Frog (66 page)

He's on the toilet. Lulu yells from the living room where they sleep “I smell gas. I mean the kitchen kind—no joke—you?” “Yeah, I smelled it too. It's probably one of the oven's pilot lights. I meant to light it but had to rush in here to crap.” He hears her go into the kitchen, light a match, an explosion. He's quickly wiping himself when she rushes into the bathroom, nightgown and hair on fire. “Howard,” she yells and he gets up quickly and wipes himself with the toilet paper he had in his hand and she rushes into the bathroom, hair and nightgown on fire. “No, I understand you meant the stove's gas. I smelled it too but had to come in here to crap. Probably just the oven or stove's pilot light. Wait a second and I'll do it.” Half minute later an explosion. He's still shitting but jumps up, sits down a couple of seconds to finish, is wiping himself quickly with the paper he had bunched in his hand when she yells “Howard” and runs into the bathroom, hair and nightgown on fire. Explosion, “Howard!” he jumps up, sits down to finish shitting, “Wait,” he yells, jumps up, wipes himself quickly with the paper he already had in his hand when she runs in, nightgown and hair on fire. What to do? Fire in the hair seems out. Drops the paper into the toilet, rips at the nightgown till it's off, stamps on the pieces on the floor till the fire's out. “My hair's still on fire.” “No it's not.” Pats it, she screams, he feels around for fire, feels warm but not hot, pushes her head into the shower curtain and smothers her head with it till he's sure the fire's out. She's screaming, her son from his bedroom's screaming—“Stop it, Carl,” he yells; “it's all right; your mommy's going to be all right”—opens the shower curtain so he can see her, fire's definitely out. “What should we do?” he says. Looking at him but not looking at him, mouth open wide trying to scream now it seems but nothing coming out. Wraps her head gently in a towel, more to soothe her that he knows what he's doing than for any known purpose, says “Let's go in the other room,” to get out of the smells of this one and change the scenery for her. Holds her elbow tip and the fingers of her other hand and starts to walk with her; she falls to the floor. Carl's crying from the bathroom door now. “I said go to your room, for Christsakes; don't watch this,” but Carl stays there. He tries to pick her up and she yells “No, it's killing me where you touch.” “Well you can't stay on the floor.” “Sit her on the potty,” Carl says. He flushes the toilet, flushes it several times thinking maybe lots of rushing water sounds will make her feel cooler, puts the seat cover down, “I'm going to sit you here for the time being,” pulls a towel off the shower curtain rod and spreads it over the seat cover. “Got to be careful of infections. Now, I'm going to help you up very gently, very very gently. You're all right. You're just a little burned and it was terrible what you went through but you'll be all right.” She opens her eyes on him, still doesn't seem to see him, smiles at Carl. He lifts her up by two places that don't seem burned, some of the burned nightgown's stuck to her and he'd like to pull it off but thinks some skin would come with it, her head hair stinks, underarm hair where it's been burned, little blisters in some places already forming, she's peeing now but he lets her do it on the floor though he moves his feet and tells Carl to step out of the way, sits her on the seat cover when she's done, says “Does it hurt much?” “Everywhere.” “I don't know what to do for burns,” bending down and wiping up the pee with the towel he used for her head. “Just sit here. Carl, try not to let her fall over. Your son will stay with you, Lu, but don't fall because I doubt he'll be able to stop you. I'll call the police,” and in the kitchen shuts the oven off, dumps the towel in the trash, opens the window all the way, calls, woman gives him the number for an emergency ambulance, calls, man says “Want me to send one right over? Usually gas-oven-fire people don't need us by the time we get there.” “Just a second—Lu, do we want the ambulance to come over or if we have to, should we go to the hospital in a cab?” No answer and he says “Hold it” and runs into the bathroom and repeats the question and she says “I want the hospital, I want the ambulance, what do you think!” Goes back and says “She says she wants to go to the hospital in an ambulance. She's badly burned, acting irrationally. I think she could also go into shock.” “Just if we come we'll have to take her to the hospital or charge you for it if you decide not to go. It's just that sometimes all you need, if you need anything more than over-the-counter remedies by the time we get there, is your own doctor, which we don't drive people to.” “He says are we sure we need to go to the hospital, Lu? He's saying—ambulance man on the phone now is—we could go straight to a doctor by cab.” No answer. “Lulu?