Frog (80 page)

it's probably just his thinking it is tonight, but tomorrow he won't think that, she assures him, or at least not to the degree of tonight, and the day after hell think even less than like tonight, and he says maybe she's right, maybe he's wrong, she's got a good point, he usually makes things seem worse off than they are, so thanks, and now he also wants to say that if she ever changes her mind he'd certainly like to see her again and yes, if it resulted in it then to end up in bed with her anytime in the future she'd like, so if she ever reconsiders, though he knows what her feeling now is about it, give him a call, and she says did she hear right? yes she heard right, well she's going to tell him something now also, but something insulting but she also hopes constructive—if it keeps him from contacting her again that'll be constructive enough—and this will also be the last words she hopes to ever say to him, unless he's going to be one of those annoying-type schmos where she'll be forced to get an unlisted new phone number, and that's that an idiot—is he still listening or has he hung up? and he says go on, shoot—an idiot is someone who's never going to learn anything in life and, she wants to add, not because he's unwilling to either, and before he can say does she mean him? she hangs up. They never speak to each other again, he never bumps into her, sees her on the street, nothing like that, or meet any of her friends or hear anything about her till four years later, on a Broadway bus heading uptown, a woman waves to him from a seat when he's walking up the aisle, he stops, says hello, she says doesn't he remember her? he says he thinks he does but forgets from where, she says she's Aluthea, Carrie's best friend when he was going out with her a few years ago—she was in fact at the same party he met Carrie at—remember? she went out with his crazy friend Bernie for a while till she found out how crazy he was, and he says oh yeah, he remembers, asks how she is, then how Carrie is and she says Carrie's married, living upstate, on something like a farm, her husband has lots of money and bought it, and he says that's nice, he's married too and not only that his wife's two months away from having their first baby—a girl, though they weren't supposed to know but the obstetrician's nurse blabbed the results of the test—vindictively, they're pretty sure of, but that's over and done with and asks if he can sit and sits next to her and says is Carrie anything like that?—a baby, maybe two by now, even if it seemed she didn't want to get married or have kids for about ten years—her education and art, she used to say, and she says her art's not as important to her anymore and she'd like to get pregnant but hasn't been able to, and he says well, they'll go, if they haven't already done so, for pregnancy tests, and maybe a tube will have to be blown through with air or whatever the process is, or fertility pills, though one has to watch out with those because you can wind up with triplets, and she says oh no, her doctor says that as a couple they'll never be able to have children, that she's simply unable to because of some incorrectible malfuction with her ovaries—not even an implant's possible, it'll just reject, all of which has devastated her for she's been saying there's nothing she wants more than to have a baby, and he says he's sorry, it must be a hard thing to accept for somone so young, and hard for her husband also, and thinks how strange, for if anyone was built to have a kid and then nurse it, it was she, which was probably mostly what attracted him to her, her large tall shapely body, perfect but just bigger in every way, and she says it's been a lot more than hard for her—she's become a wreck over it, principally because her husband doesn't want to adopt a child, he only wants to have a natural one, and he says an adopted one is natural but he of course realizes what she means and doesn't know what he'd do if he were in the husband's position but hopes they can work themselves out of the dilemma, and then his stop comes and he sees someone's rung for it and he says good-bye and hopes they'll see each other on the bus again sometime and to give his best to Carrie and walks home feeling bad for her but doesn't say anything to his wife about meeting the woman on the bus and has never told her about that time in the bar. To her, Carrie's just someone he saw one day a week for a while till she gave him crabs or a short time after that and the last person he slept with, though months earlier, before he met her. He's thought of the sobbing scene lots of times since it happened, not for a while though till he bumped into Aluthea, and never could come up with what precisely brought it on and then kept it going for so long, since he doesn't think he ever sobbed longer as an adult, and was always ashamed of it and glad he never met Carrie again. He wonders if Aluthea recalled the sobbing scene, since she must have known about it from Carrie, and if anytime while she was talking to him she thought of him peculiarly. Anyway, the culminating explanation—that her dropping him so unexpectedly came after so many other women had dropped him or had refused to go out with him when he heard about them from a friend and called or met them at a party and asked and by someone he thought would be the last to do it—she in fact had said several times that if anyone dropped anyone it'd be he—probably comes as close to why it happened as anything he can think of. Thinks why again. Yep, that's about the best he can come up with. Sobs when his second daughter comes out but not as hard as he did with the first. “Wow,” the obstetrician says while she's stitching up Denise, “I never saw a man react so emotionally to the delivery of his child.” “You forget what he was like when Olivia was born—much much worse,” Denise says she said when she later told him what the doctor had said, for he was sobbing too loudly and ferociously to hear either of them.

