Crying Laughing

by Lance Rubin

  “Winner, I know, and that’s awful, but no offense, sometimes you act like you’re the only one with any problems.”

  “What?” I got dumped literally forty-five minutes ago, and now I’m receiving a surprise lecture from my best friend on all the ways I’m a subpar human.

  “I’m well aware it’s been hard for you,” Leili continues. “That’s why I haven’t brought this up sooner. But it’s not like I have zero problems—”

  “I know that!”

  “You do? What are my problems?”

  “Like, you know, not getting to see Oz as much because she’s with Roxanne. And, you know…being so busy with everything you do I’m sure is hard.” I pause to see if I’m right or not. “Are there other ones?”

  Leili hits me again with her sarcastic laugh.

  “Are there?” I ask again, searching for ground beneath my feet and finding nothing.

  “I actually should get going,” Leili says.

  Get going? She can’t get going! We haven’t figured anything out at all, and I’m gonna be left with this horrifying feeling all night.

  “Connie says that if people can’t make me feel seen, I have every right to step away. Otherwise I’m only enabling them.”

  It takes me a moment to chew over that one. “Wait, do you think you’re enabling me?”

  Leili doesn’t say anything.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know,” she says finally. “Maybe.”

  “Okay, so let me get this straight: I’m doing improv wrong, I’m a terrible friend, I only care about myself—have I covered everything?”

  “I really should go, Win,” Leili says, unnervingly composed.

  “First tell me—”

  But she’s already hung up.

  I call back. It goes straight to voice mail.

  I grit my teeth and quietly scream as I push my Lisa Simpson piggy bank off the dresser. There’s a clangy thud as it hits the floor, at least five years’ worth of change shifting around.

  I call again. Voice mail.

  I am angry. But I also can’t shake the feeling that I am a terrible friend. And a terrible person. And a terrible improviser. Definitely didn’t Yes, and that conversation.

  How has everything gone so wrong, so quickly?

  I scroll back through all my texts with Leili from the past few weeks, desperately searching for confirmation that I’m in the right, that I’m an okay friend, that I did text her that day she stormed out of the cafeteria. (I didn’t.)

  An old text from her stops me in my tracks:

  Are you making prudent decisions?

  I stare at the words.

  “Doesn’t seem like it!” I want to shout at my phone.

  It’s only when I see my actual response that I remember Leili was jokingly quoting Mrs. Tanaka. It was the night I found out about Dad.

  And Leili was there for me. Like she always is.

  I sink down on my bed and cry. For a long time.

  25

  As Mom and I sit listening to a woman playing guitar and singing a sad song with lyrics about flowers and knives and blood, I realize I’m very nervous. It’s as if the person about to perform is me and not Dad.

  He’s standing in the back with his cane, too anxious to sit. I keep throwing glances his way to make sure he’s all right. He’s nodding his head to the music, which, to an outsider, might seem like he’s in a very mellow mood, but I know that’s not the case.

  Cory and Ed are here too, at a table right behind us. Dad made a point of not inviting anyone except the two of them, since he so values and trusts their opinions and feels like they “have a good sense of the industry.” And, somewhat incredibly, they were both available to come.

  I’ve only been to Ted’s Roasters a couple of times before this. It’s your standard-issue coffeehouse, a bunch of square tables spread around the room, with a small, crudely constructed stage about a foot off the ground at the front. Mom is drinking a chai latte (she’s obsessed with anything chai), while I got a large hot chocolate (extra whipped cream), which I’ve barely touched.

  It’s pretty crowded tonight, almost all the tables in use. There are a few people my parents’ age, a bunch my age, but most look like they’re in their early twenties. I know they’ll laugh, because Dad is hilarious, but I want them to laugh a lot.

  I did the announcements by myself this morning, which was very surreal. I was anxious when I got to school, ready for Evan to be every bit as awful to me on the announcements as he was at rehearsal yesterday, but he wasn’t there. Ms. DiMicelli had heard from Mrs. Costa that he no longer wanted to do the announcements, though she wasn’t sure why. I had an idea.

