Life Is Funny Read online

A woman wearing skinny pink glasses and holding a briefcase steps into the garage.

  “I’m serious,” I say while she looks around. “We’ll take it out before you tell my dad it’s ready.”

  “I bet you don’t even know how to drive,” Sam says.

  “Excuse me,” the woman goes.

  “So?” I say. “You do.”

  “Excuse me.” The woman walks up to us. “You’re Samuel?”

  “Samuel?” I go, but as usual, Sam doesn’t even blink.

  He just shrugs at me, and then, real polite, he says to the woman, “Sam.” He holds out his hand. “You must know my mom.”

  The woman shakes with him, smiling. “Annie,” she tells him. “Your mother was supposed to have written you that I’d be coming by.”

  “I wrote her back to forget it,” Sam says. “No offense or anything.”

  She’s sort of staring at him through those pink frames. Something about the way she’s looking makes my face get hot, but Sam is calm as anything.

  “Sam,” I go, but then I don’t know what to say next.

  “Your mother wasn’t exaggerating,” this Annie woman tells him. “I thought maybe she was using artistic license to serve maternal subjectivity.”

  I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, and I can’t tell if Sam gets it either because he sort of ignores it.

  “I’m really not that interested,” he says, but the woman’s already pulling a card out of the side pocket of her briefcase.

  “She made me promise to come take a look at you and to be encouraging if I thought you could work,” this woman says, handing him the card.

  Sam holds it out so I can see it, too. Cooke Model Management Corporation, it says. Annie Sherman, Booking Agent.

  “I got the impression from your mother that you and your father could use some money.”

  I look over at Sam, while he looks up at her.

  “There’s a lot of money in modeling, you know,” she tells him.

  * * *

  Josh and Daniel are pissed that I don’t hang with them. They’re extra pissed because I guess Sam used to stay by himself and have all those girls, only now, since I sit with Sam at lunch, the girls are all over me, too. I know they’re not there for me, really, but it’s sort of fun. I stay quiet, to make sure I don’t look like a jerk and to watch how Sam handles things. Mostly he’s pretty cool to everybody. He never joins in with one girl trashing another. He never treats one better than the other. I wonder if he’ll let it slip that he’s going to try to be a model. That he has some interview coming up at his mother’s friend’s agency. I bet girls love that kind of thing. But Sam keeps his mouth shut. I guess he has all the attention he needs from them.

  “What do you think of that redhead with the contact lenses?” I ask him one day, near the last week of school. We’re walking to his dad’s shop.

  “She’s okay,” he goes.

  I think she’s hot. I’d ask her out, only I’m too shy, and I don’t want a girlfriend anyway, because if she bugged me, I’m worried about what I’d do. So I just jerk off thinking about her instead. It always starts off with me asking what color her eyes really are, and then she takes out her contact lenses, and then she goes, As long as I’m taking things off . . . and she steps out of her jeans, and then . . .

  “She’s totally into you,” I say. “I bet she’d go all the way with you.”

  “All the way?” he says. He’s always making fun of how I talk. “That means ‘fuck,’ right?”

  “Shut up,” I tell him.

  “Okay, for real. Forget her. There’s someone else I like,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “This Indian girl. She sits at that corner table during lunch.”

  “One of those veil girls?”

  “She doesn’t wear a veil.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Her name is Sonia.”

  “That eighth grader?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you even know her?”

  “We had some art elective together once. She’s smart. Real smart. She’s fine, too,” he tells me. “You ever get a really good look at her?”

  “Those girls don’t go out with people,” I remind him.

  “Yeah,” he says, like he figured it out a long time ago. “I know.”

  We turn the corner into the shop, and Sam’s dad knocks on Sam’s head with his knuckles. “Nos llegaron dos nuevas,” he goes. “Todo carrocería. ¿Los quieres?”

  “He’s got some new cars in,” Sam tells me. “All body work. You want to help out or something?”

