Frog (3 page)

Anyway. Anyway. He wishes he were young. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Around the age he was when he first met Denise. That she were young. Around the age she was then too. That he could meet her for the first time. That they had no children, had never been married. Married, what's the difference? But no children. That they were at a dinner party. Any kind of party. That she was sitting in the living room or standing there or in the foyer when he first got to the party. Or that he was sitting or standing in one of those rooms or the kitchen when she walked in soon after she got to the party or the public hallway right outside the crowded foyer when she was coming upstairs. That they'd look at each other for the first time. Speak, all of that, a first time. Ask the other to pass something at the dinner table or across the bar. Salt, pepper. A bottle of wine, plate of canapés. Smile, say thank you, you're welcome, not know each other's last names yet. Know nothing about the other's family and very little what each has done educationally or does professionally or wants to do in either or both. That the scene would suddenly jump to three Saturdays later. Sundays. Fridays. Two weeks later. It didn't have to take so much time. He was hedging then. Didn't know, though he knew he was very attracted to her and she seemed to be attracted to him, whether he wanted to see her again. Knew he'd get involved. Didn't know if he wanted to. Thought he might want to play around with several women at one time. They're in bed. Hers, his. She had actually called him after he didn't call for a week and said “I thought you were going to call. Anything wrong? Tell me and I won't bother you again.” Just remembered that. They'd met for coffee a few days after the party, took a long walk, had a good time together, laughing, joking, telling each other deep and personal things about themselves, and a week after that was when she called. Blanket, sheet over them. Nothing over them, no clothes. She's on top of him first, he's on top of her first, later holding each other through some to most of the night. Outside, a thunderstorm. Lightning. Went on for a long time. She asked if he was frightened—“I am.” Storm had wakened them. He said “No, but it's wonderful having thunder, lightning, rain batting the windows and you with me all at the same time for our first night. Sort of enshrines it, or something.” Just remembered that. The electric storm and almost exactly what he'd said. He's thought of it before but not for years. She said that was sweet. They probably then kissed, covers must have been back over them, and maybe it was then when they started to make love a third time. He started to. She just turned onto her right side and let him put it in. Now on a single bed. One small room with a kitchenette. Had a large studio then, much better furnished. She had two rooms with a full-sized kitchen and a backyard. She was making lots of money, for more than a year she was one of the leads in a very successful play. It's been a bad year for him. Several bad years in a number of ways. He doesn't have a phone. Called her from a booth that last time. From his phone in his previous apartment a year ago. She can't call him even if she wanted to. Why would she want to, except maybe to say one of their children is sick. She could send him a letter. A telegram, if it was an emergency, though she'd have to get his address from one of the children. It wouldn't be the same thing, a letter. Remembers hers. The good ones, ardent ones, ones that said—only one did—“So bus the 450 miles to see me, but see me, for I need and want you now.” Not like the letters after they split up. “Please don't call—
don't
call, that's all—or ring my downstairs buzzer, wait for me at work, send me anymore gifts, telegrams or letters, bother me in any kind of way again.” Anyway—

Anyway, should go to sleep now. He's tired enough. Has to be at work early tomorrow. Isn't: end of job. Odd that he's making less now, in what the money buys, and gets less respect at work, mainly because of the kind of job he had to take at his age just to survive, than when he first met her. Probably not so odd, but then was he ever on his way. Turns off the light, turns over on his side—right side, but don't make anything of it—cups his hands under his cheek, wishes he had two pillows. They always slept with two each. Her habit. He got to like it. She had two for herself when he met her and wanted two for herself when he moved in. They went to a store to buy two more, but the same kind she had in case their pillows got mixed up on the bed. But enough of that. Shuts his eyes. Thinks of himself sitting on a rooftop. Climbing a tree. Sailing a boat. He never sailed. Hasn't climbed a tree since he was a young man. He was sitting cross-legged when he never does. She sailed before she met him—with the man who played her father in the play: just friendship; they'd never made love—and liked to sit cross-legged in her short nightie while reading on their bed, but that doesn't have to be the explanation why. They're naked in bed. Image just entered. He didn't do anything to bring it on. Nothing immediate he means;
now
. It's that first time again. He remembers her body so well. For those twenty or so years it only imperceptibly changed. Maybe a little more. She studied dance for years, continued to as an actress, during their marriage always ran, swam, did dance warmups, kept in shape. Waist, breasts, hips, arms, legs—all like a dancer's. Muscular buttocks, calloused feet, delicate hands. The neck. Strong stomach. Her face. Long blond hair usually brushed straight back with a barrette on top or pinned into a chignon. Dirty blond hair to almost brown by the time they divorced. Always so soft. Covered his face. Sucked her nipples when it did. Right one was the one he preferred, maybe because it was the easiest to reach. That make sense? Could. Ran his hand down her long hard deep back crack. She's on top of him now. Grabbed her ass and squeezed and rubbed. Pressed it into him. Steered their movements just like she did. They came, one of them first. Rolled over. Soon started doing it again. They said “You know, I love you.” “And you know I love you.” “And I love you.” “And I love you, my darling.” “And you're my darling too and I love you.” “And I love you, my darling sweetheart, I love you, just you.” “And I love you too, my darling darling sweetheart, I love you, just love you, I do.” “Love love love,” one said. “Love love love love,” the other said. They came, slept, sometime after that started doing it again. He did. She let him. All that's been said. If that hasn't been said then should have been assumed. Long kisses, all kinds of kisses. Telephone rings. Must be ringing in the apartment across from his or is in his head. Listens. Ringing stops. “Rachel, thought it was you,” a woman says. He imagines her speaking on the phone to him. “My darling, I haven't changed and I'm coming right over.” Her clothes, body, feelings toward him? “My sweetheart, I've changed somewhat, but who doesn't in ten-some years at our age, and I'm coming right over. I'm going to jump right into bed with you when I get there. How could we have let it go on like this so long? I let it. But enough talk. I'm on my way.” She comes. Rings the vestibule bell. He opens his door while she's running upstairs. “As you can see,” she says, “I'm still in pretty good shape.” He pulls her down on him. First closes the door. First tears off her clothes. First hurries with her to the bed. He had waited naked for the half-hour it took her to get there. He raises the top part of his body to hers. Their heads meet, chests. They open their mouths. Kiss for a minute like that without stopping. He's inside her now. Just happened. Corresponding parts found their way. For the time being he doesn't feel much down there; it's all in the kiss. Her hair around him. Still soft and fine. Used to frizz up a bit when she took a hot shower or the air was damp. Then he falls back on the bed because he can't keep himself up like that any longer and she falls on him, clip their teeth and almost chip them, and they start kissing again and holding each other as tight as they can without hurting the other, she with her arms under him till she has to pull them out because, she later tells him, they were beginning to hurt.