  A ripple of nausea passed through me as I thought of doing them alone for the entire school, but once I started, I was somehow able to get in the flow.

  “Guess you didn’t need that Evan after all,” Ms. DiMicelli said with a playful wink once I’d finished. “Just dead weight.”

  Truer words, Ms. D.

  I couldn’t feel that great, though, because I’d never gotten in touch with Leili. Still haven’t. She spent lunch today working on Yearbook. Azadeh said Leili was pissed at her, too, for a while and eventually came around, so I shouldn’t be too worried. BUT OBVIOUSLY I AM. My best friend and I aren’t talking! It’s a nightmare.

  A bouncy, bearded guy named Micah is the host of the open mic, calling the acts to the stage in the order they signed up. We showed up a little late, so Dad is further down the list. But we’ve already watched at least seven (mainly excruciating) acts, so he might be soon.

  Micah pats the sad guitar girl on the back and gets ready to introduce the next performer. Oh, please, let it be Dad so I can stop feeling such horrendous jitters. It’s not. A guy named Rex is called up to the stage. No last name, just Rex. As soon as I see that he’s not holding an instrument, I get concerned.

  And it’s warranted, because Rex steps onto the stage, literally puts his mouth on the microphone to say “Hi. I’m Rex” in a deadpan voice, and then starts telling jokes.

  This is not the hugest disaster, but so far, no other comedians have performed, and it seems like it would have been helpful if Dad could have been the first. Oh well.

  Rex is probably in his late twenties, wearing a plaid shirt and skinny jeans, with shaggy hair not dissimilar to Evan’s, and he gets big laughs right away. Not from me or Mom, but from most of the other people in the room. I can tell from Mom’s expression that she’s also desperate for Rex to crash and burn so that Dad will have a higher likelihood of success. No such luck.

  “My girlfriend is always telling me I’m too negative,” Rex says, “and I’m like ‘Shut up, I hate you, I have no idea what you’re talking about!’ ” This gets a huge laugh, and my stomach sinks. It’s not the cleverest joke, but he really sells it by shouting the second part in a demonic voice. I start to turn back to Dad to give him a reassuring look or something, but the thought of seeing him in the midst of anxiously comparing himself to another comedian overwhelms me, so I don’t.

  The laughs, meanwhile, keep rolling. Rex talks mainly about his girlfriend, but also about how boring his office job is, which gets people roaring. Most of his jokes have previously been made on The Office, but no one else seems to mind.

  “And that’s my time, folks!” Rex says to conclude, like this is some huge comedy club and not a local coffeehouse with bad air circulation. (It’s so hot in here, my god.)

  “All right, everybody, let’s give one more hand for Rex!” Micah says, chuckling as he says it, as if the mere mention of Rex’s name is making him laugh at his jokes all over again.

  Please don’t let Dad be next. Please. Let’s have at least one act in between, a palate cleanser before he has to go up there. If there is any sort of Benevolent Force in this universe, let there be a name undernea
th Rex’s on the sign-up sheet, one that isn’t Russ Friedman.

  “Next we have Russ Friedman!” Micah shouts. “Come on up here!”

  Farts.

  Dad slowly makes his way from the back of the room, and it’s taking long enough that the applause dies down before he’s even halfway to the stage. Why did Dad have to stand back there? Or why didn’t he memorize who was before him so he would be able to anticipate his entrance?

  It’s not his fault. I just feel bad that the whole room is watching him. And, of course, we’re only here in the first place because Mom and I put the idea in Dad’s head, so if anything, it’s our fault.

  On a different day, Dad would make a joke right now to put everyone at ease, something witty and self-deprecating, like “Nothing to see here, folks. Talk amongst yourselves.” Instead, he tries to speed up a little, which, since I’ve now been present for two separate falls, makes me tense. Sure enough, his cane catches on the base of one of the tables, and he wobbles forward.

  My heart shoots into my mouth.

