CHRISTMAS EVE, NEW YEAR’S EVE, voir dire.
Soon enough, the first day of trial was upon us.
Each day leading up to this day, it seemed inevitable that we would be saved from having to climb these stairs, if by nothing else the apocalypse, but January 1 came and went without incident. It was surreal. The broad flight before us, the massively looming courthouse blotting out the sun. There were newsvans out, telescoping satellite poles fully extended; they didn’t appear to be here for us, though. Dave remained outside with the video camera, and the rest of us took up the back of the line. Doc panicked when he saw the metal detector, but Suriyaarachchi and I talked him down enough to see him safely through it. Cynthia did a little dance as the guard wanded her down. We traveled several echoey loops of marble hallway to the room Benji had given us.
The place had none of the grandeur of a Law & Order set. No varnished oak banisters, no ceiling-high windows blazing great shafts of dusty light. This place was small, windowless; the acoustic-tile drop ceiling deadened sound, and the fluorescent banks did the same to people’s faces, making this place look more like a hospital waiting room. It was packed, which isn’t really saying much, as there weren’t many seats. We thought we’d arrived with time to spare, but the line at the metal detectors must have eaten through it; the bailiff had just finished his spiel, and the judge was gaveling for people to be seated. We slipped into the back row by the door.
Who were all these people who had come to watch the trial? I looked for familiar backs of heads. Penelope was up front in an aisle seat; I recognized her wild black hair. Her father sat next to her. Will was not in evidence. The familial math suggested that he was spending the day with his grandmother.
The ADA stood and pointed at Arthur, presumably—I couldn’t see him over other people’s heads—and said, “Some would say that this man is a monster. How else can one explain what would move a person to commit an act of incest with his nine-year-old son? To then write a book which recounts this act in all of its lurid detail, publishing it under the guise of fiction. Some might guess that this was a sadistic act meant to torment his family, to rub their noses in what he had done. But the evidence will show us that he is not a monster. Arthur Morel is a man. A very troubled man, who did something awful in a moment of confusion three years ago. The evidence will show that he wrestled with himself about this act for three long years and finally, in a way, using the publication of his book, decided to turn himself in.” Penelope’s mother was right. The damage had already been done. Even if Arthur was found innocent on all charges, even if Will recanted everything he had said, there was no going back from this.
After the ADA had concluded her opening statement, the judge granted a short recess so that Benji could adjust his remarks. We moved up a few rows for a better view of Arthur’s orange-jumpsuited back. For a week and a half now there had been enough money in the legal defense fund for Arthur to post bail, but Arthur had argued, quite reasonably, that it would be better to have the city hosting him with room and board; every dollar spent should be going toward securing Arthur with the best defense he could afford. While they were on the subject, Benji brought up the possibility of replacing himself with any of the half-dozen private defense firms who offered to try this case pro bono, but Arthur wouldn’t hear of this either.
Benji stood. Even from where we were sitting, it was clear he was terribly nervous. His eyes were glassy, and the notepad he held highlighted the trembling of his hands. He approached the jury box. “The prosecutor is right about one thing. Arthur Morel is not a monster. But not because she says he isn’t, but because Arthur Morel is innocent. I don’t know what would possess a man to write such a strange story, whether it was a self-destructive streak in him or a touch of the crazies, and I’ll leave it to the critics to explain what kind of merit there is in such a book, but I do know this. The man before you, my brother, is no child molester, and I intend to show you how and why beyond all reasonable doubt.” By the end of his remarks, Benji’s face was pouring sweat.
True to his word, the judge sped the proceedings along, and after a break for lunch, the prosecution began laying out its case. There wasn’t much to it: Will’s testimony, Arthur’s book, an expert witness. The court clerk played Will’s recorded statement and read the relevant passage from the novel into evidence. It seemed that Will hadn’t been subpoenaed to testify, which Benji’s experts interpreted as good news. It meant that Will had become shaky as a witness for some reason. Either his story had changed since he’d talked to the police, or there was something wrong with his manner—that he seemed to be lying or was unsympathetic in some way. Benji considered calling him to the stand for the defense, against the prosecution, but Arthur stood in the way of this, too. “Is he trying to get himself convicted? Is that what this is? Somebody please tell me!” The fact of Will’s absence was more good news. Just sitting there, Will was a persuasive tool in the courtroom. His presence would have meant the mother was of the same mind as the prosecution or that the prosecution had enough pull with the mother to make her do it. His absence suggested the opposite. It meant Penelope had become uncooperative.