_______

This is how he remembers it. He shits in his pants. Actually, it starts with him coming up to her—his memory of it always starts with him coming up to her and pointing between his legs. She says something like “Did you make doody in your pants?” He nods. Remembers nodding, not speaking. “Doody in your pants again?” Nods. Next thing he remembers she's pulling him into the bathroom, then that he's in the bathroom, long pants are off his legs, she slips his underpants off with the shit inside it, and holding the clean part of the underpants pushes the shit into his face. Then she picks him up by his underarms, holds him in front of the medicine chest mirror and tells him to look at himself. He doesn't want to. He's crying. “Look, I'm telling you to look!” He looks. Shit all over his face. Looked like hard mud. Just then he hears his father's voice. “Hello, anyone around?” He starts squirming in her arms to be let down. He wants to run to his father to show him what she did. He knows what she did was wrong. She lets him down. He runs out of the bathroom, through what they called the breakfast room into the kitchen where his father is. He points to his face. His father starts laughing very hard. That's all he remembers. Scene always goes blank then.

“Frieda's coming today,” his mother said on the phone. “She particularly asked me to see if you could be here. I'd love for you to be here too.” “I don't know if I can make it,” he said. “Please do though. She'll be here at noon. She's always very punctual, to the point most of the times of getting here ten to fifteen minutes early. I'm taking her out to lunch. Would you like to join us?” “Now that I know I can't do.” “Dobson's—for fish. She was thrilled with it the last time. Raved and raved. Even had a glass of wine.” “No, thanks, Ma. If I come I can only spare an hour. Getting there and back will take another hour, which is really all I can spare. Two. Total.”

He tells his wife that his mother called before. “Frieda's visiting her for the day. Both want me to be there. For lunch too, but that I'm definitely not doing.”

“Your old nanny? What was the story you told about her—what she did to you?”

“What? Every morning rolling down my socks in a way where I could just hop out of bed and roll them up over my feet? Actually, she did that the night before. Left them at the end of my bed along with my—”

“Not the socks. The feces in your face. How'd that go again? I remember your father was in on it too. In the story.”

“He laughed when he saw me.”

“What do you think that was all about?”

“More I think of it, maybe he really did think it was funny. Here's this kid of his running up to him with shit all over his face. He had a great sense of humor—No, he did. And for all he knew I might have tripped and fallen into it and maybe that's what he thought was so funny. His kid tripped head first into shit.”

“But later he knew. You told him, didn't you? You were pointing, crying. And you told your mother later—you must have, or he did—but they still kept her on.”

“Frieda was a gem, they thought. She ran the house. Kept the kids disciplined, quiet when necessary and out of the way. Three boys too, so no easy task. She gave them the time to do what they liked. Work, play, go off for a week or weekend whenever they wanted. Cruises, and once all summer in Europe. And she wasn't well paid either. None of the nannies then were.”

“But she did lots of cruel things like that feces scene. She beat you, hit your face. Smacked your hands with a spatula that you said stung for hours later.”

“That was Jadwiga, the Polish woman who replaced Frieda when Frieda married.”

“Sent you to bed without your dinner several times.”

“Both of them.”

