The more he commiserates, the less miserable he feels. Airing dark truths help lighten his spirit; and writing obsessively to himself these long dark weeks cures him of the need to write obsessively to himself. In one long last e-mail, he talks about his new contentment, about how at peace with himself he has become. He thanks himself for listening, for commiserating. He describes venturing out of his office now to engage with fellow staff and administrators, a new desire to tackle the overflow on his desk. He tells of a home life in which he is now fully and happily engaged with Penelope, with Will. His heart is brimming with new love for them, a love he does not have to fake anymore. He brings in pictures of them and tacks them up on the board above his desk, puts one in his wallet.
The big shock comes on the final pages, suddenly, although in some way it seems to be the culmination of all prior moments in the book, the destination that all sentences point to.
Penelope reads the final scene, then reads it again, and before she is aware of what she is doing exactly, she is on her feet, running out of the park. The people she passes stare at her. She can hear herself panting. She is jogging down Central Park West, past Lincoln Center, past the Theater District, past Port Authority, left at Madison Square Garden toward Manhattan East Middle School.
Will does not appear to be among the small clusters of children playing here. It is a brisk autumn day. The sun is overhead, warming her shoulders and gleaming off the windshields of parked cars. The air is still. There is a basketball hoop, boundary lines painted on asphalt. Older kids are yelling their way through a game, though in the long moment that she stands there, nobody seems to be able to make a basket. Those about Will’s age are involved in some version of tag at the far end of the yard by a muraled wall. A pair of girls sitting down is tagged, then leaps up and join the fray, letting out blood-chilling screams; others, who have been leaping around, dodging outstretched hands, lose focus and drift off. And then Penelope sees him, sitting against the wall with three Hispanic girls. She searches Will’s face for any trace of trouble. What is she looking for? He seems to be enjoying himself, totally at ease with these girls. This always surprises her about Will, his ease with people, it didn’t matter who. Was that a function of his age? He certainly didn’t get it from Arthur. Even around people he knows, Arthur is shy and stern. At parties, he suffers from social exhaustion, his tolerance for small talk low; before long he grows restless and needs to be home again with her and Will. He doesn’t like meeting new people. Will, on the other hand, can talk to just about anybody. He is charming, precocious in that way of only children. It breaks her heart how at ease he is with people.
A male teacher, who has been sitting on a bench, notices Penelope and saunters over. Hello, he says. You’re a parent, but I can’t remember whose.
Will Morel’s mom, she says.
That’s right, of course. Checking up on him?
Just making sure he’s safe.
I was coming out of Dave’s, done for the day, when I ran into Penelope ascending the subway’s stairs. She took me by the arm.
“What are you doing now? Let’s have coffee.”
She led me across the street into the Galaxy Diner and walked us toward the back. These were the last days of smoking in New York City, and there were a few reserved booths by the restrooms that were usually empty. She took a seat and asked me for a cigarette.
“I’m not the girlfriend type,” she said, lighting up. “Other women have girlfriends they complain to, go to for comfort. I have Art. And my parents. And I can’t talk to either of them about this. So who do I talk to?”
The waiter came with menus and a dishrag that he heaved in two swipes across our table, leaving behind a mildew stink. His borderline hostility brought my attention to the emptiness of the place. The cooks behind the counter were watching us as they sudsed down the griddle and mopped the floors. This was a lunch place, and lunch was over. I ordered a Coke. Penelope ordered a tuna melt. The waiter stiffened at this. “I’ll have to see if that’s still possible.”
“You do that.” She pulled on her cigarette, watching him go, then said, “Have you read it? Of course you haven’t, it came out this morning.” She put the book on the table. “Take it, I don’t want it. Shit. You need to read it, though, I’ve got to talk to someone.”
“Talk to me, now. What’s so wrong?”
She told me the story of her day — dropping Will off at school, buying the book, reading it in the park, then running back to the school to check on him — as if the solution to her dread were to be found here, in the minutiae of the day’s decisions. “I mean, the thing of it? It was exactly like I said. You were there. I called it a mile off. He set me up. That motherfucker set me up.” This word—motherfucker — it sounded in her cutesy voice as though she were invoking the name of a fairy-tale villain. “Now he can always say he gave me an out. But even if I had read it back then, I couldn’t have told him to destroy it. I wouldn’t have.”
“What’s so bad about it?” I turn the hardbound book over in my hands. The dust jacket showed a photograph of Barbie and Ken and Young Ken standing naked in a toy bathtub, genital areas blurred out.
“I don’t want to say. You’ll read it. You’ll find out, and you’ll probably like it — admire it for its unflinching whatever.”
“So you’re just mad that he wrote it.”
“Yes! And what am I going to tell my parents? Not to read it? They’ve been so happy Arthur’s finally made something of himself — they’ll be crushed. And furious.”
“That’s Arthur,” I said. “It’s not good unless he’s pissed someone off.”