Day 2 opened with the prosecution’s psychologist, who had spoken to Will, testifying to the cues Will gave that indicated his story was not a fabrication. He also gave his opinion of Arthur’s book, which he saw as enough like Will’s version of events to be mutually corroborative. He had also spent time with Arthur at the detention center; in his deteriorated state, Arthur seemed to him very much a man wracked by self-loathing and guilt. The psychologist admitted that, on first reading, the book was perplexing, and he hadn’t known what to make of it, but after interviewing Arthur it became clear to him that it was a cry for help. Arthur couldn’t turn himself in, for whatever reason, so his unconscious had done the job for him.
On cross, Benji said, “Is it possible, in your educated opinion, that William Morel is somehow confused? That he is mixing up what he’s read with a memory?”
“No. That’s just not feasible.”
“Yet in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry you write about a man who became convinced that Garrison Keillor was bugging his phone. Can you tell us how the man came to this conclusion?”
“He was an avid listener of A Prairie Home Companion and grew suspicious that the skits he heard resembled the contours of events in his own life. Eventually, the man came firmly to believe that the shows were direct transcriptions of conversations that he’d had throughout his day. The only explanation for this, he reasoned, was that Garrison Keillor was somehow recording his life.”
“So in a sense, this man mistook fiction for real life.”
“This man was in a florid state of paranoid schizophrenia.”
“And how did you conclude that?” A few chuckles at this, even from the witness.
“Well—” He composed himself and began down a jargon-studded road.
Benji stopped him. “What I mean is, did you check for bugs? In the patient’s apartment? Did you question Garrison Keillor?” At this point, an eruption of laughter in the gallery of the courtroom.
“No.”
“And why is that?”
“I can only conclude these leading questions are designed to get me to tell you that A Prairie Home Companion is a scripted, fictional radio show.”
“Right. And wouldn’t you say that knowing this helps in your diagnosis of the man as a paranoid schizophrenic?”
“There are other ways to reach that—”
“But in this case, would you say it helped?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“If, for instance, Garrison Keillor were this man’s father, and Mr. Keillor made skits about their life together—”
Objections from the prosecution, sustained by the judge.
The witness said, “William Morel, in my opinion, is not schizophrenic.”
Benji pressed, but the man would not budge. It didn’t matter. He had accomplished what he’d set out to do, planted the seed.
With the exception of rare moments like this, from the standpoint of pure entertainment, the trial was a disappointment. The ADA seemed aware of her counterpart on television and was attempting somehow to play herself in that role or remind us of it. But it came off like the stiff acting in a high school drama production. Benji, too, nervous though he was, tried to play it up in a way that missed the mark and left people groaning in pity. He bugged his eyes or furrowed his brows and scratched his chin. These were his two best moves. It was clear he’d been coached and that he was not a particularly adept student. Presiding over them, the wobbly, bobble-headed judge sustained and overruled objections in equal measure, offering the droll one-liner when the occasion called for it or a sharp rebuke, stopping one or the other of the attorneys in their tracks. Unlike the attorneys, the judge wasn’t playing a role—if he was, it was a role that he had played for so long that he had inhabited it completely. Who was it who said that eventually our face takes on the contours of the mask we wear? Something I read in college, probably. I thought of it while watching these three performances. And wondered again about Arthur, his role in all of this. When the time came for him to mount the stand, what sort of performance would be required?
Mostly, the court proceedings were of exactly the sort you might expect out of a place with laminate faux-wood paneling and no apparent ventilation: interminable, bureaucratic, the narrative thread lost in the picky back-and-forth about wording and what could and couldn’t be said or what this one meant, exactly, when he used that phrase. Two pigeons fighting over a piece of pretzel. I found myself glad to have been banned from filming it, as no doubt the footage, when we came to edit it, would have sat cold and inert, and the three of us would become gridlocked about what to do. It would have been the Winnebago crash all over again—a moment that seemed, when we planned it, a centerpiece, a riveting climax, but instead proved to be embarrassing and unwatchable.