—Listen, she's badly hurt, not responding. Only doctor we know of is some pediatrician's name someone gave us in case her son gets sick. And I'm sure we have enough money around or can borrow it to cover the ambulance if that's what it is, so come quick.” They come. He's put a clean sheet around her and his heavy bathrobe over her, got a neighbor to take Carl to nursery school. She stays the night at the hospital. They cut most of her head hair off. He says he likes it, makes her look younger and athletic, that she has a pretty forehead that should have been exposed like this long ago. She says it's the first time since she was four or five that she didn't have long hair and bangs down to her eyes. “What was left of my pubic and underarm hair I shaved off myself since some of the aides here who do it look like your typical New York creeps. I was always too hairy. Now I'll even be hairier when it grows in.” “Won't bother me. Blacker and bushier the better.” They talk about how the accident could have happened. They had a couple over for dinner, smoked some drugs and drank a lot of wine, must have left the oven on, she says. Or one of them turned the oven on when the pilot was out but never used the oven—is that possible? He doesn't see how. “We cooked a meatloaf, baked potatoes and heated the bread in the oven too, if I remember. Also a strudel. To warm.” “Then I don't know how it happened,” she says. “For how could the oven go out if it had been turned on for the meatloaf and the other stuff? And how could the pilot light go out too, since if the oven was turned on and the pilot light was on at the time, the oven would have lit and stayed lit and so the gas wouldn't have accumulated for the explosion. Was the window open?” “No. That was one of the first things I did after the accident—opened it. Even if it had been open, the wind from it wouldn't have blown out the oven flame since the oven door was also closed.” “Maybe there's a draft coming into the oven we don't know of. It's an ancient one, and this is New York—capital of the world—so nothing works.” “Then how?” he says. “How?” “How! Maybe before I went to bed I was so, let's admit it, stoned, that instead of turning the oven off, since it might have already been off, I turned it on thinking I was turning it off, but while the oven pilot light was out. But I was high, not stoned, but stupid and tired as I also was I still could have made that mistake.” “That's it with drugs and booze for me,” she says, “since if I hadn't been so groggy from sleep and all that shit we took, I would have opened the window before I lit the match. I would have in fact shut the gas off and opened the oven door and the window before I lit it, since the way things were the oven was bound to explode.” When she gets home she won't let him raise the blinds during the day or even open them more than a crack. She stays in bed or in an easy chair most of the day, not saying or doing much, mostly just thinking about things, she says, and wanting the room as quiet and dark as he can tolerate it. Whenever he wants to talk about what's disturbing her she says she doesn't want to go into it yet. “If you think it was all my fault what happened, tell me,” and she says best thing now is for him to just shut up. Week after she comes home she says she wants to go back to California. They came to New York so she could take an accelerated course in interior design and get a diploma from it. He says they spent almost all their money getting here, paying the first month's rent and giving a month's security with it, winter clothes for her and Carl, things they couldn't borrow for the apartment, so they can't leave yet. If she's that depressed, which she obviously is—not reading or wanting to see anybody and barely eating and the silent treatment and no sex she's been giving him—well, they can't afford a regular psychiatrist but maybe there's a free or very cheap one, subsidized by the city or some religious organization or something. He was subbing every day in local junior high schools and doing a little art school modeling at night, not making much but keeping them going. No, she wants to go back right away; tomorrow if they can. Impossible, he says. “And you sublet your house for six months.” “I'll tell them it's an emergency—there must be a legal loophole for situations like this—and get them out. Fuck them; they're nice people but I'm sick and a mess and need my house back now and the warmth and good smells and companionship of California. I'll camp out on my front yard if I have to; they'll just have to understand.” She leaves the next day with Carl, will stay with friends till she gets her tenants out. They speak on the phone and write letters and she always says she's eager to see him, Carl misses him so much he's begun to wet his bed again, she doesn't know why he can't pick up and leave right now. Money, he says. He's living cheap, stashing a lot of cash away, replenishing what they lost moving to New York, still looking for someone to take over their apartment lease so they can get back their security. He stays till the end of the school year. When he gets to California she says she's been with someone the last three months, “a beautiful new dude in the area who, maybe because he never saw the originals, doesn't mind my butch cut and hairy cunt”—“I don't either; let me see it; because I told you I'd probably prefer it to the way it was”—“and who I thought I'd stop seeing when you got here but now know I can't and that I'm more than likely more involved with this guy than I am with you. Though if you want, long as you're here and came so far, we can ball one last time.” “Oh why did I waste my fucking time with you? But I'm horny as hell after four months,” so he stays the night, tells Carl the next morning he wishes it wasn't this way and he'll write and call him and send him things and hopes to see him in a few months, flies back to New York, moves in with his folks and stays for two years, helping his mother take care of his father, and driving cabs and posing nude and subbing in junior high schools.

