Frog (33 page)

Olivia meets a man with the same name as her father. When he phones to see her again she says no, “even though I did think you were interesting to speak to and pleasant to look at and under any other circumstances I would have enjoyed seeing you again. But you've the same forename as my father. It would be impossible. I'm trying to forget the old guy, in a way.” “Then what better way than going out with a man named Howard? You'll forget him through me.” “You sound a lot more overconfident than I like or noticed the other night and you also don't know what you're talking about.” “Maybe I am and don't. I'm sure I am and don't. I often am and I often say things I think I mean and three hours later wonder why I said them and what did I mean. But for you I'll change—not only how I am but also my name, now how about that?” “You couldn't have known, but all those remarks—saying things you don't mean and maybe just for the sounds of them besides all those beguiling rhythmic effects, big quote unquote in there and also that name business—are exactly what my father would have said or done. He was a joker. He kidded about just about everything, besides trying to be a shocker, stunner and charmer with words, spoken and scrawled.” “Then I won't change my name. I'll change yours. Or you can change yours to Howard and I'll be Olivia, though you can call me Ollie for short, or just call me Shortie, or Short for short. Or maybe I don't know what I'm saying again and three hours from now—three seconds, even—I'm thinking right now what did I say and why'd I say it?—I'll again think what did I mean, or did I already say that? I think I did. I know I did, so why my pretending thinking-oblivia? I mean oblivion, Olivia.” “Even your word pranks and speech patterns are like his. Repeating, explaining, digressing, questioning, requestioning, quick-switching, going over everything he said about everything and then wondering if he might have missed an insignificant detail or two, and then three or four, and probably in the process infuriating or fatiguing or infuriating because he was fatiguing everyone he's speaking to. No, your name is Howard, my father's name was, I want to forget the name Howard for the time being, or something. This: I just don't want any man I go out with to have that name, since any man I go out with could end up being a man I'm interested in and then seriously involved with and then ultimately the man I might think of being married to, and since I for certain don't want to be married to a man named Howard, I can't go out with you.” “I don't see it.” “Don't you? It's not screwy or complex. It's just the way it is, despite all my efforts to make it other-is, and that's that I can't say or think of or even read or anything like that the name Howard without thinking of my father, something that's not going to change by going out with a man named Howard.” “How about Howie? I'm serious. I hate the name Howie but you can call me it, but only you, remember that. You introduce me to relatives, say ‘This is Howard.' Call me on the phone though, you can even say ‘How.'” “He hated the name Howie too. That's what my mother said.” “I don't like the name Howard either, but if I went by the name or whatever you want to call it of H.J. or something—it could only be H.J., unless I changed my middle name to one with another initial—it would seem phony and therefore worse.” “He also didn't like ‘Howard,' but no—not Howard, Howie, How, Ho or even H, since I'd know what that H means and other people would still refer or write to you by your given name.” “I love you, want to marry you, marry me yesterday, let's have children last year and this, grandkids the next, sibilate our silver gilded annuity the supper's coming upchuck—Listen, what do I have to do other than turn myself into a full-fledged fool, which I'm ready to do for you, in duplicate, to see you for coffee? For tea then. Tea without the teabag then. Just the water, cold, in a glass, at a luncheonette counter of your choice. And just one glass, we'll share it, I'll even leave a profligate tip for the counterperson who brings it, and then I'll go. Or two glasses of cold if you wish. But I'll say good-bye right after, shake your hand and go. Or no shake or good-bye. I'll keep my hands in my pockets and my mouth closed. Or only I'll drink the water, out of one glass or two, and you can just watch. Or don't watch. Look the other way, at your shoes, the clock, tick-tock. Or watch your watch. You don't have a watch, I'll get you one. Two watches, three, one for around whatever part of the body that isn't a wrist, since I can't stand the ones with a pin or clip. Or don't even come inside. Stand outside, but at least walk a half block with me to the luncheonette, which is all I ask. And I don't even have to drink the water. I can just stare at the glass for a few seconds, maybe just ask for an empty glass but still give a huge tip, and you can be doing what you want outside, watching or not, and then either of us can go.” “You're really asking too much. To see me you'd have to die, which is certainly