Frog (31 page)

Eva writes Olivia a letter. “My dearest O. I'm at the office now and want to get this down to you before I forget a thing about it or more than I normally would or already have, minds being what they are. Before the phones start ringing and intergalactic heliomagnetic printing gadget starts binging and clients and colleagues and corresponders and coffee-tenders start pouring into the office and the experience gets filtered through all the events of the day and for the most part lost. Okay: Today, just ten minutes ago imprecisely, I saw a man on the street who looked just like Daddy did in one of the more notable photographs with us. Same chintzy hairline, bricky build and circus tentpole neck girth; same face, almost, with that particularly prominent Tetch chin (some call it ‘big'; thoughtfuler callers call it ‘strong'), and for the men, palisade-like cheekbones and bosomy layrnx. I couldn't believe it and when I started gaping at him dopey- and dewey-eyed both, I'm sure he thought I couldn't believe how gorgeous and garnie he was and that I was in some simplehearted and -minded way trying to pick him up. Wearing the same lemon yellow T-shirt Daddy wore in the notable, although what he was doing entering this snotty-chic office building in it is mystery utero-nummary. Maybe he had run all the way from his fancy hum in the city with his briefcase strapped to his back and only a minute before at the park exit taken his pants out of the case and put them on over his jogging shorts, knowing he could get away coming into the building in the shirt but please-not-sir the shorts. Because he had a dapper pair of pants on, sneakered feet—those are okay to change out of in your office, half the building now using brisk walking-to-work-and-back as their daily exercise (with about one a month, we learn in the health and crime reports of the building newsletter, dropping dead on the street from it or breaking an elbow or kneecap or getting robbed and/or raped)—and was carrying the unaforementioned monogrammed aforementioned briefcase that I doubt Daddy would have carried or owned, even if it had been given to him by Mom (‘and,' you said she always added, to make us feel good, ‘the girls'), who I'm sure wouldn't have had it monogrammed and in fact probably would have had it roughed up before she gave it and nearly imperceptibly scratched. Did what she added make us feel good? But I should move on with this before I lose it, or even more than I normally, already, minds, etc…. You know the photo I mean? Daddy, with his head wrenched around neckparoxysmally, and his arms, holding us to his thighs, as thick as my thick thighs but unlike mine, looking hard as … thirty seconds went by and no better simile would come up. Daddy smiling contentedly, you laughing maniacally, me crying heartbreakingly, Mom I bet clicking what she thinks could be the pic-of-her-genetrixness jitteringly, hope filling her sleeves. But the man: looking ten years younger than his age, just as Daddy did in the pic: openhearted face, long body lean and straight, weightlifter's chest, arms and neck, so actually his build a bit bigger and bulgier so ultimately uglier than Daddy's, since Mom's said he only did situps and things and never lifted weights, gummy smile (our drawn gums, not the kind you buy), and holding, instead of two contrasting kids in just about every way but their sex, gums and chin (mood, hair, eyes, nose, clothes, size, thighs…) the revolving door still for me, other left-or-right holding the briefcase. CON the monogram acronymed. I continued to couldn't-believe-it and finally busted ‘I swear I've no designs on your body, con sir, so disalarm yourself if that signal went on, but you look almost exactly like, which is why I've this dippy-pussed look of dumb-foundment and foundling-findment (don't I wish I said all this) on my what a look's usually on, my father.' He said ‘Put that on the screen for me again?' and I said ‘My father; you look just like him almost to the size of your quatriceps, and that's no lie,' and he gave me one of those ‘I'm sure I don't look that young even if I'd like to think so' lines and I said ‘No, petty please, don't compliment me or whomever you're complimenting. You're the spitting image of him, as my father sometimes said of other people and other times said his father liked to say, and then added a couple of times, something he said his father never did—all this, by the way, I got from my mother and my sister Hearsay—she's from the eastern branch of the tree—and that last bad add said out of a slight disquiet over meeting my father's spitting image, so flopped, though more likely never had a shot—“And that has nothing to do with spittle, drivel, drool or slaver and the likes.” ‘ I assume,' he said, never beating a blink when I actually did say some of these things, ‘by your tone and tense and some of the words used and your expression that went with the last few, that your father's dead.' We were through the door and inside the lobby now, had been since I first noticed his acronym, heading for the elevator bank. ‘Did I? Yes I. Must've I, at least, for darn, he's gone, poor mon, for sure. No, digressive I, for plain toot is he is and I never saw him as he was and I miss him bad, real badly, Con, really. But the resemblance, you to him. Well—' An elevator opened. He said ‘Hey, what're my doing here? I belong at the thirty-six-to-fifty-third-floor bank. I must have got totally absorbed talking to you. Nice meeting you, miss,' and tipped the invisible peak over his brow. ‘Wait,' I said. ‘The resemblance. And there are a hundred other elevators at this