  His dad unfists his hand from that knuckle rap and puts his palm flat on top of Sam’s head and just keeps it there. They’re both raising their eyebrows at me, and for the first time they kind of look alike.

  Suddenly I can see them knocking on our door to tell us the Jag is ready. I can see my mom opening the door, thinking it’s my dad who forgot his key. They stare at her banged-up face and get a good look before she ducks away.

  Your car’s ready, Sam would say to me.

  Very good car, his dad would say.

  Thanks, I’d go, trying to close the door fast.

  Was that your mom? Sam would ask.

  Yeah, I’d say, wondering how to get them out of there.

  Who did that to her?

  Nobody, I’d tell them.

  His father would say something to Sam in Spanish. Then his father would put his hand flat on top of my head. It would feel heavy and warm.

  You call us if it happens again, Sam would say. Or call the police.

  What are you talking about? I’d go. She just hit the dashboard when my father crashed the Jag.

  You should call the police, Sam would say.

  It’s not that simple, I’d tell him, thinking about my father in jail and both my parents hating me forever.

  “Drew?” Sam’s going. “You want to hang out?”

  “Nah,” I lie. “I’ve got to go.”

  * * *

  We spend most of Memorial Day weekend unpacking the Hamptons house and buying it new furniture. My mother’s face is back to normal, and my parents are in a good mood. On Saturday afternoon my father sneaks me away with him to toss the football around on the beach while my mom conference calls with some new wedding clients about flower arrangements. Walking close to the surf, my dad pulls me in under his arm and asks me to start thinking about what I want for my fifteenth birthday. “I want you to stop hitting her,” I tell him, but the wind by the ocean and the breakers are pretty loud, and I don’t think he hears.

  After soft-shell crab in a restaurant with a sunset and ocean view, they hold hands while we walk through the town center past ice-cream shops and antiques stores. I walk a little ahead of them so nobody knows they belong to me.

  “You’re not embarrassed, are you?” my mom calls out.

  “Stop it, Mom,” I say, trying to be loud enough so she can hear, but not so loud the whole street can.

  They speed up and skip next to me, swinging their arms, just to embarrass me more.

  “Come on,” I tell them.

  People are looking at us now. My father kisses my mother right there in middle of the street.

  “I’m walking back,” I warn them.

  They laugh.

  In about three weeks, she’ll answer the phone wrong, or buy the wrong kind of toothpaste, or bring the wrong shirt to the wrong dry cleaners, and he’ll bash her all over again.

  * * *

  In the back of the Range Rover, on the way home to Brooklyn, I try to figure out what to do. That’s how I usually spend my time in a car lately, thinking about what to do. Maybe that’s because the first time I saw him hit her was while we were all driving somewhere.

  I was little. Four, or maybe five. We were going to Vermont for my first ski trip. My father had asked my mother to drive for a while, and then he got mad at her because she didn’t put on her turn signal. Then he got mad because she changed the radio sta
tion, and then, after she didn’t have the right change for the toll, he got mad again. When she said it was impossible to drive safely with him yelling at her like that, he fist-hit her smack in the jaw, and she swerved, and my stomach felt like it was on a sideways elevator, and he told her she better learn to drive safely no matter what he did, and he hit her again, and she swerved again, and I thought and thought about what to do, and by the time we reached the ski lodge, I still hadn’t figured it out, and when my father told everybody we’d had a little accident and that she’d hit the dashboard, and my mother let him keep the lie, I started to cry, and someone at the ski lodge gave me a Tootsie Pop, and I still didn’t know what to do.

  * * *

  Sam’s going to his aunt and uncle’s tomorrow in Pennsylvania, but the Jag is finished this morning.

  Over the phone he’d wanted me to tell my father it was ready, but I didn’t. I just walked to the shop on my own, like it was a regular day. Only it doesn’t feel like a regular day. I don’t feel regular. I feel mad. I was mad the minute I heard Sam’s voice on the phone. I don’t know why exactly, but I’m sick of his voice. I’m sick of him.