not what I'm asking for, and be reborn to around your present age with any other name but the one you have now.” “And if I die and happen to be reborn with the name Howard, what then? Coincidences like that have happened. Travesties, you can say. You can, I can—us both. Tragedies, rather, but let's not go that far, what do you say? Just give me another name this second and I'll be nothing else but that name for as long as you like. Honestly, what name would you prefer me to be? Lionel?” “If I actually wanted it, Lionel would be fine.” “Not ‘final'? OK, Lionel. From now on I am. Lionel, Lionel. Hey, I'm beginning to like my new name, so thank you very much.” He hangs up, phone rings fifteen seconds later and she picks it up. “Don't tell me,” she says. “Hello, Olivia? This is Lionel, remember me? Tall, withery, walks like smoke unfolding, talks like folds unsmoking, rosy eyeballs, cozy nose holes, stovepipe legs. My voice is a trifle disguised, so maybe you don't recognize it. But it's Lionel calling, Lenny or Lionel. No, not Lenny or Len. Really, terrible names, undistinguished, somewhat lummox, and which wouldn't even suit me in a baseball game. Lionel. Good plain Lionel, but how's by you? Long time no peak.” “You nudnik. All that's exactly what my father would have done and probably said.” “I know what he would have done and said. I am your father, that's why I did and said it. I'm back. But I love you like a lover, not like a father. Or rather suit you like a suitor, not like a vest. For a father doesn't want to fall flip-flop for his daughter and marry and have kids by her and grandkids by their kids, if he's an upstanding man, an opprobrious father. Hey, how about that? Big words your father misuses, your suitor dissutures, like calling himself scur-a-lust and pusillan-i-must when he means foursquare and a fifth snared and six will get you a collar. In other words, where he doesn't mess around with his suit buttons, pocket flaps, lining, lapels and button holes. But God, what am I doing? Being subhuman, nonruminant, unfeeling, forgive me, for what I really should have said was I'm sorry and how long ago and only if you want to tell me, what from? And please don't say that's exactly what he would have said and with that same soft sympathetic timbre after that long silly insensitive monolo I gave.” ‘It's true. But let's forget it. It's absolutely no use.” “Did he die of happenstance? Certain circumstances? In his own arms? As my father used to say of his two younger siblings who died when he was five, of old age? Now you know where I get most of this from. And I know I'm not being funny but I have to keep you on…. No response to that?… Listen, I want to go out with you, don't you hear? Am I to suffer because my folks named me after my mother's brother who died six months before I was born? He got smacked with some shrap. Few pieces left of him are buried overseas in a soldier's grave he shares. Is my mother to blame for forcing my father to go along with that name, and is he to blame for letting himself be forced? I could have been Abel. Nice name? The right initial? That's what they planned, Abigail or Abel, till my uncle got scrapped. I forget what H-name I was to be if I'd been a girl, but hardly matters. But would you have seen a guy for just coffee or water or an empty glass whose name was Abel?” “The name alone wouldn't have stopped me.” “And my mother didn't want ‘Howard.' Her mother pleaded with her to. Was still distraught, of course, over her only son's death, so said ‘His loss was bad enough and almost killed me, but I'll die for sure if you don't name your boy Howard.' Is my grandmother to blame for pleading that to my mother, and before that, for naming her son ‘Howard'? And is the original Howard—original as a name as far as my mother and I know, since there's no record of it ever being in the family—to blame for dying before I was born? For letting himself be drafted, let's say. For not dodging it, though who knows if in his dodging he wouldn't have been run over by a car or train, or caught, died very quickly of something in the stockade. So my grandmother got his name out of a phonebook. Opened it up, went down the columns of Smiths and came up with Howard and stopped right there. Or continued going if she didn't already have a girl's name. ‘Hortense' I now think my mother settled on from the phonebook for her girl's name if she couldn't convince her mother to accept Abigail.' Maybe we should blame AT&T. So my mother went along with my grandmother. She was a good daughter, devoted, and didn't want to be in any way the reason for her mother's illness or death. Qualities like that should be highly prized. Even still, I should phone her right now and say ‘Mom, you never did such a wrong thing in your life, so far as I know and which I'm only now realizing, as naming me what you did. Because of it, and let's not even talk about what I'll be missing out on, you'll be out a beautiful intelligent daughter-in-law and if this woman and I would have had it in us, two to three fine grandkids.' I'd love to call her up. She's dead and I only wish there was a phone for her where she is so I could call her every day as I did when she was alive. I don't know why she never called me except when I was coming over and she wanted me at the last minute to pick up a lemon or carrot she needed for the dinner that night, or the afternoon paper that had some lotto game in it she didn't want to miss, or a carton, and if I wouldn't do it, just a pack of cigarettes. But all right, no time for gripes, wouldn't you say?