The Funnies Page 14

  Susan and I walked to the fried dough stand, the only one that seemed to be doing business this early. We ordered two pieces each. Susan, as promised, paid.

  “Hey, he oughta be paying, right?” demanded the dough fryer. He turned to me. “You oughta be paying for this pretty lady.”

  I tried to chuckle, a rasping, malformed sound that had to be metamorphosed into a cough. “Could I get a receipt?” Susan asked.

  “What, are you kidding?”

  Next to the booth, I listened to a young family talking to a rent-a-cop. “What do you mean, he’s dead?” the mother was saying. “We came all the way from goddam Greenwich, Connecticut for this!”

  The vendor scribbled something on a piece of waxed paper with a magic marker and gave it to Susan. “Thanks,” she said, but he didn’t say anything back. We wandered to the center of the circle, where no one else was standing, and waited.

  “I have a bad feeling about all this,” I said.

  “Don’t be a sourpuss.” Her mouth was white with powdered sugar, and I reached across the space between us to wipe it off. Her face felt cool. Suddenly this seemed wildly inappropriate, but she only thanked me. “Though it’ll just get all dusty again.”

  “This is true.”

  “Why have we come out here, by the way?” she said. “Shouldn’t we be under some trees?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.” But I lingered. I didn’t want to sit near the rent-a-cops. Once, briefly, when I was about four, I had a thing about rules. I became convinced they were all false. It wasn’t a rebellion, just an obsession. I don’t know what led me to believe it—probably something I’d seen on television—but for at least a week, I went around breaking every rule I could remember having been given: I scribbled on the walls in crayon, I stuck a butter knife into an electrical socket (it didn’t go in all the way), I ran through the house and built forts out of the furniture. Bobby and Rose spent the week giving me disapproving glances, but I kept thinking: you guys haven’t figured it out yet! You’re missing your real life!

  It all ended when I shucked off my mother’s hand at a crosswalk and charged into traffic, nearly causing a pileup. A beat cop (the only one I have ever seen in Riverbank) saw what I had done and, to my amazement, arrested me, handcuffs and everything. The handcuffs didn’t quite fit, so all the way to the station—and we walked, right down Main Street—I held tight to them, so that nobody would think I was trying to escape. The cop led my mother and me to a holding cell and made me step inside. I asked for a tissue for my freely running nose, but the cop told me, “You don’t get tissues in prison. You have to trade your cigarettes for them.”

  I cried, “I don’t have any cigarettes!” then fell to the ground sobbing.

  At that point my mother had had enough and rescued me. She told the cop off right there in the station, and he must certainly have realized he’d gone too far, because he stood with his head hung and took it, then let us leave. For a long time, I believed my mother was commanding and invincible—a long shot from Dad, with his droopy grin and arbitrary regulations. Mom was my hero. What struck me most about this memory was that, until now, I had completely forgotten not only the incident, but my years of awed respect for my mother. It seemed like a lot to forget, and I wondered what else I had forgotten.

  Susan must have noticed my reverie, because we didn’t move to the shade, only stood there in the gathering heat while people massed for Mayor Francobolli’s dedication. I could see him now at the foot of the bandstand in his suit, leaning slightly back to compensate for his paunch. He was talking to some official-looking men I didn’t know. Why a suit? I wondered. He’d only have to shed it to jump into the river for the big kickoff, a tradition that had made the crossover from the old festival.

  As he scaled the bandstand steps, the mayor noticed me in the crowd—the center of the field was still largely empty—and waved to me. I waved back. He made his way to the lectern and thumped his fingers against the microphone; a screech of feedback swept over the park. People groaned.

  “Christ,” I said.

  “Reminds me of the rock clubs I used to hang out at,” Susan said.

  “You were a teenybopper?”

  “I was a bass player.”

  “Hello!” bellowed the mayor. He waited, like an elementary school principal addressing his student body, for the crowd to greet him back. A weak mumble went up.

