The Funnies

  The Funnies

  J. Robert Lennon

  Dzanc Books

  1334 Woodbourne Street

  Westland, MI 48186

  www.dzancbooks.org

  The Funnies, copyright © 1999 by J. Robert Lennon

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2013 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-936873-64-7

  eBook Cover Designed by J. Robert Lennon

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  For Mom, Dad, Chris, Mickey, Pop Pop

  and Skoog, who’s got funny

  The widespread popularity of the strip signifies, I believe, some kind of a subliminal awareness on the part of the readers…The humor, after all, is often quite bland and not particularly effective. Thus it is unlikely that the humor…is what interests readers. The probability is, rather, that the representation of pathetic domestic relations cloaked in exaggeration and absurdity really intrigues us.

  ARTHUR ASA BERGER

  The Comic-Stripped American

  Why should comics be relevant? Should golf balls be printed with ecology slogans? Should circus clowns perform population-explosion skits? Are our martini olives to be wired with abortion information?

  MORT WALKER

  Backstage at the Strips

  the funnies

  one

  “Dad’s dead,” said my brother, as if it were my fault. This was Bobby, five years my elder, who once tried to make me drink a bottle of aftershave I had stolen from him. He was fifteen at the time, and I was ten, and he only stopped when he realized I would vomit the aftershave and everything else onto his bedroom carpet. The last word he’d spoken to me, during our last phone conversation a couple of years ago, was fine, followed by the climactic silence of an abrupt hang-up. Now, with the telephone receiver in one hand and a backgammon dice cup in the other, I might have welcomed a nice, clean disconnection. Instead the silence was filled with Bobby’s measured breaths, rustling mintily in my ear.

  I said, “What?”

  “Heart attack. In his studio. There’s a funeral tomorrow.”

  I said, “Jesus, when?”

  “I just said, tomorrow.”

  “No, I mean…”

  A crisp tsk reached me, barely perceptible. “Last night. He passed away last night. Bitty’s already here, Rose is coming in the morning.”

  “How’s Pierce? Is he okay?”

  Bobby’s pause again seemed to carry the suggestion of blame, as if our younger brother were a wayward urchin in my charge. At twenty-eight, however, Pierce was the only one of us who hadn’t left home, and thus fell under our father’s care, whatever that was worth. Not much, anymore. “Maybe when he comes out of his room we’ll find out.”

  “Bobby,” I said, “why didn’t anyone call me?”

  “I am right this minute calling you.”

  This time I was the one to pause. After several bloated seconds, he said, “Well, Tim, there’s been a lot to take care of. We tried last night…”

  “What time tomorrow?” I said, savoring the interruption.

  “Noon. Come early, to the house. And please do not be late.”

  “Lay off, Bobby.” And this was enough to trip, finally, his circuit breaker. My brother Bobby did not blow fuses. He hung up. I gently set down the receiver.

  “Roll,” said Amanda. She was sitting cross-legged in her nightgown on the floor, inspecting the backgammon board with rapacious pleasure. She was winning. I lowered myself to the carpet, put my hand over the cup, rattled the dice and let them fly.

  “Yes!” she said.

  “That was my brother Bobby,” I told her. “Our dad had a heart attack. He’s dead.”

  She looked up, the afterimage of her predatory grin bobbing gracelessly in her eyes, and I felt bad for her, worse, for a change, than I felt for myself: how did you react to the death of your boyfriend’s father, when the only things the boyfriend ever had to say about him were rotten? When, in fact, the boyfriend had, at times, wished the old man dead? She rearranged her expression, looked for a time down at her hands, then offered one of them to me. I took it. To her credit, she pushed aside the backgammon board, upsetting the pieces, and pulled herself over. She put one arm around me, then the other. We hugged.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Are you okay? How are you?” She pulled back and took my face in her thin fingers.

  “Uh, I suppose I’m fine. I guess I have to go. Home. The funeral is tomorrow.” My sisters and brothers, I thought, all together at once: when was the last time that happened?

  “Do you want me to come? I can get off work. Why don’t I come.” Say no, said her eyes.

  “Don’t. You’ll probably never see them again anyway.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, with an obvious relief she must have thought she was concealing.

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  * * *

  That night, while Amanda slept, I sat on the sofa, tugging at upholstery threads torn loose by a previous owner’s cat and reading randomly from a stack of five-year-old fashion magazines. Already I was feeling guilty for not going home immediately. But for whom? Not Bobby, who would be pleased to have one more reason to scorn me; or Rose, the oldest, with whom I had barely spoken in ten years. Not poor Pierce, either, who would likely see me as just another conspirator against him. Maybe it was Bitty I should have been there for, the baby of the family, newly married at twenty-five to a man I’d never met but who I bet was a lot like our father.