bank for me to take. Or I can take the express to the seventy-eighth and walk down three flights. Or even take your elevator to the fifty-third and catch another one there to my floor. Well, it's remarkable, yours and his—the faces, in many ways your bodies—to say the least, and to say even less than that, we all must look exactly like one other person in this world, even identical twins and triplets and such, other than their looking like the other sibling or siblings in their set. And if we look exactly like a set of identical twins or triplets and so on, then like two or three or all the way up to six other people, if there are identical sextuplets who have survived. Seven, even, if there were ever, or are now, rather, since I'm talking about this happening in the same time period with some overlapping of course, surviving identical septuplets I think they're called. Eight? No, it doesn't seem possible, has ever happened, whatever a set of eight is called. And a set of identical eighttuplets, I'll call them, looking exactly like another set of eight of any time period, but without scientific tinkering I mean, or even identical septuplets looking exactly like a set of quintuplets, and so on? No, impossible, has never happened, period, though there might be a set of identical twins who look exactly like another set of twins, and almost certainly have been if we don't keep this to a single time period, or even triplets with twins or maybe even with triplets or quadruplets, though I'm no expert on these matters so don't take my word for it. I'm losing myself here, and possibly your interest, with my slapalong speculation of improbable pairings and things, and we haven't much time. So yes, he's dead, my father is, to get back to it, even if neither my sister nor I believe it. We think he's hiding out or something—perhaps a prisoner—in Cuba or some country near here like that—an island, but one we, this country, hasn't much to do with publicly but is very concerned about for political or strategical reasons or things like that, which is why there's been no word about him or efforts to get him out. It could be our country even knows something about him but isn't letting on for its own interests, though that's really farfetched, but then who can really say?' I won't go into Con's expression by now, though he obviously wanted to get away from me, if just to finish getting into his business clothes, maybe take a shower first—all in his office or one of the health clubs or cardio-fitness centers in the building—and start work, and for what should be obvious to you, I didn't want to lose him. It's a very big building, with a dozen entrances and several restaurants and cafeterias and many underground and exterior and interior aboveground shops and a double movie theater and even a post office and its own zip code, and I was afraid I'd never see him again even if I looked hard for him in it for the next few years. ‘Anyway,' I said to him, ‘we feel he's alive someplace—why a nearby isolated island-state I can't rightly say, or can't come up with anything right now—and that he'll eventually get back some day, if just through our dogged wills and mental exertions for him.' ‘Much success with it,' he said, and then ‘Talk to you again perhaps, and have a nice day,' and I said ‘Yes, have a nice one, and good morning,' and that, my dear sister, for the most part, was that. When I got to the office, or really in the elevator going up, I said to myself, or aloud in the crowded car without even knowing it, ‘Oh Daddy, wouldn't it be nice if it was true what I told your beefy lookalike downstairs? We've been aprayin' and ahopin' for it for so long and only wish there'd finally be some sign from you that you're on your way. By boat, by train, by magic motorbike if you wish—you name it, and for me, even come in a dream.' Sometimes I think we're a tiny bit cracked going on about him like this, don't you? Everything I said to the man. All this time spent on it in just this letter? Jeez, other surviving kids after this long a spread have virtually forgotten their pas, with maybe every so often a vivid to vague to somebody else's remembered memory returning, but fleetingly, nothing life-intrusive, his influence on them mainly hereditary. I think—you know what I think?—I think we ought to toss out every photo and letter and book and memento and so on of him, from him, about him, left by him, by him—the works. Because those are what might be keeping us back or tied in so. Seeing them, bumping into them, where we begin inventing and imagining things. And if that doesn't work, to get rid of whatever things of his Mom's kept too. Steal into her house, chuck ‘em all out. She wouldn't even know, or much care if she found out, since she never goes back to them, or for his books, takes them off the shelves, while we see them every time we're there. And if that doesn't work, to get rid of every book and thing of his we know someone other than Mom owns. And then go to the major library here and with a flick of some master computer terminal switch find out on the monitor what libraries across the country, university and otherwise, his books are in. And maybe through another flick, what libraries around the world have his books, though he never sold much of anything or got any critical attention overseas, did he? And check all these books out—spend a couple of years doing it if that's what it takes—and get rid of those too. And by placing ads in the appropriate trade journals, find out where his books might be in all the used book stores and whatever remains in the remainder stores and distributor warehouses, and buy them and get rid of these too. And also, get a list of every rare book dealer and see if they have them and buy all of them no matter what the expense and destroy these too. And if that doesn't work—if he's still managing to influence our actions and so forth—he still does with you, doesn't he?—then to place an author's query in the
