Rich and Famous

by James Lincoln Collier

  The thing Pop does for a living that keeps his head from being filled up with petty details is draw comic books. His most important cartoon used to be a superhero called Garbage Man, where this mild-mannered advertising executive turned himself into Garbage Man when trouble impended and burned holes in the bad guys with his super smell. Pop still does Garbage Man, but now he’s more interested in a new one, called Frankens-Teen. It’s all about a teenager who can turn into a Frankenstein monster whenever he drinks this potent astral fluid which he carries around with him. The minute he drinks it he goes all shuddery and turns into an indestructible monster with stitches all over his face, determined to wreck vengeance on some bad guys. Pop says that sooner or later somebody is bound to buy Frankens-Teen for the movies and pay him a million dollars or something, but frankly, I’m not counting on it.

  Actually, Pop doesn’t want to be a comic strip artist. What he really wants to be is a famous painter like Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol. Jackson Pollock is dead. He made his pictures by dripping whole cans of paint over huge canvases. They didn’t look like anything real, but they weren’t supposed to—they were supposed to look like the inside of his mind. Frankly, if my mind were that disorganized I wouldn’t let anybody know about it. The pictures Andy Warhol makes look like ordinary things—tomato soup cans and Brillo boxes. Pop used to paint like Jackson Pollock. He used to snap paint on his pictures with a spoon, the way kids snap peas at each other. Now he’s changed more over to the Warhol style. For example, he’ll paint a picture of a picture. Once he painted this picture of the cover of his own Frankens-Teen comic books. It was exactly identical—the same size and color, with the titles and the name of the publisher, just the way they were on the printed one. You could hardly tell them apart. I said, “You mean you painted a picture of a picture you’d already painted?”

  “Why not?” he said. “People paint pictures of trees, don’t they? Well that comic book cover is just as real as a tree. It’s part of our lives.”

  “Why didn’t you just paste the comic book cover onto the canvas? You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

  “Aha,” he said. “That’s the whole point. It’s a scathing indictment of contemporary morality. Social commentary in the form of a joke.”

  “What’s so funny about it?” I said. “I think Frankens-Teen is funnier.”

  “That’s because you have a juvenile mentality. Frankens-Teen is meant to appeal to the twelve-year-old mind.”

  “I’m thirteen.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a juvenile,” he said. “Wait until this picture makes me rich and famous. I won’t give you any of the money.”

  I thought about saying that he didn’t give me any money anyway, but that would just give him an excuse to tell me how lucky I was, New York was full of kids who barely got enough to eat, much less any allowance. I didn’t think I could stand that, so I kept my mouth shut.

  I don’t mean to say that Pop is a bad guy. Sometimes he’s pretty nice. I mean one day he’ll remind me of all the poor people there are in New York and threaten to cut off my allowance. The next day I’ll ask him for some money for the movies and he’ll give me five dollars and tell me to keep the change. But the big problem is this whole thing about how I’m a juvenile and only thirteen and can’t be trusted to run my own life and all of that. What difference does it make to him if I get to school late or get bad grades or even flunk out? It’s my life, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to make a mess out of it if I want?

  Stanky agreed with me that Pop was too bossy.

  “Your parents aren’t so bossy,” I said. We were lying around his room messing the place up with grape-jelly slushes we made in his blender.

  “They don’t pay much attention to what I do,” he said.

  “They aren’t always bugging you about something,” I said.

  “They leave it up to Eloise to bug me.” Eloise is their maid.

  “Yes, but they let you stay up late if you want to or skip school sometimes.”

  “That’s because I get straight A’s.”

  “It wouldn’t matter to Pop if I got straight A’s, he’d still order me to get up and go to school on time,” I said.

  He took a suck on his grape-jelly slush. “Boy, are these grape-jelly slushes terrible,” he said.

  “I think we put in too much vanilla,” I said.

  “You have to put lots of vanilla in slushes,” he said. “Otherwise they don’t taste like slushes.”

  “Well anyway,” I said.

  “The thing is, George, my parents and your father are different. My parents just don’t worry about me very much, they figure I’m okay and they do their own thing. But your father worries about you all the time because you haven’t got any mother.”

  “I might get a mother,” I said, “and I don’t think it’s going to make any difference.”

  “It probably will. At least maybe she’ll take your clothes to the laundromat.”

  “She has to work,” I said. “More likely it’ll end up I’ll have to take her clothes to the laundromat.”

  “When are they getting married?” Stanky said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They keep arguing about it. Pop says, „What the hell’s the big rush about getting married, it might spoil everything,’ and she says, „We’ve been going around together for three years and I’m not getting any younger.’ I think it’ll be pretty soon, though. Pop’s getting tense.”

