Frog (88 page)

either. Which is why you drop them into boiling water so easily” “What are you talking? I don't even eat them at other people's homes.” “That's what I'm saying. You know Frog would feel pain if you dropped a drop of hot water on him and if there was no air, suffocation, and other things. That he's aware we're gone and not there to feed him, I don't know; but that there's nothing to eat, when that happens, and he's hungry and then starving-come on. But we'll improve things to make him more active and his life better. First, a bigger tank.” “Oh, I'm sure along the way.” “No, after we're up there a day or so—during our big shop. It's been on my mind a long time. We should let him walk around the room every day, in Maine or in the city. And in the country we said we'd let him go on the grass sometimes and in the lake, or salt water—whichever he can take; we'll have to find out.” “I want to walk Frog on the grass,” Olivia says. “I don't want him to die.” “So do I,” Eva says. “Frog shouldn't die, right, Olivia?” “Right.” “Listen, everybody, please, hush for a minute,” he says. “I'm thinking of some other solution but going back for him.” “No other,” Denise says. “Next exit, we have to turn around.” “If we go back to New York will I miss my rainbow sherbert?” Eva says. “Almost everything will be the same except later,” Denise says. “Probably at a different restaurant, so regular sherbet or ice cream instead of rainbow. Or so much later that we'll be eating on the way, so we'll have to skip dessert tonight to get back on the road and in the Green Heron before your father gets too tired driving. But that means we'll get something like it or the same thing tomorrow or the next day at a different place—Dick's in Ellsworth, when we do that big shop there.” “I don't want to miss dessert,” Olivia says. “So you think we should let Frog die in our apartment because you want dessert?” “I didn't say that.” “Then what are you saying? It's a long trip back to New York. And then a long trip back to where we are right now. And maybe even a longer trip to get right here because by then a lot more people will be heading out for the long weekend—” “Oh Christ, I forgot all about that,” he says. “It'll be hell, and by the time we got to Hartford or New Haven, even worse, and when we got to the Maine border, the absolute pits.” “And your father will keep saying we could have been here three hours ago or so, four hours, etcetera, even five—we might as well prepare ourselves for five—besides what hell he'll say it'll be when we pass Portsmouth and are getting close to the Maine border and that once wonderfully freeing bridge. But when we get to the Mass. Pike exit he'll really let me have it. For then he'll recall the up-till-then worst driving mistake we've ever made together—I made, he'll insinuate. But we can't let an animal die because it'll be convenient for us, can we? Sherbets over turtles—are we kidding? If Frog were a frog I'd say I don't know but I'd probably go back for it. If Frog were a worm I'd say let it go. It's small, it'd decompose fast, there wouldn't be that much of a smell, certainly not enough to break down a door for, and it's nowhere near as developed as a frog or turtle.” “The turtle isn't so developed,” he says, “at least on the brain scale.” “It's developed enough. It sleeps, it feels fear, it makes love, it lays eggs, it sits on them and fights off predators, and when they're hatched it turns the little turtles around in the right direction to the ocean if that's what kind of turtle or tortoise it is. It doesn't come when you call or lick your fingers after you feed it but it's smarter than a lot of us think. I've seen a film—” “Public TV again, where we get all our learning it seems.” “Don't be like that,” she says, “you sound awful.” “I saw that film program too,” Olivia says. “Most of the babies couldn't find the ocean and the mother kept pushing, and one time a bird caught one of them.” “I saw that too,” Eva says. ‘The bird was ugly and mean.” “You couldn't have seen it. Even I was small, so you were too young or not born.” “How do you know?” “Stop it, both of you, all of you,” Denise says. “The argument's over. All the arguments and justifications and I must have this and that and such. We're wasting time—
precious
time, Howard. Forget express mail and the Matlocks and the mother solution and everything else. I don't even want her going over there in this weather—either of them, my father too—and carrying Frog home. It'll be too heavy and sweaty and they're too old and might not know what to do with Frog and he could die from that also—that happened with my hamster when I was a girl.” “What happened?” Olivia says. “Nothing. I'm also too old for them to do my dirty work for me. That's what you and I are here for each other and I wish you'd see that already. And when it's dirty work we have to do together, we do it without blaming and ridiculing the other. We'll all have to accept missing everything we planned to get—sherbets and scotch and newspaper and Captain Bush at the helm and the rest of it. If we make one phone call it should be to the Breakwater to cancel the reservation.” “They will anyhow when we don't show.” “Well, to do it right, we shouldn't have them hold it for even a half-hour if we know this long beforehand we can't make