Frog (82 page)

living costs out there till I was able to get a job, and so on, even the regular postman knew, Mrs. G. at her bakery down the block, Morris the candy store man, most of the butchers at Gristede's, I became a dental hygienist thanks to Dad who heartbroken when none of his boys became dentists settled on the next best thing for me, married a vet who specializes in farm animal teeth and gums and help him run his practice, because of all the different treatments and operations I had when I was a girl I couldn't have any children that weren't stillborn, I'm a doting aunt to several of Ted's nieces and nephews and less so, since I never saw them as much, to Jerry's kids and now even their kids, do you finally believe me or do you want to phone Jerry or Mom for proof?—you once complained that my painting by numbers was for morons and bought me a real paint set and canvases I felt too unequal to to ever use, you once took me to Janine's Christian Science practitioner because you thought as long as nothing else was working maybe that would, you once, because of the red-and-black plaid flannel shirt I took from your drawer and wore—,” “What made you come see me now?” “Why put it off longer? why not have done it sooner? one time I was all set to fly in to tell you when I got a bad flu and then changed my mind, what you don't know will hurt you? what you do know might kill you? why bring up old bilge or why not work it out before you're dead? for you might get hit by a falling brick tomorrow like I heard happens in the city or one in some punk's hand and then I'd always be sorry we didn't talk of it, or I could find I've had another kind of cancer for years and go in three days flat, so who knows? reasons for doing can be just as good for not, Ted said do and don't, Jerry said don't and do, Mom said ‘What's best for you, what's best for you both,' Dad said to clam it since knowing you'd been duped for so long might give you even more reason for doing me in, Alex never said since he was drowned or his ship blew up or something before I told anyone, but now you say he's kicking, good, I want to reunion with him too, for one thing to explain why I stole his ship fare from his drawer which stopped his round-the-world trip for half a year which I guess ended up with him getting on a different one coming home that now never went down or did but without him—I liked having him around, didn't want to see him go or me be the last child at home, but mind if I use your bathroom?—tiny bladders run in our family—remember Mom dashing in from the street and leaving a pee line on the floor?” and he points the way, says “What am I saying, I mean doing, for it's not as if I see you every day?—oh Jesus, Vera, this is more than I can say, both of you back the same day,” kisses her hands, says “I feel so bad what I put you though starting from that time in your room, I also want you to meet Denise and our girls, they're going to love having a blood sister-in-law and aunt from me—Denise is an only child and all of what would have been her relatives right down to the last second cousin were murdered or worked or frozen or starved to death during World War II, and also please, whatever you do, don't tell my kids what I did to you—no threats but I will feel rotten if they find out,” and puts his arms around her and kisses her head, she says “You still retract like you used to because of the ugly scar down my back—for my sake try to get used to it if you're going to hug me,” and he says “I always thought I did it in a way where you didn't notice, I'm sorry, and go to the bathroom, you're jumping around as if you have to,” and she goes in, shuts the door, turns the faucet on, “Just like Mom,” he says, “with the water going, so nobody will hear,” “You say something?,” “The faucet—Mom—I don't think I spoke about this with anyone in the family—used to even turn it on to teach us how to pee in the bowl—she thought the sound of it, which still gives me the urge to go if I'm in the john or at the kitchen sink and the water's on,” phone rings, “It's Dad,” he says, “has to be, the triumveral—which lots of people must have already coined—return, or march,” and picks up the phone and says hello, “Will you accept a collect call from Simon Tetch?” a woman says, “Sure, put him on, I won't even ask how he's there, since I saw him right before my eyes die—no going-out-of-the-room-at-the-last-moment on my part—and then a day later get buried, and his body I saw at the funeral,” “Howard,” a voice like his father's says, “how's my boy, and good to hear you, and how I got back I'll level with you straight off—I wasn't dead or faking, just some look- and feelalike coma that even had the doctors and morticians fooled, and then I pushed and crawled out of the box and above ground like I've pushed and crawled out of every spot I've been in, whole and better and a lot smarter and tougher from it and ending up standing on two feet but this time in need of a little cleaning,” “And this was when—yesterday or the day before after almost twenty years—how was the food down there?,” “It was some time ago—you figure it out, you're the one who was always making with the plots and angles and complications, and you probably still are, if I know you, only because you couldn't turn up anything better to do—but I'm here and that should be enough,” “You know, reasons have to satisfy me logically, plausibly—,” “Oh plausibly, with your flossy words, well I got them too: abomination, ridicule,” “All I'm saying is your explanation doesn't quite make it, but I'm glad you called,” “Good, since my life's much easier when you're not being a wise guy, and listen, I'm sorry for the reverse charges, which shouldn't stand you much as I'll be brief, but I'm at a booth and had no change on me,” “No problem, glad it didn't stop you from calling, and let's face it, Dad—do you think I can say this?