By the closing gavel of day 3, the prosecution had rested its case. Benji argued for a reprieve but was denied one, and so the following morning began the defense’s long parade. We came early to secure a seat up front behind the defense table.
When they brought Arthur in, Cynthia burst into tears. It was the first good look she had gotten since the arraignment. No doubt the new beard and the outsize jumpsuit had something to do with it, not to mention the sallow greenish light of those fluorescents, but there was no denying that he was a man transformed. He looked caged, some aboriginal man abducted and brought back to the civilized world to be marveled at. There were scrapes and bruises on his wrists and ankles, and his body trembled. He turned, and it seemed to take him some time to process us.
Cynthia said, “Oh, what have they done to you?”
Arthur smiled. He mouthed, I’m fine.
Suriyaarachchi nudged me with a folded New Yorker, gesturing for me to take it. He pointed at an article I was meant to read. It was an essay about the tradition of autobiographical fiction. It mentioned Arthur’s book several times, praising it and its author. From the second paragraph: “The Morels is one of those books that is memorable not for the story it tells or for its characters or for the quality of its prose, but for an episode within it—Don Quixote tilting at windmills, young Proust dunking a madeleine in a cup of tea—we don’t remember who or what or why, but we remember this […] and these actions come to stand for the book itself, synecdochically, becoming a visual thesis upon which all the rest hinges.”
I handed it back to him, and he gave me a look—tugged mouth and wide eyes—that said, Pretty good. Meaning, for the movie. Suriyaarachchi didn’t care much about Arthur’s fate apart from how it might affect the fortunes of the movie. Or, rather, he did care but only in the way an art collector, heavily invested in a certain artist’s work, might care about that artist’s declining health. I hated him for this, in no small part because it highlighted these same feelings in me. I was not immune to the excitement of filmmaking, nor did I fail to see that Arthur’s plight might be seen in a certain light as good entertainment, something ultimately that would sell.
Benji called his first witness, another psychologist. He had spoken with Arthur a few times at the prison. The man had a different opinion of Arthur and his book than the prosecution’s witness, and so, in effect, these experts canceled each other out.
I looked at the roster of names on the witness list, mine among them. It would take days to get through. It seemed Benji was looking to win through attrition, and I wondered if this was what the judge had meant by “antics.” If Benji had gotten the continuance he’d asked for—three months—how long would that list have grown? And the judge, despite Benji’s rantings, was quite fair, to the point of permissiveness. Even I could see that Arthur’s professionalism, his soundness of mind, his kindness and loyalty as a friend, had little bearing on whether or not Will was lying. Amid the unceasing calls to relevance from the prosecution, Benji persisted, and the judge allowed his witnesses to have their say. I suppose Benji had to work overtime to counteract the effect of Arthur’s very presence there before the jury—a wild creature, capable of anything.
The psychologist on the stand had also spoken with Will, but his evaluation revealed nothing that could be used to our advantage, so during questioning, Benji left it alone. The ADA, however, was very curious. She had him read several passages from his report, which revealed Will to be a somewhat distressed but otherwise normative eleven-year-old.
“What observations led you to conclude that William Morel was stressed?”
“His body language, mostly.”
“What can you tell us about his body language?”
“Deep breaths, fidgeting. And he spent much of our session rubbing his genitals.”
“Rubbing, how?”
“He was sitting in a large upholstered chair opposite me and held his hands clasped together, fingers threaded like this—down at his crotch. He would press them up and down against his groin when he talked. Quite unconsciously, I thought. In this context it appeared to be a response from stress. This is not unusual. He seemed reluctant to be there, speaking with me. I got the feeling that it made him nervous. He spoke of not wanting to get his father in trouble. The rubbing seemed to be a strategy for comforting himself, calming himself down.”
“Did William Morel ever exhibit symptoms of a dissociative nature?”
“What sort of symptoms do you mean?”
“Trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality?”
“Not in our time together, no.”
