Lost in the Funhouse (3 page)

Lots of whiteness, fingers poking down there, he was brave, a little soldier, barely one year old.
“We were probably more frightened than
he was. He was fine. There was no evidence of his being frightened,” Daddy says.
They went inside and fixed him up and he came home from the hospital after a few nights during which he never squawked and right away Mommy took him down to Florida where both grandmas and both grandpas were staying together in a big hotel-what great friends the grandmas and grandpas had become! Daddy put him and Mommy on the train.
“I remember saying goodbye to them at the station, and he was absolutely the most beautiful little boy, very handsome, very very handsome, in his beautiful little outfit with a little cap to match.”
The tonsils came out next, just months later.
“He had a lot of colds. We promised him ice cream.”
Ice cream! He liked to mush it so it went down smoothly in his throat, which felt scratchy. Mush and smush it with his spoon. He would always want it just like that.
“I wonder if it all started with the tonsils. … His ice cream was a ritual all his life. He never ate the ice cream while it was hard. He took a spoon—it was like making butter. He’d get a tremendous bowl and he’d mix the chocolate with the vanilla. You would hear him stirring and stirring.”
Then Mommy went away because there was another baby inside of her and this baby would be his brother, his little brother, and it was the day after New Year’s Day—just before he would turn two—that Michael, Michael Alan Kaufman, came out. Mommy and Daddy and the bundle returned home from the hospital and everybody was happy but he wasn’t very happy, or so it seemed to the grown-ups, and now there was another crib in the room and somebody else in it.
“When I was born, he would look out the window,” Michael says. “This is what I was told. He was like normal before I was born, but then he started looking out the window.”
Through the living room window, he would stare out at the grass and the trees and into the—where?
“When my brother was born,” he would say, because Mommy told him this, “I started standing in the living room and I would stare out the window—just stare—and I would be very sad. Just sad.”
He looked and looked for something, out that window. Maybe for Dhrupick to come play with him. Or Papu Cy. Papu made him feel better after Michael came to the family but then Papu stopped coming very much and Mommy said Papu wasn’t feeling well and had to be in
the hospital for a while.
“I remember he was in the hospital and I would see him less and less. And I would think, Oh! I was getting sad because I wasn’t seeing him.”
Papu had stomach cancer which was not good and he didn’t come over anymore at all and then that November Mommy and Grandma Pearl and everybody looked very very sad, which made him even sadder.
“When he died, they didn’t tell me-because I didn’t know anything about death. So they told me that he went away. And I said, ‘Well, when’s he coming back?’ And I kept waiting for him to come back and he never did.”
He stood and stood in the window watching.
“I would just keep asking every once in a while, ‘When’s he coming back, when’s he coming back?’ And they said, ‘Well, he’s never coming back. He went on a long trip and he’s never coming back.’ “
Very lost very empty, big tears big eyes, almost three years old, so confusing-how?
“When I got older, my mother said that they realized that it was a mistake for them to tell me that. Because I kept saying, ‘Well, why didn’t he take me with him-if he was my friend, you know?’ And then they said that God-who I just thought was this other guy-that God took him away with Him. God wanted him. So I pictured him driving along, that he had gone on a vacation and all of a sudden God lifted him up out of the car and He wasn’t letting him come back. At first, I think I resented the fact that he didn’t take me with him. But when they explained to me about God lifting him up and stuff, then it was all right.”
…. And the clock stopped short never to go again when the old man died. … He watched the window less and stayed in front of the television set and began watching the people and the cartoons inside the glass very very closely.

2

Kiddie City, recording booth, Little Neck, New York, father, son, 1954:

“It’s the Andy Kaufman Jamboree! And here’s the great old troubadour himself with his guitar, Andy Kaufman! Good evening, Andy, how are you tonight?”

“Fine.”

“How ’bout a little song for us. You got anything in mind that you’d like to sing? Maybe some original piece that you’ve written?”

“Yep!”

“What’s the name of it, Andy?”

“‘Playin’ on Me Ol’ Guitar!’”

“Okay, Andy, let’s see how it sounds! Introducing Andy Kaufman
with an original piece just written and being heard for the first time on radio and television—Andy Troubadour Kaufman!”

“O-lay-ee-oh, o-lay-ee-oh, o-lay-ee-oh, brrr-um-bum, brrr-um-bum, brrr-um-bum, brrr-um-bum, brrr-um-bum; Playin’ on the ol’ guitar, Playin’ on the ol’ guitar, gotta keep it old but I don’t know how, playin’ on the ol’ guitar, bumbadumbum, bee-hee bee-hee bee-hee, brrr-um-bum; look at that man over there, he’s wearin’ no underwear, gotta keep it old but I don’t know how, playin’ on me ol’ guitar, bee-hee bee-hee bee-hee….”