—you were never one much for making calls from pay phones if you first couldn't tell the operator you lost your coin in the slot or got the wrong number, or even from the one at home, so maybe it is you on the phone,” “Why you being so sarcastic? and it was you who was always the big sport with our phone—calling pals in California—that homely stringbean and her kid you once lived with out there—but you never picked up the tab for it, never even asked to see the phone bill,” “I used to leave a couple bucks by the phone if I made a long-distance call and with a note saying for my California call at such and such a time, and I called from home because I was living there then, helping Mom take care of you, which was a promise I made her and OK, I wanted to do it too, and if I went out to call it would have cost me twice as much because of I don't know what implausible justifications the phone company gave—operator assistance for a while, but when I could dial direct from a pay phone if I put in the right change after a recorded voice told me how much?,” “You never understood even with the local calls that it's extra charges after the first three minutes, and that piled up into big phone bills, but did you put money down for those?,” “So the phone bill was a few extra bucks a month because of me, so what?—you knew you were never going to see your last buck and you had a free nurse's aide in me minus my room and board,” “I wasn't made of money is what I'm saying,” “And I'm saying you had enough dough stashed away to take care of the little extra a month on the phone bills, and I'll pay you back everything you still think I owe you for those calls, with interest and interest on the interest, for I've money, a regular job, not a tremendous salary but enough to get you back every last red cent of it,” “Forget it, it's over and done with and I don't want to be petty, but you used to make me mad with that business and other things—my liquor, for instance, swilling it like a dozen drunken Irishmen at a wake but did you once bring a bottle home?,” “Sure I did, probably more than I drank, booze for Mom, booze for me, wine, cordials, beer, soda when I was drinking brandy and soda,” “When, if you didn't keep it in your room?—you never brought and you drank too much and the best stuff I had too, the scotch and my one bottle of rare Crown Royal I was saving for special occasions, and then you watered the bottles, don't tell me, ruining the liquor for me when I was finally able to have my one shot a month,” “While you're at it why not bring up the refrigerator—,” “Just tell me first, did you water my Crown Royal?,” “Yeah, I don't know, I might have watered a bottle or two of something—it was late and I was probably exhausted but couldn't sleep or just keyed up from having taken care of you and needed a drink—one of your big fecal spills, for instance, which I'm not blaming you for—and I'd run out of my own booze and Mom's was empty too and I thought you might be checking the bottle level the next day, but if I took an inch of it it was a lot,” “Three or four inches, if I remember, and not because I measured and checked it but because of its taste, but what about the refrigerator you started mentioning before—how you used to stand in front of the open door all day?,” “That too, but I was thinking about your complaints of how much I ate,” “You nearly ate us out of house and home, but you were fidgety from taking care of me maybe, which led to all your overeating, so like you I shouldn't blame you there, but with the open door you acted as if we had lots of stock in Con Ed—you also acted as if the refrigerator bulb and the food spoiling inside were replaceable for free,” “Then you should have got a see-through refrigerator door, for how else could I have seen what was inside?,” “You could have come to it the way I did, with an idea what you wanted to eat and what was inside,” “Mom was constantly buying different foods, so I didn't know what was inside,” “And you were constantly eating but I don't think buying it,” “You wanted me to set aside a special little section of the refrigerator for myself with just the food I bought?,” “I wanted you, since you weren't shelling out for your own upkeep outside, to contribute something to the house—food, alcohol or money—for no matter how little you earned with your sub work at school you always still could have given in a small cut,” “What about how much you were saving on nursing care with me and Mom?,” “Listen, with my own mother—my father I couldn't do it for because he just keeled over one day and died—but with her when she was sick I paid for round-the-clock nurses in the hospital and then a live-in one for her at home till she died,” “You were such a good son—that's what you liked to stress—and what lousy sons we were, or just me,” “Not lousy, you just always thought you knew better than me so never did anything I asked, and you also never chipped in a dime to the house,” “You became a dentist early and made much more than I,” “I was paying half my parents' living costs when I was working two jobs while going to dental school, but it could be I had more incentive than you kids, coming from a background where we had almost nothing,” “You went into everything else, why not my Gentile girlfriends next?,” “I'll go into them—which ones?