His father comes home from the army. Years later his brother tells him it wasn't the army but prison. But for now it's the army. He's sure there's going to be a celebration tonight though nobody's said there'd be. Maybe they're keeping it from him because it's a surprise one and they're afraid he'll tell it. He wakes up early, thinking his father might have got home late last night, goes to his parents' room, nobody's in it and bed's made, in the kitchen his mother says he should be here by the time Howard comes home for lunch. He leaves the house, tells the boys he walks to school with and his teacher and best friends in class that his father's coming home from the army today, can't wait, he's a major in the dental corps and was stationed in New Mexico, that's way out west, and lies that he was supposed to go to France to fix soldiers' teeth, but then the war started to end there and they pulled him off the troopship. He runs home for lunch, hears them arguing through the front door, arguing as he goes into the apartment, “Dad, Dad, it's me, Howard,” he says from the foyer, they're arguing in the kitchen. “Eat shit then,” his father says. “You should talk. And really, just wonderful words to wait so long for.” They see him. “Howard, my darling little child, how are you?” and he gets down in a crouch and Howard runs into his arms and is picked up and kissed. “Whew, you've become such a load.” His mother's been crying, he sees from up there, looks angry, fists clenched. He says “How was the army?” and his father says “The army was fine, just what I needed for a year and a half, much as I missed you all. How have you been—a good boy?” “Did you ever get overseas?” “No, they kept me in Albuquerque the whole time. That's in New Mexico, near the real Mexico but still America.” “I know; I saw it on the map. Mom showed me it around all the mountains. Were there Indians and wild horses there? That's what some people said there might be. And how come you have no uniform on? Did you hang it up? You don't have to wear it when you're home?” “Wait, hold it,” putting him down. “One question at a time. No uniform because I've been discharged. That means I'm out of the army, home for good. And it was always on loan—not yours—so I had to give it back. If I didn't I'd be arrested. And Indians and horses? Not so many Indians; plenty of horses.” “Did you bring me any army patches?” “Was I supposed to? Don't worry, I know who to send to and I'll try and get some.” “Did you ride the horses?” “Never had time. Work work work, teeth and more teeth, and they were short dentists. But lots of mountains, lots of deserts, lots of springs.” “What are they?” “Springs. Water coming out of them, gushing or bubbling. They were lucky to have so many for New Mexico needs all the water it can get. So does the whole West, I think.” “Did you bring me anything from there? An Indian bracelet like I wrote you?” “All that's still in my luggage. When it gets here I'll have lots of gifts for you and all my darling kids. Now eat your lunch. I think that's what your mother put on the table.” He eats. They leave the kitchen, shut the door and start arguing in the foyer. She tells him to go back where he came from and stay there, for all she cares. His father says any place would be better than here. “But what I want to know is why you have to act like that?” “Like what?” “Like a filthy rotten conniving bitch.” “You pig, you swine…” If his father left would he want to go with him or stay with his mother? Depends who Alex would go with. But if his father went back to New Mexico and took him he could learn to ride all those horses, there'd be all that country, he could shoot guns and climb mountains and slide down parts of them, maybe make friends with an Indian his age. His father was only in the army there though, so he wouldn't move back now that he's discharged. But suppose his parents broke up and his father only moved to another part of the city and wanted him to come along, what would he do? He doesn't know. Then suppose a judge, like in some movie he saw, said choose who you want to live with, your mother or your dad, what would he do? He couldn't live without his mother. He'd hate not living with his father, and without Alex and Vera if they chose to go with his father, but he'd just have to settle for seeing them all as much as he could. Does that mean he loves his mother more than his father? He can't answer. He doesn't want to think about it. If he got that far as to say he knows who he loves better, he knows he'd be struck down dead by something or for his whole life after that seriously cursed.