  “You ready to drive it?” I ask Sam at the garage.

  “You’re killing me,” he goes.

  “Just drive it,” I say. “You know you want to.”

  “Nah.” He shakes his head. “It’ll get you into trouble.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do,” he goes.

  “What’s your problem?” I ask him.

  “Huh?”

  “You have to do the right thing every time?” I sound like an asshole. I can’t help it.

  “What are you talking about?” he goes.

  “You have to be so perfect?”

  His father slides out from underneath some car on the other side of the garage. “¿Tienes algún problema?” he yells over to Sam.

  “No es nada, Papi,” Sam yells back.

  “Do you ever break one goddamn rule?” I’m going. “Do you ever just do something for the fun of it?”

  He gets real still.

  “My whole life is a goddamn broken rule,” he tells me, real low, real calm. Then he steps in close, like Dreadlocks Dean did that day, and his voice stays quiet, but it’s hard and mad as anything. “Do you know how fun it is to be a bastard half spic with a mother who’d rather fingerpaint in some other country than live near you and a father who has to kiss rich white ass daily just so he can make his goddamn rent?” He backs up, glaring at me with this disgusted look, like he’s the coach and I’m the spaz retard.

  “You always know what to say, don’t you?” I tell him, sarcastic as hell. I’d take it all. I’d take his life any day. I’d take his father in a second. “You always know what to do.” I want to be him so bad it makes my blood hurt. “With the girls, with the cars, with me. With everyone.”

  He sort of blinks, and then he shakes his head, like he’s sorry for me or something. “Whatever,” he goes, and then suddenly I get scared I’ll either start bawling or else rip his face off.

  “You know what?” I tell him. “From now on just stay the fuck away.” And I’m gone.

  * * *

  I’m so pissed off I don’t even get what’s going on until I’m in the apartment and the door is closed. My parents are in the foyer, and he’s mad again. She’s got blood on her mouth and over her eye, and her sleeve is torn. She’s got the keys and mail table between them, holding it up by the surface so the legs stick out to sort of protect her, but he’s twisting it out of her grip.

  “Go to your room,” she tells me, the way she always does.

  He yanks the table away from her and tosses it behind him. Then he grabs her and shoves her up against the wall. She throws up her hands, and I walk around them into the kitchen. I hear the punch, which doesn’t sound like much in real life but turns eyes the shiny color of olives in five minutes flat, and I pick up the phone.

  I dial that stupid, stupid number they make TV shows off of and try to keep my voice steady, so if they replay it on the news, I won’t sound like an idiot.

  “What is the location of the emergency?” they go, without saying hello.

  “Two-fifty-one Baker Place,” I say. “Between Seventh and Eighth Avenue.”

  “What’s the nature of the emergency?” they ask.

  “My dad’s beating the shit out of my mother,” I go.

  “Stay on the line, please,” they tell me.

  So I do.

  * * *

  My mother starts to cry when they cuff him. She never cries.

  That goofy Gingerbread kid watches from his stoop. He’s got his basketball tucked under one arm, and I can see his fingers tapping it, fast, like he’s typing or sending Morse code.

  My father stops in front of me as they walk him to the squad car. They let him lean down to whisper in my ear. The kid stops tapping and shifts the ball to his other arm.

  “Do you see what you’ve done?” my dad goes, really quiet, nodding over to her. She’s still crying, slumped against our front door. “Do you see?”

  Year Three

  Grace

  China

  Ebony

  Sam

  Carl

  Monique

  Molly

  Drew

  Caitlin

  Hector

  Grace

  MY MOTHER IS a lunatic. She has a routine for everything, and if you do anything to screw it up, she falls apart. My mom falling apart is something you don’t want to see. The problem is, her routine’s always changing, so it’s next to impossible to figure out what you might be doing to screw it up. Which means you never know when she’s going to fall apart.