  Mom gasps.

  He can’t fall right now. He can’t. That would most definitely be evidence of a Malevolent Force in the world.

  Dad is able to balance himself, and we breathe a sigh of relief. Mom makes eye contact with me, like Thank fucking god, and I look back like Yeah, no shit.

  Micah puts a hand out to help Dad onto the stage, and, finally, Dad is up at the mic. He takes it out of its stand, and I shout “Woo!” to give him a boost of encouragement.

  It backfires horribly, though, as my Woo! startles Dad, causing him to drop the mic, which lands with a huge thudding pop that makes the entire audience flinch, followed by screechy feedback.

  This is going really well.

  Micah kindly scurries onto the stage to pick up the mic and hand it back to Dad, but not before saying, “You’re supposed to save the mic drop for the end of your set,” which gets a huge laugh. Shit.

  I know he was trying to defuse the tension and give the audience permission to laugh at a man with a cane who has accidentally dropped something, but I wish he’d let Dad make the joke himself. Because he definitely would have.

  “Uh, yeah, I’ll remember that for the future,” Dad says. “Mic drop at the end. Very good.” Some people lightly chuckle. “So, uh, hi, everybody. My name is Russ, like he said, and I, uh…” Now Dad is not only nervous but also a bit shaken by the dropped-mic incident. I’m sure most people can’t see that, but I do. “It’s a little presumptuous of me to try to do stand-up comedy when I struggle just to do the standing-up part.”

  This gets a solid laugh. Mom and I look at each other again, relieved but still on edge. We’re not out of the woods yet. Far from it.

  Dad catapults straight from that joke into his Facebook material, which instantly seems like a mistake. After sharing those jokes with me earlier in the week, Dad decided he wasn’t going to run anything else past me or Mom ahead of time. He said he wanted it to be a surprise and to get our genuine reactions live with an audience rather than in our family room.

  It made sense at the time, but now I’m deeply regretting it. If I had seen this in advance, I would have told him to do at least a few more jokes about why he has the cane, what it’s like to walk around with one all the time, something where he further invites the audience in instead of just being like “Hey, I can’t stand well! Now here’re some completely unrelated jokes!”

  I would have thought he would have known to do that. He’s the one who first played Tig Notaro’s classic stand-up set for me, the one where she’d had a string of terrible things happen to her, including being diagnosed with cancer earlier that day, and somehow spun it into confessional comedic gold. I’m kicking myself for not pushing Dad to go in that direction.

  His jokes about Facebook are going over fine, some scattered chuckles, but he’s hitting that strange announcer persona even harder than he did with me. I wish he would just talk like himself.

  Much to my dismay, the jabs at Facebook make up his strongest material. He transitions into bits about online shopping (“I miss having a checkout person to flirt with! Siri doesn’t quite cut it”), gardening (“I ended up with tons of weeds, which, if you took away the s, would actually be okay with me”), and, sadly, that old bit about mannequin nipples that he did years ago. It sounds less like my father and more like what he thinks a stand-up comedian should sound like.

  That said, he’s still getting some laughs (along with the ones coming from me, Mom, Cory, and Ed), but it’s nothing close to the kind of response I was imagining for him.

  Was he ever actually good at this? I want to shout at Mom.

  I know she’s feeling as guilty and mortified as I do. What have we subjected Dad to? The whole point of this was to build him up, to remind him that he is more than his disease, to send him on a journey of self-fulfillment, and it feels like we have very much done the opposite.

  “Well, this has been a lot of fun,” Dad says, mercifully wrapping things up.

  Has it, though?

  He slowly and carefully maneuvers the mic back into the stand, making sure not to drop it again, even though I feel like doing that would, in fact, be the perfect way to call back to the beginning of his set and bring everything full circle.

  Alas, it’s not that kind of night.

