The Funnies (34 page)

“He is,” I said. “He's got different problems is all.”

Her eyes met mine. They were as deep and alien as bullet holes. I got the impression she wanted to say something, but she never opened her mouth, just stared at me until I had to turn away.

“Get over it, Rose,” I said, suddenly angry.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her shaking her head. “You never
trusted
him, Tim. And then had your trust betrayed. By the time you came along, he'd already ruined everything.”

“Pierce?” I said, stupidly.

“Daddy,”
she said. “Pierce was a drop in the bucket.”

I was beginning to tire of this. “I can't understand why you
dislike
Pierce so much,” I said. “It isn't his fault he's the way he is. Frankly, Rose, there's a lot more of Dad in you than in Pierce.”

“You can say that again.” She laughed, a sound like a dish breaking.

Rose had always prided herself on being cryptic and secretive, claiming obscure insight into the family dramas that we could never possibly understand. As a teenager she kept a journal in code, and was so confident it couldn't be cracked that she left the spiral notebook it was recorded in lying haphazardly around the house. She was right too: the hodgepodge of numbers and letters and mysterious symbols eluded Bobby and me, the only people who cared, and a thorough ransacking of her bedroom turned up no Rosetta stone. But there was a part of me that didn't want the code cracked. I wanted to buy her schtick, to take comfort in the thought that someone, at least, knew what was going on.

Now, of course, it was obvious she'd been every bit as addled as I was. I wondered if there really was a key to those journals, if perhaps they'd been as mysterious to her as to us: maybe writing in the journals was an elaborate kind of playacting, and at night in bed she scrutinized the meaningless signs with a flashlight, as if they held the solution to her misery. In that case, her game was meant to protect us, to take the pain of living in that house onto herself, and I had misjudged her.

I stared at her and she, with her long face turned into the sun, must have felt me staring. How many layers of pretense and subterfuge was she made of? Was there a pure, unadulterated Rose underneath, or had she become the things she pretended to be? She was older than me by more than just the years between us.

As if she had read my thoughts, she said, “You're still just a kid.” And that seemed about right, until she turned to me and revealed the face she'd assembled to go along with the statement: a contemptuous smirk, her eyebrows arched in naked moral superiority, and the tiniest ghost of doubt concealed underneath, like a thief silhouetted behind a billowing curtain. She was trying to chase me out.

It was hard to resist. I got up, setting my juice glass on the floor at my feet. “Funny how I'm the one taking the adult responsibilities around here,” I said, and started to leave.

“Wait,” she said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. I was nearly to the door by then. The room grew tense, as if polarized by our talk, and in the silence the air seemed to glow with its energy. “I'll help. I'll help take care of her.”

I looked back: her body was shut tight, knees and hands together, turned toward the windows. I saw the bagel bag lying neglected on the table and I wanted another.

“You mean it?” I asked.

She nodded. “We can work out the details later.”

I considered going to her, but I knew she didn't want me to, and to be honest, I didn't want to either. I said, more quietly than I had intended, “Thank you, Rose,” and walked out.

* * *

I didn't feel like sorting out the mess the conversation was already becoming in my head, and so I tried to put my plan back on track: I walked with the intention of stopping myself every twenty blocks for one thing or another, an art gallery, a cup of coffee, lunch. The idea was to clear my head to make room for the work I'd have to start doing when I got home. Instead, every step seemed to shake loose another anxiety: the cartoon, Mom, money, my future. The coffee I bought tasted stale, and the art I looked at in the usual galleries seemed too aggressive, too eager to please, or offend, or prove something. I avoided inventing a destination, but all the same I wasn't surprised when I found myself in SoHo, nosing around the galleries near Delicious Duck, hurrying past work that deserved perhaps a second look, to get myself back on the street. I studied passersby, letting them take on her shape for the smallest fraction of a second, letting my blood run thick and sludgy with longing. I made no mistake about the longing: it was for a sympathetic ear, for a sounding board. But of course there was more to it than that, and for that undefined more I kept myself from rushing to her building and ringing her from the desk.

