The Funnies by John Lennon

Place.
    Ivy Homes sat on its man-made hill like an expensive and calamitous hairdo. It lurked behind a barrier of uncannily round shrubs and perfect green grass, tended obsessively to by outsourced landscape professionals in embroidered uniforms. As usual, they were there when I parked the Caddy and got out.
    At the desk I tried to ignore the fat man bellowing incessantly in the vestibule. I remembered him from past visits; the staff seemed powerless to stop him and had apparently stopped trying. I walked down the long reeking hallway to my mother’s door, which as always was open. She unsteadily half-stood, gripping her walker, to greet me. I kissed her cheek and she kissed mine.
    â€œTim,” she said.
    â€œHi, Mom.” I tried not to betray my extreme surprise at her lucidity; it caught me off guard. I sat on the edge of her bed and she lowered herself back into her chair. Above us, gripped by a hanging metal stand, a small black-and-white television droned quietly. I thought, can these people see such a tiny picture?
    I once worked as a short order cook at an all-night restaurant and bar in West Philly, called Tory’s. Though it had survived in the same place for years, it had a fly-by-night, thrown-together look about it, with no matching tables or chairs and a couple of grimy pinball machines, one of which didn’t work. At two each morning, sheets of plywood would be leaned against the bar as a makeshift wall, and I would stand behind them cooking breakfast. There was one waitress. Her name was Janet, and she was astonishingly crisp and beautiful, with a starched white apron she bought herself, meticulously shined shoes and smooth black hair gathered in a yellow clip at the back of her skull. Working in the middle of the night, behind that plywood wall, I would finish orders and call them out, and Janet would appear to whisk them away, as stupefyingly incongruous in that place as the Queen of England. This is how my mother looked to me here: Ivy Homes was no place for someone who knew where she was. I could feel my heart gumming up.
    â€œAre you here from Philadelphia?” she said, trying to get her brain around the situation. “Or are you staying at home?”
    â€œI’m at home,” I said. “With Pierce.”
    She nodded. “Your father’s dead.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI forget, over and over.” She shook her head. “Today I’m remembering a lot. I remember the funeral, I think. Was it in some sort of movie theater?”
    â€œYou’re thinking of the crematorium.”
    â€œOh, hell, yes. Now why on earth did your father go and ask to have that done? He’d not mentioned it a single time.”
    â€œI suspect it might have been Bobby’s doing.”
    She blushed. “Tim, tell me what your brother does for a living. It’s slipped my mind.”
    I told her. “Oh, sure,” she said.
    â€œMom,” I said. “I came to tell you something. I’m going to take over the comic strip. Do you remember the will?”
    She nodded. “Mal looks like a washed-up blackjack dealer with that dye job.”
    â€œSo you do remember.”
    â€œA little.”
    â€œDad left me the strip,” I said. “At first I didn’t want to do it, but I thought hard about it and decided I would. I need the money, for one thing.”
    â€œFor one thing.”
    I looked at her eyes. They were clear and blue. “The only thing, I guess.”
    For some time, we sat quietly, saying nothing. My mother’s eyes closed slowly, and I thought she had fallen asleep. I was getting up to go when she said, “No, wait.” Her eyes opened. “Do me a favor, Tim.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWhen you draw, don’t make me out to be the simpleton your father did. He used to tell me it was all made up, that it was a made-up family, but I knew that was what he thought of me. He thought I was stupid. Don’t make me