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Funnyboy

Josh Rolnick

I glanced out the window as my train pulled into the station and saw the girl who killed my son. I recognized her ponytail—the way it shot up and bent over on itself—from the newspapers. She stood on the New York-bound platform in a hive of girls, several of whom wore West Village varsity football jackets. Missy Jones wore a pink ski vest over a white turtleneck; her blue jeans tucked neatly into white moon boots ringed with fur. She smoked melodramatically, tilting her chin up and blowing her plume at a mock Victorian lamplight. As my train came to a halt, Missy tossed her head back and laughed, flashing her teeth in the mustard light.

I turned from the window, buttoned my coat, lifted my briefcase. She doesn't seem very contrite, I thought, stepping off the train and starting down the platform. She seems to be coping rather nicely, in fact.

The train pulled out, and I queued behind people funneling into the station. When the last car cleared, a rhythmic clapping rose from across the tracks. I turned and saw the girls standing in a circle, clapping with their hands straight up, as if in prayer. A moment later they began a cheer, their voices echoing off the brick-faced station house:

I stepped out of line. The girls started again, louder. They swiveled their hips and clapped to every other syllable, then gripped the handlebars of imaginary motorcycles, twisting up the speed with each vroom. They stepped to the four-count—forward, left together, right together, back. When they were finished, bless their cotton-candy hearts, they whooped and hollered, their war cries reverberating under the awning, and Missy said: "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh uh huh uh huh!"

I walked to the yellow danger line and bellowed: "Missy Jones."

The ruckus ceased. Missy stepped out of the huddle and peered across the tracks. It took her a second, then her smile vanished. "Mr. Stern?"

"Yes, it's me," I said. "Richie's dad."

The girls shrunk together behind her, a wild herd sensing threat. "Oh, hi, Mr. Stern."

"Where are you girls off to, this fine night?"

"We're going to see Phantom."

"Phantom! Gee, that sounds like fun."

She hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. I've seen it before. It's one of my favorites."

"Well, see it again for the first time, Missy. Vroom vroom!" I raised a fist in the air, offering a triple shake of an imaginary pompom, then whirled and headed for the station, a zesty bounce to my step. And why the hell not!

Hadn't I just single-handedly ruined Missy Jones's night?

By now I hear you saying, Spill it already. What’s this all about?

So here it is: On an unseasonably warm February day ten months before I spied Missy Jones en route to Broadway, my twelve-year-old son Richie retrieved his Huffy from the garage and pedaled out into the sun-dappled streets of West Village, New Jersey. He most likely went down to the high school and cut through the parking lot, then barreled past the Quonset hut and hit the Indian trail with a full head of steam, dodging trees in the settling twilight. He shot out onto Hill. The only problem: Mrs. Edelson had died. On that unseasonably warm afternoon, her children were moving her belongings out of her home, and someone had parked a moving truck along the curb. Perhaps Richie noticed the treasure chest logo on the truck before blasting into the street between truck cab and garbage dumpster.

Missy Jones, daughter of a village alderman, was on the other side of that truck, driving in her parents’ shiny Acura Integra, Candy Apple Red. She slammed on the brakes—left twenty-one feet of tire tread seared into the asphalt—and, still, she struck Richie broadside. My son flew through the air, over a plaid sofa, and hit his head against the pavement of Mrs. Edelson’s driveway. Her forty-two-year-old son, I am told, heard the sound of Richie’s head hitting the concrete and vomited into the azaleas.

Missy Jones was seventeen, a West Village High School junior. The entire episode was extremely unsettling to her. She was so distraught, in fact, that she quit the cheerleading squad. She had lost her mirth, you see; she couldn’t locate that special place deep inside where spirit lives and breathes. She told us this. She sent Anne and me a letter two months after the accident. It was actually less a letter than a heavily perfumed run-on sentence with postage. Missy told us how sorry she was and she wasn’t speeding and she never saw him coming on the other side of that moving van and our son is a beautiful boy and she has nightmares now in which she takes a rest under a tree in an open field and she looks up and there are dead children hanging from the branches. I’m not trying to be a one-man soap opera when I tell you the letter was streaked with tears.