  “Thanks, everyone.” Dad throws up a hand and takes steady but determined steps off the stage to the sound of gentle applause. I’m so happy it’s over. After watching helplessly as he drowned for seven minutes, I’m glad he’s finally made it to dry land. I want to Woo! again but I’m too scared. Doesn’t matter anyway because astute open mic host Micah, not wanting to invite yet more dead air, is already introducing the next act as Dad totters to the back of the room. I assumed he would join us at our table—there’s a seat for him and everything—but then again, wading into a mass of people who thought I was mediocre wouldn’t be my first choice either.

  As luck would have it, the next act is YET ANOTHER COMEDIAN, this time a woman named Liddy Ramani who kills from the moment she steps onto the stage. She’s really funny, and even as my insides are melting, knowing that Dad has to experience the profound pain of being sandwiched in between two performers with objectively more successful sets than his, I’m thinking I want to see her perform again sometime when I can actually concentrate on what she’s doing.

  It’s a fleeting thought, though, because Mom and I simultaneously notice that Dad isn’t in the back of the room; he’s walked out of the coffeehouse altogether. After a rapid-fire nonverbal conversation, we decide to follow him.

  He’s not hard to find, standing outside on the sidewalk, one hand on his cane, the other holding a cigarette. It’s a very shocking sight. I’ve always known he used to smoke when he was younger, but I’ve never actually seen him do it.

  My first instinct is, of course, to say, “Gross, Dad, why are you doing that?” but the look on his face—eyes staring into the distance, muddied with pain and disappointment—stops me. It’s a look I only remember seeing one other time in my life, at Grandpa Harvey’s funeral.

  “Hey, Friedo,” Mom says. That’s one of her nicknames for him, the one reserved for the most tender/desperate moments.

  “Hey,” Dad says, blowing a bunch of smoke out the side of his mouth. It’s so unsettling, seeing him do something I usually associate with dirtbags and losers. Smoking is the worst.

  “Is that the best idea?” Mom asks, gesturing to the cigarette.

  “Probably not.” He still hasn’t looked at us. It’s a very rare thing when my dad can be mistaken for one of those people who never smile. But that’s where we’re at. “Don’t worry, I didn’t buy a pack or anything. I got it from the guy behind the counter.”

  I want to say something helpful, but I can’t figure out what.

  Thankfully, Dad takes the lead.

 
“Well, that sucked,” he says.

  “No,” I say, unconvincingly.

  “It was all right,” Mom says, one hand on his shoulder.

  Dad turns and looks at us for the first time, the angriest deadpan I’ve ever seen.

  “No, it did suck,” Mom says.

  “Yeah, it really did,” I agree. “I’m sorry.”

  Dad gives a rueful shake of his head. “I forgot that part, you know? How hard it is. It was like I knew it wasn’t going great as it was happening, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

  “It’s been a while,” Mom says in her most sympathetic voice. “You’re rusty.”

  “Every comic has stories like this,” I say.

  “That’s true.” Mom jumps onto my point, grateful for evidence that maybe this is all part of a trajectory toward triumph.

  “It is,” Dad says. “But I’m donezo, baby. You just witnessed the epilogue of my comedy career.”

  “Oh, come on, the first set was always going to suck. It just was,” Mom says, taking up the role of Tireless Cheerleader, which impresses me because, really, I never thought Mom cared about comedy one way or the other. Then again, she’d probably be just as tireless if his old passion were kicking puppies. Come on, these puppies need to be kicked! “And you got some very genuine laughs in there.”

  “Eh.” Dad exhales again. The cigarette smell is so gross. “So much of doing stand-up is exactly what just happened. You go out there, and you’re bad.”

  “But you’ll get better every time you go onstage!” Mom says. “You just will.”

  “For sure,” I say, joining in.

  “Please stop!” Dad says, his voice rising enough so that two people walking to their car turn and look back at us. It sends ice down my spine, curving around to my stomach. Dad isn’t usually a shouter. “Please. I’m not saying I’m done because I want this to be a cute moment when you rally me back onto my feet. I’m saying I’m done because I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Mom and I are both quiet then, looking in any direction but at Dad. It feels like we’ve been scolded.