  She’s a receptionist at some fancy ad agency on Madison Avenue in the city. I’m sure her stupid routines must get screwed up at work, but Madison Avenue probably doesn’t let her get away with any falling apart. They should use her in one of their ads. For a psych ward.

  She’ll come home one day and fall apart because I didn’t make dinner for us. Then the next day she’ll fall apart because I made dinner but she was planning on ordering in pizza. Then the next day she’ll fall apart because she called ahead of time to tell me to order pizza, but I ordered it from the wrong place. I’m not allowed to defend myself. When I try, she says, “Don’t talk back! I don’t want to hear it!” Then she stomps down the hall to Walker’s apartment.

  I don’t know how he can stand her, but he’s kept her for over two years. He works for the city or something. He’s okay, but he takes up too much of my mom’s time. Even though she’s a lunatic, I never really get to see her, and that sort of bothers me. I keep thinking if we had more time, I could talk to her about certain things that Ebony and China talk about to their mothers.

  One thing I’d want to tell her about is how it can be at school. I know we can’t afford private school or anything, but the girls here are really hard on me. Somebody’s always wanting to fight. Somebody’s always calling me stuck up or a bitch. It’s bad enough I’m white, but I think the way I look makes it worse. When I used to go with my mother to the city sometimes, people would stop me on the street. They would give my mother their cards. They always wanted to know what agency I was with.

  It’s nice being good-looking because it’s one less thing to worry about. But it’s hard, too, because when you stand out in ninth grade, people always want to start with you. If you’re a cute guy, it doesn’t matter how you act. But if you’re a pretty girl, things are different. If you’re too nice, they call you weak. If you’re not nice enough, they say you think you’re better than they are. The whole thing sucks. The only way out of it is to get famous. If I started getting modeling jobs and got famous, then I’d be a celebrity instead of just a pretty white girl, and then they’d want me to be their friend instead of wanting to start with me. So I got accepted with this fancy agency a couple of weeks ago, and I’m waiting for them to get me work. My mother is excited because she thinks I could make enough mone
y to send myself to college. Walker doesn’t like it. “Keep your head on straight,” he keeps telling me. He thinks I’m going to make it.

  Ebony and China are the best. They understand me pretty well, and they never give me a hard time. I told them right off the bat, way back in sixth grade, that my mom might be weird around them. I figure it’s better to let people know up front and let them decide if they want to have anything to do with you. I told them how my mother’s a fake. How she’ll say all the right things but she’s kind of racist. How they’d see through her in a second. I was nervous maybe they’d dump me after that, but they were cool. By ninth grade there’s not that many groups that are mixed. Everybody usually ends up with their own. Me and Ebony and China are one of three mixed groups left. We don’t care.

  We spend the most time at Ebony’s house. She’s got eight-year-old twin sisters, and her mother’s a real estate agent. Ebony’s mother is really cool. She knows a lot of poetry from when she used to be a teacher, and she uses it on Ebony when she’s trying to make a point. Ms. Giles keeps the twins’ artwork stuck to the refrigerator with magnets that look like orange slices dipped in chocolate. Ms. Giles’s first name is Grace, just like me.

  China’s mother is nice but not as cool as Ebony’s. She’s a pharmacist. She brings home all kinds of sample medicine all the time, and when China is sick, they never have to get prescriptions. China’s mother has really short hair, and she wears big earrings. She calls China baby, and she called Ebony that once, too, when Ebony was crying because her dad had called the night before, drunk, from somewhere in North Carolina. I never had a father. Just some man who slept with my mother once, and she didn’t know she was pregnant until he was long gone anyway. China’s father is a cameraman for Sunset. I’ve only seen him a couple of times. He’s got a pierced ear, and he has the same slanty eyes as China, and he calls China’s mother baby.

  When China screws up, she gets grounded and loses her allowance. China gets ten dollars a week. Ebony gets seven. I don’t get an allowance. I have to ask when I need money for something. Depending on whether my mother’s routine got messed up, I either get it or I don’t.

  * * *