… But whenever I did call—listen to this—every day except when I was away in some place like Europe or Asia, where I actually saw my namesake's grave. Taken care of very impressively. The U.S. does a tip-top job when it wants to and puts it all together, or at least for its military dead. But she'd always say when I said ‘How are you?' on the phone, ‘All right, though, I guess.' She was never ‘great.' Not even ‘good' or ‘not bad.' Things could always be much better, she was telling me, maybe by my calling twice a day in the States and coming over more and at least once a day on my short-to-long out-of-country stays. Or maybe if she admitted things were pretty good to OK that day she thought I might cut my calls to every other day. I wouldn't have done that and I saw her as much as I could. Could tolerate it, I'm saying, and also knew, even if she thought she thought otherwise, how often and how long she could tolerate me. Anyway, a phone call to heaven, we'll say, would make her life eternal more enjoyable, I suppose, and also let me know by her being near a phone that life there wasn't so strange and scary to her and if it was she'd say.” “Truthfully, Howard, and I'm sorry, but why are you bothering me with all this?” “Because I'm trying to impress upon you some of what I think are my more positive qualities. So far I feel everything I've said has come out mealy-mouthed and against me. That I was a good son, caring, responsive, and that maybe I even have some intelligence and imagination, qualities you might think all right. Good sons often make good husbands and fathers, it's said, or at least the chances of it happening should be slightly higher. And if the man's also to some extent intelligent with a little savory flair, even better, would you agree?” “Who can say?” “Also that I looked after people—not just my mother. And not just helping old or infirmed people across the street and small but important things like that. But I'm interested in them, what they do and so on, how they get along without sight, and such, and though I didn't go into that before, there it is. That's going to work against me too, I just know it. But I'm not ashamed of any of this either. And she was generous with money and encouragement to me when I needed it—everyone falls into financial and emotional holes—when she didn't have to be with the money, since I was old enough to pay my own way, and she really couldn't afford it. I suppose I paid it back in attention and real filial concern, and actual helping out, like laying down rubber treads on her basement stairs and winterizing her windows each year. And by ‘emotional' I don't mean disturbed in any way or bizarre. That's why I tagged the ‘savory' to the ‘flair' before, which you probably got, along with, because of my intentional mispronunciation of savory, the double meaning. I got sad sometimes, like any sane natural person does periodically. So I didn't change my name when I got to legal age, though wanted to. Lots of times through my youth other kids made fun of
it. ‘Howard Howitzer. Howard Whore.' Stupid stuff but still upsetting. I'm sure Howard was once a popular name even in this century—I know kings used to have it, or maybe that was Harold—but when I got it it was out-of-date and just too formal. I didn't change it because by that time, though my grandmother had long succumbed, my mother had got used to it of course and didn't want to be calling me something different suddenly, she said. Abel' I was going to change it to, simply to undo what'd been undone twenty years earlier and because to me it was a stronger-sounding and more desirable name, but let's forget it. And by desirable I'm not saying ‘Oh come to me, I'm gorgeous, romantic and magnetic besides worth a fortune,' but just a better if not more appropriate name for me. Able, capable, effectual, all of which I am. Not joking. It's something lots of people scorn or feel threatened by because it represents a certain versatility and adaptability to life and even a flexibility with it, but don't let me get started why I think all of that's to the good. It is and it isn't but mostly is. But I was where? Please—that's what I'm driving at without trying to be pushy—please try to forget your father for a minute and my personal name liability and think a little of the possibilities of a half-hour with me. One stinking little coffee's all I'm shooting for. Even rich and aromatic, but what could be the harm? And I can say that ‘harm' question after all I've just said, right?…. Come on, Olivia, right?” “You can. What do I care? And as for your rambling on too long, you're very much