Grouching

IT BEGAN HAPPENING around Hallowe’en, which is why nobody noticed it at first. Then it became one of those wryly amusing end-of-the-news stories on a local station in Anaheim, but because it was so close to Hollywood, nobody took it very seriously. A man who looked, dressed, walked, and talked exactly like Groucho Marx had been wandering the streets. As he was neither escorting any children nor begging at the doorways himself, his presence aroused suspicion – at least according to a busybody who insisted on being interviewed – but when he remained in the Groucho guise throughout the subsequent days, his wife called a nearby hospital and it made the news again. The local story was picked up by other stations across the country that shared the network, and it made its to social media as well. That’s where I noticed it.

My first experience was in an Aldi. I rounded a corner, its endcap a display of pet food, and glimpsed a man in a swallowtail coat placing items on a checkout line. He was slightly stooped and his hair was brushed back. As he turned to his cart, I saw a mustache, eyeglasses, and improbable eyebrows. I took all this in as, feigning disinterest, I proceeded up the aisle before me, processing the sight. Groucho was buying boxes of cracker assortments.

It wasn’t Groucho, of course. Some wag had chosen to adopt the garb and make-up of the comedian, possibly in a new-inspired copycat gesture. I hurried down the adjacent aisle in time to see Groucho finishing the checkout. “I had a wonderful shopping experience,” I heard him tell the cashier, adding, “but it certainly wasn’t at this fleabitten place.”

An oddly unfocused prank, I thought while driving home. Which was when I spotted Harpo. I heard him first, heard his horn, that is, and then saw the top-hatted figure in a bulky overcoat standing beside a man in a business suit. The man was querying him – I was too far to hear the conversation itself – and the Harpo figure responded by lifting his leg and placing his thigh in the man’s hand. It was a gesture I knew from the movies, but it was a little shocking to see it play out on a sidewalk. The man angrily pushed Harpo away and strode off. There seemed to be laughter from standers-by.

Were the two Marx-impersonators promoting something? Before I had a chance to investigate, I saw Groucho and Chico on the sidewalk together, approaching yet another Groucho. That should have been enough to make me nervous, but it wasn’t until I got home and thought to consult my computer that I learned what you already know: These appearances were happening throughout the world.

No explanation was offered; at least, no explanation that made sense. A few parents blamed binge-watching for their children’s transformations, but more rational people noted that nobody below retirement age would be binge-watching the Marx Brothers. All aspects of it seemed unpredictable. Who would transform? When? And to whom? Cable-channel talking-heads charted the changes, inviting scientists to stand in front of haphazard-looking graphs and spout haphazard-sounding theories, and the next day two of those scientists were wearing Tyrolean hats and playing one-fingered piano.

And that was the most disturbing aspect of the phenomenon. Those who changed adopted the speech and style and costume of their new identities, yet each still maintained the previous identity. TV newscasters, struggling to keep up with the story, found a man who had turned into Harpo but insisted on showing up for work at a government agency which found no use for an employee honking through the halls in a trench coat and dashing after frightened young women when he wasn’t at his desk trying to concentrate on agency business.

When it seemed, after a week, that these transformations were a male-only thing, the first of many Margaret Dumonts appeared. By this time our local news station was devoting a nightly segment to the newly changed, and it was unpleasantly funny to see matronly women sputtering in indignation, each of them in that familiar Mrs. Teasdale voice. One of those stations also included local authority figures – physician, social scientist, philosopher – giving their own hollow theories about these changes, until they transformed into one of each of the brothers.

I say one of each, but that ignores the fact that there were Zeppos appearing as well, somewhat harder to spot right away although the natty 1930s attire should have been a quick giveaway.

There were few complaints from those who changed. The Grouchos added the familiar acerbic wit to whatever else they said, the Chicos spoke in that awful, insulting dialect, the Harpos honked horns and pretended to chase pretty women. And some of those women looked remarkably like Thelma Todd, suggesting that the what- or whoever was causing this to happen had some knowledge of the range of players. Would Eve Arden be next, or Kitty Carlisle? Could there be a Douglas Dumbrille out there hatching his evil plans?

