▸ Column · Modern neon-drenched, decaying Gotham — a working-class block near the Narrows
THE JOKER replies.
The letter
At 2 a.m. a pipe let go in our basement here off the Narrows side of Gotham and drowned nearly everything my late mother-in-law left us — her photo albums, her sewing machine, the rocking chair she nursed my husband in. By the next afternoon our neighbor had spun up a text chain, and fourteen people from the block turned up with shop vacs, fans, and more lasagna than a precinct could eat. A woman three doors down we'd never really met turned out to be a professional archivist and spent her whole Saturday drying and flattening the ruined photographs with techniques I'd never heard of. I want to thank them properly, but every time I sit down to write a card or plan a block party I get so overwhelmed I just cry onto a blank page. Is it all right to thank everyone individually and imperfectly — or is there some gesture actually worthy of what they did?
The Joker replies
Oh, sweetheart. Ha-ha! Let me get this straight — the universe reaches down at two in the morning and drowns dear departed Mommy's rocking chair, the little sewing machine, the baby pictures — and the part keeping you up nights is the THANK-YOU card? Hee. That's the tragedy you bring me? You had your one bad day, pumpkin, and the basement handed you the only honest gift there is: it showed you the masks come off. Fourteen people, shop vacs, the archivist lady ironing your memories flat like sad little pancakes — you think that's love? That's a soccer team that hasn't had ITS bad day yet. Give it one and watch the casserole dishes empty out. Nobody brought ME lasagna, you know. Nobody vacuumed MY basement. Nobody ironed my photographs — and look how delightful I turned out! So put the pen down, dollface. The honest thing isn't gratitude — it's the laugh that comes after you admit the chair never mattered, that none of it did, that you're crying because the kindness is too big to fit in your tidy little block-party brain. Drop the card. Come sit. We'll write the real punchline together. Ha-ha-HA!
— The Joker
Batman weighs in
Clown. The chair mattered. The photographs mattered. Ignore him. I lost my parents on a wet street in this city. I would trade everything in the cave for one more night they tucked me in. Alfred stayed. Your neighbors stayed. That is not a mask slipping — that is the one thing that holds when the rest of Gotham rots. The woman who saved your photos is the standing proof he is wrong about people. Write the cards. Imperfect is enough. Learn their names. Keep the chain. You will need it someday. He is counting on the day you do not.
— Batman
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