  “I’m glad to see you all here for the opening of FunnyFest ‘ninety-eight!” he said. “This year is a special one. Our attractions, our prizes, are some of the most spectacular ever, and we have more food and gift vendors than ever before, thanks to the really stellar efforts of my Director of Publicity, Vasily Rowe!”

  One of the men he had been speaking to waved from a patch of worn grass next to the bandstand. A few ragged claps died in the air. The mayor went on. “But most of you have probably heard the great tragedy that has befallen FunnyFest, Riverbank, and the world: Carl Mix, the creator of FunnyFest, I mean the Family Funnies, died of a heart attack not two and a half weeks ago.” Somewhere, people booed. It wasn’t clear if they were booing my father, the mayor’s mention of my father, or death in general. “But we have decided to continue FunnyFest, this year and forever, much as our favorite comic strip will continue, at the hand of Timothy Mix, Carl’s son, who is with us today ladies and gentlemen right over there give him a hand!”

  Francobolli gestured vaguely in our direction. I slumped, mortified, as people swiveled their heads to see who, precisely, I was. More clapping, though not as much as there might have been had I waved. The mayor prattled on about community spirit in the face of tragedy, and heads reluctantly turned back to him. I whispered to Susan, “I can’t believe he did that.”

  “Jumped the gun just a little,” she said.

  “You can pick up a schedule at any one of the ticket stands here at the ‘Fest, or at any restaurant or shop in town, all of whom would appreciate your business.” He paused for a brief giggle, an effervescent sound like soda pop gurgling into a glass. A breeze picked up and blew several of his note cards away. People scrambled to retrieve them, but the mayor had already resumed, now a little less confidently. “And there are…uh…rides, thank you Vasily, and plenty to eat, and events here and in the fairgrounds all day long, and tomorrow. And be sure to cast your ballot at any ticket booth for Riverbank’s new name!” More cheers and boos. “And now, without further ado…” Francobolli stepped to the edge of the stage and tore at his clothes, baring his sunken chest with a manly, button-popping yank, and pushed down his pants to reveal a pair of bright Hawaiian swimming trunks. He was laughing as if tickled, and a few game members of the crowd laughed along with him. He had some trouble with the shoes and socks, and I wondered why he had worn socks at all, had he known he was going to do this.

  “This is tremendous,” Susan said.

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  Once he had gotten the pants fully off, Francobolli held them high in the air, letting his belly laughs carry over us on the wind. He moved back to the mike. “To the river!” he called out, and this time a few people did respond with a weak “To the river!” “To the river!” he said again, and this time a resounding reply: the crowd had filled in behind us like Indy cars revving at the starting line. When Francobolli jumped—remarkably nimbly, I had to admit—to the ground, the crowd flowed around us like blown sand through a dune fence, and I began to feel the anxiety that comes from watching other people embarrass themselves.

  “So what are we doing here?” Susan said. She had pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead, and her eyes gleamed with such delight that I thought she might begin tearing off her own clothes. For a second I figured she wanted to leave FunnyFest entirely. Then I realized that she was planning to follow the mayor to the bridge.

  “Avoiding that?” I offered lamely.

  “Don’t be a poop.”

  The bridge was several hundred feet from the bandstand, to the south of the fairgroun
ds. The crowd surged: across the open field, between the food vendors, who proffered their stuff weakly in our direction as we passed, between the giant maples to Bridge Street. We were not allowed to join the mayor on the bridge, for fear of its collapse. The rent-a-cops created a theoretical barricade by blocking us with their bodies. The crowd feinted, retreated, then finally gave in.

  “I sort of wanted to see it go down,” Susan said.

  A rescue team had been assembled: there was an ambulance, its lights flashing ominously, parked in the grass, and down by the water, two medics with a stretcher and a couple of guys wearing swim fins, flapping the fins at each other and laughing. Meanwhile, the stripped-down mayor had reached the center of the bridge, where he peered over the edge at the rushing water, still high from spring rain, and at the concrete abutments that held the bridge up. He shuffled over a few feet. The men in suits were with him, and briefly I amused myself with the image of them joining in the leap, but they both stood far from the railing, where they stared at their shoes. One was holding a stepladder.