To those of us un- (or at least not yet) affected, an increasingly disturbing result was the inability to tell one Groucho from another. I had been living for several years in a retirement center when this phenomenon began, and could no longer be sure who were my coffee-companions until they started wearing lanyards sporting cards that announced their former (and, behind the guise, current) identities. Doug M. became a Groucho, as did Otto S. But to be seated with both of them put me in a crossfire of barbs that quickly became tiresome. And Harley V., wittiest of the group, was now silenced inside a Harpo.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Doug in his new Groucho voice. “Don’t want to be one of us? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I always say, though some of them desoive that beating.” Honk honk.

By winter, a birds-of-a-feather phenomenon kicked in. Grouchos hung out with Grouchos, Chicos Chicos, and so on. The recreation hall nearest my apartment became a kind of Harpo-ville, and you can imagine the cacophony with two dozen of them assembled there.

As the television news the anchors themselves transformed, the subject became an amusing curiosity, and very soon disappeared. The news became a comedy show, and a not-very-good one. I kept up with events through my online New York Times subscription, realizing that there were consequences I couldn’t have anticipated in my insular retirement world. An Op-Ed piece titled “Where Did My Mother Go?” was penned by a sad/angry teen who lamented that her Mom was more Margaret Dumont than the mother she’d known. After which the Times gave over more and more space to recipes and gossip, dwindling, as it were, e-page by page.

Before I wearied of sipping coffee with a table of Grouchos, I asked them if there had been any advance notion, any sign or feeling that this transformation would take place. “Transformation?” said Otto. “You ask that blonde over there to show me her formation and I’ll show you the best kind of a trance.”

All of the TV stations I could get had gone over to old movies and “You Bet Your Life” reruns, so I could find no celebratory programming on New Year’s Eve. I bundled up and went outside, figuring I could tolerate some Marx Brothers in exchange for a cup of bad champagne, and I found them in the rec centers. I didn’t go in. I saw the Grouchos an oddly subdued bunch sitting at the tables, evidently saying nothing to one another. A little further down the road was the Chico center, and the Harpos were after that. Again: sitting quietly, as if waiting for something. Margaret Dumonts were in yet another hall, fingering their pearls, saying nothing.

It was about 10:30 on a cold, starry night. I felt oddly exhilarated to be able walk around, away from these oddities, so I was saddened to see the approach of someone else. He, too, wore parka and scarf and woolly hat, but what face I could see looked, if I can put it this way, normal.

“You too?” he said in a croaking voice, and revealed more of his face.

I showed him mine. “Me too,” I said.

He shook his head. “Only a matter of time, I guess.”

“Why is this happening?” I asked

He shook his head and started to walk away.

“Want to find a glass of champagne or something?” I called after him.

He silently continued to walk. His intransigence perversely inspired me. I went back to my apartment complex and got my car out of the garage. There should be time enough to find a bar or liquor store.

I wasn’t surprised to find the one in the shopping plaza closed, along with all the rest of the stores there, but the town’s Main Street was also dark and desolate. The liquor store there was closed, but I couldn’t remember if it was the type to cash in on this holiday.

Red neon a couple of blocks farther on caught my eye: “Sonny’s Bar,” the sign read when I neared it. I parked. The door of the bar was locked. I could see through the Venetian-blinded window a row of people, men and women, at the bar, none of them looking like part of the Marx Brothers world. I rapped on the glass with my car key. The bartender looked up and shook his head and waved me away.

It must have happened on my drive into town. I wasn’t aware of it until I got home and took off my coat and glimpsed myself in the mirror. Just like that. I felt a sense of irritation, surprisingly mild, and then the comfort of the sense of resignation that followed. It was like a massive antidepressant. No longer had I anything to worry about, and I felt confident that there would be somebody else to show me the way. My only task right now was to make my way to the rec center and join my fellow Grouchos.

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