The Animators(105)

We drive to the Collective for Cartooning Arts in Brooklyn, a sprawling old mansion in Cobble Hill. The last time we were here, it was to accept the Newcomer’s Award. I slit my own girdle so I could breathe and Mel made out with a cocktail waitress in an upstairs broom closet. “Heh,” I say to myself.

Brecky and Donnie exchange a look.

The block is stalled with cars. Crowds cluster at the entrance. There’s a reaction when we arrive: groups parting, whispering. Lots of eyes on me. The high’s wearing off and I can feel my bum leg, heavy, dragging slightly behind me. Brecky and Donnie tug me through, sometimes exchanging words with people. There’s the interns: Jimmy the Fire Maniac, Indian John Cafree. Surly Cathie off to the side of the building, smoking a Black & Mild and twiddling with her cellphone. She uses it to salute me, a rueful little pucker to her lips. I think of her with the wild dogs in South Edgemere: Okay, cunts, who wants to be first? I am hugged and patted. My reactions are milky, on delay. The inside of my mouth is covered with fur.

We’re led to the front of the screening room, where a projector runs a slide of Mel photos. Mel as a kid, dwarfed in a Def Leppard T-shirt. Mel as a high school senior, hair long and stringy, giving a clamped little smile to a studio photographer. Mel at Ballister, craned over a drafting table, brow nearly touching the surface. Mel and me clinking beers. Mel and me in the studio, her pointing to the Cintiq screen, mouth open, me frowning. Mel and me. Mel and me again.

A polished clay jar is at the center of a long oak table. Donnie stops to speak with someone. I creep toward it, flick the lid open.

“Sharon,” Donnie calls.

I let the lid clang shut.

The service goes just as Donnie said it would. People get up to talk. Fart rises first, wearing a tie and khakis with sneakers. His hair is all combed down. He fiddles with his tie. He looks anxious.

“I met Mel my first year in New York,” he says. “We were both doing freelance stuff, sketching for this sneaker company. It was maybe my first job out of art school. I knew, like, three people in New York. It was pretty lonely. And the day we met, she took me out drinking, and we stayed out until five in the morning. We were instant friends, you know? Like right away.”

He shifts from one foot to the other, stares off into the middle distance, one hand in his beard. “She wasn’t afraid of stuff,” he says. “She wasn’t afraid of anything. And she thought I had the right to not be afraid of anything, too. And I can honestly say that she’s the only person I’ve ever met who made me feel that way.”

His mouth crimps. I stare at him. It’s as if I’m listening through a straw.

“She made me believe in myself,” he says. “She believed I could do more than I actually could, which made me do more. She was a good friend.” His voice cracks. He finishes by saying, very quickly, “My life will be less because she is not in it anymore.”

He sits back down, head tilted forward. His back is trembling. Surly Cathie puts her red, calloused hand on his shoulder.

Donnie stands and begins to speak slowly and clearly, her eyes bloodshot. “I have never known someone who tackled life like Mel,” she says. “She just went in, headfirst, without a helmet, pretty much all the time. Whatever she did. And when you met her, you saw it right away. But she was also one of the most loving people you could meet. It wasn’t the most obvious thing about her, and you might not see it on first glance. I wouldn’t want to hazard the guess of how many of you she called motherfucker the first time she met you.”

There’s a ripple of recognition in the crowd. Donnie smiles, for the first time in days.

“She loved hard,” she continues. “If she loved you, she loved you the most. She would stick with you until the very, very end. She loved—” Donnie swallows. “She loved Sharon. Adored her. Of course. And she loved Fart. She loved John, and she loved Cathie.” She closes her eyes. “She loved her mother, so much. If you knew her well, you knew that she did. What courage that took. What forgiveness. It takes a big, brave person to forgive. And she was big. And she was brave.”

Donnie puts her hands over her eyes and rubs for a moment. I see her chest rise and fall. Starts to say something. Stops. “Sorry,” she says.

I see her take a deep breath and smooth her jacket. She looks up. “I first met Mel and Sharon when they were twenty-one years old. They were kids. I was kind of a kid, too, just starting out. It was at a cartoon expo. I really liked their shorts. I thought they were smart, and funny. Mel was the one to chase me down and convince me to have coffee with them. And I remember her leaning forward across the table and saying to me, ‘Believe in us. Just believe in us.’ And I did. And I still do.”

Toward the back, distribution guys stand in suits, Beardsley shifting awkwardly among them. I stare at him, numb, distantly enjoying his discomfort. It’s all extremely smeary. I focus on one thing; the rest of the room collapses. I notice wetness coming down my chin. My mouth is open. Haven’t remembered to close it in a while. Brecky passes me a tissue. People are looking.

One of the distribution guys—the head or second-in-command, a dude neither Mel nor I knew terribly well through our contract there—gets up, rummaging his hands through his nice suit pants, saying something about work left behind. A screen is pulled down, the lights dim.

A familiar sound snaps me back to attention. They’re showing the last few minutes of Nashville Combat. A scene we worked over and over, rerecording the dialogue, drafting and redrafting, trying to get it just right.