“That was a terrific number, Andy. I’m sure that before very long, you’re gonna be hearing that number from coast to coast and it’ll be on top of the hit parade! Andy, is there one more number you have in mind?”

“I have—‘What Time Is It.’”

“Is that another original composition?”

“Yep!”

“Okay, Andy, I guess all the folks would like to hear that number. Take it away!”

“What time is it? What is the time? It’s only one o’clock. What time is it? What time is it? It’s only one-thirty, it’s only one-thirty. What time is it? What time is it? It’s only two o’clock, it’s only two o’clock. What time is it? What time is it? It’s only two-thirty, it’s only two-thirty. What time is it? What time is—”

“It’s time to stop this song right now! Thank you, Andy, that was terrific! By the way, Andy, what time would you have ended that song?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“You mean you would have gone all the way up to twelve-thirty? My goodness, Andy! You know this program goes off the air in exactly one minute, and I don’t think we would have made it. What do you think?”

“Wellll, that’s not quite a long song!”

“I thought it was going to be a verrry long song….”

Time was amorphous, meant very little. Hours passed, usually in solitude, though he was never alone, though he was mostly alone.
(He and/or Dhrupick became many characters and now the characters were working regularly. They made noises that burst out of him; he was a crowd; he was a spectacle; nobody saw or was supposed to.) Channel 5, of 5 Robin Way, upstairs bedroom, beamed daily telecasts beginning in 1953: “I really thought there was a camera in the wall and that there were millions of people watching me somewhere out in TVland. I don’t know where—but
somewhere—
and I really believed this.” No one was in the room with him. “No one was in the room with me.” Little Michael would be gone, maybe downstairs or somewhere with the housekeeper, Margaret E. English, of Denmark, South Carolina—a shy and kindly young black domestic who had come to work for and live with the family the year before. Upstairs, Andy made his rumpus. Margaret saw him as a peripheral blur: “He would jump around, always on the go.” Concentration was focused on the afternoon block of programming: “I had about four hours of programming every day,” he would soberly recount to a television psychologist thirty years in the future. “Ohhh, I had all kinds of different shows—adventure shows, horror shows, old-time movies, cartoons. I would just run around the room playing all the parts.” Eventually, he would break the afternoon down into eight half-hour shows. He would sing and dance, play heroes and apes, judges and defendants, villains and monsters, damsels and dogs, cowboys and … “I don’t remember much of them. I remember one that was like an old-time silent movie show—’cause in those days on television they showed a lot of silent movies instead of cartoons. I didn’t understand what was going on in these movies—all I knew was that these people were walking around faster than usual, with music playing. So when I was re-creating them for myself, there wasn’t any plot. It was just me for a half hour walking around fast and doing all kinds of faces and falling down and stuff like that….

“My parents would say, ‘Why don’t you go out and play?’ And I would say, ‘I can’t! I’m putting on my shows!’”

Having gone inward when his grandfather died, he stayed inward, coming out only when alone. But he had also found a friend who lived across the backyard—she was real; her name was Cathy
Bernard-and he showed her the magic of inwardness, how to find secret places, the thrill of shared sanctuary, of hiding from. “He had a great imagination. We’d make tunnels in the backyard. This kid across the street had a tree house and we’d hang out there and make up stories and play house. There was another kid who lived next door to me who we hated. Andy would come up with all kinds of ways to torment him. We would make different bird sounds from the tree to confuse him. We’d say he could come over to play and then we’d hide. The kid would just go nuts. Andy liked finding ways to keep people from knowing where we were. He was into getting people wound up. My family had a basement with catacombs and we were always going in there. Sometimes he’d sneak down there unbeknownst to me and he’d make weird noises to scare us. One time, a house down the block caught fire and Andy said, ‘Let’s go jump on the fire engine!’ So we hid on the engine while the firemen were putting out the fire. They didn’t find us until they had pulled away and gone a few blocks.

“Mostly, I remember a lot of hiding in the family cars, then scaring the hell out of his parents when they looked inside. We’d crouch down in the back and his parents would be yelling,
‘Andy, where are you!’
They had someplace to go or something to do. And he’d say, ‘Let ’em go crazy, let ’em find us!’ And his mother—she was a funny lady, too—she used to get so mad, and then she’d laugh because we were right there all along. The truly funny part was she never figured out that that’s where we
always
were!”