  Considering how eager we all were to disown our childhoods, none of us had fallen very far from the cradle. West Philly, where I lived, was a quick paddle down the Deleware from the family compound in Riverbank, New Jersey. Rose lived in upper Manhattan, Bitty in nearby Frenchtown, Bobby somewhere in the landscaped landscape of Bridgewater. And Pierce, of course, lived in his bedroom. I wondered if the rest of them, like me, hated to travel.

  I thumbed through the ragged pile of scrap papers that served as our address book until I came to my mother’s number, standing alone on the back of a grocery receipt (hardware, alcoholic bev, bakery, bakery, bakery, dairy). “MOM,” it read. “IVY HOMES.” And then the number. Before I could change my mind, I dialed it.

  “Ivy Homes Care Center.”

  “Dorothy Mix, please.”

  There was a long pause, a string of clicks and tones like the language dolphins speak, and a woman’s voice. “Yes?”


  “Is Mrs. Mix there?”

  “Who is this?” said the voice, stern and subdued, like a marriage counselor’s. Lite rock played softly somewhere.

  “Her son Tim.”

  “She’s sleeping now. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean no, but I just…”

  “They shouldn’t have put you through,” she said with finality. I hung up.

  I hadn’t visited her for at least a month—or had it been two? I tried to figure out how that was possible, but of course, as I quickly grasped, it was more than possible, it was true. Small comfort to think that I’d be seeing her soon enough.

  * * *

  Amanda’s car broke down fifteen miles from Riverbank, an hour and a half before the funeral was supposed to start. It was a Chevy Chevette. I used to have my own car, a red 1982 Datsun station wagon with a cream interior that I bought in high school and paid for in tiny increments with tip money. I drove it for six years before the brakes needed servicing, and another four before the exhaust system and fuel lines gave out. Beyond that, it was just oil changes and spark plugs. All through art school I used it to lug around supplies, and when I graduated, loaded it with my installation pieces for delivery to galleries. I had slept in it for a year’s worth of nights. But not long ago Amanda had somehow convinced me to sell it. Let’s just keep one car, she said, the Chevette. It’s easier to park. We sold the Datsun and split the money.

  So why, I wondered, sitting in the Chevette in the hot July sun, on the shoulder of the only stretch of Route 29 that was not shaded by a canopy of trees, with the driver’s side window permanently rolled up, did I feel like I was borrowing it from her?

  Under the hood I found the automotive cousin of a coronary: a Chernobyl of thick black motor oil steaming on every surface, burst hoses splayed across the car’s hot viscera. Gelatinous yellow goo was drooling over the crankcase like spilled custard, and onto the pavement below, where it pooled around my only pair of dress shoes. I was wearing my Sunday best: blue slacks, white shirt, blue blazer, already as sweaty as a gym suit.

  Furthermore, I had to pee.

  There was a burger place up around the bend, so I started walking, my bladder leadenly somersaulting deep in my gut. I’d driven this road dozens of times, the forty-five minutes back and forth from college, and thought I could remember each trip down to the last unremarkable detail, every song I’d listened to on the radio, every speed trap I’d slowed down for. The homecomings themselves—visits to my mother; half-assed, ill-fated family holidays—were lost to me, as were my unheralded returns to West Philly. How I missed the Datsun: plodding through the terrible heat, I thought I might cry. About my father’s funeral, on the other hand, I felt only deep fatigue, as if I’d already been attending it, day after day, for many years.

  I relieved myself at Burger Bodega, but the pay phone was out of order, and I had to throw Dad’s funeral at the clerk to get my hands on the house phone. I thumbed through a grease-stained Yellow Pages, looking for the service station I always passed in Washington Crossing, the nearest town. Spelling’s? Spalding’s?

  “You mean Sperry Auto,” the clerk told me, a rawboned, buzzardly man in a paper cap. “Except it ain’t Sperry Auto anymore. It’s Sunoco Plus.” He stood over the grill, flipping patties with robotic speed, and spoke to me through a haze of meat-scented steam. “Lucky for you I knew that, huh?”

  A woman answered at Sunoco Plus, yelling yeah over something shrill and pneumatic-sounding. I told her where the car was. “I’d appreciate it if you hurried,” I said. “I’m late for a funeral.” For a moment, the noise stopped, and I could hear men laughing and the confident clanking of hand tools, the shrill sound of country music emanating from a transistor radio. If I closed my eyes I could see the radio, balanced on a dented oil drum, layered thickly with years of axle grease and cigarette smoke.

  “Well, we’ll get there when we get there,” the woman said.

  * * *

  The tow truck, still bearing the cheerful Sperry’s insignia on the door, was driven by a crabby, tight-jawed mechanic with a handlebar mustache. He wore an orange Sunoco jumpsuit without a single stain on it. “Got Triple A?” he said, hopping onto the pavement.

  “No.” I had, in fact, a perfectly preserved memory of myself dropping the membership renewal form into the trash two months before. I had gone an entire lifetime without requiring roadside assistance, and decided to spend my thirty-five dollars elsewhere.