As it turned out I didn't have to. I watched her walk into the restaurant from a block away. Once she was inside, I made a run for it, hoping to make it before she ordered, in the event that we might do it together. I found her huddled in the cavernous dim of the place, her sunglasses absently left on, buried in an ornate, finger-softened cardboard menu. She seemed to have trouble reading it.

I thought I could sneak up on her, reach over the menu and pluck the glasses off. I pictured her astonished, laughing face as she looked up and saw that it was me. Instead, she turned her head and my hand brushed her ear, and she jumped back as if I had zapped her with an electric prod.

“You!”

“Hi.”

She sighed, shaking her head at the carpet.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I was trying to surprise you. By taking off your glasses.”

“Glasses?” She brought her hand to her face and removed them. “Ah. Yes.” She let me have a thin smile, and said, “Dare I ask what brings you here?”

“Scrumptious Chinese takeout.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.”

We ordered food and it was brought to us. “No napkins, no fork, no chopsticks,” she told the clerk. We carried out our bags, and since she hadn't told me to go elsewhere, I walked alongside her. We didn't talk. She squinted, having forgotten to put the sunglasses back on. I followed her into her building, a scabby brownstone with a cat on the stoop, and up the steps. She held the door for me.

Her place was what I'd expected. Largely tidy, the furniture covered with pieces of damp clean laundry. Some movie posters and an old formica dinner table, where we sat and opened our bags.

“You got my letter?” I said.

She held up a hand. “Tim. Lunch first.”

We took chopsticks from the china mug at the center of the table. I watched her eat. She watched her plate, occasionally fixing me with a wary, slightly hostile glance. But I could tell she pitied me a little—her face, exerting itself in the act of eating, betrayed a crude, practical sort of mercy—and I let myself hope.

I finished first. When she was done, she reached out, took my hand, and pulled me to the couch, where she placed us at opposite ends (I was reminded of my talk with Rose). She said, “I do not want to be the girl you're hanging around with while you're sorting out your various issues.”

This took a moment to sink in. “Which is to say forget it?” It sounded true as I said it, and my heart listed.

“Which is to say forget it, if that's all I am to you, or will be.”

“I don't think that's all you are to me.”

“You don't think.”

I chose my words carefully. “I can't tell you that I'm absolutely certain of anything. I am pretty sure I don't want you just because I'm desperate for somebody to talk to.”

I was surprised to hear myself say this. She sighed.

“That came out wrong,” I said.

“No, it didn't. It was the truth.”

“I guess.”

“Move closer,” she said. “Just a little.” I gave her several feet of space, and she took my hand in both of hers. They were cold. “I was watching
Rear Window
,” she said. “Get it rolling, would you?”

With my free hand I picked up the remote from the coffee table and turned on the set. It took a moment to find
PLAY
in the parking lot of buttons, and then I hit it.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

We watched it straight through without speaking. Jimmy Stewart had just started spying on the glum songwriter. The taste of Hunan beef still simmered on my tongue. At some point Susan's hands began to move over mine, and our fingers entwined and pulled apart, tested each other while we watched.

When it was over, I picked up the remote and turned off the TV. I could hear her breathing. She slid into my arms and I lay back, and then she lay back, half-on, half-off me on the thin cushions. We kissed, and kissed again.

“If you break my heart, Mix,” she told me, the ends of our noses flattened against each other, “I swear I'll beat the living shit out of you.”

“It's a deal,” I said.

More kissing. My hand found her back, the place where her T-shirt had pulled from her shorts and exposed a bare inch of skin. She let out a breath.

“Bedtime,” she said.

Delighted, I said, “Right.”

Afterward we seemed far from finished. We stayed very close, saying nothing, finally sleeping, then waking, then trying it all again, and despite the typical trappings of pleasure, I didn't feel like what we'd done had resolved anything. We had crossed over into something new, and though the border patrols hadn't gotten us there were still miles of rough terrain left to navigate. Lying in Susan's arms, I extended the metaphor, adding rattlesnakes and scorpions, undercover immigration agents and idle rednecks with sawed-off shotguns, until Susan absently began stroking my hair and I let my brain shut mercifully down.

