Lost in the Funhouse by Bill Zehme Read Free Book Online

didn’t cry when he yelled at her. She hardly ever did. Sometimes she would even start it by asking him a stupid question. She drew it out. Carol, Andy, and I would look at each other and go, ‘Why is she doing it?’ We’d see it coming and think, ‘Watch out! Let’s head for our rooms!’ But they somehow were able to have a sense of humor about it. I think he once had a T-shirt made up for her that said, DON’T YELL AT ME! And she had one made for him that said, I’M NOT YELLING! ”
    Carol turned from infant to teen with the cacophony ever resounding, wincing at it always. “I saw her as a doormat, a victim,” she recalled. “He’d bark, ‘You left the lights on!’ ‘Burnt steak again!’ ‘Where’d you get this meat from?!’ I’d be sitting there with knots in my stomach. It was almost like having an alcoholic father, in terms of not wanting your friends to see what was happening—and sometimes they did. I remember seething inside and thinking, ‘Just tell him to shut up!’ Later, I’d sometimes tell her, ‘Leave. Just pack your bags, take us and leave.’ Mostly, I just went and turned up the stereo.”
    Andy kept silent about it. Then and for always. Excused himself from the table, from the room, from the family, from the reality. He rarely spoke of his father’s noise to anyone for the rest of his life; it never really came up in normal conversations; of course, he would make an inadvertent point of never actually having normal conversations;they never really came up. (Certainly, he would personally withstand gusts of that same anger as he grew and tested paternal patience.) But he paid enough attention to the tone of the torrents-shrill, nasal, sibilant, snappish, relentless. Strangely, he would one day know a particularly bilious lounge singer who seemed to replicate, bleat for bleat, the singular staccato of Stanley Kaufman’s fulminations. Enlarged on them, even. And though he would have a very special affection for the unpleasant lounge singer, he never really approved of all that terrible yelling. It just wasn’t very nice.
    Storms came and went, trailing wakes of regret. Regret brought reprieves, big fun happy ones. Coney Island was best. It became a family ritual, beginning when Carol was tiny, continuing on through always. Janice loaded the kids into the car and Stanley took the D train from town after work and they’d meet in the parking lot and nights of wonder unfolded. Rainbow lights swirled and spun; saltwater breeze swept calliope music into the muddle of screams, laughter, shills, nonsense. Such was Coney—that, plus neat sideshow freaks. (Upon arrival, every time, two big wide eyes got bigger and wider and danced better dances. What was seen here, heard here, was what lived behind those eyes since forever. Home. This. Best place anywhere. Absolutely. He always said so.) Food came first, per ritual. Stanley filled the bellies of his brood with fabulous Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and french fries, then chow mein on rolls, then corn on the cob, then custard, then jelly apples and cotton candy. (Cotton candy:
Oh!)
Then they rode everything, repeatedly—the Steeplechase, the Parachutes, the Rotowhirl, the Wonder Wheel and the mountainous, monsterous Cyclone. But of course—the Cyclone!—towering behemoth, legendary roller coaster of the gods, famous for its seemingly ninety-degree plunge toward certain death. It was, to be sure, Andy’s favorite, would always be. He made a prop of it. For every turn on the ride, he created elaborate performances around the bliss/terror. He liked to announce in shrieks at the apex:
“We’re all going to die!!”
He liked to feign desperate protests before boarding
—Oh please, no,
please-please-please, I-don’t-wanna, noooooo!!!
Best of all, he liked to disembark weeping hysterically, until his father or mother or someone told him to knock it off, at which point his face resumed repose and he smiled and said, “Okay.” (Could turn on a