Frog (37 page)

A few weeks later he's in the car pulling up to the house. She's coming down the front steps, has to hold on to the railing, is dragging her leg. Pain on her face, her free hand's shaking and she grabs the railing with it or else it seems she'll fall. It hits him. How could I have been so dismissive? What a jerk, what a jerk. He yells “Stay there,” runs to her, walks her back to the house, calls their doctor. On the day of the appointment she says “I'm sure it's something simple.” “I'm sure too,” he says, “but let's find out.” Their oldest daughter says “What's wrong, Mommy?” She says she's going for a regular checkup, just as they do with Dr. Miriam once a year.

The doctor thinks it might be nothing worse than a pinched nerve as her osteopath says, and tells her to take two very strong aspirins three times a day for two weeks and then see if her condition improves. Also to stop seeing the osteopath. “It might be the workout he gives you plus Howard's massages that are exacerbating a muscle injury or making some other relatively minor ailment worse.” She does what he says. The pains continue. She trips periodically. Sometimes when she sits or lies down she doesn't think she can get up by herself. Twice Howard has to help her downstairs and walk her to the car. The doctor thinks she should see a neurologist. The neurologist examines her and suspects a serious neurological disease. He puts her through several tests: brain scan, spinal tap, others. She's nervous about them. Howard tells her “Listen, better we go on as usual and not worry so much before we hear the results. It might be nothing. The old pinched nerve, even, that Dr. Aman once begrudingly said it could be, since all doctors hate any diagnosis or suggested cure that comes from an osteopath. The neurologist is more likely just ruling out possibilities rather than looking for them. Probably the worse that'll happen is you'll have to take prescription painkillers or muscle relaxants for a while and you might feel funny from them and your face puff up a little.”

The neurologist calls. It's what he thought. “At her age,” he tells them in his office, “drugs and treatments should be able to arrest it. There are variations of the disease and hers isn't the most serious.” She takes the drugs, goes through the treatments. She gets weaker, starts using a cane to walk, braces on her right arm and leg, then has to walk with a metal walker or Howard's help, collapses several times, has trouble keeping food down, loses sight in one eye, several other things go wrong or change, is put on an experimental drug, treatments discontinued, she can't get out of bed and sometimes not even out of a chair by herself, becomes blind, partially paralyzed, is hospitalized, released, gets worse, hospitalized, dies.

He thinks of how they first met. It's a funny story. He was going to a wedding reception in an apartment building. The bride and he had once been lovers. He thought it odd being invited to the wedding, but she explained it in a note with the invitation. Amy, this woman, was separated from her first husband when Howard started seeing her. He was bartending then and she and a man friend, just back from a week on St. Thomas, came in for banana daiquiris. He talked with them, when the man was in the men's room he asked her for her phone number. One day her husband came by her apartment for something when Howard was there. His complete set of Conrad, which was still in her bookcase. It was late morning, Amy was making them breakfast. There was a quarrel. She doesn't remember what it was over or if she was involved in it. She thinks it started because her husband, who'd come without telling her and tried to get in with his old apartment keys, then complained that she'd changed the locks. So she had to have been involved in it. But Howard stood up to him and even stuck his finger into her husband's chest and made him back off. She thinks her husband said “How do you know I'm not carrying a gun?” which he did sometimes, and that Howard said “What the hell do I care? If you did remember to put bullets in, and the right ones, you'll probably shoot your bloody balls off pulling the gun out.” Anyway, the incident seemed to do something to her and her husband, because from then on she was never afraid of speaking up to him or thought him intimidating in any way and he never again treated her abusively or not for long, and in fact a few weeks later he very calmly consented to the divorce she'd been asking for a year. She thinks she might have even told him she was thinking of marrying Howard, which was never true and could never have been true, but she used it as part of her argument. She continued with Howard for about a month after that, realized they'd never work out, then met Hank, fell in love as hard as she ever had, now they were getting married, so Howard was invited, to the rather rudimentary small church wedding if he wanted to go but more to the reception after, since if it hadn't been for him she might still be fighting that psycho sonofabitch ex-husband of hers for a divorce and by now might even have been killed by him.