Four months later, another letter arrived. Missy wanted to meet with us, to apologize in person, or, as she put it, “broken heart to broken hearts.” Anne’s instinct was to forgive, as it always is. She told me about the ancient Samoan ritual of ifoga. In that culture, it seems, when one person seriously wronged another, the wrongdoer, along with his or her family, would go directly to the home of the aggrieved. They would bring oven stones, wrap fine mats over their heads, and kneel, as a group, at the doorstep, prostrate for hours or even days in the hot Pacific sun, while the injured family deliberated over whether to accept the apology. Eventually, the family’s Talking Chief would come out, accept the mats and stones, and invite the other family inside. It was a risk, though. In some cases, the Chief would emerge only to lop off the penitent’s head with a battleaxe.

“That’s what she’s doing, Levi,” Anne had said. “Offering herself up.”

Anne wrote Missy a note back, inviting her and her parents over for tea. But I wanted no part of it. I spent the appointed afternoon at the bar of the Swing Back Lounge.

And now, I would like to tell you what happens when your son gets hit by a car while riding his bike and then dies. For a while, there is genuine sympathy. People you don’t know come to your house with tuna noodle casserole. The phone rings so often, you have to shut it off before you go to bed. You get crayon drawings from school children.

One little Picasso sent us a picture of a stick bicycle, broken in two, with tears streaming from the handlebars. But then things change. The cops let it be known that, after a complete investigation, the accident is your son’s fault. Read: his parents’ fault. Your son becomes the poster child for reckless biking. The police chief and mayor join forces in announcing a new bike safety program. Thereafter, whenever you run into your neighbors, they blame you for the whole goddamned thing. They don’t say it to your face, of course. They whisper it to each other, standing in front of mist-shrouded iceberg lettuce at the ShopRite. He’s the one whose kid was riding without a helmet!

You’ll be glad to know this story has a happy ending. Fairy tales do come true! In her senior year, confronted by the insistent pleas of her classmates, an emotionally bruised Missy Jones agreed to come back to the cheerleading squad—as the co-captain, no less!—in time for the season opener against Ridge. Perhaps you saw her picture in the paper? The one with the sassy ponytail, come-hither eyes, and lynx-like smile?

Missy phoned several times asking to speak with me. But I refused to take her calls. Once, I drove home after work only to find Missy’s cheery beery bim bom Acura parked outside. That car in front of our house! I didn’t stop. As I rolled by, I saw Anne through the bay window, holding her shirt at the neck. Later, she told me Missy had stopped by unannounced. I told Anne if I ever came home and found Missy sitting in my living room, I could not be held accountable for what I might do.

“What should I tell her, Levi?”

“Tell her the truth. I’m not going to see her and that’s that.”

“She’s just a kid, Levi. She’s suffering.”

“Jesus, Anne,” I said. “I’m suffering too.”

Do you know that I no longer enjoy doing the things that we used to do together, Richie and I? Like fishing. I no longer enjoy hooking a worm through the meatiest part, so that the barb punctures the skin on the other side, and then rearing the line back, releasing the bailer, waiting for the rod to shimmy. Believe me, I’ve tried. The smell of earth and rich roots gets up my nose and makes me sick.

Quick quiz: What is the name of the light stripe that separates an earthworm’s head from its tail? Time’s up. It’s called the clitellum. Do you know how I know that? Of course you don’t. My son taught me that. He also taught me that, when nightcrawlers are cut in half, they don’t die. They regenerate.

Imagine that. Losing half of yourself and becoming whole again.

There is a thing that crawls in the dirt and eats shit that can do that.

I was preoccupied as my train pulled into the station. It was Friday night, one week after my little over-the-tracks repartee with Missy Jones. On Fridays, I picked Anne up across town at the anthropology building, and, on our way home, we stopped off for Chinese and a Blockbuster DVD. I shuffled down the platform, into the station, onto the escalator, thinking about how, in days of yore, sub gum wanton and a new release had been a preamble to lovemaking. That’s when I saw them, visible just beneath the ceiling at the bottom of the escalator: white moon boots ringed with fur.