His brother comes back, walks through the door, says “So Howie, how are you, how's it going, what've you been up to?” “Alex, what is this? you gotta be kidding,” pinches himself, slaps his face, “Still gotta be a dream,” bites the inside of his cheeks, shuts his eyes for a few seconds, then says “It isn't, you haven't gone away, I still don't believe it but I'm gonna make the most of it,” rushes over to him, hugs him, kisses his shoulders, keeps his arm around him while he yells “Denise, Olivia, Eva, the babysitter, hurry in here, meet someone you've never met before, my brudder Alex, lost at sea years ago, thirty years, in ten it would've been forty, in twenty it would've been fifty, thirty: sixty, and by then I'd be an old man but still I'm sure mourning several nights a year my dear lost brudder, crying some days too—jeez am I glad to see you, meet the family,” and points to the staircase when he hears someone coming down, it's Eva, says “Babysitter's gone home, Mommy told me to tell you… who's this?” and he says “My brudder—
brother,”
“But I know your brother—Uncle Jerry, and this isn't him,” “This is my other brother, the one I've talked so much about—you know, on a ship, lost at sea, terrific storms in the ocean, the North Atlantic to be specific, ship probably split apart or by some fluke rolled over by the waves, life buoy washed up on the Irish coast, only thing of the ship ever found that they knew belonged to it, we thought him dead, sweetheart, but here the guy is—ask him something, tell him to say where he's been all these years and how he got here and that he's your uncle, my and Uncle Jerry's brother, your grandmother's middle son—God am I happy, and we got to call her up quick,” and runs to the phone, dials, woman answers, he says “Is this LaDonna or Sojourner?,” “Sojourner,” she says, “Well hi, this is Howard, Pauline's youngest son, a fabulous practically unbelievable thing's just happened, get me my mother quick,” and she says “She's napping—should I wake her?” and Alex's waving his hand no, and Howard says “One second please” into the phone and covers the mouthpiece and Alex says “I don't think we should spring it on her like this—the shock of it,” and Howard says to Sojourner “No, tell her I called and will call back later and don't mention anything about the fantastic or unbelievable part of why I called—how is she, by the way?” and she says “As well as can be expected—you know, we took a walk down and back the block today—it tired her out—and not eating very much but not because she has no appetite—she only wants to stay slim, she says—she's quite a vain woman—while I tell her good eating shows good health and good looks, and she still won't listen when I say not to smoke so much—she says she's not inhaling but I see it—and also not to drink before she retires at night—scotch for sure not, but not even water, for it gets her up to void and if I'm not by her side right away she tries for the potty herself and sometimes falls,” and he says “Thanks, thanks for everything—I'll call,” and hangs up and says “Oh boy, Mom's in lousy shape, and of course Vera and Dad died,” “No, I didn't know but by now expected as much,” “Yeah, you were lucky not being here—both eroded so slowly—and also lucky in a way with Mom, avoiding the quick slide this time, but then there's all you kissed—missed—but see what he did before, Eva, about my not waking Grandma up?—he was almost all the time right, this brudder of mine, your uncle—Christ, what would I have done not having him around when I was growing up? and Christ, what I would've done if he hadn't disappeared—I was only twenty-four, hardly on my way, and he was my best friend and the serious drinking I fell into—really, why the thirty-year silence, Alex, unless the details are too disquieting for witty-kiddy ears?”—“Do you mean me?” Eva says and he says “No, I meant cats, it's an expression, ‘Here, kitty-witty, nicht disquiet bischen ears,' but one that's probably too far in the past for you to understand, like ‘the bum's rush' is for me, which was Dad's—remember, Alex? and do you know if it meant fast and if fast then fast as you run away from the bum or fast as the bum rushes away after he puts the touch on you? another expression of his—'Don't put the touch on me in front of people,' when we wanted a dime for a comic book and saw the best opportunity to get it—a dime then, sweetheart, think of it,” “What's a dime or a comic book?” and Alex says “Before we talk about my long silence, let me tell you your Eva's a doll—what I've missed and not kissed not being around from the time she was born—if you want, come and give your unc a juicy squeeze, my beautiful niece,” and opens his arms and she shrinks from him, runs behind Howard and holds onto his legs while looking