  Pop’s girl friend was named Denise Rothwell. She was an editor at Smash Comics, which is where Pop met her. Smash Comics is the company Pop works for. I don’t mean he goes there every day. He’s a freelancer and mainly works at home, although sometimes he has to go up there and fix up something on one of his comic strips that he supposedly did wrong. It makes him furious when his own girl friend calls up and tells him something is wrong with his comic strip. He shouts over the phone, “You’re just being picky, Denise, cut it out will you,” but he has to go up there and fix it or he won’t get paid. Pop is broke a lot and always needs to get paid.

  Denise Rothwell believes in Women’s Lib. So do I. Pop says he believes in it, too, but he doesn’t really. I mean he believes in it when it comes time for Denise to pay for her own movie ticket or her share of dinner when we go to a restaurant, which isn’t too often, but when it actually comes down to the question of who’s boss, they usually end up having a fight. Pop says, “You’re just trying to make an issue of it,” and Denise says, “No I’m not, you’re being bossy.” and they end up not speaking to each other for a day until they calm down and go down to Fidelio’s for a drink and work out an agreement. I’m usually in favor of Denise. Anybody who’s trying to get liberated from Pop, that’s the side I’m on.

  It may seem like I’m getting off the track, but you have to know about Pop and Denise to understand what happened. Around last March or something they had their usual fight about getting married. To calm Denise down Pop said they ought to go to Paris. Of course I wasn’t supposed to be hearing it, I was supposed to be asleep. But we have a kind of small apartment—just a big living room with a skylight where Pop works and has his day-bed, and a tiny kitchen and a bathroom and my room, which isn’t so big, either. If anybody out in the living room is talking in loud tones it keeps me awake. At least if it’s interesting it keeps me awake. If they’re talking about politics or some philosophical question I can usually fall asleep without much trouble. But this was interesting and it kept me awake.

  Pop said, “We’ll go to Paris and have the honeymoon first and then get married later—some time in the fall when the weather is cooler.”

  “What does cool weather have to do with getting married?” Denise said, which I thought was a pretty good question.

  “Oh,” Pop said, “you don’t want to get married in the heat of the summer.”

  “May I point out that it was twenty-six degrees this morning. Is that cool enough for marriage?”

  “Stop cha
nging the subject,” Pop said. “The question is, what about going to Paris?”

  I could tell that Denise wanted to go to Europe all right. She hadn’t been there since her junior year in college, she said. Pop had lived in Paris for a year once, before he married my mother, but he hadn’t been back since. So Denise shut up about getting married and they talked about it some more and after a few days they came up with a plan which they didn’t want to tell me about right away, as I might be upset.

  The plan was that they’d go right after school ended. They wanted to go for four weeks. Being a freelancer, Pop could take a vacation whenever he saved up some money, which he usually didn’t. Denise would take a leave of absence. As for me, they were going to stuff me off upstate at my Uncle Ned’s house with my Cousin Sinclair. Man, did I hate Cousin Sinclair. Cousin Sinclair thought he was perfect, which maybe I could have stood except that his parents agreed with him. They were always saying, “See the marvelous story Sinclair wrote,” or “The music teacher says that Sinclair’s the most brilliant flute student he’s ever had,” or, “Have you seen Sinclair’s painting that won the school prize?” Well, the story would be some crap about a little lost child that got raised in the woods by elves, and the picture would be sea gulls swooping over the waves, and as far as the flute was concerned Cousin Sinclair was pretty good at lilting airs out of his Little Masterpieces book, but he wasn’t going to get very many plays on the A.M. stations. I hate to brag, but the truth is that I’m a better musician than Sinclair, although naturally nobody in his family was going to believe that. Anyway, you can imagine I wasn’t very thrilled with the idea of spending half the summer stuffed off upstate. I’d never spent four consecutive weeks with Cousin Sinclair and I was afraid I might murder him before the first week was over.

  But what could I do about it? I spent a lot of time thinking about it. It really bothered me. It wasn’t fair. Why should I have to suffer just so they could go to Paris? I mean I had nothing against them going to Paris, they were allowed to do that if they wanted. But why did I have to get stuffed off in upstate New York with Cousin Sinclair?

  But I couldn’t argue about it until they told me about it. I mean I wasn’t supposed to know yet, so there wasn’t anything I could do about it yet. It was hard not to talk about it. A couple of times I almost blurted out something about it. Once they were talking about who was King of England during the war and I almost asked them if they were going to visit London when they were in Europe. Another time, when Pop gave me my measly dollar-fifty allowance I started to ask him if Uncle Ned was going to pay me my allowance when he was gone. But both times I managed to stop in time; and finally one day Pop said, “Put on a clean shirt, we’re going out to dinner with Denise,” and I knew they were going to tell me about it. It was about time; it was hard keeping their secret from them.

