Frog (59 page)

book I could tell in five minutes. Just three pages—the first two and the last and maybe an extra thirty seconds to zip through the middle. Because crap is crap and doesn't need anymore time than that. Just as that stupid soap was, which you're too smart not to know. So what am I saying? I'm saying if you have to watch anything on TV when the sun's still out and we're not on daylight saving time, maybe an educational program on another station at the same hour?” “What about if I don't watch anything because I can't?” and she looks around for something and he says “What do you mean?” and then “What are you looking for?” and she grabs the glass off the night table and throws it at the screen, doesn't break it but the glass breaks when it hits the floor. “Oh, smart, smart,” he says. “You want to kill us all if the tube explodes and sets fire to the room? Brilliant,” and he leaves. “Hell with you, bastard,” she yells. “And the tube couldn't have exploded because the television was off,” and he says “Maybe, maybe,” gets to the end of the hall, then back to her room to pick up the glass. “Martyr, back, wonderful, don't cut your hands I'm supposed to say,” and after he's got all the glass but the tiniest pieces he leaves the room. They don't talk to each other at dinner. After, his mother talks to him and he says he would have gone in anyway to apologize and goes into her room where she's on her bed reading a magazine and says “Look, I'm sorry, the whole thing was dumb of me, please accept my apology and I came in not because anyone told me to but on my own.” “I don't want to talk about it. You're so freaking stuffed with yourself you stink.” “Fine, good, get it out on me; you should.” “I'm not
getting it out
. I've thought about it and you're a mess.” “Look, my standards, if that's what they are, are stupidly and most likely falsely and just all-out-of-proportion high. And to me I have this misguided, don't ask me where it came from, idea that art-art-art is God, so what can I say? I'm probably a fake.” “Oh, when you get right down to it a lot of what you say's true, even if the way you say it is horrible. I do watch these dumb shows to stop from being bored to death, when I should be doing something else with my time. Like what, though's, the problem.” “No no. Watch the good stuff, that's all, and maybe some of the bad stuff too when you're totally bored; it's only human.” “Really, much as I hate admitting it and still think your a swollen-headed mess, you changed my mind.
You
want the set in your room from now on? Because I don't.” “No, keep it and never listen to me again on this, or just think some more before giving it away.” “If you don't want it can you wheel it to Mom and Dad's room? They said they wouldn't mind having one like mine they can regulate from bed.” That's where he puts it. In a closet, which is where his parents want it, and from time to time someone wheels it out for her, but not out of the room, for something she especially wants or thinks she ought to watch. He takes her to the movies. “Take her to a movie; she hasn't been in years,” his mother said. “You want to go to a movie?” he said. “Sure, I love them,” she said, “but who's going to take me and how we going to get there? It'll take me a year to walk to Broadway to get the bus.” She's begun to smoke so wants to sit in the balcony. He can't stand tobacco smoke but will take it for her. He asks if they have an elevator here, “you can see my sister can't take the stairs too well,” and the usher says “No elevator; if it's that she wants to smoke, she can do it in the ladies' room, but that's one flight downstairs.” “If you have to go,” he tells her, “do it now; I don't think there's a bathroom upstairs.” “No worry; I always go twice before I leave.” She hands him her metal braces, grabs the stair railing with both hands and climbs the two flights to the balcony. She has a lot more trouble with the steps in the balcony because there are no railings along the aisles. He says “Maybe I should have got the loge seats. They seemed so much more expensive, but what the hell. Want me to run down and quickly change them?” “I'll just be in people's way while you're gone. And by the time you get down and back we can be up there, and who's to say they'll have any? C'mon.” The theater's jammed. It's a popular movie, won a few Academy Awards in the leading categories the newspaper ad said, and the people around them all seem to be laughing. “If I see a single seat, want me to grab it for you?” “I don't like sitting alone; nobody to tell what I think about it. Don't worry, we're almost there or thereabouts.” When he finally got around to asking her if she wanted to go to a movie and they looked in the paper for one, this one had already begun. But it was the one she wanted to see most and she didn't want to wait for the next show, she said, as he might lose interest in going by then or say it was getting too late, he has to work tomorrow and so on. So he ran outside, up the avenue and got a cab and picked her up in front of the building. “Only front two rows audience seats or last three rows balcony,” an usher was announcing by the ticket booth and he looked at her and she said “OK with me; I want to see it and might not get another chance till it comes around again in a year. When the movie ends we'll come down.” She seems to be struggling so he grabs her arm to help her walk up the last few steps and she says ouch. “That hurts; too much pressure on my arm goes straight to my brain or spine or something, but it's like a bullet shot in me where you touched.” It takes twenty minutes to walk from the lobby to their balcony seats. People around them are still laughing and even howling hysterically. She gets in first and he turns around to look and doesn't yet see what's so funny. Jack Lemmon. He can be a funny guy. And something about an apartment key he heard on the way up and some pretty actress he's never seen before who seems to be overdoing the New York accent. He bought her what she wanted at the candy stand. “Anything?” “Pick it, the kid's flush.” “What's ‘flush'? “Cash, on me, more than enough.” Popcorn, soda, ice cream bonbons that seemed pretty expensive for the size of the box. He didn't say anything, but his look when he got his change back. “Well, since I see my being here as kind of an occasion,” she said, “I might as well treat myself big or let you do it.” “That a way to go.” He carried it all up for her with the braces. Some of the popcorn spills when he quickly turns from the screen to her when she says “C'mon, sit down, you'll see it better from here,” and he hands her the soda, popcorn and box and starts picking it up. “What're you doing?