The Funny Man (32 page)
Safely, very safely, the funny man drives his boy back to the city. This visit is going to be different than the video game and order-in dinner festivals of recent vintage. The funny man has recently begun worrying about the corrosive effect suburban life may be having on his boy. The boy is still young, but he’s beginning to get that doughy, fat-kid look. He seems uninterested in sports other than video-game killing. When they visit the judge next time, the funny man does not expect things to go well on the visitation-rules front, but he will instruct his lawyer to go fucking hard at his wife over the whole DVD-player-in-the-headrest-of-the-car issue. He will insist on a soccer league, if not something cooler, hockey or lacrosse.
Today, the funny man is going to show him the city, the real city, put a little grit under the boy’s fingernails. The funny man was also raised in a suburb, but it was different back then. Back then kids rode their bikes without helmets and blew up dog shit with firecrackers. Nowadays a suburban kid would find a brick of unexploded ladyfingers and turn it in to the cops. He will not let his kid become one of
them
. He wants his kid to be a ringleader. The kids other kids look at and say, “I can’t believe he did that.” The funny man has the whole program mapped out. First, he will show him the city, bit by bit, and then when he is ready he will have his son take the subway by himself and he will see that in spite of what the suburban ninnies of the world think, there isn’t a child molester waiting on every corner to snatch you up and take your innocence, as if that’s worth anything anyway.
The first stop is going to be a diner, a real diner, not one of the corporate chain places with the shiny and gunkless mini-jukeboxes at the booths stuffed with music that doesn’t belong on a jukebox. The funny man and his boy will sit at the counter and the funny man will explain the differences, how the yellowed porcelain of the funny man’s coffee cup reflects history and tradition, what the varicose veins on the waitress mean, why those are badges of honor, why it’s important that you can see into the kitchen if you look through the pass-through. That the boy’s mother used to work in a place like this not long after he was born, if you can believe that.
Because the boy is in the back and hard to see, the conversation as they head toward the city is mediocre to poor, monosyllabic answers to the funny man’s closed-ended questions about the status of school, his friends, his history diorama. The funny man apologizes for being late and in the rearview he can see the boy shrug. The funny man was late because it took a few stops to find a pharmacy that would fill a script. His work on the slip’s effective refill date was pretty fucking convincing, so he had to take the first three places at their words that their supplies were out, none of which would have been a problem if the doctor had just accepted the fact that he’d accidentally flushed his whole supply of patches down the toilet. At the fourth place a cop was browsing in the magazine aisle, so that was out. At the fifth place a teenager with a hoop pierced through her nose like a bull’s ring, chewing on a fist-sized wad of gum, barely glanced at the thing before shuffling back to the aisles to look for the stuff. The funny man stared back at himself from the magazine cover in a wire rack on the counter. He was counting the days until the next issue when that wouldn’t happen anymore. He would’ve applied the fresh patch immediately upon getting back to the car, but he was already late and he’d found that if he waited some, until the pain began to near its peak, the relief from the patch, the warmth and goodness that spread through his body, was quite wonderful. He wasn’t going to slap one on in front of Pilar, that’s for sure, and he pretty much figured they could get back to the city before it really became dire.
But the fucking traffic in the tunnel. It must be a parade, always a parade, one ethnicity or another deciding to announce their unique specialness by snarling traffic for hours. The funny man accepts people of all creeds and colors, so why can’t they accept themselves and stop marching around demanding things, declaring how proud of themselves they are?
Pride goeth before
the fall
, he wants to shout, and maybe he does, because the boy flinches.
The pain is starting to spike with the feeling that the funny man would just as soon saw his foot off with a vegetable peeler as keep it around and this traffic isn’t going to loosen any time soon. Fortunately, he’s got his little pal who shares half his DNA with him.
“Hey, buddy,” the funny man says. “See that bag back there somewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you hand it to Daddy?”
“It’s on the floor.”
“Fantastic, pal. Reach down and grab it and hand it to Daddy.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can, pal. Just unbuckle and grab it.”