Michael:
“One Saturday night, we were outside playing with Margaret. My parents were going to a formal dance in Manhattan and it’s getting dusky and Margaret told us it’s time to come in. Suddenly, ‘Where is Andy?’ She couldn’t find Andy.”
Margaret:
“His mother and pop left for their dinner and it’s dark and no Andy. I’m going around to different houses saying, ‘Andy! Andy!’ Nobody’d seen Andy. I got frightened.”
Stanley:
“As we’re just about to go over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan, I look in my rearview mirror—and I see
this dirty little face popping up with a big, big grin, like, ‘Surprise!’ I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do. I said, ‘Janice, guess who’s in the car with us?’ She turns around and screams! What are we gonna do? We’re late to this dinner dance, this kid is in the car, we’re thirty-five minutes from home, Margaret’s got to be frantic. So we immediately go to a telephone, call Margaret and tell her we have Andy with us. And then we call my mother-in-law, who now had an apartment in the city, and thank God she’s home. Of course, she’s thrilled because we bring her little grandson over to her. But Andy was so pleased that he had put this one over on us. So it all started very early, didn’t it?”

“Cut the kiddin’, Kid McCoy!”

Was what Grandma Pearl always told him.

He never listened.

He loved to play for her.

(And for Grandpa Paul and sometimes Grandma Lillie.)

But most of all for Grandma Pearl, who lost Papu.

Like him.

Stanley and Janice noticed that he still had that sad face.

Somber almost. Sullen.

Unless he was making those noises behind that door.

(Or when he hid on them. Him with the surprises always.)

Or when he was with Pearl. “Cut the comedy, Kid McCoy!”

“Cut the clownin’, Kid McCoy!”

Pearl loved it, really.

Such energy, enthusiasm! A delight!

Then later the withdrawal, the shell, the lonesome eyes.

Janice: very concerned, then—

Preschool teacher said he’s not right maybe.

Worriedly mentioned “imagination” to Janice.

Imagination = Delusional?

Teacher had glimpsed him alone, happily flailing-jabbering.

Like he was somewhere/someone else.

Then back again, so quiet again.

Perhaps and only if she would like….

The name of a reputable child’s psychologist in the area?

Little tests could tell things….

It was probably nothing at all.

Was what Janice told herself.

He was four the first time. “When we saw that sad little face, we couldn’t stand it, and we took him for psychological testing,” his mother remembered. “Apparently, he was playacting all the time, really a showman.” Which was to say, he was playacting even for the doctor lady, so how could anyone know the truth? “I would play with the toys the psychiatrist had. There were toy guns. I especially liked this air gun with red Ping-Pong balls. You pump it up and then you shoot it. I used to aim it at the psychiatrist. And she’d say, ‘Now, you don’t want to shoot me with that.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’ “He always left the sessions smiling brightly—as though he had spun good ones in there. His father thought little of such examinations
—since when is imagination a bad thing?
The only conclusion that emerged was that, well,
here
was quite the lively lively mind! But where oh where oh where did he get such fanciful ideas?

Hi, Howdy.

Ho-ho! Well, hi, Andy!

How are you?

Ho, boy! I’m fine. And how about you?

I’m fine, thank you. Wow—thanks for coming on my show.

Oh, well, thank you for having me on your show, Andy. Boy, it sure feels great to be here!

Well, it’s great having you. You know, Howdy, I was watching you ever since I was a real little boy. I used to every day go into the living room and I’d sit down before the television and turn on your show, at five-thirty. Every day. And I just thought it was great.

Ho, gosh! Well, thank you, Andy.

You know, you’re even older than me. Your show came on in 1947, and I was born a couple years after that. So that means I was watching you since the time I could just first perceive images or sounds. Before I ever even knew what a television set was, I was watching you! So, like, you’re the first friend from television I ever had—and probably the closest, I think. And, uh, I always wanted to meet you, and now I finally am.

Well, Andy, I … I’m glad to meet you, too.

(Laughter. Why are they laughing?)

You know, I was once in your Peanut Gallery, when I was five years old. You know? And I was just sitting there, and … I was kind of depressed, because I could see the man who was working your strings. And, I must say, even though I could see your strings and everything—to me you’re just as real as anyone else who’s on this show. And I feel like I’m really talking to a real person. But, anyway, one thing I wanted to do that day—and they wouldn’t let us ’cause there was too many kids—and I always wanted to do this. And I’m wondering if maybe I could. And that was to touch you. Do you think I could maybe touch you?

Sure, Andy, go ahead—you can touch me.

Okay
…. (Laughter. What’s so funny?)
Wow. You know, another thing that I always wanted to do was shake your hand. Do you think maybe I could shake your hand?

Ho-ho! Sure, Andy!

Okay …
(Laughing again—why?)
You know, this is just like a fantasy fulfilled for me. ’Cause I always used to want to be on your show.
(And again.)
And I thought that your show—you know, in Doodyville? That’s where your show was …
(And again—please don’t, okay?)
And I thought Doodyville was inside of the television. You know, like if television was this box—and if I went inside the box that was a television, I’d be in Doodyville. And I always wanted to be on your show. Now, here it is about, I guess, twenty-five years later, and I have
my
own show, and you’re on
my
show!