On redirect, Benji managed to bring things back in balance by getting the psychologist to admit the possibility that the diagnosis of a dissociative disorder involved more than a single one-hour consultation, that were Will to have one, he could present quite normally for days—even weeks—at a time.
It was five days of this, at the end of which came me. And Arthur.
If the courtroom was a bore, the same could not be said of the goings-on outside. The first day I had seen a few people with small flip pads taking notes and wondered if they might be reporters. That evening, eating dinner at the carriage house, Doc pointed at the television with a speared floret of curried broccoli. It was the final segment of the local news, usually reserved for items that would be introduced with a phrase like Now here’s an interesting one. It showed a small insert of Arthur’s dust-jacket photo. Doc stumbled to his feet to turn the volume dial on the small portable television just in time to catch the anchor say, “… but the author claims he made the whole thing up. Wonder what the next book will be about!” The following day, a CBS-affiliate anchor and her cameraman approached Benji and his assistants on their way up the courthouse steps, and that night we all waited impatiently through the day’s leading stories for the footage, which appeared along with a court sketch of grizzle-bearded Arthur. We cheered, and Cynthia declared, “Our fifteen minutes have begun!” The day after that, it was all three of the major networks following Benji up the stairs, along with half-a-dozen photographers clicking and flashing in their faces. It became the evening’s top story. The day after that it was the front page of the Post and the Daily News.
Benji had been right. In the vacuum of the millennium story, this one entered to fill the void. There were other “bigger” stories going on inside the halls of 100 Center Street that week—a grisly murder, a mafioso on trial—but this was the one that caught the public eye. The Brooklyn Museum exhibit was still fresh in people’s minds. It was also a time of brazen sexual transgressions, from our president’s to nannies caught on video to the several high-profile cases of teachers tried for statutory rape—both male and female—and the trial of Arthur Morel found itself as somehow the quintessence of all this, the last straw perhaps. So in spite of what the judge had said about what this trial was and wasn’t, to those following its progress outside the walls of the courtroom, it became a referendum on the limits of artistic freedom. The papers took pleasure in the possibilities of his name, which—if you substituted e with a—seemed designed to comment ironically on his situation.
The announcement, in the middle of all this, that The Morels had been nominated for the Faulkner Award was rocket fuel that set the debate aroar and helped launch it past the local news and into the seven o’clock national slot. Two New York Times op-ed columnists took up the debate over several days, one arguing for literature’s return to its historical imperative of extolling our better angels and the other arguing for the prerogative of literature to be whatever it needed to be.
And as unreal as this short account of Arthur’s ascent may seem to read, this was exactly how it felt to live through: unreal. Dreamlike. It happened so quickly. We sat watching the news at the carriage house, the five of us, the day’s papers scattered around us, scarcely believing what we were reading, what we were seeing.
Suriyaarachchi clapped Doc on the back. “What did I tell you? Okay? This movie is going to be enormous. Your two sons will see this thing through, and Arthur will come home safe—and be able to share in all of this. Just trust, just trust. And I know the phone is tempting you right now”—ringing off the hook with offers, Hard Copy, Jerry Springer, Larry King—“but your silence is worth more down the line. How does it feel to be the father of a rock star?”
But I think Suriyaarachchi misinterpreted Doc and Cynthia’s disbelief at all of this. Because what Arthur had achieved here wasn’t fame; it was infamy. He was tarred by the tabloids, already tried and found guilty by New Yorkers at large. And who could blame them? His own book seemed to convict him of this crime, and even assuming his innocence, the act of publishing it alone was thought by most who were talking about it to be a kind of abuse. It was, at best, a perverse and downright mean thing to do.
But Doc and Cynthia didn’t understand the hostility. “Even if he did do it,” Cynthia said. “Is it really something to get this worked up over?” They had thought themselves one with the city. Their open door to the sidewalk had been a thirty-year testament to this. Neither of them had ever considered there were people who thought differently than they. To find out, finally, that most of the city thought they—and their son—were repulsive freaks must have been a crushing blow.
