J. Lennon - The Funnies

“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 frankness 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.