It was too late to take the bus home, so I stayed. We went out to eat, and came back to Susan's apartment exhausted and happy, two things I had not been simultaneously for a long time. It was strange trying to fall asleep on a new bed, with a new and unfamiliar presence, and we stretched and rolled and yanked on the sheets until I felt raw. At some point we simply gave in and stopped moving, almost too tired to speak.

Almost. “Tim,” she said. “There's a reason I haven't been calling you. Besides this, I mean.”

I made an encouraging sound. In my half-dream, her words took on shapes and bobbed in the haze of sleep.

“It's Ray Burn. Your meeting with Ray Burn.”

“Whaboutit?”

“He tried to back out. He said he didn't want to see you, but I talked him back into it. You're meeting next Wednesday.”

I pulled myself out of the haze and sat up. Moonlight spilled across the bed. The clock radio quietly buzzed beside me. “Why didn't he want to see me?”

“He said there was no reason to bother you until you were completely ready.” She was lying on her back, watching the ceiling, which was cracked and bubbled from years of leaks. “But I think…I think he was thinking it would be easier to pull the rug out from under you if he never actually met you. He didn't say that; that's just my impression.”

I could feel it all falling apart. “So what are you saying?”

“I'm not saying anything. I mean…the thing is, Burn is a very bland guy, not too smart, and he doesn't need to be doing this cartoon thing. He's got old money. He just does this for a hoot. So he is very impressionable when it comes to cartoons. If somebody shows him something or tells him about someone, and the person doing the showing or telling is…confident, you know, has a little spark, then he'll start believing everything that person says.” She sat up too, and put her hand on my knee. “He's, you know, tabula rasa.”

“I saw Ken Dorn at the conference. He told me he'd met with Burn.”

“Yeah, well, Ron Burn, the old boss, liked Dorn. He thought Dorn was a wit. So Ray sees Dorn if Dorn wants to be seen.”

“And Dorn has a ‘little spark'?” I said, incredulous.

“Well, no. But Dorn has gotten to him, and Dorn also is trying to make you look bad. Besides, Dorn is the bargain cartoonist, so…”

“So I'm history.”

“No. You're meeting with Burn, remember?” She turned to me and took both my hands with hers. “Tim, if you want this, you can go into the meeting and wow him. I know you can.”

I shook my head, wondering if it was all even worth it. “Did you hear about what happened at the conference?”

“Your panel discussion? Yeah.”

“Dorn set me up, you know.” I told her about the overalled hayseed and the transaction out by the dumpster. “If he really wants it, he's going to get it.”

“Not if you don't want him to. Remember, you're the one who's supposed to get it. As far as I know, the lawyers haven't been able to get around that.”

I pulled my hands away and lay back. “I didn't want any of this to begin with.”

She waited a long time before saying, “Including me.”

“No, not including you.”

It was hard to cheer up again after that. We slept, and in the morning ate breakfast together, but there hung between us some general dissatisfaction, something both of us felt but were powerless to repair, either in ourselves or in the other. Susan offered to drive me home, but I refused. “It's your day off. You should enjoy it however you want.”

She said, “Will you call me?”

“And vice versa.”

“Sure.” We hugged. “Did we do the right thing?” she asked me, from over my shoulder.

I brought her face around to mine, looked her in the eyes, and said “Twice,” which was, thank God, exactly what was needed for a change.

* * *

I tried to do two days' work in one afternoon. It didn't go so well. I figured if I pushed myself I could be finished by the time I got hungry, but instead my dinner—a Custard's Last Hot Dog and an A&W float—proved to be a dinner break, and I was back in the studio by six-thirty, the hot dog still somersaulting inside me. Despite my best efforts, the FF characters would not yield to the pen. I took half an hour to add to my pool of gags and replaced a few of the old, half-assed ones with the new. I was supposed to have six roughs for Wurster by tomorrow morning, and it was pretty clear I wouldn't accomplish this with any degree of technical mastery.