J. Lennon - The Funnies

“So will you help me?”

“Help you?” I gasped.

“By helping Pierce.”

“By doing what? He doesn’t need my help.”

“You could open the safety deposit box for him, find what’s inside. He trusts you. If there’s something in there that would scare him, something that could convince him your father still holds power over him, you could lie.”

I opened my eyes and looked into hers. They had taken on a startling and persuasive intelligence. I considered this, in light of what I now knew about her. I could see it, her and Pierce.

“I bet you’re good for him,” I said.

“He needs me.”

“I can’t lie to my brother. Whatever’s in there, I’ll have to tell him.”

“That’s selfish,” she said. “That’s you holding on to a habit because it’s easier to do that than to take responsibility for him. He wants you to be responsible for him, you know. He trusts you.”

“You said that.”

“It’s true.”

“Before I came back here, I hadn’t been close to him in years. Why would he trust me?”

She shrugged. “Beats me.”

* * *

I finally found Susan standing in the middle of the food vendors’ circle, blankly glancing around through her glasses, as she had at my father’s wake. I noticed for the first time that the circle looked much like a ring of covered wagons, cowering in the dust on a prairie of the American West, shielding itself from an attack by marauding Indians. Susan seemed unaware of any such attack. She took a bite out of something in her hand, and as I came closer I noticed it was a corn dog. She saw me, made a move to hide the corn dog, then gave up and brought it back into view.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “The ultimate popular culture nostalgia cliché food. Would you believe I’ve never had one before?”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Really, this is my first.”

“I’m sorry,” I said suddenly, surprising myself with my vehemence.

She started. “About what?”

“Leaving you to your own devices this morning. Not letting you know I’d be going out to see our mom.”

“Good Lord, Tim, I don’t care about that. I’m a big girl.”

“I’m just not used to dealing with all these new people,” I said. “And old people too. Not that you personally are hard to deal with.”

“No offense taken.”

“I don’t feel like myself,” I said. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

She nodded. “I never feel like myself. Or rather I never feel like the person I think of myself as actually being, the sort of Platonic ideal of myself I always picture doing the things I’m about to do. And then when I do them this other person takes over and screws them up.”

We stood silently in all the commotion, nodding. Susan offered me a bite of her corn dog. I refused, still queasy from the Centrifuge of Death, but I didn’t tell her this, and I feared that this rebuff without explanation would give offense. Then I came to my senses and simply let it go. It was a wonderful feeling, like dropping a box off at the Goodwill.

“Is this on?” came a shrill voice, then a squeal of feedback. I turned to see the mayor, perched on the bandstand with a brass band setting up behind him, peering at the microphone as if it were a mutant strain of lab rat.

“Speaking of clichés,” Susan said.

“Hello? Hello?” The mayor was wearing a Family Funnies T-shirt, the one with a picture of Bobby saying, “Why’s it called a tea shirt? There’s no tea on it!” He also wore a deep, rich tan he hadn’t had the day before.

“It’s five o’clock,” Susan said. She pulled a folded schedule from her shorts pocket. “Time for the election results.”

“I forgot about that.”

Francobolli was fumbling with his notes now. A few people had gathered in the field, not many. I wondered how many townspeople had actually voted.

And then, something very strange happened: I became suddenly, inexplicably happy. It came to me like a faint, delicious scent swept from a distant place, and tumbled over and over itself, snowballing inside me, taking on weight. I shifted my feet to support it. Then the mayor coughed, bent to receive a sealed envelope, and just like that it left me. But its faint impression remained, lending me lightness, the way an extra bat gives the slugger in the on-deck circle his effortless swing at the plate. I hopped once, then again, testing it.

“What?” Susan said with a puzzled smile.

“Nothing, nothing.”

The mayor gave a brief speech. He talked about the things that made Riverbank great, its natural beauty, its notable figures of the past, then segued into my father, then into the town council’s decision to change the name in his honor. He clawed at the envelope.

Not Familytown , I begged him silently.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the mayor announced. Behind him, the trombone player raised the trombone to his lips and adjusted the slide. “I’m pleased to report that our town is now called…”

A beat, in which only the distant sounds of the rides and riders could be heard.

“Mixville! Mixville, New Jersey!” And as the band ripped into the air with a ragged vaudevillian vamp, the mayor yelled, drowned out by the sound, “Welcome, one and all, to Mixville, New Jersey!”

I looked around, at my new town, the one named after my family. People were clapping, infected by Francobolli’s manic exuberance. I was unsurprised to spy Ken Dorn hunkered among them, looking vaguely Teutonic in a gratuitous leather vest and khaki hiking shorts, and he eyed me from twenty yards away with a knowing smirk, as if he could read my mind. But I was just as sure that he couldn’t. Try your damnedest, Ken , I told him silently. You will never know me . And I turned to my editor and accepted my great, ironic handshake that for the moment I thought I deserved.

Monday morning was relentless in the wake of my undone cartooning work, with the curve of the pen itching away at my bones, Wurster hanging over my shoulder, barking instructions, the house’s oily cold clinging to my skin and clothes. By the time I got out, the early clouds that had been massing on the horizon had arrived and gushed forth their rain, and the heat wave had finally broken. I blinked in the bright gray light, listening to water dripping off trees.

When I got home I asked Pierce for money. I hadn’t wanted to do this, but I had been letting him pay for groceries and gas for weeks now, and he hadn’t appeared put off by it.

“Oh, yeah, okay,” he said. We were in his bedroom, where he had been playing solitaire and smoking cigarettes. He got up and went to the closet. I heard some clunking around from there. When he came out, he had a neat handful of twenty-dollar bills, which he handed to me.

“You’ve got cash in there?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Where from?”

“The account Dad left me. I got a lot out at once.” He sat down on the bed, reluctant to meet my eyes. “Banks make me nervous.”

I glanced at the money. It was a thick little pile, and I had to restrain myself from counting it. “Jesus, Pierce, thanks.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s a lot.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

His tone was dismissive. But I lingered, letting my eyes navigate the room, wondering if he had other things stashed here: drugs, old photos, letters. “Speaking of banks,” I said, and felt the temperature in the room drop half a degree. “That key.”

He bent farther over his game, emphatically flipping cards into piles.

“Are you going to look and see what’s in it? Aren’t you curious?”

“Nope,” he said.