Frog (60 page)

portrays her as a whore. She's no whore. No woman's a whore. The whore's the author who portrays women as whores so every man and lez can stick his finger in while he reads. Because when she sticks her finger in it's for her pleasure, pure and simple, and perhaps as a mnemonic device, but not for whores who think all women are whores, lezies and fingers.” “You make no sense and are also downright offensive in your references to lesbians,” the teacher says. “And what do you make, you big bag of haggard figs? Fart on me, fart on me, why don't you?” and she stands up—“Your crutches, watch out, you'll fall,” Howard says—and she says “Hell with my crutches, who needs them?” and grabs them off the floor and breaks them over her thigh, says to the teacher, who's never stopped eating, “You're lucky I didn't wrap them around your little onanist's neck,” and slaps the sandwich out of his mouth and stomps out of the room. “Crude, rude and wasteful, is the way I'd characterize your sister,” he says, “and you're fired.” In another he's sleeping in bed in his old room, little light from the streetlights coming in through the Venetian blind slits, when the covers are slowly pulled off him, he starts shivering and says “Please, whoever it is, I'm cold,” and looks up and sees she's naked and has the body and body hair of his wife. She says “Mind if I come in—I'm frightened,” and he says “I'm not allowed to—I promised the folks,” and she says “Why, because I'm supposed to be sick and sad person? Well, you don't see me crying or on crutches or canes or in a wheelchair or anything, so I must've recovered or else always been well,” and she slips in beside him—“Please, it's a narrow single bed, go back to your own”—kisses him on the chest, tickles his nipples, grabs his penis and jerks it till it's hard—“That's reflex, not feeling; it's even happened when I've sat with a plain empty box on my lap”—gets on top of him; he tries to buck her off and she says “Don't be a rotten bastard; I might, like everyone else in life, be frightfully to moribundly sick tomorrow or even later tonight, so let me have my kicks while I can”—sticks his penis in, arches back to sort of lock it in and bounces up and down on him, while he's looking at the door, waiting for his parents to burst in and thinking of an excuse to give them—“I couldn't help it; she forced me to; she's become so strong and big that she simply overpowered me; I also thought that for all the permanent harm it'll do me, maybe it'll do some short-term good for her in some particular way, and I also didn't want to wake the two of you up…” His mother, Vera and he are at the airport; he's leaving for a year on a fellowship at a California school. Vera says “Wait, nobody go away,” and on crutches goes into a shop, comes out and waves her hands no and goes down a passageway and disappears, comes back just around the time they're thinking of looking for her, with a newsweekly and cheap paperback copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay poems. “I thought you'd like them for the plane. I won't pretend I've read the poems or even know how to say her name, but it was the only poetry book they had and from what it says on the back cover it seems very good.” He kisses her cheek, she lowers her head and blushes, he wants to tell her that if she has another operation he'll fly home immediately and stay as long as she likes. That he can't thank her enough for the book, which he'll start reading right away on the plane, even before the magazine, which he also thanks her for. That right now she seems balanced on the outstretched crutches like some winged statue of victory on top of an institutional dome. That he'll come home for Christmas for a month and maybe Thanksgiving if the fare isn't too steep and they'll go to restaurants and movies and just spend lots of time talking at home. That he'd trade places with her if he could. He's had twenty-eight good healthy years, so he'd be willing to take her place from now on if she could be healthy again. That if she ever needs some of his skin for grafting, which the doctors said she might need, and of course any amount of his blood, whose type they share, she can definitely count on him. That she should think about coming to California with Mom to see him for a week or two, but when the weather's nice so they can see the pretty hills and big smelly trees and exotic flowers and flowering citrus trees, with eventually real fruit on them, he hears the area's known for. That he's going to buy a used car there and they'll drive all the way to Santa Barbara or the Hearst Castle if she wants, even if it turns out to be farther than Santa Barbara, and back along the ocean route through Big Sur where they can even camp out for the night. That he'll try to write her almost every day but certainly a couple of times a week and of course call. That he loves her very very much and she's in his thoughts daily and she'll be in them even more a day when he gets out there and he'll miss her