it. Dinner on the road. Maybe we'll discover a better place than we ever dreamed of and convenient, a minute off the road. No alcohol for you, or just one, but we might even like it so much and like coming to Kennebunkport already fed and ready for I don't know what—just things we haven't done there at night—that we'll want to do it this way from now on. It'll give us a few more hours in the city and where we don't have to rush out so fast to be on time for this and that and forget things like Frog. And if we leave after a good meal, the girls will sleep for two hours in the car. So, sound good? Relaxed morning, not going to bed so early the previous night? Lunch at home, newspaper read over your second coffee and thus a bit less to fill up the car? Leisurely jog through Riverside Park rather than the early-morning sprint you say you always do day we leave? We can even sleep later, do a wash rather than leave our dirty sheets behind, and then a less anxious drive-no need to speed—Green Heron, bath, maybe a short walk or ride for an ice cream or a beer for you or something like that after we check in. Then, the next day, breakfast and a couple of hours for the girls and you at the beach before we start off, since it's the shorter part of our trip. Anyway, who's to say we could have done everything we wanted to today—beach and such—since for all we know it might rain.” “It's not supposed to.” “You know? You didn't have the news on that I'm aware of, even at home.” “The paper. When I was quickly going through it after I bought it to see if there was any mention of Bush planning to be there today and have dinner at the Breakwater. There was nothing, though the weather report page said Portland would be fair and clear, high around seventy-five.” “So, you've beached it with the girls every summer coming and going when the weather was good—one time they can miss it.” “I don't want to,” Olivia says. “Wouldn't you for Frog though? He's supposed to be yours. Think of the thought of his death troubling you if you let him die.” “I'll miss the beach but I'll miss Frog more,” Eva says. “You're only saying that for Momma,” Olivia says. “No I'm not. I don't want Frog to die.” “I don't either. But I've been wanting to go to that beach all week for its pebbles, and tomorrow it'll rain or Daddy will say ‘Hurry up, let's get out of here.'” “Believe me,” he says, “if I thought the turtle was going to die I swear, no matter what I said, I'd go back for him. But what he'll have is two harrowing days—terrible ones, meaning—or maybe not even that bad. But two at the most if we make the calls today and send the keys express.” “Don't try to bamboozle us,” Denise says. “Frog could die or get very sick. Did you change his water today? For I didn't.” “Let me think. No, to be honest, not since yesterday. But it's not my job or yours, even if I'm just about the only one who does it. It's Olivia's, not that I'm trying to make her feel bad or it makes things better for him.” “I'm sorry,” Olivia says. “I was going to but nobody told me and I was busy getting my markers and things together and I forgot.” “Then we definitely have to go back,” Denise says. “His water's old and he does his stuff in it, you know that.” “I think we should go back too, Daddy,” Olivia says. “If we do can you get a book from my room I left there and want to read again in the car? It'll be a long trip and I might run out.” “Will do,” Denise says. “You'll get it for her, won't you?” “OK, I've been overruled,” he says. “I'm going to hate it all the way back and then all the way here again and to Georgiecraphole.” “Why should you? Use it as an opportunity not to make a big demonstration about it—to just fume and rage through the trip how much you hate it. Rise above it for once. If anything, you'll get that out of it. Maybe it wouldn't be the first time you did that, but not letting things get to you the way you usually let them, and you might even end up thanking Frog for it.” “You mean thanking you.” “No, just Frog. And maybe he'll understand what you did for him and from then on come when you call him. It's a good example for the girls too. Please take this exit.” “No, I can't change, not on something like this, but I will do it. Hey, we're going back. Everybody buckled up? We're all in the car, sitting back? Then let's go,” and he takes the exit.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Portions of
Frog
have appeared in the following publications:
Agni Review, Ambit, American Letters
&
Commentary, Another Chicago Magazine, Asylum, Beloit Fiction Journal, Boston Review, Boulevard, Caprice, Confrontation, Denver Quarterly, Fiction International, Florida Review, Frank, Gettysburg Review, Kansas Quarterly, Kennesaw Review, The Literary Review, Nebraska Review, New American Writing, North American Review, Northwest Review, Other Voices, Paris Transcontinental, Pequod, Quarterly West, Redstart, Satchel, South Carolina Review, Southern California Anthology, Story Quarterly, Threepenny Review, Triquarterly, Western Humanities Review, Witness
, and as the stories “On the Beach,” “Mom in Prison,” and “Joe” in the story collection
All Gone
, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Copyright © 1991 by Stephen Dixon

Cover design by Steven Seighman

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