through them at Alex, when Olivia comes down, arms loaded with books, “I heard from upstairs but had to get these first—Alexander, your brother, impossible and you know it, Dada—a person can't swim up again after thirty years below and say ‘Hi, I'm alive,' and spit some water out that might be gagging him”—Eva's laughing—“Oh, they can pump water out of some drowned persons when they haven't drowned for very long and make them breathe again, and sometimes even after an hour if they've been in very cold water, with ice floating on top and snow in the trees, because it lowers the body temperature and heartbeat and I don't know how but you're saved—I read that in one of my Nancy Drew books,” and drops the books on the floor and starts looking through them—“I can't find which one it's in so you'll have to trust me—so who is he, Dada, a friend of yours impersonating your brother to trick us for some reason?—maybe it'll fool Eva but not me,” and she sits on the couch with the books on her lap and starts reading, and he says “Olivia, show some respect—it's your uncle, my brother, this is a miracle till explained otherwise—even if you don't fall for it because you think you're so smart and have better things to do at the moment, please get up and kiss him,” and she slams the book down—“If you make me lose my place!”—and goes over to Alex and puts her cheek out and looks pained, he closes his eyes and kisses her, looks content, says “Ah, another honeypot you got, you apotheosized kid, and with such a smooth cheek too”—“That's because she hasn't shaved yet”—Olivia clenches her eyes tight and hands into fists—“Only kidding, my sweetie—for some reason, Alex, she's never going to shave-only kidding, my sweetie, but by now you know me, though Alex doesn't—he stopped dead with me at twenty-four: easy with the jokes, not so with the other things,” caresses her face, she looks up at him and pops him a kiss, “Oh this gal's bright, good, sensitive, imaginative, creative—sounds like a college reference I'm giving but she's gonna be the artist in the family—compared to her we're has-beens who never were, unless you've done something startling and long-lasting under another name since we last heard from you and it can be converted,” and Alex says “Don't worry, all the material you've probably used about me the past thirty years is still valid and not dated, if it was done well,” and he says “Me?—strictly fiction; only non-fict I've writ was called Why I Don't Write It,' which proved its point by reading unbeingable and where no magazine asked me for one again, but let's start unraveling the snarl as to where you've been so long and why all this time you didn't clue us in, but darn, here's Denise—just when I thought I'd get an answer from you—though wish you'd met her previous to her present condition—she had such lively eyes, like the sea,” and she comes downstairs slowly—“Howard?,” “I'm here, dear, just a few steps farther,” “How many?,” “Seven, not counting the floor”—clutching the rail with both hands, foot edging to the end of each step before going over and dipping to the next one till she nudges it, then, toe poised over a step: “I can't make it this way—I'm scared I'll fall,” and he says “Just five more steps not counting the floor—for Alex,” and she starts to cry, Alex says “Go to her,” he says “No no, this'll help—I want her to learn how to do it or else we'll have to sell this place at a loss to buy a ranch house,” “You can move her to the first floor,” “I want to be with my wife in our bedroom upstairs—I'm a beast: I need my warmth, her smells, my sex and her breasts,” she gets on her knees and crawls down the steps backwards, holding onto the balusters, stands at the bottom, “Watch when she smiles,” he whispers to Alex, “nobody has one like her—it lights up blown bulbs even when they're not in the sockets, and if they are, even when the lamp's unplugged—our whole globe could run for a year on the electricity her smile gives off, our sun is a dark dewdrop in a deep cave at the peak of the Ice Age by comparison, our solar system could spin another min with a single glint of that facial detonation and if she had her old eyes back, for days,” she grabs a cane off the bottom of the banister, “Where are you fellas?,” “Over here,” Howard says, “up two, down three and then weave around another staircase,” and she faces them and says “Alex, what a delight finally to meet you and especially when we thought you'd perished, and what a change your being here will have on Howard and in turn on the children and me—you're the chief reason he sleeps so feistily at night and acts like a caffeine neurotic during most of the day,” and she pokes the cane in front of her hitting a bunch of things and then getting the tip caught under the rug—“I