So he went into the building, made a left at the end of foyer when the doorman must have told him to go right, a woman was waiting at the elevator. Pretty, he thought. The door opened, they got in, he waited for her to press a floor button, she didn't, he pressed seven and kept his finger by the button plate and asked what floor she was going to, she said “I'll attend to it when the time comes, thank you,” he said “Please, no need to worry. I'm going to a wedding reception on the seventh floor—the doorman let me through—so I only asked because I was closer to the buttons.” “Thank you for your explanation,” and she looked at the door. Hair, face, voice, expression, clothes, words she used, self-possession, that she didn't smile fakely at him to conceal what she really might feel. He tried not to look at her too much; didn't want to disconcert or irritate her or make her more nervous if that's what it was. But he could hardly stop looking at her. She was beautiful, in ways his dream woman: high cheekbones, long light soft hair, bright eyes, large breasts, slim waist, what seemed like solid legs, big full forehead, other things, her height, books in her bag, obvious intelligence, shape of her lips, no trace of makeup, white teeth. At seven he said “Good day,” she nodded, he got off, she immediately pressed her floor or the “close” button, door closed, and he saw that the apartments here were A to D with the service steps directly across the elevator but no door or passageway leading to anything further and he was going to G. “Oh Christ,” he said, when the elevator opened a couple of floors, or maybe one or two more than that, above him. Must be she. He quickly thought of something. “Excuse me, miss, it's me. Or mrs. or ms., but it's I, the fellow who got off the elevator on the seventh floor?” “Yes?” “Well, the wedding reception isn't here. No loud partying, voices, glasses tinkling, music the bride said they were going to have nonstop. Maybe I've the wrong floor or apartment number or even the wrong building or street number. The tenant who's giving the party is Rukovsky.” “Rerkovsky? If it's that, which I don't see how it can't be, since they're on the seventh floor, then you'll want to go downstairs and through the lobby to the east wing of the building. 7G.” ‘There's a second elevator then?” he said, walking upstairs. “Two wings, two elevators, yes.” “Is there another wing other than those two? Just so I don't end up in it.” He was on the eighth floor, started for the ninth. “Only two.” “So I must have gone left instead of right downstairs. Funny, for the doorman said the wedding reception, when I told him I was going to one, though I never got around to giving the tenant's name, was to the left, seventh floor. That I'd know which apartment it was by the noise. I doubt there'd be two afternoon wedding receptions going on in this building today.” “Sunday, June, a fairly large building in a very active city—who can say? But somewhat improbable there'd be two receptions like that given on the same day by people with names as close to the ones we mentioned, and both on the same floor even if in different wings. Besides, there is no Rukovsky on the seventh floor in this wing. You must have misunderstood Nicolo's—the doorman's—directions. And I know the Rerkovskys. Not well, but at tenant meetings—they're big in that—and two of those meetings in their apartment. Darlene and Sid. They must be hosting the party for your relative or friend.” “Friend,” he said, reaching the tenth floor where she was. “Listen, excuse me, and again don't be alarmed, and I didn't mean to climb up, but I just thought of something. You probably won't go for it, but I'd love to take someone to this reception. And by now you must know”—she's already waving her hand in front of her—”… no, please, just hear me out, that there really is a reception and you know the Rerkovskys, even if not well. And maybe even the bride for all I know.” “Believe me I don't.” “So—wait a minute,” for she'd turned to the door, “abrupt as this must seem—and never never turn your back on a stranger when you're in a situation like this, woman alone, in front of her door—anyone alone, not that I should be considered one in that respect—dangerous, at all threatening, I mean”—she turned back to him, angry, hand with her keys behind her—“and even loony sounding as my suggestion could also be thought as, though it isn't so much and I'm not—would you come to it with me? Which you probably knew I was going to say. That hand-waving before. Or just meet me there?” “What are you talking about. Absolutely not.” “Why? I've been invited and I'm inviting you. If it's—” “It is, whatever you're about to say. Because I don't know you and don't want to know you and definitely don't want to go to a reception of