The Morels (42 page)

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.