The OK End of Funny Town

by Mark Polanzak

  Everything would burn bright green that summer: the leaves, the blades of grass, the ponds deep in the woods. Simon would take a stroll in the common with a new girlfriend, who worked as a biomedical engineer, and he would be fascinated by the fact that she wore a lab coat and worked on curing diseases. Mom would renew her RN credits, start part-time at Mass General. She would make a meal that had frogs’ legs. They would both come with me to Accepted Candidates Day at college and marvel at all the buildings and opportunities. My girlfriend would win several awards at graduation, wear special neon tassels, and lie to me, saying that she was most proud of our relationship. I would break up with her as soon as I got to school in the fall. I would meet girls that didn’t ask anything of me, but just wanted to get drunk and get it on. I would bump a lot of speed. I would steal a golf cart from campus security, park it on the stage of the auditorium, and I wouldn’t be caught for this. I would get by, majoring in business, and I would move close to my mother and brother after getting my BS. We would watch the Red Sox with new girlfriends. Mom would bring us good food to our apartments. She would meet another doctor, and he would treat her well and never make me or Simon feel weird. Simon would have a baby before I did, and he would name him after our dad. I would be his godfather and make jokes about the mafia. There would be new houses purchased. There would be new graduations to attend. There would be laughs, and there would be cries. There would be a world, and it would spin lazily through a black void.

  And the pink toilet would grow pipes, roots into the soil of our front yard. Tall grass would grow up around it. Mom would place nosegays of daisies and yellow roses in its basin, a good planter. The pink toilet would be there every time I returned to my childhood home. My wife would joke that she needed to pee so bad that she’d use the pink one. Our Christmas photos would be taken around the pink throne. Thanksgiving cigars would be smoked around it. Somehow, the pink toilet would look beautiful and good in our front yard, after years and years and years. Most of the time though, we’d be too busy or far away to think about the pink toilet. And it would wait, through wind and rain and snow and lightning for us to remember. Everyone and everything would live long and happy and healthy. The toilet would live forever and ever in our yard. In our hearts.

  Pink throne.

  Porcelain God.

  Stupid. Fucking. Thing.

  GRACIE

  In my insomnia, I waited for the digital 2:59 a.m. on my globally-or-atomically-or-somethingly-precise cell phone to change to 3:00 a.m. My wristwatch was behind, and I thought to synchronize all clocks in my place. But I heard this moaning out in the streets and looked up. When I glanced back down, the cell phone clock had flipped over. I bent my ear to the window.

  It was this two-syllable moan. Over and over. Maybe not human, but something wrecked. “Gray-Sea … Gray-Sea …” I pictured a dog floating in the ocean, then a guy looking for the dog at exactly 3:02 a.m. in Inman Square.

  I knew I wasn’t sleeping anyway. I knew setting my clocks wasn’t going to stimulate me much longer. And this guy, calling out, Gracie, again and again, was something to do. I pictured the guy. A lonely guy looking for his lost thing. I could help out. I wanted to know that this messed-up guy got her back. I needed to know that he wasn’t going to crawl into bed alone tonight.

  I tugged a winter hat on, grabbed my smokes, and pulled on my ripped jeans over my sweatpants. Then, I was out on the streets, stopping whenever I heard the guy’s call, triangulating him. I reached B-Side Bar, but now he was calling from the basketball courts on Elm. When I got to the courts, he was moaning for Gracie at the little square at five corners. At the little square, he was calling from back at my place.

  I lit a cigarette and sat on a bench, thinking that Gracie’s probably having the same problem as me. How does he expect to get his dog back if he’s constantly moving? Each time she goes to him, he’s gone. Hug a tree, dude. Stay in one place. When I heard him call out again, he’d moved impossibly far from his last spot. He got behind me somehow, calling from blocks away, down by the Somerville line. I heard him again, and he was back in front of me, somewhere up Hampshire Street. Crazy. It was the same voice. What are the odds of two guys missing a dog with the same name? Then I caught my-idiot-self and realized it was two guys looking for the same dog. But the same voice called from the south, then again from the north. Four guys? I heard it back near my place again.