any kind today. It'd seem peculiar too. The Rerkovskys would ask and I'd have to say I just met you in the elevator and then spoke to you for a minute on my floor, and why am I speaking to you hypothetically about this or even speaking to you about anything on my floor? You could be something you're not saying you are. This could all be a pretense. Look, be smart and take the elevator and go to your party,” and she unlocked the door while staring at him, went in, shut and locked it and threw the bolt hard. They talked through the door for about fifteen minutes. To get her to come to the door he rang the bell several times and said between ringings “Please, don't call the doorman. I'm nothing like what you might think I am. Truth is I'm incorrigibly harmless, never been in any adult trouble. I only want to speak to you through the door for a few seconds to a minute but no more to explain some things and then I'll go.” The first time she came to the door she said something like “Get away from here now or I'll not only call the doorman and the super but the police,” and then went away from the door. He could hear her footsteps on the wood floor. The second time she came she said “I'm not playing around with you, sir. If you continue to ring and don't get off this floor, I will call the police. I've the phone in my hand now. Dot dot dot with the numbers on the buttons and you're done. If you run away from here I'll have them look for you at the Rerkovskys. If you're also not there, then they'll have my description of you. And if it's true what you said about the bride being your friend, they'll speak to her, find out who you are and go to your home. If there is no bride or wedding and you had no plans to go to the Rerkovskys, then I'll ask them to knock on every door in this building to ask if anyone was expecting you. And if nothing comes of that, then for them to drive around the neighborhood looking for you, and then keep watch over this building in case you plan to return.”

He forgets exactly what he said to make her continue listening and not call the police, if she was really going to. Days later she said she didn't have the phone in her hand then but was thinking of going to the living room to call. He knows he said he wanted to give her a quick rundown of who he was and what he did and where he lived and so on, just so she'd have some idea of him and know or at least think there was a greater chance of it that he was rational and respectable and no criminal or kook. That way maybe she'd look differently on him. And maybe, though without opening her door if that was the way she wanted it, and preposterous as this outcome probably was, give him her name and phone number so he could call her some later time. And “later time” not meaning tonight but in a few days to a week or as far off as she wanted, but he would hope relatively soon. Or if she preferred to call him, he could give her his name and phone number. Certainly his name. He gave it. Waited for her to give hers. She didn't. He could even give her the names and phone numbers of people he knew whom she might know and she could call them about him. Would she prefer that? If she did, he'd wait till she got paper and pen or he could even write the names and numbers out for her or slip a paper and pen under the door so she could write them down. She didn't answer. Really, he said: intelligent, decent people. Educators, writers, a translator, a magazine editor; even a publisher of a small trade house here in New York. He listened. She didn't ask who they were or if that was what he did: write, possibly teach. He was going too far, wasn't he? he said. But, quite truthfully, though he also knew he wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know, he was attracted to her and didn't want this to be a lost opportunity where he'd never see her again. Which was why, of course, he was making such a terrible fool of himself and putting her through all this and risking being grabbed by the super or the police. And don't worry, he said. None of her neighbors had opened their doors to look, nor had he heard any of them come to their doors or open their peepholes. They must all be out. She didn't say anything. Or just very circumspect, or apathetic, inattentive, uninquisitive, reclusive to a fault or for any number of reasons didn't want to involve themselves in possible trouble. Tenants were tenants whatever New York City building you were in. Would she agree with any of that? Then what did she think about anything he'd said so far? Still no response. He asked if she was still there. Yes, she said, from right behind the door. And if she had called the super or the police? No. Then could he also tell her, and then he'd go, how he usually felt at parties when he went alone and