  We went to the Open Hart, which is their usual restaurant. It’s just a place with booths and red-checked table cloths and candles stuck in chianti bottles. The air conditioner hardly ever works and there’s usually a big cloud of grease pouring out of the kitchen and it hasn’t got any class at all, but they like it because it’s cheap. I don’t care. All I ever eat is a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs with a side order of garlic bread and two big cokes, which Pop says rots your teeth.

  So we went there and as soon as Pop ordered a bottle of wine and took a big gulp he told me that he and Denise were going to Paris. I said, “Gee, I never would have thought you’d do something like that.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock,” Pop said.

  I ignored that. “Well look, can Stanky come and stay with me in the apartment while you’re gone?”

  He and Denise looked at each other. “Well, what I thought was that—”

  “I mean since you’re paying for the apartment anyway, we might as well use it. If you sent me upstate or somewhere it would cost all that train fare, and then you’d have to give the people money for my food and some extra in case of emergency.”

  “What made you think of upstate?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “It was just a place that happened to come to my mind.”

  “Well actually, I was thinking you might enjoy being with Sinclair for the summer. There’s the lake right there and Uncle Ned will take you water skiing.”

  “I flatly refuse,” I said. “I will not spend the summer with that turkey Sinclair.”

  “Oh, don’t be unreasonable, George. Sinclair is a perfectly nice kid.”

  “Cousin Sinclair is a schmuck.”

  “Don’t use that word about your own cousin,” he said.

  “If he’s my cousin why can’t I call him what I want?”

  “I think we ought to change the subject,” Denise said. “Let’s talk about it another time.”

  “Why, Denise?” I said. “If I’m going to have a fight with Pop we might as well get it over now.”

  “Because it’s spoiling my dinner, which I happen to be paying for. Now if you or your father wants to pay for my dinner, I’ll consider letting you spoil it.”

  “Very witty, Denise,” Pop said.

  “I suppose you’re going to gang up on me, now,” she said.

  “Do I have to listen to you two fight all the time?” I said. I meant it as a joke, but instead it was a mistake.

  They both stared at me. Finally Pop said, “Now, look, George.”

  I picked up the menu and pretended to read it. “I guess I’ll have my usual spaghetti and meatballs,” I said.

  They stared at me some more and I tried to hide down behind the menu. I could feel their eyes charging through the air at me. Finally Pop said, “All right. Let’s be cheerful and have a pleasant dinner. We’ll talk about it later.”

  So we talked about it a couple of days later when Pop and I were having dinner at home. This time I had my arguments all worked out. “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I promise to keep the apartment clean and I promise I’ll eat vegetables and stuff and not live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and do the laundry and all that. And if there’s an emergency or anything, I can go over to Stanley’s. I mean if I got sick or something like that. So there isn’t anything for you to worry about. That way when you get back the place will be clean and all ready for you.”

  “There’s more to it, George. For one thing, I expect to sublet the place. I can probably get three hundred dollars for the four weeks. There are always visiting professors at New York University who are looking for places to rent while they’re in New York. I can’t afford to pass up the money.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, how much will it cost for my train fare up to Sinclair’s?”

  “About four dollars each way.”

  “Oh,” I said. I thought about it. “Well, what about my food?”

  “I’d have to feed you anyway, George.”

  “Well, suppose I promised to live on peanut butter sandwiches, that would save you a lot.”

  “You just promised not to live on peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “Well listen, Pop, what if the record deal with Woody goes through? I mean if that happened I couldn’t be upstate with Sinclair, I’d have to be in New York.”

  “George, don’t get your hopes up over that. It isn’t going to happen.”

  “Woody said it was hot,” I said.

  “Woody always says everything is hot.”

  “But suppose.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “How can we cross that bridge if we come to it when you’re in Paris?”

  “A couple of weeks isn’t going to matter, George.”

  “But what if it did? I mean what if I had to make some tests or something right away. Could I—”

  “George, I’m tired of arguing about this. Sinclair isn’t all that bad. I remember one summer a few years ago when you had a good time with him.”

  “That was five years ago,” I said. “Besides, who wants to spend four weeks getting
beaten at chess by somebody who thinks he’s perfect?”

  “Oh, come on, George. All that fresh country air and swimming and water skiing. You’ll find lots to do.”

  “What’s hot about fresh air?” I said. But it wasn’t any use and I knew it. Pop had made up his mind and that was that. It made me mad as hell. It just wasn’t fair, getting shoved off with Cousin Sinclair just so Pop could have a good time. I wasn’t asking him to do me any favors, I was willing to take care of myself and even pay for my own food and all that. But the real truth was, it didn’t have anything to do with subletting the apartment or Sinclair being a big load of fun. The whole idea was that Pop didn’t think I was old enough to take care of myself. That was what it was all about, and it made me sore as hell. What right had he to tell me what to do? Why should I have to obey his every whim like some slave?