That couldn’t be Missy Jones, I thought. The escalator dropped down, revealing the Wearer of the Boots from the bottom up: tucked-in jeans, long legs, piglet-pink parka. What are the chances of running into her twice in one week?

Not until I saw the tippy-top of her ponytail; not until she scrunched up her shoulders, smiled, and waved, a fluttery little Beauty Queen wave; not until she said, “Mr. Stern! Hi ya!” did it occur to me: Chance had nothing to do with it.

You might say that what I did next was instinctual. Lions and tigers and bears type shit. I turned and bolted up the down escalator, pushing my way through a phalanx of commuters. From the top, I saw Missy running—quite speedily, to be frank—up the up escalator. She held some sort of case at her side. “Mr. Stern! I just want to talk.”

That’s when—how did Richie used to put it? Ah yes. I ran like diarrhea. Down the platform, down a staircase to street level; under a train bridge and across the road.

Just before ducking into the parking deck, I chanced a glimpse back over my shoulder. Missy Jones blasted out from under the bridge, spotted me, hurtled forward. I ran into the parking deck vestibule and hit the stairwell, taking two steps at a clip. At Level 4 I threw open the door and made a beeline for my car.

I suppose you think me cruel for avoiding Missy Jones that way. The poor dear, you say! She just wanted closure! All I have to say to you is, sometimes a thing that looks heartless from one angle makes a lot of sense when viewed another way.

Richie was our only child. Maybe you knew him? He had curly brown hair that his mother hated to cut. Maybe you saw him down at the pond hunting toads with his butterfly net? Or throwing jet black crickets into spider webs? He was the one crouching in the reeds flicking the hair out of his eyes. If you knew him, let me tell you something: You didn’t know him.

When Richie was nine, Anne and I took him to Yankee Winter Weekend at Old Sturbridge Village. On our first night, he asked to go to a magic show. The Great Something-dini was performing in Puritan Hall. We got there early and sat in the front row, and as we waited, the house filled to overflowing. When the Great Something-dini glided down to the stage on a floating unicycle, Richie was transfixed. You must understand I am not exaggerating. My child did not blink.

Toward the end of the show, Something-dini took off his black top hat and stared out into the audience.

“Now,” he said, flipping the hat over three times, “I need an assistant!” Richie took a quick breath, astonished. Was it possible?

The magician peered into the bright lights as a titter ran through the audience. But it was a foregone conclusion. He had picked Richie out the minute he floated on stage. A curly-headed, slack-jawed, big-eyed boy in the front row? There was never any question.

“Young man,” he said, “will you please step onto the stage?”

Richie dashed to the magician’s side.

“What is your name?”

“Richie.”

“Richie!” He bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “May I implore you, Richie, to help me perform a staggering feat of magic?”

Richie nodded, mouth open. At this point I should mention that a slight wave of nervous laughter rippled across the rows. Perhaps the audience felt for Richie, the unwitting foil. For all we knew, he was about to be sliced in half. A full hour after his bedtime!

“Will you do exactly as I say?” The magician bent down, glaring with jade eyes. His thin, white-powdered face stopped just a few inches from our son’s.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Richie, I want you to look into this hat.” He brandished it under Richie’s nose.

Our son peered into the ethereal black depths.

“Are you looking?” he bellowed.

Richie pulled his nose back and nodded, shifting on his feet.

“Now!” The Great Something-dini said. “I want you to tell everyone, what…is…in…this…hat!”

Richie squinted. He stood on his toes and craned his neck way out over the hat. Then he turned, looked out at the audience, and said: “What…is…in…this…hat.”

For a moment: silence. The audience was not sure whether the line was a misstep or a joke. But then Richie smiled. And the audience erupted! Laughter ripped across the hall like a Skittles top, applause reverberating off massive wooden ceiling beams. The magician certifiably blushed. The trick was on him! And then he smiled, grudgingly— but, if you ask me, in true admiration. He stepped aside and motioned to Richie with an open palm, acknowledging him as one would a trusted sidekick. “Ladies and gentleman,” he said, “give it up for Funnyboy!”