—you had so many, one uglier and skinnier than the next, and you lived with some, you brought them to the house for dinner so we had to entertain them no less, one Kraut you even had stay a week and don't let's forget again that especially ugly stringbean one and her kid you lived with at the house for a few months,” “A couple of weeks—we were supposed to for a few months, while she went to some accelerated interior design school, but it was obviously upsetting you and in turn Mom and us, so we moved out, and I did ask your permission first—you forget that or just don't want to remember—I called from California and wrote and in both the call and your letter back you said though you don't entirely approve of the arrangement, you gave your permission,” “I never gave anything, your mother must have even though I told her not to,” “And that Kraut for a week was a Dane I met there whose parents put me up for a while, and she was a friend, that's all—we had similar interests in art and literature and looking at cathedrals and so on—and we slept in different rooms in her home and ours,” “Oh, you were shtupping her, don't tell me—you thought you had a shlong ten feet long that had to be used every night or it would become standard size—well then you should have used it in your own home—I hated all your Gentile girlfriends, there was never anything to them, no looks or brains, with probably tight anti-Semites for parents if they had any money—you were throwing yourself away on them just to get laid,” “You liked them well enough when they were around, and they were always pleasant to you, much more than you rated, seeing what you thought of them—Janine, for example—she made you laugh, held your hand when she talked to you sometimes, treated you with plenty of respect, and if you thought she was ugly and skinny then you have less of an eye for beauty than I ever thought, for weren't you always boasting you married one? or maybe you only started keeping your glasses filthy when I met her,” “I forget this Janine, most of them looked like the next one, maybe there was an exception some place, but rich, beautiful and Jewish is what I'm saying I wanted for you and you should have too and could have got, for if they have everything a Gentile girl does but also's Jewish, what's so wrong with it?—fewer problems, for one thing, because you're mostly from the same
background so understand each other from the beginning, and Jewish girls are as sexy as any—more so most times—maybe it's in the religion or what's not in it or what they learn at home—to give a man who gives them a good life everything he wants—and you had the looks, height and brains to get one but you never took advantage of it—then you lost your hair like me—I told you you would—but not like me you didn't have any money to make up for it, and you were drinking too much and not taking care of yourself in other ways—clothes, even though I said if you were interested in a Jewish girl I'd buy you an entire wardrobe to date her—your beard sometimes, other times a mustache—nobody even knew who you were because of these quick-change acts with your face—and your old sneakers, no socks with them sometimes, you were getting to look like a street rummy with all of this, so then why would they want you?,” “I still had a youthful face—it's genetic, from Mom's side—and I didn't shrink or lose as much hair as you at a comparable age or my brains, but I didn't happen to meet a Jewish girl I liked then, maybe just circumstance,” “You didn't meet them because you didn't want to have anything to do with them—they were Jewish, so not as good as far as you were concerned—no small features, stick legs, no invisible nose or breasts—Jewish was trafe for some smart-aleck reason—you only wanted Gentile because they were different from what the rest of our families had and you could shove them into my face because you knew I hated it—consider yourself lucky one didn't foul you up for good by getting a baby from you and making you pay through the nose for it,” “How do you know one didn't?,” “First of all you had no money for payments to her if she did,” “I'm only talking about the baby part,” “That's just what they'd do—out of marriage, even when living with their own husbands but from someone else, and right after she screwed with you she'd screw with him and then with both of them smoking a cigarette after she'd tell him she's pregnant by you and he'd come with a gun after your head, but don't even insinuate to me you and one woman did, I don't want to hear it not even as a joke, because if it's true then you're finished in my eyes and because of your cavalier attitude to it, in the world's,” “No, I'm sorry, it never happened, probably I was lucky, and now I'm married and have two wonderful girls and my wife couldn't be nicer, and she's Jewish, what do you know? though it had nothing to do with it—I just, well, met her, and she turned out to be that—in fact when I first saw her I thought she wasn't,” “And it made you more attracted to