From a moving car raw eggs were pelted at the carriage house, whipping through the open doorway. One connected with Doc’s shoulder. He lifted his shirt to reveal a palm-sized welt. After this the doors remained permanently closed. All through the night intermittent hollering from outside reached us down in the basement, a ghostly noise, the pounding of fists on the metal garage door echoing somberly, an uneven drumbeat. In the morning, we found scrawled on it MONSTERS in dripping purple spray-paint.
On the morning I was to testify, we pressed through a throng of jeering pedestrians before making our way up the courthouse steps. Suriyaarachchi following with the camera merged with a dozen others taping our ascent.
We were made to wait. Benji and the ADA were conferring with the judge in the emptied courtroom. A guard stood at the doors, which barred any substantive eavesdropping, but I could see the jury was in attendance as well.
I took a seat on a bench, across the narrow hallway from Mrs. Wright and Will. They were sorting foil-wrapped items out of a plastic bag. While Mrs. Wright kept a wary eye on me, Will was pretending not to notice. It was the first time since the trial began I’d gotten more than a passing glimpse. He kept a blinkered focus on his sandwich, which sat on its foil wrapper in his lap. He carefully removed the top and peeled off two soggy lettuce leaves. In his hunkered-down posture—his twitchy fingers, the dark hollows under his eyes—I saw someone utterly besieged. As though he were ducking not only me but everyone else in the world. I detected something else as well. Guilt. Not the guilt of a betrayer. The guilt of a liar.
Will and I needed to talk.
The opportunity presented itself a few moments later when, speaking to Mrs. Wright, his lips formed the word bathroom. Penelope and Frank were not far off, standing against a wall. Frank had been keeping his eye on me. I got up, casually, ahead of Will, and rounded the corner, making my way to the water fountain just outside the men’s room door. I leaned in for a warm coppery draft, lingering until I saw Will’s sneakers pass my line of sight.
I rose, wiped my mouth, and ducked in after him.
A line of enormous urinals like marble bathtubs. Will was at the one in the far corner; I took the one next to his. “You’re lying,” I hissed into his ear. “Aren’t you?”
Will blanched, stepped back a few paces, fumbling with his zipper.
A tall gentleman emerged from a stall and walked over to the line of sinks. Will and I watched as he rolled up his sleeves, pumped out some soap from the dispenser, and washed his hands. The man became aware of us watching. He stared back through the mirror.
After he left, I crossed over to the door and kicked the rubber doorjamb into place.
Will ducked into a stall and latched it shut.
I stood for a while staring at the stall door, long enough to consider the implications of being caught in here, intimidating the lead witness.
Then, very softly, came Will’s voice. “I don’t care what happens to him. I hate him.” His voice sounded different in here—thin, crystalline—cupped by the dozen marble basins, as though it were being transmitted from somewhere else.
“How can you say that? If you knew what you were saying, how jail would be for a man like your father—you wouldn’t say such a thing.”
“I wish he were dead. We’d all be better off. Mom’s so sad, and it’s because of his lies. Why shouldn’t I lie, too? Then he’ll be put away, and it’ll be over, and we’ll all be happy. It’s what he deserves for writing what he wrote about me. Grandma says it. Grandpa says it. Joanna Brady says it. Even Mom says it.”
“Will,” I said. “I’m not defending what your father wrote. It’s a terrible thing. But what you are doing here is wrong. Evil, in fact. You know that, don’t you? Are you evil? Do you want people to think of you this way?”
“I’m not evil,” he said. The stall door rattled. “I’m not evil!”
“Then you’ve got to make this right, Will. You’ve got to tell people the truth.”
Someone was knocking outside. Voices.
“I’ve tried,” Will said.
“What have you told them?”
He opened the stall door, peered up at me. “I said I was confused. That I’m not remembering right.”
“That’s not the same as telling them you lied.”
“But I can’t! I’ll get into trouble. Serious trouble—you don’t understand. Please.” Tears wobbled in his eyes. “Please don’t tell Mom.”
“Will, this is bigger than you getting into trouble. I have to tell her—don’t you see, I have no choice.”
“Please don’t. I’m begging you. Listen, okay? I’ll tell her myself. Let me do it. Please.”
More banging. Frank’s voice: My grandson, that’s who!
