The Funnies Read online

  You won’t want to do this at first, but you’ll come around. There’s more to it than meets the eye.

  Dad

  The accompanying list was long as my arm: sandpaper, palette, rubber cement, kneaded eraser, etc., etc. I shouldered out of the stall, crumpled the papers and hurled them into the trash can, screamed, spun around, kicked the door so that it gonged on its hinges. Then I stood perfectly still, breathing heavily, for several minutes.

  Gathered, I went to the trash can and pulled the papers out. Did he think he could get away with this pop-psychological semi-apology for all the heartlessness and gloomy self-indulgence he’d inflicted on us over the years? But of course he had, and he was doing it right now. I smoothed the letter out against my leg, fresh sweat breaking out under my arms and on my back. I’d keep it as testament to my enduring patience. Someday, when I’d made my own fortune without him, I’d read it and laugh at what a supercilious twit he was.

  I smoothed back my hair in the mirror—for once, I noticed, I didn’t look like a penitent awaiting the lash—and flung open the men’s room door. I almost knocked over Susan Caletti. She brought her arms up before her face, as if I were about to sock her.

  “Jesus!” I said. “Sorry.”

  She backed up a step. “That’s okay.”

  “Where is everybody?” The hallway and conference room were empty.

  “They left. You were in there a while.” She smiled, pushing a wavy clot of hair away from her face. She looked terribly uncomfortable—her dress was navy blue and heavy-looking, with her ankles popsickle-sticking out of it, sunburned to a lurid pink.

  “So I guess you’re giving me a ride home?”

  “I guess I am.”

  * * *

  Susan Caletti drove a tan Subaru station wagon that looked to be from the early 1980s. It was in great shape. I told her this as we wended our way out of Trenton, the air conditioner gusting clammy warm air into our faces.

  “Yeah, I had a boyfriend who waxed it every weekend, so I sort of caught on. It feels a little funny doing it out in the street, but whatever.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “TriBeCa,” she said, and added—with a practiced, muted jubilance—“rent-controlled.”

  “There’s no rent control in West Philly.”

  She took her eyes from the road to offer me a surprised glance. “No?”

  “Our rent’s gone up something like four times in the past two years.”

  “Too bad.”

  Her driving was quietly competent, a rare thing. She seemed even to be enjoying herself. As if reading my mind, she said, “I like driving in cities, especially non-New York ones.” We were getting on Route 29 via a narrow entrance ramp. She paused to jockey for position against a pickup with wooden fence rails. The pickup backed off and let her merge. “It’s funny, I don’t really think of it as a part of real life. It’s like a video game or something.”

  “That could get you into trouble,” I said.

  “Hmm. I suppose it could.”

  We rode in silence for some minutes, watching trees and houses creep by. Susan didn’t turn on the radio. We were coming into Washington Crossing when she said, “So have you given it some thought?”

  For a second I didn’t know what she meant. I had been thinking about Amanda’s car, and began to look for the service station where I’d left it. Then I remembered. “Oh, sure,” I said.

  There was the station, up ahead. The Chevette was parked outside in the sun, all the windows clamped firmly shut. “So?” Susan asked.

  I turned to her. “Are you kidding me? Of course not!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure! That strip has been the bane of my existence my entire life! It’s stupid!”

  “Okay, okay,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “All I’m saying is don’t be hasty. Your dad…”

  “Don’t tell me about my dad, please.”

  “Right, okay.” She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sighed. “Just let me say this. From the standpoint of publicity, it’s preferable for us to keep it in the family. It’s a family thing, you know?” We were on a straightaway past a meadow, and she took a moment to look at me. I kept my eyes out the windshield. “And the other thing is that it’s easy. There’s really not much you have to do. Your dad didn’t really do much except draw his daily strips. We just send you your checks.”

  “Susan, with all due respect, I’ve already made my decision.”

  She poised herself to speak, her shoulders pitched like a linebacker’s. But finally she relaxed into her seat, nodding. The willows and ranch houses of South Side Riverbank came into view.

  At the foot of our driveway, she stopped the car. The air conditioner had finally cooled it off, and I envied her the drive back to New York. She opened the ashtray and pulled out, from a pile of nuts, bolts, rubber bands and coins, a creased business card. She handed it to me.

  “In case you have second thoughts. Your dad said….” She stopped short, her eyes on the river glittering in the distance.

  “Oh, go ahead and finish.”

  “Your dad said it would be good for you. Maybe that’s true.”

  “My dad has never known what’s good for me.”

  She met my gaze and held it, for the briefest moment, then put the car back into gear. “That may be true too,” she said.

  * * *

  There was a message on the answering machine for me. It was from the Sunoco station in Washington Crossing. They had an estimate on the Chevette.

  I called back and got the woman I’d talked to when I broke down. “You threw a rod,” she said.

  “I kind of figured that.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s gonna cost you six hundred bucks. We gotta get a new engine, okay? And there’s one up in Ringoes we can get you used for about four hundred, and believe me that’s a real good deal, and then labor’s two hundred, and I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s the best we can do in these particular circumstances.”