“Twisted your wrists till they burned. Right? Frieda?” He nods. “Face it, she was a sadist, but your parents permitted it.”

“Look, you have to understand where she came from and the period. As for my parents, who knows if they didn't think that discipline—her kind—and it probably wasn't an uncommon notion then—attitude, belief, whatever—was what we needed. The kids. And OK, since they didn't want to discipline us like that themselves—didn't have the heart to, or the discipline for it or the time—she got anointed.
Appointed
. That wasn't intentional. I'm not that smart. Or just was tacitly allowed to. Anyway, Frieda came from Hanover. 1930 or so. A little hamlet outside. My father hired her right off the boat. Literally, almost. She was here for two or three days when he got her from an employment agency. And that had to be the way she was brought up herself. Germany, relatively poor and little educated, and very rigid, tough, hard, disciplined years.”

“What did your father do after he stopped laughing? Did he clean your face?”

“I don't remember, but I'm sure he didn't. He would never touch it. The shit? That was Frieda's job. On her day off, my mother's.”

“Can you remember though?”

“Let me see.” Closes his eyes. “She put me down. I'd asked her to. Your know all that. I ran into the kitchen. I see him coming, and then he's there. He's got on a business suit, white shirt and a tie. His office was in front of the building, you know.”

“Yes.”

“So it could have been around lunchtime. He came back to the apartment for lunch every workday. Did it through a door connecting the office and apartment.”

“The door's not there now, is it?”

“On my mother's side it is—in the foyer—but she had that huge breakfront put up in front of it. On the other side it was sealed up when he gave up the office. I don't know why they didn't have the door sealed up on their side. Would have been safer from break-ins and more aesthetic. Maybe he thought he'd start up his practice again when he got well enough to. But after he gave up the office it was rented by another dentist. A woman. He sold her most of his equipment. And he wouldn't have been in a business suit then. White shirt and tie, yes. He wore them under his dental smock on even the hottest days. So now it makes me wonder. It was definitely a business suit I saw. A dark one. He must have come into the apartment through the front door, not the office door. It was probably a Sunday. Frieda got her day off during the week and a half day off on Sunday right after lunch. So I don't know. Maybe it was one of the Jewish holidays. He could have just come back from
shul
. But where were my brothers? They could have gone with him and were now playing outside. And my mother? She would have been in the kitchen cooking if it was a Jewish holiday. That was the time—the only time, just about, except for Thanksgiving and I don't know what—my father's birthday? her father visiting? which he did every other week till he died when I was six, through I don't ever remember seeing him, there or any other place—when she really went at it in the kitchen. The other times it was fairly quick and simple preparations and, occasionally, deli or chow mein brought in. Maybe we were going to my father's sister's—Ida and Jack's—in Brooklyn for dinner that night. We did that sometimes. She cooked kosher, if that's the right expression, and my father, raised on it, still fancied it, especially on Jewish holidays. Anyway, he approached. I was around three or four at the time. So if it was a nursery school day and not a serious Jewish holiday and I wasn't home from school because I was sick—but she never would have put shit in my face if I were sick—then it was the afternoon. My nursery school for the two years was always in the morning. But what about my father's business suit? Let's just say he closed the office for the day and had a suit on because he'd just come back from a dental convention downtown. He's there though. I see him coming through the living room into the kitchen. I run through the breakfast room—where we never had breakfast, except Sunday morning, just dinner—to the kitchen. The kitchen was where we had breakfast and lunch. Frieda's behind me. I don't remember seeing her, just always sensed she was. I hold out my arms to him. I'm also crying. I don't remember that there, but how could I not be? I think a little of the shit was getting into my mouth. I don't remember smelling it but do tasting it a little. All this might sound like extrapolation, exaggeration—what I didn't smell but did taste. But I swear it's not. Anyway, to it. Arms are out. Mine. I've a pleading look. I know it. I had never felt so humiliated, soiled, so sad, distressed—you name it. Dramatic, right? I'm telling you,” opening his eyes, “I felt absolutely miserable and this had to be evident to him. So maybe when he saw me he took that kind of defense—laughter—rather than deal with it, try to comprehend it. But maybe not. Maybe he did think I tripped into it. So even though I was so distressed his first reaction might have been ‘Oh my God, Howard's tripped into shit.' Maybe he thought it was our dog Joe's. Or dirt. That I'd been playing in one of the backyard planters, or that it was paint on my face. Clay. But no play clay's that color. Maybe it does get that way when you mix all the colors up. Anyway, my arms are out. Let me try to get beyond what I've so far can't remember about it. Past the blank.” Shuts his eyes. “Arms. He's there. Kitchen. I run to him. Frieda's behind me. Sense that. I'm crying. Have to. Pleading look. He laughs. Blank. Blank.” Opens his eyes. “No, didn't work. Most of my real old memories end like that. Like a sword coming down. Whop! Maybe hypnosis would get me past, but I tend to doubt those aids. Or can't see myself sitting there, just submitting.”