“I’m not allowed.”
“I’m saying it’s okay, so just go ahead and unbuckle and grab it. Look, we’re hardly moving, it’ll be fine.”
“No, Mom says.”
Someday he will remind the boy of this conversation, of the depth of betrayal to all of manhood in general and his father in particular, but right now, he just needs that bag, so spotting a sliver of an opening he jets from the middle lane to the right and then to the shoulder, which is no shoulder at all, but half a lane for the ’tards who walk or bicycle.
The funnyman unbuckles his belt and turns and reaches blindly for the floor on the backseat, but his hand brushes only carpet. The boy looks out the window at the angry faces of the drivers of the cars that must weave around them.
“Am I close?” the funny man asks.
“I don’t see it anymore,” the boy says.
The funny man sits forward and gropes under the front seat and he feels like he can sense the plastic bag just past his reach but he cannot contort himself enough to reach it and the ankle/foot is really screaming now. It is like in the horror movies where the demon’s jaw becomes unhinged and its screams really bellow before it swallows its victim entirely. The ankle/foot is threatening to engulf him. Getting out the driver’s side is a no-go because the cars are passing millimeters from the door and he wouldn’t actually blame them if they tried to take him out, so he crawls across the front and wedges the door open maybe eight inches since he’s so close to the barrier, and after much painful effort manages to wriggle out, face first and to the ground.
He crawls. He crawls past the rear door and opens it and tries to reach inside, draping himself across the boy who is still strapped in his seat in the middle and it’s impossible to reach to even the floor, let alone under the seat.
“Out,” he says to the boy, flicking the buckles open.
“What?”
“Out. Out. Get out, I need to get in there and I can’t, so get out.”
The boy looks at the gap in the door doubtfully. As the boy unbuckles fully, the funny man grabs him under the arms and puts him on the car’s roof.
“Pull your legs up,” he says to the boy. “I need to get in there.” Face pressed deep into the scratchy car carpet is no place the funny man wants to be. He’s been negligent in the upkeep and crusty bits of the boy’s road snacks leave imprints on his cheek. But he perseveres. The funny man jams his shoulder into the seat back, inching it millimeters forward until there is enough room and his hand closes around one of the bag’s loops. Carefully, carefully, so as not to spill the contents, he hauls it back. When the bag is fully freed from under the seat he pauses for a moment and smiles and focuses on the pain. It is at a crescendo, the woodwinds and brass and percussion sections all working at maximum intensity, total cacophony, but one of the best parts, almost better than the moment of salvation, is to know that salvation is at hand, and it is, right under his hand. Above the traffic noise and honking and shouting, and the fog of carbon dioxide exhaust, music fills the funny man’s head, a marching band playing just for him.
I
FEEL SORRY
for the sheriff’s deputy who must testify about the incident in the tunnel. I think we all do. In many ways he is the headliner, the one we’ve all been waiting for, and he appears temperamentally unsuited to the task, out of his element and shy. Since my plan has formed and taken shape and I’ve begun the implementation, I’ve been viewing my trial differently, half-a-step removed, not divorced from my reality, not like the pills, or how I felt at the Center and prior to the shooting and my arrest, but not a full part of it either. Maybe it’s me remembering the teachings from the Center, temporarily abandoned in the postarrest-and-start-of-the-trial panic, but I tend to think it’s because I now believe that what I intend to do, what I most desire, is going to come true.
Bonnie is fulfilling her part of the equation. After the coded messages started to arrive, her game soared out of its lovesick trough, as she slid through the clay at Roland Garros for her first major ever. The sports weekly called her a champion, and I flushed with pride. In the pictures she never looked
too
pleased. Wimbledon is next and if all goes well there, we are on target.