she can't know how much and he really thinks, though he doesn't know why he feels so sure about this—maybe it's the way she's been looking and acting lately—but that she's going to get much better the next year, off the crutches, no more of those urinary and eye problems to add to it and headaches and such, gaining weight and maybe even height and walking and doing just about everything normally again. And that there's always the chance he'll get the disease too, as the doctors said, and that she's set the standard how to deal with it year after year. The departure's announced, he kisses his mother and her good-bye, thanks her for the book and magazine and tells her to take care and he'll call them soon after he gets there, the plane goes, he sits in his seat crying for a while, reads the magazine cover to cover, opens the book when lunch comes but the pages start falling out while he's turning them. One of the first things he's going to do after he finds an apartment and gets set up in California is stick the loose pages and rest of the book into a postal bag and send it to the publisher with a note complaining of the lousy binding and asking for a new copy plus reimbursement for the cost of the bag and mailing the book to them. He and the woman he's living with like going to a different restaurant every other week. They take Vera with them every third or fourth time. One time she says the Indian food's too hot. “If you take me again, please not too spicy a place?” She doesn't like the Mexican food. “Too heavy and any food that has chocolate in its main course has to be in deep trouble to come up with something original.” Philippine food's too peanutty, Chinese food too gooey, Japanese food's pretty but has no taste and the small portions make you feel gypped, German food seems as if it's been left on the stove for days by mistake, Cuban and Ukrainian food seem unclean. “I appreciate being invited—it's nice just to get out—but I wish I liked tasting different foreign foods or saw the point to it as much as you. Have you ever eaten French?—I'm sure you have,” and they tell her if it's any good it has to be too expensive for them, and American food, which she wouldn't mind having—“Since summer camp I've loved things like succotash and chicken à la king”—they feel they've had too much of it at home and they also like drinking different foreign wines and beers. The woman's very attentive to her, holds her arm when they walk, makes sure she gets the best taxi and restaurant seat, provides her with magazine articles she thinks she might be interested in, always compliments her clothes, often comments about her soft sultry voice and long straight well-groomed hair, that she has a perfect little model's nose and beautiful small fingers and ears and how smart she is not to use rouge and nail polish and hair spray and how well she takes care of her cuticles and nails. Once when he goes to the men's room she says “I wish I could be like you. Beautiful, a natural height, breasts, hips that don't look like a six-year-old's, your posture, educated, engaged to an all-right guy, the chance to drive a car and go to work and have kids. I hate my life but don't tell my brother any of this. Say I'm satisfied, to a degree, if he asks what we talked about and you say ‘life.' But sometimes I wish I could suddenly die and nothing really helps that feeling. Religion sometimes, psychiatrists no time, I never took to booze or food as a release. And because my insides are so bad in various places after so many operations and the wear and tear on them from the disease, I'm not supposed to smoke, but screw that I say, since it's my only peace except sleep.” The woman tells him all this later and he says “Why doesn't she have more incentive to do something with her life? Sure, death, that's a good one to scare the shit out of you and which she's talked a lot about and years ago actually tried, because she hasn't the fucking imagination or spunk to do anything harder, like possibly doing something. For she has the use of her hands, her brains have the potential, she gets around on those crutches OK or can always take taxis, and she certainly has the time. She doesn't have to go out and hack it, everything's given her, the libraries are stacked with the best anyone could read, the state and federal government will pay for any education she wants for as long as she likes right up to a Ph.D., and Social Security or some other big agency guarantees her a decent income for life and even more—if the rest of the family dies—should she suddenly fall flat on her face or can only meet things halfway,” and the woman says “Why do you take her out and spend the time with her you do and talk and say you think about her so much if after all of it you still can't put yourself in her place?” “Wait a minute—what did I say? Maybe you're right. I can be a little too hard on people. Let me go to sleep on it, but Christ I'm being straight-out honest when I say I wish she was a more interesting and better-read person