“Okay,” I said. “Fine. Now switch places.” I pushed past him into the stall and hopped up onto the toilet, pulling the door shut. “I’m not here,” I whispered, crouching.
Benji was able to get me five minutes alone with Arthur. I waited for him in a closet-sized space down from the courtroom. A glass door looked out onto the busy corridor.
Arthur was led in by a guard. The guard removed the shackles, then let himself out; he stood watch on the other side of the door. Arthur sat. He really was unrecognizable in his orange jumpsuit, with his hair so shaggy, his beard so thick.
I relayed the details of my recent conversation with Will, and Arthur nodded, frowning slightly. Then, still nodding, said, “That’s not going to work.”
“If Will confesses he was lying, then the prosecution will have nothing.”
“Exactly!”
“There won’t be a trial. But there needs to be a trial, for this to work there needs to be … you see, Will has to accuse me, to put me away for—”
“Arthur. This isn’t a novel. This is your life.”
He licked at the corners of his mustache. “You need to stop him,” he said. He was agitated. He ran his fingers through his hair. “You need to talk to Will.”
“I’ve already talked to Will.”
“Before he confesses to Penelope! Don’t you see? Once he tells Penelope, this will all be over.”
“Come on. There has got to be a better way to atone for things, Arthur. Stop being so grandiose. You’ve hurt your wife and son, yes. And you will one day find a way to get them to see how very sorry you are for what you’ve put them through. But this is not it. This is suicide.”
“It has to happen this way.”
“You know what? I’ve tried. Fuck you, Arthur. If you want to stop Will, ask him yourself.”
“I can’t! Nobody will let me talk to him!”
“Well, figure it out. I’m done. I refuse to be a part of this game.” I stood.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “At least don’t tell Benji. Do that for me. Please. Don’t tell Benji.”
“Too late,” I said.
I had been put on the witness list ostensibly to speak to Arthur’s sanity, to have me talk about The Morels—there had been debate among Benji’s team on the merits of trying to explain to a jury Arthur’s nuanced reasons for writing the book. Benji argued that it would be better to offer some explanation, however incoherent sounding, than none at all but had run into resistance, yet again, from Arthur, who wouldn’t hear of testifying about it. Which was where I came in.
But when I told Benji of Will’s confession, the plan changed. Benji was ecstatic. He clapped me painfully on the back. “We can put an end to this farce today,” he said. “Right now!” He also asked me several times whether I wasn’t making this up, that he would totally understand my motivation to do so, but this was not the way to help his brother. I could go to jail for perjury.
I assured him that I was telling the truth.
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay!” He told me to be myself and reminded me again that whatever I did, seriously, not to perjure myself.
If such a thing had crossed my mind, the thought would have evaporated upon being sworn into the stand. It was a powerful ritual that humbled me before judge and jury and those hundred pairs of eyes in the gallery. It had been years since having this many eyes on me, and that sweaty-palmed dread brought me back to the Concerto Concert. The judge up there might have been Mr. Strasser at the podium if one swapped the gavel for a baton. Even the way he looked down at me—the slight nod, the smile in the eyes—reminded me of the way I had been looked at by Mr. Strasser, the warm good grace of being judged as sound, satisfactory. I felt the same sense of responsibility to do my best, to honor the attention I was being given.
From up here I had a clear view of every face in the room. Arthur watched his hands move in front of him on the table. Benji sat next to him, checking his notes. I looked for Penelope and found her in her usual spot up front, behind the ADA, her father next to her. I tried meeting her gaze, but she would not look at me.
Benji stood, addressed me by name. “How long have you known Will Morel?”
“Since September.”
“Four months. And in that time, have you ever known the boy to lie or practice willing deceit?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you describe these occasions for us now?”
I looked over at the jury box, a subway car of faces—black, Asian, white, Hispanic. A mute city chorus to witnesses this tragedy. At first they had been a serious-minded bunch, several of them taking their own notes, all eyes forward, ears craning to catch every word. But by day 3, several had succumbed to the boredom of the proceedings. At one time or another they would nod off, a couple openly reading newspapers. But once the story broke nationally, they seemed to snap back, to return to the solemn duty they’d sworn to uphold. At the end of the day yesterday, the judge had ordered them sequestered in a nearby hotel. This morning they sat wide awake, the full force of their attention coming at me from that side of the room like heat.