  “Oh.”

  “So we need a decision from you on whether to go ahead or not on it.

  “I’m wondering if the car’s even worth fixing.”

  “Well, that’s a possibility.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you,” I said. “It’s technically my girlfriend’s car.”

  I hung up and stood a moment by the phone, waiting for inspiration. Six hundred dollars! On the day I was supposed to have become rich! I grabbed a pencil from the grease-spattered mug next to the stove and snapped it in two against the edge of the counter. This felt good, so I did it to all the other pencils too. Then the pitiful theatricality of the gesture struck me and I put the pieces back into the mug and wiped off the counter with a damp rag.

  I called Amanda. She picked up on the first ring. “It’s me,” I said.

  “Hello, me.”

  “More bad news.” I waited a few seconds. “It’s the car. It needs a new engine.”

  “How much?” she said.

  “Six hundred bucks.”

  “Hmm.” In the background, at our apartment, I heard somebody say “What?” “Nothing,” replied Amanda.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “Nobody.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “It’s Ian,” she said. “I know how you hate him.”

  “I don’t hate him,” I said. “Why would you say that with him around?” Ian was our upstairs neighbor. He borrowed things and played “whimsical” little “jokes” on me when I wasn’t home, like adding dead birds or dandelion chains to my installations, or filling my sneakers with bread crumbs. I hated him.

  “Don’t worry, Tim,” came Ian’s voice, shrill even far from the phone. “I can take it!”

  “Don’t let him into the studio, please.”

  “I don’t know about this repair,” she said. “Are you sure they’re not just ripping you off? You can look like a sucker sometimes, no offense.” This refreshing f
rankness suggested that they had just been talking about me.

  “I’m sure, Jesus Christ.”

  She was silent, briefly. “Tim?”

  “Amanda.”

  “Did they read the will?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What’d you get?” Her voice was small and quiet, as if it were coming out of a dictaphone.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You didn’t get nothing.”

  “I got the comic strip,” I said. “If I can get it together in three months, I get to draw the Family Funnies, and I’ll live in my father’s studio and be him. That’s my inheritance. An endless, meaningless task.”

  This time the pause was longer, a nice slack length of rope to hang the conversation with. “Are you going to do it?” she said.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  She sighed. “No, of course not.”

  “What?” Ian was saying, “What?”

  “Ian, shut up!”

  I said, “Look, we’re not going to have any money anytime soon. We have to decide about the car.”

  “I guess we let it go, then. I guess we don’t have a car.”

  “I suppose that’s best,” I said.

  “Unless you sell a piece or something,” Amanda said, her voice brassy and false as an audition. “Maybe that’ll happen, do you think?”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.” But whatever emboldened her before had drained away, and it was just her speaking now, woeful and hushed. “So are you coming home?”

  As much as I didn’t want to be in this house, with its sticky patina of dust and big empty rooms, I wanted even less to be back in the cramped apartment with Ian listening to us from above, and my clumsy and unappealing work, my feelings for which were maturing from constructive doubt to outright disdain. I thought of Susan Caletti, puttering up the New Jersey Turnpike in a gentle cloud of cool air. For a second, I thought about what a year of the Family Funnies would earn me, and how long I could live on it afterward. I swallowed hard.

  “Tim?”

  “I need a little time to think here,” I blurted. “I have to think things over.”

  Amanda cleared her throat. “‘Things’?”

  “Yeah, things. Everything. All these new developments.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do,” I said, a parting swat. “Your dad didn’t just die, okay?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry,” as if awakening from a long sleep. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “Look, just don’t worry about it, okay? Just give me a few days and I’ll work out a plan.”

  “Right,” she said. “Regroup.”

  “Exactly. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Amanda said.

  * * *

  Something was wrong in the house. I walked from room to room, struggling to figure it out, but only when I noticed through my parents’ bedroom window that the Caddy was missing did it come to me: the place was empty. I was alone. In a family of seven, with a mother who didn’t work, a father who worked at home, and a brother who rarely left his bedroom, this was a rare circumstance, and standing in the dusty quiet I thought I could remember every other instance of it in thirty years. They were all pretty much the same. My father, racked by a sudden recognition that he was a bad parent, would declare a family outing, and one of us (whoever was quickest) would declare themselves violently ill. Bobby was most convincing: never reluctant to purge himself, he could vomit on demand. Rose was second best, milking her nascent menstruation with enormous skill; she would double over with sudden cramps and fold herself onto the floor like an old blanket. I was third. I got headaches. My mother would lead me to my room, pull down the shades and lay a damp washcloth over my forehead. I was actually brought to the doctor once; my mother was certain I was having migraines (“Your great aunt Sarah had ‘em, goddam her”). But I was pronounced healthy, much to my relief. Pierce, even when he was far too young to be left alone, had only to announce he was staying home, and nobody would question him: my father, true to form, didn’t actually want him along. Occasionally he would be locked in his bedroom for safe keeping. And Bitty, equally true to form, always wanted to go.