  “It’ll costya,” he told me, as if that mattered.

  “Well, okay,” I said. He glared at me for a moment, then put the Chevette into neutral, backed the truck up to it, and winched the front wheels into the air. I watched this operation with what felt like a woeful, obliged expression on my face. We got in the truck and heaved onto the road, setting a pine-tree-shaped air freshener into pendulous motion where it hung from the radio knob. We listened to the news together, much as we might have if the other wasn’t there.

  One of my greatest anxieties in life is the possibility of being at the mercy of a man less intelligent than me, yet highly skilled in an arena of which I have no knowledge. As anxieties go, this one is arrogant and impractical, and I am forced to deal with it often. I was unable to restrain myself from saying, “Something just popped.”

  “What?”

  “Something under the hood just popped.” I looked at my shoes. The yellow goo had dried, leaving light brown stains on my loafers. I reached down and touched them. Perfectly smooth.

  The driver took his time answering. “Tell it to Peg,” he said finally.

  The service station was much as I remembered it, but it had been painted yellow and blue, and the wooden Sperry’s sign replaced by a plastic Sunoco sign, the kind that lights up. There wasn’t much to Washington Crossing, a few narrow streets and some traffic lights. People lurched heavily by on the sidewalks. Peg was busy, so I asked to use the phone and was directed by Mr. Mustache to a pay phone around back. Beside the phone was a molded plastic chair with paint spattered on it. I ran my hand over the spots, making sure they were dry, before I sat down and called my father’s house.

  “Yes?” said Bobby.

  “It’s me. Tim.”

  A deep and lengthy silence, the kind that conversations unwittingly fall into and die. “Where are you?”

  “Wash Crossing.”

  “The funeral, Tim, is in forty-five minutes.”

  “I know,” I said. “I had a breakdown.”

  “You mean automotive,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want me to come get you.”

  “Well, I guess so.”

  “You guess so.” This had been a habit of my father’s: throwing your words back at you so that they sounded stupid. For a second I considered hitching back to West Philly. Then I saw myself doing it, standing on the shoulder of the road, waving down cars in my rumpled clothes.

  “Yes, Bobby,” I said. “Please do that. It’s at the Sunoco.”

  “There’s no Sunoco in Wash Crossing.”

  “There is now.”

  I stumped back into the empty office and placed myself in the path of a dust-caked oscillating fan that had been set up on a file cabinet. The dust, over time, had formed loose confederacies that shimmied precariously in the manufactured breeze. For a while I stood there with my eyes closed, cooling. When I opened them, they fell onto something at the counter: cartoon strips preserved under a sheet of scratched plexiglas. I leaned over, trying to stay in the airstream. Sure enough, there it was, the Family Funnies. My father’s comic strip. I got that familiar feeling—a kind of existential loginess mixed with an acute disappointment in the world—that I always did encountering the Family Funnies in the wild. In this one, it’s just Bobby and Rose in the car, the two oldest, with my mother and father. The hood’s up, and a mechanic’s peering at the engine, and Rose is leaning out the car window, and she’s saying, “Don’t worry, mister, my daddy can fix it!”

 
; Rose, I thought, would probably insist she’d never say such a thing. Then I remembered with a start that I would be seeing her—and the rest of them—in about half an hour. It had to have been twenty years since we’d all been together. We were like a high school graduating class, sticking it out only as long as we had to, then fleeing into the world, diplomas in hand. I could see the five of us only as our comic strip selves: forever prepubescent, compassionate and cute, full of harmless misapprehension and mild rivalry, and immaculately compliant in the delivery of Dad’s lousy jokes. If he ever drew us as adults, he wouldn’t have enough white space on the page to put between us, enough ink to fill in all the petty resentments and knee-jerk equivocations.

  I knew exactly how my father would draw himself dead, though: with wings, and a harp, and of course those blank eyeglasses that obscured all expression.

  two

  Maybe Dad conceived of it as a way to control us. In the unbreachable box of the comic strip, we could be charming and obedient, and we would stay that way, year after year. Maybe it was his own puerile self-doubt, his lack of self-control—the classic bad-dad syndrome—that made this seem like a good idea. Whatever precipitated it, the Family Funnies made him rich and famous, transformed him from Carl Mix, rotten father, into Carl Mix, middle-class hero, preeminent architect of Good Clean Fun. And it turned us, of course, into objects of public humiliation, imperfect prototypes for our gleaming, dimwitted twins, who were implicitly held up to us as model kids, as everything we were lamentably not.

  “You threw a rod,” my brother said, peering into the engine as if it were the mouth of a man I had just killed. He gave me an unapologetic look of appraisal. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “It’s the best I’ve got.”

  “Jesus, Tim.” His face was puffy and his eyes red, and I felt more shame at my own lack of evident grief than I did about my mussed blue suit. Bobby’s suit was black, and crisp as crackers. I was sure he had more where that came from.