I told them about the lying game Will learned at school and had us play around the table during our Thanksgiving meal. I told them about the pranks Will boasted of once we’d gotten to know each other. The bumper prank, wherein while crouching he would slap the rear bumper of a car trying to parallel park and when the car stopped would lie prone in the street; the driver, horrified, would emerge from the car, and Will would jump up and run away. Or the overcoat prank, wherein Will would stand just beyond the edge of a restaurant’s street-facing window with an old overcoat, each sleeve stuffed with a heavy sweater, and toss the coat in a high steep arc so that it would plummet right down in front of horrified diners, looking for all the world like a falling body. I told them about our marathon session of prank calls, and the prank calls I heard later on the Morels’ own answering machine.
Benji wondered aloud why Will might prank call his own house but had to withdraw the question, as the prosecution objected on grounds the judged sustained. Benji asked, “Have you known Will to deceive on any other occasion?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you mind describing that occasion for the jury now?”
I looked down at Arthur, who looked steadily back, betraying nothing. I looked up to see Penelope watching me, too. Was she trying to communicate something to me with her eyes? If so, I couldn’t tell. Then I looked over at the jury box and told them what Will had confessed to me. As I was telling it, however, I sensed several members recoil. They did not want to believe me. They wanted to believe Will. They wanted to believe that Arthur was guilty. And who could blame them? If what I was saying were true, then this whole trial was, as Benji had put it, a farce. A morbid farce.
The prosecutor, when she rose to question me, helped the jurors out. She gave them every reason to suspect my testimony. I was a bully, intimidating an eleven-year-old boy. Further, I was making a documentary about the accused, which spoke of my financial interest in securing his freedom. I was currently living with the accused in his parents’ house. I was a longtime friend, had known the accused for fourteen years, which spoke of my emotional interest in securing his freedom. When she was done with me, the judge thanked me, and I stepped down on rubbery legs. On my way back to the witness room, I passed Doc, who gave me a wink.
When I returned, taking my seat next to Suriyaarachchi, Benji was at the defense table, scribbling on a yellow pad and whispering in Arthur’s ear. The judge called the court back to order, and the jury returned. The bailiff escorted Arthur to the witness box and closed him in. The clerk asked Arthur to raise his right hand and swear that the testimony he was about to give would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and Arthur did. Benji asked the court’s indulgence to allow him to establish in unequivocal terms his feelings about his son. The judge allowed it, and so Benji asked him if he loved his son. Yes, Arthur said. Benji asked if he harbored any sexual feelings for the boy, if he’d ever sexually molested him, or if the book was a confession—and Arthur answered firmly no to these questions.
“Why then,” Benji asked, “would you write such a thing?”
Arthur seemed annoyed to have been asked the question. And, as he started answering, it became clear why—why Benji’s legal team didn’t want me explaining it and why I’d been puzzling over it this past month and a half: the answers just didn’t make any sense. If Arthur was able in his living room to conjure the rhetorical flair necessary to convince me, that advantage wasn’t available to him under the cold glare of the overhead fluorescents and the dozen perplexed-looking jurors in this room. Here, it sounded like the rantings of a crazy person.
When Arthur was done, Benji took a seat at the defense table and murmured that he had no further questions.
“Mr. Morel,” the prosecutor began, rising, “have you yourself ever been sexually molested?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “Of course.”
The words hung in the air a moment like an epiphany. Yes, of course. I might be projecting a little when I report this, but there seemed to follow a kind of shocked silence in the courtroom. Even the prosecutor, who’d asked the question, seemed caught off guard by the answer. How was it that I never thought to ask? In Penelope’s hours of relentless interrogation, that I bore witness to, how was it that she not once had thought to ask? At Thanksgiving, why hadn’t the Wrights thought to ask? Had nobody asked? How could this be? The obviousness of his answer made it seem inconceivable. I craned to see Penelope’s face but couldn’t from where I was sitting.