  After everyone was gone, I generally got out of bed and went straight for the kitchen, where I consumed great handfuls of anything rationed, forbidden or nutritionally counterproductive that I could find. Afterward I rooted through my parents’ underwear drawers, read Bobby’s hidden skin mags, abused myself and watched television until I heard the car in the driveway. By this time my headache would be real, and I could climb legitimately back into bed.

  In response to the memory, or maybe to the morning’s disheartening conversations, my head began a tentative thrumming. I rooted in the kitchen drawers and turned up a bottle of fossil aspirin, the crusty old tablets half-buried in a dune of analgesic dust. A threadbare washcloth found encrusted over the tub-edge wilted under cold water. I lay back on my bed, the washcloth folded across my brow, and fell into a shallow nap, where I had a nasty dream. In it, I was driving Amanda’s Chevette, and Amanda was directing me from the passenger seat. The car was filthy inside and out, slathered with some kind of tacky black goop. It kept getting on my hands and clothes.

  “Left!” Amanda screamed. “Right!”

  She was steering me toward obstacles, and when I hit them, parts of the car broke or fell off. And though I was doing what I was told, she was outraged, and pummeled me with her bony fists. “You dumbfuck!” she said. Meanwhile the landscape threatened, grew darker and more treacherous with every passing second.

  There were a lot of people watching me drive, healthy, happy people waving banners and flags, as if we were part of a parade. They groaned with disappointment every time we smacked against an object. What were they doing out here, in this awful place? What was I doing out here? The dream ended abruptly when Amanda steered me into the base of a huge black volcano.

  I woke unrefreshed, spooked by the silence, and found myself missing the usually unnerving presence of my brother. Where did Pierce go? Who did he see? I had no idea. But I supposed the same questions could be asked about me, and the answers would be no less disappointing. The sun hung shockingly low in the sky—it was already evening. I had missed most of the day.

  I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of ice water. Then I pulled Susan’s card from my pocket. BURN FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC., it read. SUSAN CALETTI, EDITOR. A telephone number.

  And on the back, another number, handwritten beside a capital H. I dialed this one. After five rings, a machine answered, and I almost hung up. Then the familiar clatter of a manhandled phone.

  “Hello? Hello? Hold on.” The taped message droned on a second or two, then stopped. Susan came back on, her voice syrupy with sleep. “Hello?”

  “Susan?”

  “Yeah, oh, hi.”

  “This is Tim Mix.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m good with voices. Excuse me, I just woke up.”

  “Me too. Sorry about that.”

  She coughed, and I heard the whisper of fabric being adjusted. “So what’s up?”

  From where I stood, I could see through the grubby sliding glass doors the entrance to my father’s studio.

  I switched the phone to the other ear, the way a person does a hundred times during a long, wrenching conversation. “I’ll do it,” I said.

  seven

  Friday night in Riverbank meant ice cream and miniature golf, two things that, despite my best efforts to hate them during my college-era anti-hometown period, I still loved with unnatural passion. There is no miniature golf in West Philadelphia, and never was. There was no soft serve either, not in the time I’d lived there. I set off on foot for downtown.

  I had spent the afternoon avoiding my responsibilities as author of the Family Funnies. There was the studio to clean out and begin work in; there was Brad Wurster to call, to set up my lessons. I needed supplies, I supposed. It was July 10t
h, and I had until October 7th (three months after my father’s death) to become a cartoonist. I felt no urgency. October seemed so far away, like a description of autumn from a long, boring novel, and I couldn’t think of any reason why my task should not be absurdly easy.

  As a rule, people in Riverbank rarely walked places in summer; they either sat on their porches, watching people drive by, or drove somewhere themselves. This rule of thumb applied equally to the North and South sides of town, though the cars were different. People stared as I strolled along the sidewalk, at first from deep behind stands of trees, then increasingly, the farther north I got, from crumbling cement porches with wrought-iron railings. As I walked, I could hear the river meekly yammering two blocks to my left, and ahead the dim lights of downtown glowed wanly against parked cars.

  For the first time in many months, I felt good. I felt better than good, in fact—I felt terrific. I replayed my conversation with Susan in my mind. She had told me that we would meet—“Come to New York if you want,” she said, “or I’ll come there, whatever”—to discuss my progress, and the syndicate’s plans for me. We talked about interviews I would eventually have to give, and a conference I would attend in the coming months. I hadn’t done anything at all, and people were taking care of me; people had my comfort and work in mind.

  No matter that it wasn’t meaningful work. It was work, one way or another, and I would find a way to like it.

  Custard’s Last Stand stood at the intersection of Main and Cherry, catty-corner from the Episcopalian church. It was illuminated by massive parking-lot streetlamps, swaddled in halos of light-drunk moths, that towered over the eighteen golf holes like skyscrapers. The course was packed. I pulled open the saloon-style half-doors, ducked past the vestibule bugzapper, then got myself into line behind a hefty family of five. Bon Jovi was on the radio. I hummed along. When it was my turn, I ordered a vanilla cone dipped in quick-drying butterscotchlike goo, then carried it, along with a wad of napkins thick as a Penguin Classic, to the chain-link fence that separated the paying miniature golfers from the spectators.