  The mayor raised his hand in the air, casting a hush over us. “Ladies and gentlemen!” There was no microphone, and he was forced to scream. He motioned to the stepladder man, who unfolded the stepladder and positioned it against the railing. The mayor climbed it, and stood, tall for once in his life, on the steel railing of the bridge. I could see, at the far end in Pennsylvania, a few people hanging around, marginally interested in the peculiar spectacle of our town. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated. “Let the Funnies begin!” And with that, buoyed by the infectious cheer of the massed burghers, he leapt, his baggy swim shorts billowing around his pus-white thighs, and plunged into the Delaware.

  And this time, even I cheered. Why not? Already a few wiry, nervous types, mostly adolescents, were scrambling down the bank on the south side of the bridge to watch him surface. I felt the mob edging that way, even as their screams died away. We followed. Susan’s hand found my arm in the crowd. Her skin was warm, and it was difficult to tell where she left off and I began; I felt larger, as if now, attached as I was to my editor, I had new and joyful access to a strange and exciting world.

  Then I noticed that the cheers had died away. I was standing on a riverbank with several hundred people, all silent. What was the problem?

  The problem was that the mayor had not surfaced. The rescue guys calmed their flippers. The ambulance lights, which for some reason had never turned off, lent the scene a weird, done-deal air, as if the mayor’s body had already been dragged, bloated and ashen, from the muddy water.

  We watched and waited. Someone somewhere began to cry. And then, at last, Mayor Francobolli burst from the water laughing. He laughed and laughed, sweeping downstream like a sodden log, and the cheers erupted again, mine along with them, and the divers dove in and ferried him to the shore. And still he laughed, staggering up the bank, his chest dark with wet hair and his flabby arms triumphantly cleaving the air.

  It was easy to forget that this entire hullabaloo was about my father. Most people already had, I guess. For a moment I wished I could be a Fan of the Strip, so that I could have as good a time as everybody else.

  sixteen

  We were beginning to feel the logy halfheartedness that comes over weary people on hot days, so we found a tree near the entrance to the fairgrounds to take a breather. The next big event in the field wasn’t scheduled to take place until two, and the crowd made its way toward the rides. More people were arriving now, staggering past us through the gates, sweaty after the trek from their cars. A clot quickly formed at the ticket booths.

  “I suppose we’ll need tickets,” I said.

  Susan unzipped the butt pack cinched around her waist and produced a thick fistful of ride and game tickets.

  “Where’d you get them?” I said, impressed.

  “Custard’s Last Stand,” she said. “You know the place I’m talking about?”

  “Know it? It’s the site of my unsupervised self-upbringing.”

  “Cool,” she said. “I also voted for the new town name.”

  “No kidding! You don’t even live here.”

  She shrugged. “No one asked. I voted for Mixville.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Hmmph. Maybe it was a vote for your father.”

  “He’s probably snorting in his grave.”

  While Susan leaned, sighing and shut-eyed, against the tree, I took a moment to give her a long look. Her ankles were very close to me, not ten inches. They were heavy and dotted with razor stubble. She had funny knees, with an anatomically mysterious swirl to them, like the surface of a cinnamon bun. Her thighs were thick, her cutoffs cool- and comfortable-looking on her, and her arms, poking out of her T-shirt, were freckled and hazy with fine brown hairs. She was the kind of person somebody’s mother might call solid, who wore her glasses so close to her face that they seemed to have grown on it. I felt compelled to put my head in her lap, but didn’t.

  “You’re looking at me.”

  “What? No I’m not.”

  She took off her sunglasses and squinted at me. “That’s okay. There’s nothing else under here to look at.”

  “I wasn’t,” I protested, weakly.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you lived with a girlfriend.”

  “Used to. I’m about to move out.” How did she know this? I decided Bobby or Bitty must have gotten to her first.