Times
book review section and other such places saying we're writing a book, or to make it believable, a monograph or dissertation about him and need all his letters and correspondence of any sort and anything they might have of him—magazines with his work and newspapers with reviews of his work and interviews and articles about him and first editions and autographed copies of his books and anything else of him or of his like photographs and galleys and even old hats and clothes he might have given away or left behind and someone's still using or saved, which we'll promise to reimburse them for the postage and send back special delivery express and heavily insured—and dump all these too. Go to prison for it if we have to, but first making sure we got all his books out of every prison library too. And if that doesn't work, then we should just give up thinking it's any of these things influencing our odd behavior regarding him and to form a group of two for group therapy to work his influence away or just to see why it's still there so. Or maybe we should do that first, avoiding all the expense and hassles and time put in and so forth of getting rid of everything we can of his. Anyway, what else is new with you, just to change the subject? No, because I'm deeply interested and always have been. Oops, suddenly must flit. Tingaringing and bingalinging and beginning of inter-inner office commingling besides the coffee and morning roll cart clink-clinging down the corridor, which if I don't make a move for fast will be past my door. ‘Hey Jake,' I just yelled without seeing him yet and only the tip of his cart, ‘a black coffee and plain danish as usual with maybe a few almond shavings which fell off some of the almond danishes on the tray—and don't tell me they didn't if you do have almond danishes today—sprinkled on top. Ah, just give me an almond danish and sugar with my coffee this time, and cream, or milk, or whatever you got that passes for them—I aim for change.' See you soon, Dachshund. At least me hopes.”

Olivia sits on the steps in front of the house. “Come in,” Denise says. “No, I'm not coming in. I want Daddy to ask me to come in.” “Daddy can't,” Denise says. “Get him then.” “I can't get him and you know that, Olivia.” “Yell into the backyard for him to come around front to ask me to come in.” “I can't do that either, much as I'd love to.” “Then up to the roof if he's on top working there or in the basement if that's where he is.” “Those are two other things I can't do, sweetheart.” “Call him up then if he's not around and tell him I'm waiting for for him to ask me to come in and I won't come in unless he does that.” “You know that's impossible too.” “No, I don't know that. Why should I know it? I'm not coming in till I hear Daddy ask me to. Or till I see him park the car and get out of it or even from the car window point for me to go in. Or till he shouts at me from way down the street to do as you say and get right in. That he'll paddle my fanny if I don't. That I won't be allowed any ices after dinner if I don't. That he won't read to me or let you read to me before I go to sleep. When he does something like one of those I'll come in. I'll come right in. I'll zoom in. So fast neither of you will even see me come in. You'll stand on the porch or the street or from the car and wonder where'd she go? Did she go in or is she still around the house or maybe hiding someplace near but not in? Because nobody could have zoomed in that fast. Or I'll run to Daddy first if he's in the street or walking up it or the walk or in the car or just getting out of it, but wait first to make sure no cars are coming. Or just run to Daddy if he's already in the house. From the back he might have got in when we were talking here. Or from the front when we weren't looking. Or through one of the windows upstairs. He could have been in a tree all this time and swung down from it to the roof and then into the window when we didn't see him because it was a back window or we were talking or just never looked up there. Or he could have been in some secret place below the basement we don't know about or in a closet or some hiding space in the house only he knows how to get into and only now came out of to show himself in the window or on the porch or even came out of an upstairs window to the roof to yell something like ‘Hey look-it, I'm up here.' Then I'll be in but only then will I come in, not before.” “Oh my poor darling,” Denise says and comes out and sits on the steps with her and takes her hands and puts her forehead against hers and a car passes and a man walking two different kinds of dogs waves at them while he passes and Denise nods to him and says to Olivia “We'll wait till either Eva wakes up or your father parks the car or walks up the street and shows himself or yells to us from the roof or the tree or any of the other things you said.” “No, I don't want to, I want to go in,” and pulls her hands away and sticks them under the bib of her overalls and gets up, goes inside the house and slams the door. It doesn't make a bang and she slams it again and it does. Eva wakes up crying. “Shut up, shut up, I hate you, you little fuck, everyone just shut up for good,” Olivia screams. “My poor darlings,” Denise says, walking up the steps.