You think schooling was the difference between you and your friends from the neighborhood? Schiff said.
It’s the reason I went into my precious branch of the service and they went into the infantry.
I see, Schiff said.
You know, they were funny, my father said. They made me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed in my life. At eleven, twelve years old, they understood more than I ever will. Tell me Woody Allen would be funny if he’d grown up wealthy. Tell me he’d be funny if he’d gone to private school.
What the hell private school would have let in a Jew? said Schiff.
All right—tell me anyone who’s funny who’s gone to private school. Nobody, that’s who. You have to know the truth to be funny.
And what’s the truth? said Schiff.
That we’re cannibals, said my father.
That kid—the one who falls down stairs on TV? Good-looking kid. Prep kid. Went to Riverdale.
I don’t know who you’re talking about, my father said.
You know, Woody Allen is only funny to goyim because he confirms your beliefs about us—we’re neurotic, weak, sexually perverse, generally loathsome. But we think he’s funny because he’s really making fun of you morons.
See? Something for everyone.
Dangerfield’s got better range, Schiff said.
You’re a philistine.
I find his act enchanting.
He’s a hack.
I never told you this, but I knew him a little bit, Schiff said. Smart cookie. Dark, thoughtful guy. You’d probably get along great with him.
Terrific. Let’s have lunch.
Chevy Chase, Schiff said. That’s his name.
Yeah. He’s not funny.
You’re more of an Andy Kaufman guy, I suppose.
Nah. Radner. Now, she’s funny, my father said.
That thing she does—those spoof commercials. Jewess Jeans!
You don’t have to be Jewish.
But it helps.
We should take this on the road. They’d love us in Peoria, my father said.
You they’d love. Me they’d nail to a cross.
Why do we always wind up here?
Because you’re paying me to facilitate your delusional views about Jewish comedians, Schiff said.
Sometimes I lose track of who’s delusional, said my father.
You know, that public school kid who walks into a bar walks out with new best friends only about half the time, Schiff said. The other half of the time he winds up getting the shit kicked out of him.
But he’s not afraid to fight. He knows how to take a punch.
Because his father taught him how.
Oh come on. What are we talking about here?
We’re just talking. I have a theory. Want to hear a theory?
Is it going to hurt? said my father.
Of course it’s going to hurt. Now, listen. Americans are obsessed with renewal. What’s our number one sales pitch to the downtrodden masses? A fresh start! A shot at reinvention. Adopt a new identity, become someone unrecognizable to the hicks back in the ancestral village. What was the Boston Tea Party? A costume ball. What is politics? A stage play. Actors playing politicians playing gods. That’s why there are so many steps on the Capitol building. A stage high enough for the whole country to see. Everyone’s playing dress-up. We know we’re being told fictions, yet we continue to watch, reacting with outrage when our gods behave like humans. It’s our role to yearn for them to do good deeds, and we’re thrilled when they don’t. You don’t see the French impeaching anyone for spying on the other party. Good god, they’d impeach d’Estaing if they found out he wasn’t spying on the Gaullists. The French have made an art form of complication, and what did our most famous homegrown philosopher say? Simply, simplify.
I hear he kept a radio under his cot.
It’s a fool’s philosophy. You cannot simplify yourself. You are complex, infinitely complex. Like everyone, you contain multitudes, you’re a warehouse of selves, innumerable versions of you. When you talk to me, you’re pretending to be my clever patient. When you’re talking to Sarah, you’re pretending to be a distracted husband who wants to get back to his manuscript. When you were in the Army, you were a file clerk? A copy editor? Come on. And now you’re pretending to be a comedy expert.
And who are you pretending to be?
Your therapist, I guess.
You need to work on your accent.
Lemme write that down.
Keep at it.
What was in the manuals? Schiff said.
Instructions.
That’s time. See you next week.
His knees quavered and he went down in the narrow channel between the console and the hull wall, his gloved hands vainly groping for purchase. Oh god. The boat flew over the top of another wave and the deck fell out from under him. Feeney hooted with glee from aft, the deck rose back up against my father’s body, and the dark thought materialized that if he could muster the strength to throw himself overboard, he could drown within minutes and it would all be over. He gave up trying to reach for the cutaways where the rods were stored. He was sliding around like a dead fish on the icy deck, getting the hell beat out of him every time the boat crested a wave, driven on by Bo, who was really feeling the weed, hadn’t noticed my father’s predicament until he careened across the deck and came to rest momentarily against his boot. But what could he do? Now they were out on the open water, and Bo wasn’t going to cut power, not in chop like this—you had to beat it back with velocity,