And Richie? He looked out at an audience whose collective heart he had won, doffed an imaginary cap, and bowed.

Was I surprised? Yes, but also no. When Richie was four, Anne asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Without hesitation he replied: “A joker.” Such a noble calling! And yet Anne and I secretly fretted, because at first, all of his jokes had one thing in common: They were not funny.

Here is one of his early favorites:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Richie.”

“Richie Who?”

“Richie Potato Head!”

How did Anne and I react to this? We laughed, of course! And Richie laughed too. And since Richie laughed, we laughed some more. We wanted to encourage him, you see. Being a joker in today’s world is no easy thing.

And then one day, Richie strode home from school as if he had just been to the mountaintop.

“I have a joke.”

“Okay, Honey.” Anne chopped an onion. “Go ahead.”

“Why did the apple kiss the banana?”

“Why?”

“Because it had appeal.”

Well, at this, we did exactly what we always did. We laughed! This was our Little Dangerfield after all! We were not going to stand with the critics just because our son happened not to be funny. Only, after a few seconds, something happened. Both of us realized at the same time: This joke was…funny. The banana had a peel! Oh glory day! Little Richie had told a funny joke! And, oh, did we laugh then. I roared, holding my stomach with two hands. Anne laughed so hard she cried. Or maybe it was the onion. Or maybe she cried for some other reason. Anne’s tears were the size of grapes.

Wait a minute, you say. The joke’s not that funny.

I’m sorry to tell you, you are missing my point.

I reversed out of my stall in the parking deck and headed down, wheeling around corners, tires squealing. At ground level, I drove up behind two vehicles in the EZ Park lane, rolled down the window, waited. “Come on.”

For a few seconds, my line did not budge. I leaned on my horn. “For Christ’s sake, lady, come on!”

That’s when she ran out onto the ramp. She stood for a moment, catching her breath, the case swinging at her side, scanning the cars. She saw me and began jogging. Two or three cars had already pulled up behind me. And what the hell was I going to do anyway? Reverse through the parking deck to the roof? And what then? Leap for the moon?

Missy came up the ramp until she was even with my car door, a few paces away. “I just want to talk to you, Mr. Stern.”

I stared straight ahead. The gate opened, releasing a car onto the street. I inched up, Missy walking beside me. “Just this once. Then I won’t bother you ever again.”

The final car slid out and I pulled forward, leaving Missy in my taillights. I reached out, swiped my card. The gate lifted.

Missy said: “I could have stopped.”

I tapped the accelerator, then slammed the brake. In my rearview, I saw Missy standing in a billowing cloud of exhaust.

I leaned out the window and turned. “What did you say?”

“I could have stopped the car,” she said. “Before … before the accident.”

Somewhere behind me, a horn bleated twice.

“You were speeding.”

“Well, no, it’s not so simple. Can we talk?”

A bigger car beeped, deeper. I hit unlock, spoke straight ahead: “Get in.”

She ran around behind the car, opened the door, and dropped onto the seat, accosting me with some kind of eau de mandarin-musk. I pulled out, drove toward an intersection, breathing through narrowed lips. “You’ve got five minutes to tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I need more than that.” She watched me, intent. “There’s some things I need to tell you. Can we go someplace? Maybe Shaffer Hill?”

I pictured sitting with her on the bluff, my headlights staring over the edge, the sluggish river below, and my fingertips tingled. Get someplace public, I thought. Fast. Half a block away, an old rail car diner splashed the sidewalk fluorescent.

“Missy,” I said, “this had better be fucking good.”

I sat on a vinyl bench at Mitch’s Diner. The eatery had a Bull Durham theme. There were framed black-and-whites of Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins on the wall, each one of them signed. The menu offered a “Crash Reuben” and an open-faced turkey sandwich called “The Bigs.” I ordered a coffee; Missy, a cup of hot cocoa. Drinks arrived in ceramic mugs with the Durham Bulls logo on the side.