essentially didn't know anyone there: uncomfortable, a party imposter, which was another reason he'd asked her to come with him. That had nothing to do with her, she said. He could go, he didn't have to go, all that was his business solely. He knew, he knew, he said, but was just saying, maybe for lack of anything else to say. No, that wasn't so. He also told her what the bride was to him. That they had once been very good friends, mates for a while, and he wasn't saying this to do anything but state a fact, though why he felt he had to state that fact was perhaps another matter and one he should look into…. But the bride and he didn't work out, and also why she'd invited him. It was a strange story. He started laughing. He didn't know if he could tell it through a door or keep it to thirty seconds, for that was how long she said she'd give him before she probably would call the super. He told it in a minute. One minute-ten to be exact, he said, looking at his watch before and after. She thought the story bizarre and funny. The part about the gun especially. Did he think her husband was serious? Just a big windbag, he said, or seemed. If she were he she wouldn't go to the reception. He really shouldn't have been invited, for it'll probably make the groom uncomfortable seeing him there. He believed another ex-lover of hers would be there too, he said; the one who'd come in to the bar with her for the daiquiris. Even worse, she said. Something was slightly off about this woman. But he was right not to have gone to the wedding ceremony, though she didn't know if he hadn't gone for what she'd consider the right reason. But now to think about taking someone to the reception whom he'd just met in an elevator in the same building the reception was? It'd seem his motives were questionable now and that he wanted to take her to make it an even better story to tell or to get back at the bride some way. No, positively not, he said. He wanted to take her for the reasons he gave before, which he was sure she didn't want to hear again: his unease at going alone, but much more so because he was attracted to her, that lost opportunity he mentioned, and thought if she came with him it'd be a pleasant enough place to get to know her a little and perhaps other way around for her too. Festive atmosphere, lots of convivial people, familiar building, two elevator rides and a short lobby walk to her own apartment, if it were cold out he'd say she wouldn't even have to put on a sweater, etcetera. But if she wanted he could skip the reception and they could go out for coffee or any kind of snack, all on him, not that he didn't think she could pay for it. But better yet why didn't she just come to the reception for half an hour? She didn't say anything. Even less time than that if she wanted. That way he could fulfill his obligation to go to the reception, since he had told the bride he'd be there and that seemed to mean something to her. And he supposed they could get coffee there as well as at any coffee shop and certainly far better snacks, maybe a glass of champagne if she wanted, and they could talk for part or most of that time, and that would be that unless she wanted to stay longer. If she didn't, then he could stay and she could go home, or they could take a long or short walk after that half an hour to less, and then she could go home and he'd return to the party or just go home himself. Probably that. But what does she say? She didn't know, she said. He was a most convincing arguer or fabricator. Not so, he said. He was usually inarticulate, garble-mouthed, preternaturally slow to think of the right things to say to win any argument or just thought of them too late. There was an expression for that in Yiddish, another in French, perhaps most languages—what you thought after the door had been slammed on you and you walked downstairs. Steps-in-mouth. Tongue-unfurled-only-on-the-dark-stairs. For arguing, convincing, more than simple conversing, even explaining, just weren't for him, except now and then, like maybe now. And as for lying? She'd said fabricating and she was sorry she'd said it, she said. No no, he said. He didn't, why would he? since in addition to other reasons, probably the most flagrant was that he was such a poor speaker he'd be seen through too easily. Though with the door shut it was true he might be more adept at it, since the person being lied to wouldn't see his giveaway face. No, what he did do well was run on unintelligibly about relatively nothing and make it seem no more than that. But really, what does she say? She still didn't know, she said. He swore there'd be no problems. Not on his knees, for he had his only good dress pants on and he was going to a party—No, no more bad jokes, for the time being. And ten minutes at the most?