  “Ah.” She cleaned off the sunglasses with a corner of the shirt and shot me an appraising look. “I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”

  I shrugged. “Fair enough.” I found myself strangely excited at the prospect, and remembered my college days, and the girls who dumped me, and the other girls I spilled my guts to, who someday later would also dump me. It seems in description like a vicious circle, but I kind of liked it: a steady rhythm of disappointment and elation I could rely on. In retrospect it was pathetic, and there was something in Susan’s question that made me think she knew all about it, that she could see right through me to the essential shallowness of my heart. I proceeded with caution.

  I gave her the short form, the one without the sex on the couch and the sad, empty cartoons. It felt strange, composing the story from the actual events of life. I’d never attempted to talk about Amanda; I hadn’t the need nor the audience. I pushed gently at the sore spot in me, and it hurt enough for me to turn away as I talked. My eyes fell onto the Ferris wheel. It jerked forward as the seats filled. In the gondolas, people waved their arms in the air, pretending fearlessness.

  When I stopped, Susan fell silent for a time, and I imagined that she too was looking at the Ferris wheel, which now gained momentum and began to turn with what, after the gradual admission of passengers, seemed a harrowing speed. But when I looked at her, she had her sunglasses folded in her shirt pocket and was gazing off toward the river, down where the mayor had been fished out. She said, “It was about six months ago for me. My fiancé, actually. Getting married was all his idea. I wasn’t at all sure if he was the right guy, even a right guy, but I figured, hey, I was over thirty, a little, and I’d passed a pretty doable three years with him, two shacked up, and maybe falling in love was not at all like you hear it is, and was mostly just what had happened to us, which wasn’t much.” Her eyes refocused and fell on me. “You still want to hear this?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She started at the beginning, filling in far more detail than I had. She was once an editor at a cookbook publisher, and the fiancé had been, and still was, a food photographer, who couldn’t cook to save his life but knew a good-looking meal when he saw one. They met at the publication party for a cookbook written by a famous talk show host’s chef. A lot of the talk show host’s friends were there—movie people, some sports figures, a U.S. senator. Susan found herself pushed into a corner with the photographer, who complained to her about the buffet tables, that the white tablecloths showed stains, that the food wasn’t being replenished fast
enough. Susan complained about the chef himself, his proud arrogance and mustache yeasty with recent meals.

  “I should have known,” Susan said. “Complaining in the first five minutes. We complained all night.”

  They became lovers, attended parties together, slept over a lot. Their relationship consisted mostly of talking about the collective output of mankind, or at least Manhattan, ferreting out the poseurs, seeking honesty with a dogged, almost desperate persistence, yet remaining more or less aloof about one another’s hopes, fears, etc. “The standard stuff,” she said. “Too boring for Lyle. We were normal people, and he was not interested in normal people, and for the time being neither was I.”

  Lyle suggested he move in with her, as she had the larger apartment in the better neighborhood, and so he did.

  “Now at this point,” she said, “I figured the lid would come cracking off this arch little critic thing we had going, and we’d start spooning out the goo. But it didn’t happen.” If anything, they became, thanks to the sheer volume of their critical output, even more detached. Their everyday discourse had the tenor of a book review: mild enthusiasm thinly obscuring deep disdain. “For me, the dissatisfaction was about the dissatisfaction. I mean, I liked everything but the constant nitpicking. That sounds foolish, I know, but I suppose I had invented a rich inner life for Lyle that in retrospect it seems he didn’t have. Or if he did, it wasn’t the one I’d imagined.”

  She began to prod him a little about his feelings, question his criticisms. It became a game, an extension of the old detachment, but this time focused on him. Then he began to do it back. For the last six months, both were on edge most of the time, though they never thought to stop and make a truce. Apparently the game itself still felt normal—it was, after all, a version of what had held true for two and a half years—and Susan didn’t connect it to the anxiety she was feeling. “I had just switched jobs, to Burn Features. I figured I was stressed over that.”