I sat on a vinyl bench at Mitch’s Diner across from Missy Jones. I leaned forward, my elbows resting on the table, cupping a hand over a fist. Missy sat posture-perfect.

“Mr. Stern, I really appreciate this.”

I brought my fist down against the table top, rattling a plastic ashtray, and she flinched. “Alright already, Missy. Why don’t you tell me what you have to say.”

Her hand went to a strand of frizzled blond hair at her temple and she started rubbing it back and forth. “This is hard.”

“I’m sure.”

“So I’ll just say it.”

“That’d be best.”

“I looked down,” she said. “Before the accident. I looked down to change the radio station.”

I nodded, pressed my fingers together, turning the nail rims white.

“A Sinead O’Connor song came on Z-100—‘Nothing Compares 2 U’?—and I hate that song. I mean, I like it, but it makes me sad. So I turned to PLJ, only, I went too far. Static came on loud. I looked down— just for a second—to tune it in. When I looked up, Richie was right in front of me.”

She paused, swallowing hard. “I’ve thought about this a million times, Mr. Stern. I keep thinking, if I hadn’t looked down, I could have swerved. Or stopped.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You looked down?”

Her forehead glistened, reflecting neon red from a “Malts” sign in the window. “I didn’t want to hear that song.”

“Missy, how do I know you weren’t drunk?”

“I wasn’t! The breathalyzer…”

“Or stoned, Missy. How do I know you weren’t high as a kite?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Right. Why should I believe you? Give me one good goddamned reason. You killed my son, Missy.”

She pressed her lips together, held my gaze, and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Behind the counter, a milkshake machine clicked on, churned, blended through something frozen, clicked off. “My parents told me not to tell anyone any of this,” she said, finally. “My dad sat me down with a lawyer. He said if I told you or Anne, you’d sue me, and I’d screw up my life even more. They don’t know I’m here. They think I’m at the mall with the team.”

“So why are you telling me?”

Her eyes opened wide. “I had to.”

“Why?” I slapped the table. “It doesn’t change a goddamned thing.”

Behind the counter, our waitress glanced up at me, her brow furrowed.

“But it’s what happened,” she said. “I thought you’d want the truth.”

The truth! And what was I supposed to glean from this truth? Sinead O’Connor killed my son? Manual radio tuning killed my son? A Z-100 radio DJ behind a sound-proof window at the top of the Empire State Building killed my son? What good is truth if it illuminates nothing?

I looked across the tabletop at Missy Jones. She looked nothing like the girl in the newspaper photo. She wore no makeup. Her eyes were too big for her head, and her mouth too tight. Her teeth had a yellow cast and they were misaligned—one forward, the next one back, and so on—giving an impression of decay. She was not a natural blonde; her roots were brown. Fine strands of hair sprung loose at her forehead and neck, beneath the ponytail, which was held in place, I now saw, by a series of colored bands. The ponytail was not so much haughty as it was ridiculous. When she wrapped her fingers around her mug, her nails were unpolished, gnawed; her fingertips, red, raw.

The waitress returned to the table with a coffee pot. She looked at Missy. “Everything okay here, Hon?”

Missy nodded. “Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks, Ma’am.”

She refilled my cup, spilling coffee into the saucer. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You let me know if you need anything.”

Missy fingered her mug, turning it side-to-side. “The thing I really wanted to tell you is that I knew him. I met him at the Paw Creek game last year.” She eyed her cocoa, as if the memory was in there somewhere. “Biggest game of the year. Bleachers packed. In the third quarter, we set up for the Pyramid. Normally, the senior captain is on top. But Shelly had sprained an ankle, and the team voted, and I was the one who got to fill in.

“I was so excited, waiting for it all game.” She let out a short laugh. “Only, when Shelly finally called for it, I couldn’t do it. Jimmy and Lorenzo kept trying to throw me up with the cup move, but I couldn’t get my balance. I kept falling back. I had done it so many times in practice. I don’t know. I was nervous, I guess.”

