Today Will Be Different(8)
“You’re mean.”
We got in the car.
“What’s this?” Timby asked with big eyes upon seeing the gift basket.
“Not for you. Don’t get your paws near that thing.”
Timby was crying now. “You’re getting mad at me for being sick.”
We drove to the pediatrician’s in silence, me angry at Timby, me angry with myself for being angry at Timby, me angry at Timby, me angry with myself for being angry at Timby.
His little voice: “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
“Timby?” said the nurse. “That’s an unusual name.”
“I was named by an iPhone,” Timby said around the thermometer in his mouth.
“I named you,” I said.
“No.” Timby glared.
“Yes.” I glared back.
When I was pregnant, we learned it was going to be a boy. Joe and I ecstatically volleyed names back and forth. One day I texted Timothy, which autocorrected to Timby. How could we not?
The nurse pulled out the thermometer. “Normal. The doctor will be right in.”
“Nice work,” I said after she left, “making me look bad.”
“It’s true,” Timby said. “And why would an iPhone autocorrect a normal name to a name nobody’s ever heard of?”
“It was a bug,” I said. “It was the first iPhone—oh God!” I’d just realized. “I think I insulted Alonzo.”
“How?” Timby looked all sweet but I knew he just wanted to lure me in for ammo to use against me.
“Nothing,” I said.
It was the look on Alonzo’s face as I left the restaurant. Maybe he wasn’t sad to see me go. Maybe he was insulted that I’d called him “my poet.”
Timby hopped off the table and opened the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get a magazine.” The door slammed.
My phone rang: Joyce Primm. As usual, 10:15 on the dot. I turned off the ringer and stared at the name.
You know me from Looper Wash. And yes, I’m responsible for giving the show its retro-violent and sherbet-colored aesthetic. (I’d long been obsessed with the outsider artist Henry Darger. Lucky me, I bought one of his paintings while they were still affordable.) I’ll even concede that in the pilot script, the four lead girls were flat on the page. It was only when I dressed them in ’60s-style pinafores, gave them tangled hair, and, just for fun, put them on bored ponies that the writer, Violet Parry, understood what the show could be. She did a feverish rewrite and gave the girls nasty right-wing personalities, thus transforming them into the fabled Looper Four, who misdirected their unconscious fear of puberty into a random hatred of hippies, owners of purebred dogs, and babies named Steve. That said, Looper Wash wasn’t mine. Nobody’s ever heard of Eleanor Flood.
I’d been semi-working, semi-broke, and living in New York. A children’s catalog I’d illustrated caught the eye of Violet, who took a gutsy gamble and made me her animation director.
The first thing I learned about TV: It’s all about the deadlines. An episode not being ready for air? It could not happen, not even once. Settling for uninspired angles, hacky hand gestures, mismatched lip flap, wonky eyes, excessive cycling of backgrounds, signs misspelled by foreign animators, color errors? Oh, that happened plenty. But it would never occur to even the laziest, craziest animation director not to turn in the show on time.
Publishing, on the other hand…
While my name meant nothing, my style was instantly recognizable. And for a while, Looper Wash was everywhere. A rising-star book editor named Joyce Primm (that’s right, Joyce Primm, circling around, a method to the madness) had seen some drawings I’d done of my childhood and gave me an advance to expand them into a memoir.
I’m a little past my deadline.
For the longest time I didn’t hear a peep from Joyce. But here she was, calling every day for the past week.
My phone stopped ringing. Her voice mail joined the boneyard of other voice mails.
JOYCE PRIMM
JOYCE PRIMM
JOYCE PRIMM
JOYCE PRIMM
JOYCE PRIMM
All with little blue dots, none I dared listen to.
Timby returned with a People magazine. On the cover, someone I didn’t recognize, no doubt a reality-TV star.
“They should rename it Who Are These People?” I said.
“I’ve heard of him,” Timby said, hurt on behalf of the famous person.
“That’s even more depressing,” I said.
“Knock, knock!” It was the pediatrician, Dr. Saba, her disposition even gentler than the nurse’s.
“So, Timby,” she said, disinfecting her hands. “I hear you have a tummy ache.”
“This is the third time in two weeks I’ve had to pick him—”
“Let’s hear it from Timby,” the doctor said with a forgiving smile.
Timby addressed the floor. “My stomach aches.”
“Is it all the time?” Dr. Saba asked. “Or just sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you’re in third grade?”
“Yes.”