  I pictured the guy on a bike or scooter or motorcycle or something, crying out for his lost love. This Gracie, this dog had become all the guy’s losses—his dead mother, his job, the missed opportunity with some crush who left town, all his boyhood dreams. This Gracie was now the white-hot core of stuff. She better be worth it, I thought, and headed off to help find her.

  I passed a couple on my way down to Harvard. They stumbled, tangling their arms in painful-looking webs, but they were laughing. I heard it again, “Gray-Sea!” The couple kissed each other sloppily and backed their way into an apartment building, where they would climb the staircase, a four-legged smooching machine, crash into their small but clean studio, and ignore the puppy and his slobbered tennis ball. Then, I wondered how Gracie got out. What was the problem, girl? He didn’t leave the door open. No, he loves you. All he really wants is your happiness. He found you as a puppy, needing someone to care for, needing to absorb himself in someone else’s wellbeing after a loss, to not get confused in his own thoughts. He was careful with you, thinking you were his one, believing it was good. You were sensitive—he knew this and loved this about you. How did you get out, girl? “Gray-Sea,” echoed through the blocks again.

  I gave up and lit a cigarette on the curb. My wristwatch read 3:34, my cell phone, 3:35. I was changing a name in my contacts list to Gracie, and about to hit Call, when a dog came running up to me. I shoved the phone in my pocket, chucked the cigarette, and spread my arms. “Hey, girl,” I said in a traditional dog-greeting voice. She trotted, happy enough. We embraced. She didn’t have a tag, but what were the odds? I sat down and put my arm around her, making sure she wouldn’t be going anywhere this time. For the guy, I figured I’d stay put and hug a parking meter.

  As with most advice I give anyone but myself, my plan worked, and the guy’s voice grew louder and closer. He was going to find us. I was going to watch this reunion. I was going to tell the guy to get her a damn tag, keep her on a leash, fence her in, don’t let her out of your sight. She’s the one, and you’ve got to watch her all the time. But when the voice came from around the corner, Gracie struggled out of my grasp and headed off in the opposite direction. “Hey, Gracie,” I whispered. She stuck her tail between her legs and looked back. “What the fuck? What the fuck’s wrong with you, girl?” I had a quick thought that the guy beat her or something, but she was fine. She was perfectly fine. The guy obviously fed her enough and all that. “Gracie? What the fuck?” Then, in a snap, she bounded off, disappearing into the black forest of buildings beyond a streetlamp. She wasn’t lost. She was escaping. Do what’s right for you.

  “Hey!” A voice shook me back to the present. I spun around and finally laid eyes on the poor sap.

  I didn’t respond. Who was I? I was just some guy, out in the middle of the street at nearly four in the morning. I could have been a bad guy, for all he knew. But he didn’t seem to know much beyond some sad panic.

  “You seen a dog tonight?”

  “Dog?”

  “Yeah, a white dog about this high?”

  “I haven’t seen a dog, guy.”

  He put his hands on his knees and breathed loudly.

  “How’d she get out?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I locked up the apartment. She got into bed, and when I came out of the bathroom it was like she never existed.”

  “Maybe she’s in your house still.”

  “I thought of that. Everything.” He raised his face to the streetlight and closed his eyes.

  “You’ll find her. I’ll keep my eyes out.”

  “Thanks.�
�

  I reached for my smokes as he jogged after her, vanishing at the same point she had. Before I had the cigarette in my lips, I heard him call from an impossible distance.

  I headed back home. It had to be past four. I finally felt tired enough for sleep. I didn’t want to go in, though, when I reached my stoop. I knew what wasn’t in there. The guy called out again, from the north, then, right away, from the south, then the east. It’s easier to find things in the light of day, but easier to search at night. I made my way west, tired and hopeful. I joined all the other guys in town, calling out, “Gray-Sea,” as if it were a matter of finding her.