and had some intelligent things and few other experiences than her repetitive nonevent bland ones to talk about when we go out,” and next morning, mostly so the woman wouldn't think him a bastard, he says “You were right on the mark about Vera last night. Maybe I'd had too much to drink or something at dinner and it got me mean and angry, but I was being totally insensitive and unfair.” She tries killing herself with aspirins when she's around ten. His mother sees her acting giddy, thinks she drank some liquor from the liquor cabinet, sees the empty aspirin bottle, throws her down, sticks her fingers down her mouth till she throws some of it up, gets her in a cab to a hospital to have her stomach pumped. Later Vera tells her she's never going to try anything like that again. For a day or so she felt sick of her condition and didn't think anyone liked her but her mother and that her father even hated her and that's why she did it. “But getting that tube down my neck was worse than any killing myself could be. They must've thought I wasn't awake, but I never felt anything so painful and disgusting in my life.” A couple of years later she cuts her wrist with a razor blade she got out of her father's razor. Howard's in his room when he hears his mother scream. His brother and father run through the apartment to the upstairs bathroom. He runs too but they tell him to go back to his room and stay there. The cut isn't much and his mother bandages it up. A few weeks later, though his mother told him not to mention any of it around the house and never to Vera, he says to her “Please don't let the folks know I'm talking about this, and if the question bothers you don't answer it, but what did it feel like when you did it to your wrist and what in hell made you do it?” “First of all,” she says, “don't curse. Second of all, doing it hurt very much. When the blood started shooting out I suddenly got scared and couldn't go any deeper. I didn't want to live, that's all the reason was, because I'm sick of the ugly way I look and my body all crooked and that I know it's all only going to get much worse. But all I got from it was a lot of gushy attention I didn't want and a big bawling-out from Dad. I felt so dumb. I'll never try anything like that again. Mom's also said if I kill myself she'll kill herself right after and then haunt me in heaven forever or just crack up in real life and never again be the same.” She's fourteen when she goes to the roof of their building and sits on the edge of it looking down to the street. A man in a window across the street yells “Hey miss, hey miss, what are you doing up there, get down,” and when she turns away from him and just stays there, he calls the police. A policeman comes to the roof and says “Don't worry, I'm not going to get too near you, but what are your parents' names and where do they live?” and she says “They're away for the weekend, my only brother at home's at work, and the woman who's supposed to look in on me went shopping downtown and won't be back till much later today.” He moves nearer and says “Good, that's a nice clear sensible answer, you sound great. Now come on off of there, kid, really, it's no good for you and I don't want to work hours past my duty,” and she says “Step a step closer and I'm sliding myself off. I don't want to live but I don't want to jump right away.” “Why don't you want to live?—go on, tell me, I'll listen,” and she says “Not to you.” “I can understand that; I've got a uniform; you're afraid of it maybe. But will you speak to a minister or rabbi or someone from the clergy like that?” and she says “A priest. I like them best out of all those because they have time only for regular people and
give everything they earn extra to the church and poor.” The street's now blocked, lots of police cars and vans and fire trucks down there, lots of people looking up. Occasionally she hears her name called and a couple of times she thinks she recognizes the voices, but she stops looking down or at the windows across the street, almost all of them with people in them looking at her, and only looks at her hands or the people on her roof or a plane passing or just the plain sky. A priest from a local church comes to the roof and tries urging her down. “You have everything to live for. No matter what our state of mind or physical health, we all do. Think of your dear mother. Your brothers and father I've heard. There is never a good reason to take your own life.” She says “There's no way I'm getting off here except head first to the street, so thanks but no thanks. It's a long climb and you seem to have trouble with your legs like me, so I'm sorry for making you come up.” “Would you instead show your appreciation for what I did and your respect for my age and weak legs by accompanying me to my church where we can talk without being surrounded by all of this?” “No, but if you want to talk, do, so long as it's from safe distance away,” and he says “Fine, I for one don't like heights so if I have to be up here I'm