her,” “No, I was just attracted to her, Jewish or not—the smile, the face and hair, from across the room without her even saying or even looking at me, and her body,” “A full body, what I've been talking about, one you can grab and that fills out a dress,” “Some women I knew had full bodies,” “You've had them all, I know—big, skinny, one with all legs, another with all neck, you said like a swan's, I said like a beer bottle—long hair another one had down to the floor and what a mess, one with hair like a marine recruit,” “That's because it was burned in a fire and had to be cut short,” “Blacks, whites, mostly WASP but a few Chinese thrown in,” “She was Philippine,” “Short and squat, like a baseball catcher, not to mention that greasy thick hair, though if I had my choice I'd take them over the blacks—you made me sick with what you did, but you at least showed the common sense for once not to bring the black to our house,” “I didn't want to humiliate her,” “And us?,” “I didn't want to tamper with your sensibilities either, though I doubt Mom would have minded—the woman was a very well respected modern dancer, had advanced degrees in other fields and came from a fine professional home,” “So why didn't you marry her if she was that good?,” “She was too rigid sometimes, maybe we were both too self-conscious about our being together and the remarks and stares we got, I found her dull a lot and didn't love her though she said she did me, so that was why we broke up—I don't know for sure but I'm glad we did because of what I eventually got,” “A sick woman,” “When I married her she wasn't, but you'd leave her because she got a disease?—that's not what Mom did with you,” “We were already thirty-five years married—with yours I would have found out better before I married that she was sick,” “There weren't any signs,” “Did you look hard enough, did you notice?—you just saw the great body and face and pretty blond hair and wanted to stick what you thought was your big prick in and she'd be impressed, and then you got hooked like all schnooks do with simply having a chunk of pussy always around for them and said ‘May I?' or ‘Would she?' and of course she does for by then she's over thirty and maybe knows she's got a little illness and getting worse and will probably need lots of taking care of later and her folks can't live forever and besides all that you finally landed a decent job and dressing better and so forth,” “I was dressing just as badly, maybe better footwear because I discovered sneakers made my feet ache when I walked in them a lot and also now underpants and socks—I could afford them,” “Anyone could afford them, you were just too much of a slob to wear them—pissing the last few drops into your trousers, you didn't notice but I did, the stains—anyway, I'm saying she was no dope, she knew that no matter how sick she was to become you were the kind of guy—you probably even bragged about it—to stick with her for life, which is all to the good but bad for you,” “How so if I'm helping her? and let me tell you that sometimes I'm not such a nice guy about it too,” “Maybe because you sensed something wasn't to Hoyle, because to throw away the rest of your life on someone who might have fooled you into thinking she was well when you met her or popped the question?,” “That's not it at all, but you left out dentistry—just want to remind you,” “What about it—I loved the field, yanking out stubborn teeth, fixing the ones that stayed, measuring and then finishing off the plates to perfection and people walking around with them in and complimenting me on how good they fit, besides all the money and the kibitzers who were always dropping in,” “I'm referring to my not going into it,” “You're proud of it, so you bring it up, but you broke my heart when you stopped taking the sciences in college—you had the personality like me for dentistry—outgoing, unassuming, a boy from the boys—you could have shared my office half time and done what you wanted the other half—write, painted, taken the piano—or we could have had two offices between us and once I retired and you bought me out you would have owned them both—one in the Chrysler building which I always wanted—imagine, that tall a place and so important in architecture, which you must have liked, and up till the last time I checked not a single dentist in it,” “I was terrible in the sciences,” “You could have ignored that you knew I wanted it so much and tried harder and passed and then forgotten them when you got into dental school because you don't need them there, once in it's all practical stuff—in fact you can still go back to college, get all the predental subjects out of the way in a year and then go to dental school, people have done it this late in their lives—that famous peaceful man who studied medicine in his forties, then went to Africa with his degree and I think his organ but unlike that guy, since he only wanted to be away from the world, you could make lots of money, take that tiny house of yours and triple it in size, or buy a new one, a ranch house so your wife doesn't have to walk up the steps and fall down them like in the one now, or a city and country one both, two cars instead of one, garages in the house for when it snows and to keep them from being swiped off the street, drive to your office and garage your car there too, and your girls could have their own ponies, not just dolls of ones, and