  AN EXACT THING

  Since my fiancée and I seemed to be the last couple in the world to read the novel, we were sure that all the hype would have ruined it. There was not a chance that the hyperbolic reviews—in the magazines and papers, on the sites and blogs, from our older trusted friends and our even more experienced friends who had children, the married couples bent toward iconoclasm—would be perpetuated by us, we Johnnies-and-Janies-come-lately. No way our expectations could be met. We considered waiting until the novel was released in mass market paperback, until there would arrive a string of days in which we hadn’t heard mention of the book, and when that happened, we would purchase An Exact Thing from a used bookstore, peruse it on a chaise with a cocktail, where a reader’s expectations are reduced to mere entertainment, and the story must compete with the pool and sky and buzz. But Kathy and I were being excluded from conversations. Friends would speak the novel’s title or recite a character’s line, then another friend would shout: “Stop! Stop! Mitchell and Kathy haven’t read it!” The reciter would then whisper the line’s remainder, turn away from us, and declare, “Well, they must read it,” before leading the conversation into another room and finally sealing the door between us, the reads and the read-nots. When we heard that around their twentieth anniversary, Steven and Lydia had not invited us to a party to discuss the book, we’d had enough.

  The book’s publisher had nowhere near the marketing budget of at least fifty other titles on the new releases shelf, but An Exact Thing remained the #1 Bestseller for the entire summer. It was a “small” novel, authored by someone who had written two even smaller books without commercial success but suggestive of great potential—a collection of stories, a chapbook of poems. No one knew these works. Out of print. They couldn’t be found.

  When we asked for An Exact Thing at the used bookstore, the cashier laughed. Apparently no one was relinquishing their prized copy. When we brought the books up to the register at the chain bookstore, the clerk asked, because he had to ask everyone now, “How many gifts does this make?” We hesitated. We were embarrassed to admit that this was for us, that we were new. But before we could answer, he warned us: “No one can figure out who Ms. Taylor was going to write to” and handed us our receipt. This hint, this reference, made little sense to us. But we remembered the reviews, which mentioned the execution of a scene that described “in achingly beautiful detail a hand reaching slowly, feebly, terribly toward a pen listing in an inkwell, blood leaking from a pointer finger.” That must be the question of the story, we decided. That must be Ms. Taylor’s hand in the scene. This must be the central choice of the story: Whom does she love? We were excited at a chance to solve this mystery.

  Great novels ask questions. Great works of art understand the difference between vague and subtle, puzzlement and mystery, not knowing and the unknown. In this way, An Exact Thing proved, unquestionably, to be sublime. What was so fascinating, though, was the simplicity of the story, how straightforward, how strikingly unstriking the moves were. It told the story. It knew it had one to tell and went right after it. Wonderful exchanges and lines, to be sure, details, moments along the way: Buck, a poor and gentle old alcoholic character pausing after pulling a can of beer free from the plastic yoke of a six pack to recall twisting apples free from branches with his deceased lover; Ms. Taylor mistaking, quickly, sunlight lying on a wide green maple leaf for brilliant snow in July, revealing her split desire for both the younger and the older gentleman; Clarence, the other man, donning a black suit for another day of trading, folding his unseen love letter into a pocket square. But to whom she would write the letter and what it would say, finally, was the entire story. However chilling and serious, An Exact Thing wasn’t without humor. The tale approximated true. One scene was a meta-criticism of pat romance novels. A character asked, “What author, living or dead, would you like to have to dinner?” Another character answered, “Danielle Steel: dead.”

  We got it. Not the answer to the final question of the book. We understood why everyone had told us to read it, why everyone wanted to talk about it. How readers’ interpretations could reveal so much of their true character. We had ideas of our own. After finishing An Exact Thing for the first time, we read through the acknowledgments, through the author bio, read the blurbs again, the reviews, read the opening chapter repeatedly, read the copyright page, the legal disclaimers, the note on the font. We looked up from the book in cafés and caught eyes with other couples holding An Exact Thing in their hands. They laughed, shook their heads, and dived down into the words again. Kathy whispered to me, not lifting her eyes from the page: “She’s writing to Gregory, the valet. She loves him.” I laughed politely, not able to place the likely minor love interest she was referencing. Ms. Taylor had a choice to make. A big one that she made only when it was too late. And we would never know. But we could believe whatever we wanted.