can't use this rotten stick,” she shouts, holding it above her as if she's going to throw it, “it's for cripples, not blinds,” “Oh oh,” Howard says, “now we'll never see her smile or not much of one—anyone got a match or flashlight?,” “Go to her,” Alex says, “stop pitching for laughs,” and he says “No no, believe me I'm doing the right thing—she's got to learn to walk with it or else she'll stay in her room under the covers all day be it this place or a ranch house, and then why would I disrupt my life to give up this great place at a big loss to buy an overpriced ugly ranch house besides sticking the kids with new playmates and a different school?,” “Because she's your wife and their mother and you're supposed to help, support and etcetera her,” “Listen, happy as I am to see you—giddy's the word, rapt, ecstatic, beside myself, though I don't entirely show it—and much as I've missed you—agonizingly's how I'd put it, heartstrickenly, sickenly—you can't come back after thirty years and second or third thing—Olivia, have you been counting? for she's the math whiz here,” but she doesn't look up from her book—“tell me how to ruin my life—run it, I mean, ream it, wreck it, rot it, rue it,” “I can advise you when you're being a little too cruel where it hurts—you always had that streak in you but I thought by this time you'd have muzzled or domesticated most of it,” “And if I always had that then you've always had the ability not to clam up or mind your own bizwax,” “That can't be constituted an ability, even if I were a clam,” “The know-how, know-too-much, know-it-all-how-do-I-tell-my-schmucky-bro-how-to-conduct-his-life, and knack's the word I meant, skill, trick, touch—but I have to live with her and have lived with her and in her absence do most of the things for the house and kids-shopping, mopping, slopping—nobody ever thinks of that, rarely, let's face it, unfairly, so why don't you just wise up or get lost?,” “You said it, I didn't,” and Alex goes over to Denise, takes the cane from her and puts it back on the banister, kisses her hands and leads her to the couch and sits her beside Olivia, squeezes in between them, whispers something into her ear, she slaps her thigh and smiles (she never did both at the same time with me, Howard thinks, or one after the other; thinks again: no, never, far as he can think back), the houselights go on when anyone who could have turned them on is in the living room several feet from the nearest light switch, and even if that person could have reached a light switch it wouldn't have turned on all the lights on the first floor and in the stairwell and on the porch right outside the front door, Alex whispers something to her again and she smiles and slaps her thigh at the same time: air conditioners, radios and television upstairs, washer, dryer, humidifier and probably all the lights downstairs, toaster, dishwasher, food processor, juice squeezer, kitchen radio, stove light and fan, “Stop smiling,” he shouts, “and Alex, stop whispering funny things to her—with so much power on at once we're bound to blow a fuse,” Eva sits on Alex's lap and kisses his hand, Olivia kisses his other hand and then puts his arm around her shoulder while she reads, “This is what I was most afraid of if you ever did come back,” Howard says, “not only that you'd outshine me intellectually and perceptively and with general all-around sensibleness but that you'd outdo me as a writer with the work you came back with or were now working on, show me up in front of my kids with your gentleness and equanimity and all the rest of those things, make my wife enjoy herself twice as much in your company than mine—three times, four, five, jack up the utility bill in my house where I couldn't afford paying it, and start a kissing-hand habit in my family and maybe eventually on our street and in the neighborhood when before my family was doing just fine kissing one another on the cheek and head and lips and as neighbors we were doing fine also with a mere nod or hello-well, go on then, she's much better off with almost anyone but me, and maybe the kids ditto, and if she stays in the family with you, even better, since I'll get to see her at functions and such from time to time and also my kids,” and he stamps out of the house, hoping Denise will call him back and the kids will run after him and Alex will say he's sorry and what does Howard mean and maybe something stupid besides, juvenile, injudicious, senseless, obscene, all the interior and porch lights of the other houses suddenly go on at once when the sun's straight up or an hour to the side left or right but bright, through the living room window sees his girls, turned around now with their knees probably on the cushions and their elbows on top of the couch's back—Alex and