go to the best of private schools, and you want to go on vacation you get another dentist to cover your practice, like you do for him, and off you go for a month with your wife and a special nurse for her if you want and a nanny to stay with the kids at home, and round-the-clock nurses all the time for her at home if it ever gets that bad, for who else is going to do it and now you haven't the means,” “Me, I will, I teach college so I've time, also because I don't want nurses around and no nannies for the kids, I want us to bring them up ourselves, I don't even like a housekeeper in the house for more than a few hours a week—just to clean up in a way I can't, spots or clumps of dust I never see—I like my quietness, nobody around but the family or at least for extended stays, and if we have to move to a ranch house, which is what, the one-floor family house? then we'll do it since I make enough to live OK, but I don't want my girls spoiled with too many things they don't need, trunks stuffed with dolls, closets with party dresses and dressers with sweaters and hose, certainly not private schools at so early an age unless there are killers or idiot teachers in the public ones they're assigned to, and nothing to do with ponies or any of the horsey-set pets, just what I need are pony turds all over my yard and the cult of the equine inside, and as a teacher I get longer vacations than a month, we like going to Maine all summer to a simple rented cottage overlooking the ocean and doing our nonschool work there,” “You can buy that ocean cottage and a piece of the ocean, then add a couple of out-of-the-house studios with bathrooms and little kitchens in them so you both can work to your hearts' content, but probably not in Maine since you want it to be a spot you can go weekends to summers when you have to be at the office and for skiing and short drives up all year,” “If I make enough doing what I'm doing maybe I will buy a cottage on a Maine beach, two bedrooms, where we can each work in one, maybe a little room for a guest, but nothing big where we have to do a lot of furnishing and cleaning up, but look, you got to believe I once really wanted to become a dentist, not to make a great living, or so I sold myself the idea then, but to go to very poor areas here and abroad and work on rotting teeth, but after a few predent courses I knew it wasn't for me—truthfully, you loved working on mouths, which I admired you for a lot—I love people to have healthy and pain- and stink-free teeth—while I couldn't even cut up an earthworm in bio—I had to have this bright premed seated at the same lab table do it for me on the q.t. and I still only got a D,” “You can get used to everything, I found—I nearly fainted when they made me dissect a cadaver's head in my first year at dental school, but I wanted to become a dentist so much that I didn't let it stop me, and you don't have to be the kind of dentist I was—you like kids so much you can specialize in their teeth and hand out stickers and cheap toy trinkets after, or only work on gums, implants, adult braces—those guys make more than anyone alive except one kind or another drug or Wall Street thief,” “Fine for you, which I also admired, pushing through with what you couldn't stomach, but I've no interest in making a bundle and since teaching only takes about thirty hours a week max I have some time to do what I really like to too,” “And where's it all get you?—you have to check your checkbook every time you fill your tank with gas,” “Not anymore, but what else you want to say to me while we're at it?,” “What else could there be?—we just about covered it all,” “Alex, what's got to be your thirty-year gripe against me but never expressed,” “You're the one with the full head of guilt so you get rid of it—me, I don't let it bother me day to day,” “But we're on the line, talking instead of yelling about things for once, so let's use the opportunity,” “Forget it, arguments when you're desperate never get you anywhere, also because I don't want you paying too big a bill for this call,” “What's the difference, it's my money, and what the hell's it for?,” “The difference is you don't want to piss it all away on AT&T,” “That's you again—chip chip chip, cutting back on the X rays when you took care of my teeth, so later with other dentists costing me three root canals,” “I was no good with my kids' teeth—it took me a while to realize that—I didn't want to hurt them so knew I wasn't going to drill too deep,” “Then what about winding through streets you didn't know rather than directly over the bridge to save on the toll, probably costing you another gallon of gas besides?,” “That was before the higher prices—seventeen, eighteen cents a gallon so who cared? and you saw streets you never saw before and who says we always got to go the way they tell us or because it's straight and new? and I'm not talking here about anything but the actual gas, streets, bridges and such so don't make another meaning of it,” “But if it's an important phone talk—like if you're ruining your kids' teeth with your sensitivity or wasting your passengers' time with your meandering route—I'm saying when something might just possibly come out of it to clear things up once and for all or smooth them out?,” “Who could know what you're talking about from that? and I can't help it but we're running up a phone bill that's beginning to make me sick,” “Look,