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.”
“What school do you go to?”
“Galer Street.”
“Do you like it?”
“I guess.”
“Do you have friends?”
“I guess.”
“Do you like your teachers?”
“I guess.”
“Timby.” Dr. Saba wheeled up on a stool. “A lot of times when people get tummy aches, it’s not because they have a bug, but because they have emotions that make them feel yucky.”
Timby’s eyes remained down.
“I’m wondering if there’s anything going on at school or at home that’s making you feel yucky.”
Good luck with that, I thought. Timby, the king of the nonanswer.
“It’s Piper Veal.”
(!!!)
“Who’s Piper Veal?” the doctor said.
“A new girl in my class.”
Piper’s family was fresh from a yearlong trip around the world. Is this not a rarefied but most annoying trend? Families traveling around the world to unplug and immerse themselves in foreign cultures, then parents frantically e-mailing you to please post comments on their kids’ blogs so they won’t think nobody gives a hoot? (Come on, New York Times, do I have to come up with all your most-e-mailed articles?) “What’s Piper doing?” asked Dr. Saba.
“She’s bullying me,” Timby said, his voice cracking.
My life zoomed into awful focus.
Here, now, Timby.
The gentleness, the celebrity gossip, the overidentification with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Was Timby gay? It had certainly occurred to me. But there were also the Snap Circuits, MythBusters, the obsession with escalators. Of course, the smoking gun would be the flirtation with makeup, but that was his Pavlovian response to being loved up by a harem of Nordstrom hotties. If anything, it proved Timby was all man. A mother knows. Or, in my case, a mother will love him regardless and let it play out the way it’s going to play out.
Which is more than I can say for Galer Street.