A Stranger on the Planet: a Novel by Adam Schwartz

Author:Adam Schwartz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press

PART

TWO

ORPHANS

• 1987–1989 •

On November 22, 1963, I turned seven years old and discovered a major fault line in my character. At approximately 1:15 the school principal, Mrs. Miller, charged into my classroom, crying out that the president had been shot. After a moment of shocked silence, I burst into laughter. Everyone turned to look at me. Then Wendy Feingold began laughing too, and so did Sven Bjornsson, and then Nina London joined in, and soon, like a contagion, all my classmates were convulsed with laughter. I felt exalted and criminal, pyromaniacal. I was notorious for my laugh, loud and honking, truly obnoxious—indeed, I had been sent to Mrs. Miller’s office three times that year because of it—but she and my teacher, Mrs. Carmichael, only looked stunned. School was let out for the afternoon. On the streets, adults were crying everywhere. Even the automobiles appeared dazed, moving at the slow-motion pace of a funeral procession. I saw an old black man in a fedora crying at the wheel of his Oldsmobile, and I wondered if I was still going to have my birthday party later that afternoon. We had invited ten boys in my class and ten of Sarah’s friends over to our apartment, and for weeks I had been anticipating the mayhem and presents, but when I arrived home, my mother was already there, sitting on the steps of our apartment building, rocking back and forth, her eyes bloodshot, a cigarette burning between her fingers. Unable to bear her sadness, I said that maybe it wasn’t really President Kennedy who had been shot. She looked at me quizzically. Maybe, I theorized, it was his twin brother, Tom.

TWENTY-FVE YEARS LATER, I DID it again: I burst out laughing during a bout of emotional vertigo at the most inappropriate moment possible. Molly Quinn, the love of my life, was eight weeks pregnant, and we were meeting with a clergyperson about marrying us. Near the end of the interview, when the Unitarian minister asked me why I loved Molly, I became tongue-tied. Molly gave me an alarmed, disbelieving look, which froze me even more. Finally, unable to bear the silence any longer, I turned to Molly and said, “Excuse me, but can you tell me your name again?” and then exploded into peals of laughter.

WE HAD MET THE YEAR BEFORE, in August 1987. I was in my rent-controlled apartment in Cambridge, watching a Red Sox game, when a woman called me up, introduced herself as Molly Quinn, and told me how much she loved my act after seeing me perform at a local comedy club.

“Really?” I replied. I was a competent comic, not an inspired one. But in the 1980s, comedy clubs were all the rage, and even a mediocre comic like me could get regular bookings. When I was still living in Chicago, I had enrolled in stand-up comedy and improvisation classes at the Second City, mainly as a way to get out of Hyde Park and meet women. I began going

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