Free The Funnies by John Lennon Page A

something,” Amanda said, her voice brassy and false as an audition. “Maybe that’ll happen, do you think?”
    â€œOh, fuck you.”
    â€œYeah, I thought so.” But whatever emboldened her before had drained away, and it was just her speaking now, woeful and hushed. “So are you coming home?”
    As much as I didn’t want to be in this house, with its sticky patina of dust and big empty rooms, I wanted even less to be back in the cramped apartment with Ian listening to us from above, and my clumsy and unappealing work, my feelings for which were maturing from constructive doubt to outright disdain. I thought of Susan Caletti, puttering up the New Jersey Turnpike in a gentle cloud of cool air. For a second, I thought about what a year of the Family Funnies would earn me, and how long I could live on it afterward. I swallowed hard.
    â€œTim?”
    â€œI need a little time to think here,” I blurted. “I have to think things over.”
    Amanda cleared her throat. “‘Things’?”
    â€œYeah, things. Everything. All these new developments.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œI don’t think you do,” I said, a parting swat. “Your dad didn’t just die, okay?”
    â€œOh,” she said, “I’m sorry,” as if awakening from a long sleep. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
    â€œLook, just don’t worry about it, okay? Just give me a few days and I’ll work out a plan.”
    â€œRight,” she said. “Regroup.”
    â€œExactly. Okay?”
    â€œOkay,” Amanda said.
    * * *
    Something was wrong in the house. I walked from room to room, struggling to figure it out, but only when I noticed through my parents’ bedroom window that the Caddy was missing did it come to me: the place was empty. I was alone. In a family of seven, with a mother who didn’t work, a father who worked at home, and a brother who rarely left his bedroom, this was a rare circumstance, and standing in the dusty quiet I thought I could remember every other instance of it in thirty years. They were all pretty much the same. My father, racked by a sudden recognition that he was a bad parent, would declare a family outing, and one of us (whoever was quickest) would declare themselves violently ill. Bobby was most convincing: never reluctant to purge himself, he could vomit on demand. Rose was second best, milking her nascent menstruation with enormous skill; she would double over with sudden cramps and fold herself onto the floor like an old blanket. I was third. I got headaches. My mother would lead me to my room, pull down the shades and lay a damp washcloth over my forehead. I was actually brought to the doctor once; my mother was certain I was having migraines (“Your great aunt Sarah had ‘em, goddam her”). But I was pronounced healthy, much to my relief. Pierce, even when he was far too young to be left alone, had only to announce he was staying home, and nobody would question him: my father, true to form, didn’t actually want him along. Occasionally he would be locked in his bedroom for safe keeping. And Bitty, equally true to form, always wanted to go.
    After everyone was gone, I generally got out of bed and went straight for the kitchen, where I consumed great handfuls of anything rationed, forbidden or nutritionally counterproductive that I could find. Afterward I rooted through my parents’ underwear drawers, read Bobby’s hidden skin mags, abused myself and watched television until I heard the car in the driveway. By this time my headache would be real, and I could climb legitimately back into bed.
    In response to the memory, or maybe to the morning’s disheartening conversations, my head began a tentative thrumming. I rooted in the kitchen drawers and turned up a bottle of fossil aspirin, the crusty old tablets half-buried in a dune of analgesic dust. A threadbare washcloth found