The sheriff’s deputy holds his wide-brimmed hat in his hands as he takes the stand. His hair is cut so close he looks bald. He looks solid in his formal uniform, reassuring, the kind of law enforcement you’d be glad to see if you were in trouble, yet not too intimidating when he pulls you over for that broken taillight. As he tells us at the outset of his testimony, it was a fluke that he was even there that day, not being part of the city or even county police. He plies his trade where the roads are two lanes and bracketed by wheat and soybeans. He was going to a regional conference, a chance to exchange techniques and strategies with other law enforcers and eat some rubber chicken dinners. They had discount tickets to some midweek theater. The sheriff’s deputy drove his cruiser rather than flying because he wasn’t keen on planes and it would save a little money. The county he worked for was the kind of place where sheriff’s deputies take their cruisers home with them because even when they’re not on duty, they’re on duty. He wasn’t even going to go this time, but changed his mind because he was scheduled to get a citation at the conference for his organizing a youth basketball program in the town where he worked. The chain of choices that led him to that moment is almost endless.
Clearly, he never expected this to happen to him, and on the stand he looks a little shell-shocked. Barry is as impassive as ever, and the prosecutor jitters, but without purpose or focus. From his perspective, there’s apparently nothing to object to since the sum total of our defense has been to demonstrate the bottomless depths of my horribleness. If he has worked out Barry’s angle, he must be resigned to whatever is going to happen.
First we see the video in its uncut, grainy, black-and-white glory. Out of instinct the deputy flicked his dash camera on, and as he hit his flashers and weaved closer, the horror of the moment became apparent. It’s likely that everyone in the jury has seen it before, but in the courtroom it takes on a different gravity. The screen is large, the video enhanced as much as possible. Superimposed circles and pointers direct attention to the relevant figures. After the first showing, the deputy goes through it again, scene by scene, narrating, coached by Barry the whole way, explaining why he did what he did, speeding forward, the sirens and lights, then the gestures, drawing his gun, firing. Jurors hold their hands over their mouths and shake their heads. I may owe them an apology letter as well.
I got a surprise call this morning before I left for court. I was heading out and the phone started ringing and I decided to let the machine pick it up, but as I was about to close the door I heard my ex-wife’s voice.
Oh, hey, I guess you left already. I just wanted to say that … you
know … I know this is probably going to be a bad day for you and I’ve
been thinking that …
I hesitated for a moment on the threshold of the door, but then I ran to pick it up.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh … oh … hi. I thought maybe you’d left.” She sounded flustered, like maybe she was hoping she’d get to make her speech into the machine.
“Just on my way out.”
“How much did you hear?”
“All of it. I was listening.”
“Okay, good.”
“Yeah.” There was a long pause and I listened to her breathe. I remembered this breathing. It is familiar to me as my own, more so, because I’ve never paid attention to my own breathing, whereas, Beth’s, as she slept, I could watch her for hours.
“So how are you doing?” she said.
“Okay, considering … not bad.”
“That’s good,” she said. I thought that maybe there was a nagging something about to be appended, how maybe I wasn’t looking all that good, but she swallowed it back. “Like I was saying,” she said, “I just wanted to tell you that I hope it doesn’t go too terribly and everything.”
“Nothing I don’t have coming to me.”
“No, no,” she said, like she was forcing the words out. “You don’t. They’re judging you on your worst moments and it isn’t totally fair.”
“How else am I to be judged?”
We listened to each other breathe. We held the line, just listening. She said, “Good luck, all right? I’m thinking of you today.”
She hung up before I could thank her. I can say it here, for what it’s worth. Thank you to the love of my (first) life.
N
OT LONG AFTER
my swim with Bonnie, the treatment regimen lightened up considerably and I was given increasing freedom to roam the grounds and “study independently.” For the most part, I wandered unchecked (though never too near the southwest compound), but it seemed all I had to do was think about needing or wanting something and Chet would appear to fulfill that need. One day I was on an early-morning walk that turned into a hike to the top of a small peak at the center of the island. I’d been doing a lot of walking, but had previously balked at trying to make it all the way. However, that day I decided to follow the path upwards. At around halfway I realized I hadn’t brought any water. I was about to turn back when Chet materialized in front of me, two canteens slung like bandoliers across his chest.