“I have a joke,” he says.
“Oh great! Go on then,” I say, knowing full well he hasn’t. He likes the idea of them, but hasn’t actually got a clue how they work or what they’re for. Much like me with exercise equipment.
“What…does”—his eyes go up to the ceiling as he thinks of something that to his mind sounds like a joke—“a chicken say when it gets into the bath?”
“Noah, why do most of your jokes involve chickens?”
“They’re funny!”
“OK. I don’t know. What does a chicken say when it gets into the bath?”
“Bok bok bok bok bok.”
He looks at me expectantly for a laugh.
“Hmm, that’s not really a joke, Noah,” I suggest.
“Why not?”
And like an idiot throwing coins into a change machine at an arcade and thinking, This time I’m bound to win big! I have one more go at explaining the concept of comedy to him.
“It’s just not—it doesn’t work. You’ve gotta take one expected thing and turn it into something unexpected that still works. Eurgh. Look… OK…a chicken and a frog walk into a library…”
“Then what happened?” he asks as if I’m telling him a factual anecdote from my day.
“The chicken points around the room saying, ‘Bok bok bok bok,’ and the frog says, ‘Reddit reddit reddit.’”
“Then what did they do?”
“No—that’s the joke! Because they’re in a library. Full of books. And the chicken sounds like he’s saying, ‘Book, book, book’ and the frog sounds like he’s saying, ‘Read it, read it, read it…’ Get it?”
He stares at me and then actually laughs for a bit, though it’s clear he doesn’t really know why he’s laughing.
“Kind of!” he says, still laughing away merrily. “OK, OK, I have another one!”
“Have you thought of it already?” I say.
“Yes,” he says confidently.
“Go on then.”
“Knock knock.”
“Oooh, a knock-knock joke—classic. Who’s there?” I answer.
“Chicken poo,” he says, already giggling at his own comedy genius.
“Chicken Poo who?” I say.
“Ha ha haaaa! You said chicken poo!” he says, splashing his hands down in comedic triumph.
“Brilliant,” I say as Mum bursts through the door, her hair tied back, glasses on, looking proper nurse-y…although also somehow different, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“I’m off now, sweeties,” she says, leaning down to kiss us both. “You lock the door after me, OK, Haylah? You know the drill—only call me if it’s an emergency, and there’s always Hal next door if you need someone quick, OK?”
“I know, Mum! It’s fine—go, go nurse people. Ya big-boobed hero, you!”
She smiles. “Love you guys!” Then I realize what’s different about her.
“Hang on, Mum. Are you…did you know you’re wearing lipstick?” I say as if pointing out to someone that they have spinach in their teeth.
She immediately looks shifty. “Well, yes…” she stammers. “The store was giving them out for free when I bought my foot-fungal cream and a Venus lady razor. Just thought I’d slap some on. Anyway, gotta go—love you both, byeee!” And she quickly sweeps herself out of the door and down the stairs.
“A lipstick AND a razor?” I shout after her. “You’re shaving your legs again! Does that mean I can start now too?”
“No!” she calls brightly back to me before we hear the door closing behind her.
Mum never normally shaves her legs or wears makeup, at least not since Dad left. And whenever I’ve begged her to let me start shaving my legs (as it’s bad enough that they resemble two wide tree trunks, to the point where if I dare to wear shorts in the summer small children do bark rubbings on them—so it might be nice if at least they weren’t covered in a thick layer of fur as well), she’s always said no. Then given me the old faithful, “a true feminist doesn’t conform to society’s pressures of physical beauty just to please the male onlooker” routine. Which is fine until you get changed for PE and your friends compare your bushy legs to their dad’s. Or Chewbacca’s. Or Chewbacca’s dad’s. But, before I can consider Mum’s traitorous preening activities any further, Noah starts squirting me in the face with a miniature water pistol.
“Aww, Noah!” I say, wiping the soapy water from my eyes, but he stops my anger in its tracks by poking out his little bottom lip and doing his big sad-eyes face. “What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t want Mummy to go,” he says.
“I know. But she’s only at work, and she’ll be back in the morning. Come on, let’s do your hair and get you out.”
I finally manage to persuade him to let me shampoo his hair by saying the word “shampoo” very slowly, with a big gap between each syllable. It’s truly amazing how much mileage you can get from the word “poo” with a four-year-old. Then I dry him and read a book and he asks for one last joke before sleepytime.
“OK, one more,” I say. “What does a cat like to listen to?”
“I don’t know—what does a cat like to listen to?”
“Meow-sic.”
“Ha! Like ‘meow’ because it’s a cat and music so…”
“Meow-sic,” I say again.
“You funny, Haylah,” he says as his eyes start to droop. “You should be a comedy.”
“Do you mean comedian? Do you think so?” I say, a bit too thrilled and possibly taking the career advice of a four-year-old a little too seriously.
“Yeah, you should…do more funny.”
“Yeah, I mean, I always wanted to, one day, you know. But you’re right, I should just go for it.”
Remind me why I’m putting so much faith in the counsel of someone who thinks cheese is a fruit?
“Yeah,” he slurs with his eyes firmly shut.
“Because how else is Leo going to notice me, right?”
“Right,” he mumbles.
“OK, I’m going to do it. I’ll find a way to make him laugh, to show him I’m funny too. Then he’ll notice me. You’re a genius. Thanks, Noah.”
And I kiss him on the forehead, but he doesn’t know because he’s already asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
I sit at my desk in my room, a fresh page of my notebook in front of me, pen poised over it. Every day since I was about ten, I’ve written down the funny stuff that happened that day or funny stuff that was said or funny stuff I thought of. A bit like a diary, I suppose, but without the serious and boring bits.
I flick through the last few weeks, stopping to read a few of the entries that make me smile.
Tonight Noah referred to cough syrup as “aspirin coffee” and his big toe as the “thumb of the foot.” I think he might be a genius.
It occurs to me today that burps are worse than farts. We all know where farts come from so frankly it’s unsurprising that they smell bad. But burping, that’s from the place we eat, talk, kiss, smile. At least a fart is honest: it knows what it is and where it comes from. There’s an integrity to a fart. But a burp is basically just farting through your face. And there’s something truly gruesome about that.