She leaned forward. “After a few tries, I could hear people laughing in the bleachers. I got tight. They kept hoisting me, but I couldn’t stick it. The girls were having trouble holding it together. The whole pyramid was wobbling. They gave me one last lift, and I thought I was going to nail it. But the Pyramid just crumbled away. There were girls all over the track. We jumped up and put our pompoms in the air, like Coach K taught us. Went straight into the Boss cheer. Like that’s how we planned it.”

I threw myself against the bench. “Missy, what’s the point of all this?”

“I’m getting to the part about Richie.”

“Yeah, well, get there.”

Her tongue made a cameo between her lips. “The thing is, Mr. Stern, everyone knew I screwed up. I let everyone down—Coach K, the girls, the whole school. We won the game—Bryce ran back a punt on the last play—but afterwards, all I could think about was that Pyramid.”

Now I remembered: Richie bursting into the house after the game, acting out the final punt return, imitating Bryce’s shake-and-bake; leaping over a chair, a Paw Creek defender, spiking an imaginary ball into the kitchen floor, striking the Heisman pose.

“I didn’t want to be around anyone. The girls were going to Gino’s, but I couldn’t deal. I said I had a headache. Then I left, out back, behind the locker room.

“That’s when I saw Richie walking along the path by the Quonset hut. I had seen him around at the games. He and his friends were always hunting arrows under the bleachers—the ones we lost in archery practice? But I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I just put my head down and kept going.

“He passed me, and I got this feeling like he had stopped. Like he was watching me. I thought he was going to make a crack about the Pyramid. Some of those kids can be real brats—whistling, snotty comments, boob jokes. That kind of thing.

“But Richie says, ‘Hey, kid …’ and then he pauses, and I don’t know why, but I turned around, and he says: ‘Catch!’—like from that Coke commercial? The one where that little boy gives Mean Joe Green his Coke, and Mean Joe throws the boy his shirt?”

I nodded. Sure I know. Richie loved that commercial.

“Only, he didn’t throw me a shirt. He threw me an arrow.”

A snort escaped my nose. “Richie.”

“I caught it. I smiled. He smiled. We went our separate ways.” She let out a slow breath. “The thing is, I knew right away what he meant. He was saying it was no big deal, what happened in the third quarter. It was just a stupid Pyramid, you know? I mean, he’s just a kid, Mr. Stern. But it meant the world to me. It almost made me cry.”

Missy eased back into her seat. Then she reached down, lifted her case—I had forgotten all about the case—and placed it on the table. It was covered with words and images cut from the pages of glossy mag-azines—images of flowers and men’s flexing bodies and a pair of women’s lips; words like “obsession” and “colors” and “boy.” Across the middle, like a ransom note, block letters of varying color, height, and width spelled out, “Missy’s Stuff.” Looking at this box, it occurred to me: Anne was right. She was just a kid.

Missy unsnapped two silver clasps, flipped open the box. She reached in, withdrew the arrow—two-thirds of an arrow, really; the feathery end had broken off—and held it out to me. “I want you to have this.”

“No.” I held up my palm.

“I’ve thought a lot about this. I feel so powerless sometimes. Like there’s nothing I can do.”

“You keep it, Missy. I don’t want it.”

The lines in her face asserted themselves with tension. “Please, Mr. Stern. It would make me feel better.”

I huffed and reached out. I grabbed the arrow. I don’t know if I expected to feel some thrumming pulse, some physical connection to the son that I had lost. But I didn’t. I felt nothing. A big fat shiny zip. It was just a broken dowel with a sharp rubber tip.

As soon as I took the arrow, though, Missy’s eyes welled with tears. She brought a hand up in front of her face and waved it three, four times quickly. “Whew,” she said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.” She sucked in a breath and let it out with some tenor behind it.

I dug my elbows into the table, held the arrow in my fist, and cupped my palm over the point. I imagined running the arrow through her neck. I saw blood spattering into her fake blond hair, racing down the slick surface of her vest. I saw Missy clutch at her throat, her face plastered with surprise.

“Mr. Stern? Are you okay?” She pressed a tear off her cheek. “You’re bleeding.”

I sat on a vinyl bench at Mitch’s Diner across from Missy Jones, the girl who killed my son.