happy where I am,” sits on a parapet separating adjoining roofs, takes a beret out of his jacket pocket and puts it on, “To protect me from the sun; I'm fair-skinned, so subject to its strokes,” and says “Now tell me, my dear, what brought all this on? And take your time and speak loudly, my ears from this far away aren't good and I want to hear every word,” and she talks about her illness and childhood and operations and scars and that she has no friends, only people who feel sorry for her or are paid to do things or be with her, and some people the last two years have almost gagged at their first sight of her and nobody but nobody but her mother truly loves her, but that's all right, why should they? she loves nobody but her in return, and don't tell her God loves her too because she's heard all that, she's visited a priest to speak, maybe from his own church—is his the one a few blocks down between Columbus and Broadway?—and he says no, that's a cathedral, his is farther uptown but he knows the one she means and its very fine head priest—and she says anyway, if he says something about how everyone isn't perfect in life but is in the eyes of the Lord and so on, shell say everyone but her it seems to be like, and she forgot to say she of course doesn't want to hurt her mother but she more than that doesn't want to go on anymore like this which is worse than hurting ten mothers if they were all like hers, and she only wishes, so she could be sure to die and not just get a broken neck or leg, that this building was fifteen stories high instead of five or whatever it is when you count that open areaway her mother calls it you go four steps down into from the street. He listens, tries to reason with her at several points, finally says what looks beyond bearing today can suddenly be thought thoroughly bearable tomorrow and even a gift of sorts because it forced her to reconsider her existence which in the end will give her the essential spiritual subsistence to live, and then they are always devising new cures for everything, medicine is like that these days, the good news about her cure might even be in the mail now to her mother or doctor or being printed this moment on sheets at the newspaper plant so they can all read it later today, so he's sure if she comes downstairs with him she'll look upon this as one of the more capricious events of her junior years but not one to be ashamed of one bit, for she is only questioning deeply and acting fervently and being profoundly human and all that's to be respected and even revered by all well-meaning intelligent men, death is tied to life as she must now see, she has made the connection that most people never make in their entire lives so why rush things, does she understand what he means? gives up after an hour, says it's become too hot for him and he'd feel ridiculous sitting here under an umbrella when there's no rain and besides that he's not well himself, he doesn't want to say with what but part of it is something very personal that most older folk get which now forces him to go downstairs, but if she wants to talk to him some more to have the police phone him, he'll be by his phone the next few hours and will immediately cab over, and if she only wants to talk about other things on this or any other day, simply phone him and he'll come directly to her home just as she is always invited to his. Her brother Alex comes, tells her he called the resort their folks are at but they've gone sightseeing for the day and can't be reached. She doesn't look at him, watches two pigeons nestled under a roof eave across the street, follows the path of a contrail and then stares at it till it disintegrates, every now and then stands on crutches and stretches, ignoring the oohs, ohhs and noes from below. During one of these stretches, when she's watching an enormous orange sun set into the river, a policeman swings to her on a sling hooked up from the next roof behind her, grabs her around the waist and swings back with her to his roof. She cries and kicks, is given an injection, is unconcious by the time she's put into the ambulance, Alex all this time never letting go of her hand. Howard doesn't know how the sling worked. It would have had to be somewhat large and complicated, for safety reasons and because the police knew they only had one shot at it and there couldn't be any mistakes. Wouldn't she have seen it being set up and been wary of it? Maybe she wanted to be saved that way, risky as it was, rather than just giving in and going downstairs on her own. He never asked her. In fact nothing about it was ever mentioned between them. People from the street yelled “yay” and applauded, some shouted “Tarzan and Jane.” He was working as a guest waiter in a summer camp upstate. There was a front-page photograph of her sitting on the roof, legs hanging off it, in both morning tabloids. He learned of the incident when Alex sent him a letter a week later talking about lots of other things but which included about ten lines typed out with