  When we entered Steven and Lydia’s apartment for drinks, before heading out for dinner, all of our friends, all these beautiful couples, greeted us with applause. We bowed. Lydia declared, “Welcome to the club!” We were accepted. We felt older. We felt the same age.

  All the gossip about work—how LeReux was now likely having an affair with the receptionist; how the boss’s presumed mistress inexplicably outperformed almost everyone who’d been at the office for twenty years and immediately took over as VP; how Steven joked about staying late one night to sneak into my office and go through my computer to see if I had been on sex chat sites instead of working—and all the gossip about home—how we were twelve weeks pregnant; how Steven’s ex-girlfriend showed up one night, drunk, and proposed to him in front of Lydia; how their daughter was now in an open relationship with two men and one woman—this was all prelude, was all forestalling, was all bullshit. We wanted to know about the book. We wanted to know what we all thought. So, we finally began talking.

  It was the kind of conversation you always wanted to have with your friends. A real discussion. There was something, An Exact Thing, that we were all passionate about, a piece of artwork, something that gave us real questions, a zeitgeist that we had all experienced. We felt intelligent, like people with something to say. Although Kathy and I were the youngest and the only engaged couple, we believed we were now of value. It was possible—if we could all work together, with all of our experience informing our theses and all of our hearts in the right place—to come to a collective decision, a truth, a universal understanding of which characters belonged together. We could figure it out, once and for all. Steven halted our feverish questions and claims by positing: “First we must decide why she keeps the necklace Isaac made for her.” We pondered it. Fingers tapped the tabletop. Tongues prodded cheeks. Brows wrinkled. No one laughed. No one guessed. And then my Kathy said: “Who is Isaac?”

  It is not a joy of mine to apologize for my fiancée. She is not someone who needs a regular apologist. I am just as young and naive. I could not remember Isaac in the story either, but I was more reluctant than my bride-to-be to announce my ineptitude for close reading, a skill Steven clearly possessed. But when she asked a question with such an obvious answer to readers of our friends’ caliber, I cleared my throat and dropped my napkin to the table. Although her actions should not reflect on me, it is my instinct to think of Kathy and me as one person. It is as if the sounds from her mouth could just as well have
emanated from mine, given the glances I received in that moment. I accept the fact that she and I are linked, which is actually something I love. I did see it as an insult to her that Steven chewed his well-done filet, and raised an eyebrow at me, not Kathy. So, in defense of her, with frustration for the dynamic, I clarified for her, to them: “We don’t know who Isaac is, as in we don’t know his intentions.” This settled the table, or at least my stomach, for the moment.

  “Shall we change the subject?” Lydia suggested.

  And we did, without anyone talking.

  Great novels need to be read several times. The second time I read An Exact Thing was in private. I showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and kissed Kathy goodbye for the day. I took my briefcase, walked around the block once and entered a café kitty-corner to our building’s entrance. I watched for Kathy to exit a half hour later, headed to her office. Back inside the apartment, I drew the shades, loosened my tie, and extracted An Exact Thing from the shelf. I entered the words in my stolen way. Great novels hide greater meanings in little moments. We may read a scene as simply character-building or plot-developing, a line as filler or superfluous. But great books measure every breath of a narrator, and the reader, being only human, does not realize the economy and layering in each phrase. The reveal in each word and each unmade bed. I knew I would read it several more times. I would find time, make time, hide away. The second read showed me so much that I had missed before. It was as if I had been allowed the experience of someone else’s read. What is the best analogy? The book first shows its surface. The big idea. The second time, you follow a secondary character and see another story develop. You notice that a specific expression is used repeatedly, which you couldn’t possibly catalog, reading it only the once. It’s like meeting a person at a party. Then seeing her on the street. Then kissing her in the dark. Then lying to her. It’s you, though. You are the changing thing.