Arthur went on. “In that place, it was inevitable. Except those I lived with wouldn’t have thought of it in such moralistic terms. Early sexual experience. What could be more natural? Man is a sexual being, after all. Children are sexual beings. Read Freud, he’ll tell you all about it.”
“By whom?” The prosecutor was suddenly motioning to an assistant, scrawling notes. “Who molested you?”
Arthur offered a dismissive wave. “Oh, I can’t remember. I’ve long ago stopped trying to figure it out. That mystery is locked away inside me somewhere, inaccessible. There were any number of candidates.”
“Your father?”
“No, not him. It wasn’t his—thing.”
“Your mother?”
“No. I told you I don’t remember.”
“Then who?”
Something registered in his face. He said again that he didn’t remember, but this time it was less convincing.
“Have you ever performed an act of child sexual abuse?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. Now it was Benji’s turn to begin scribbling furious notes, motioning to his assistant.
“Would you please describe the circumstances of this incident for the court?”
“Incidents,” Arthur said. “Plural.” He took a deep breath. And then another. “Okay,” he said. “At school. The only formal school I’d known thus far in my life. A music school, on Saturdays. In practice rooms, this was where. Sometimes bathrooms. Okay. My first was a boy my own age. Eight, maybe nine. More than touching. The use of mouths and hands and I—enjoyed—the acts, the acts I performed, we performed together. I wanted more, more touching with mouths and hands. I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me. This place was different from a weekday school. One didn’t know one’s cohort. I didn’t know his name. Where to look for him again. But I wanted—more.” He took another deep breath. Another. “Okay. I found another boy, same age. My same age. Another practice room. This boy, too, was—willing, a willing participant.” Deep breath. “Okay. I found many willing participants. It wasn’t difficult.” The prosecutor pressed Arthur to clarify, and he was forced to utter the words penis and anus, the words stimulation and penetration. “It was a virus, okay? I was spreading a virus throughout school. The virus of sexual knowledge. Learned at too young an age. I was set loose on the young boys at that school. It’s such a—such a shameful business. Oh, God! Eight, nine, ten. Okay? I was there eight years. Eight years, dozens and dozens of children. Boys, I should say. Only boys. Girls were not the same. It wasn’t that I didn’t desire them. They were just—so much more complicated. They required talking to. A code I didn’t understand. Boys were always at the ready. Curious. Willing to perform.”
“When did you stop,” the prosecutor asked, “molesting other children?”
“Once I began to learn the language of girls. Sixteen. High school. Once I moved in with my brother.”
“In fact, you’ve never stopped, have you? You have been compelled to, despite your best efforts, continue this practice into adulthood—with your own son. Isn’t that true?”
“No, absolutely not. You haven’t been listening.” But the prosecutor was done.
On redirect, Benji said gently, “Who was it, Arthur? It wasn’t Dad. It wasn’t Cyn.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember, Arthur. I know you do. Just say it. This is your moment.”
“No.”
“A teacher. You played violin. Was it your violin teacher?”
His violin teacher. I remembered suddenly. His book. His first book. A boy molested by his coach, who comes to school one day with a shotgun and—I almost stood up and shouted.
Arthur’s shotgun. Arthur’s cadenza was his shotgun.
I looked at Arthur as if for the first time. Timid, afraid. Of himself. Of his urges. The advice of the school counselor in his book came back to me now, a character of Arthur’s own imagination, dredged up to give its author the advice: Abuse has to be dealt with, or it will eat you alive. Was this what Arthur was doing with his sea of words? Wanting to explain it all away? Hoping a manifesto about art might unravel this troubling knot inside him?
Arthur’s eyes were leaking. His nose was running, and his tongue touched nervously at the glistening tip of his wet mustache. He shook his head. He shook and shook and shook his head.
“You did this for Will,” Benji said, “didn’t you? You worried about your own history. You wanted inoculation from this virus, as you put it. You felt your hands were unclean. You felt the need to purify them. That’s what this book is about, isn’t it? Purification. A purification ritual.”
“I deserve to go to jail,” Arthur said finally. Then would say no more.
What had Arthur planned to do up on that stand? Was this it? The final stage in his catharsis? Or had the prosecutor thwarted, by her line of questions, some other thing he’d been planning? I’ll never know.