… Leave it, we've already caused too much fuss.” It's the last row, nothing behind them but wall, so he can bob around and sit as tall as he wants. He sits, drops under the seat what popcorn he picked up, lays her braces quietly on the floor, helps her off with her coat, she gives him back the bonbons and says “For some reason I can't open it; the fingers; they feel stuck,” and he rips the plastic off with his teeth and opens the box. “Help yourself,” she says but he says he hasn't been able to stand any kind of ice cream since he was a soda jerk at a summer resort and saw—, but she shushes him, points to the screen and they watch. She smokes six cigarettes during the forty minutes till the movie ends. At one point she put her head close to his and said “Liking it?” and he said “You know, it isn't for me to say this but—,” and she said “Please don't talk about my smoking,” and he said “But your clothes are going to stink from it-mine too—not to say your health,” and she said “Let me have what little fun I can get, will you? and you're also killing the movie for me,” and sat up straight again. Most of the balcony gets up to leave when the movie's over and he says “Should we move down?” and she says “Who wants to get trampled in the rush,” and he says “Fine by me, so long as my eyes hold out—yours doing OK?” and she nods, “and nobody behind me to complain of my big head.” When the movie gets to the part where they came in he says “Think we can go now?” and she says “Why, did we see this? Can't we see it to the end though? I'm having a ball.” He hates seeing a movie he's just seen. Even as a kid, hated it, for even a few minutes, and doesn't think he's ever seen the same movie through twice in his life. He looks at his watch. It's a dark part of the movie and he can't see the numbers and hands on the dial, but he says “It's getting late,” tapping his watch; “I have to be at school tomorrow half past eight at the latest,” but she pretends not to hear him or she really doesn't, everyone around them laughing so hard. She's laughing now too, harder than she's done since they got there, maybe for his benefit, but then she also might understand the story better now. A combination of things perhaps, one contributing to or taking away from the other, but too difficult and not important enough to try to figure out. He shuts his eyes, slumps down till he's lower than the seat top, tries to sleep, but her laughing and everyone else's and the loud sound track keep him up. Who can sleep in a theater? he thinks. His father, even at operas. “Only comedies,” she says when they're putting their coats on and waiting for almost everyone in the balcony to leave. “No serious stuff, which I'm sure you'd like better. That is, if you ever want to take me again. And if it's the balcony that made you so irritable, next time you can stick me up here and then sit downstairs and come back for me after. I can get used to sitting alone if it's a picture I can laugh hard enough at. Though this one was both serious and funny, don't you think? A very tricky plot, with some serious actors in it, and suicide's nothing to laugh about, if I got what happened right. I know she didn't kill herself, but they did have to walk her around.” “Irritable? Me? No, it's just—well, cigarette smoke might make me that way a little, but I'll get accustomed to it. Hold my nose through most of the show, or something. And twice a month if you want, but from now on let's try to get here from the beginning.” “I don't know. Sort of makes it easier for me getting here when everyone else is already in. And coming in the middle of the picture and trying to make out what's happening is sort of a challenge.” He takes her to a movie a few weeks later and then a couple more times in the next few years. He dreams about her recovering, for several years before she died and lots of times after. In one he says “Good morning,” and she says “Good morning to you, sir,” and gets off her crutches, throws them behind her, he jumps at her to stop her from falling but she steps back, shows how she can walk without crutches and says “I can even fly now,” and puts out her arms, closes her eyes and starts humming, rises about ten feet, flies in a circle around him and then into the clouds. “Come back,” he shouts. “Don't get carried away. There are planes up there. Spacecraft, lunar junk, wild birds, no air.” In another he's hurrying to junior high school to teach when a car pulls up, she's at the wheel and leans across the front seat and says “Hi, like a lift?” “Sure, but since when do you drive?” “Oh, I've been practicing in my hospital bed and wheelchair, and stick shift too.” He gets in beside her and says “What is it, some special handicapped car?” and she says “Oh no, I'm all better now, I've just come from the hospital,” and lifts her legs above the seat and shakes them. “Watch out for the cars,” he yells and though her car hasn't moved, her feet go back and forth on about eight floor pedals, so fast he can hardly see them. “I can walk too but why walk when you have a car?” “And your crutches?” “First thing I did when I got out was put them under the tires and run over them.” “You should have given them to the hospital or Goodwill,” and she says “Symbolism over reality any day. You never went through what I did, so how could you know?” Another one she's in a wheelchair, slumped over asleep and held in by a waist strap, tubes in her nose and coming out from under the blanket on her lap, when she suddenly crows, rips the strap off and tubes out of her, stands and kicks the chair back so hard it bangs against the wall and falls over, and starts walking around in circles, sniffing the air like a dog. “Look at you, you're walking,” he says. “Mom, Dad, look at Vera. It's a miracle.” “That's right,” she says, “and this is the way I'm gonna be from now on. I can't stand the position I was put in,” and walks out of the apartment, building, down the block, walking so fast he can't catch up with her even though he's sprinting. “The world's fastest walker,” he thinks. “I'll enter her in the Olympics if they have such a race. She'll win medals and fame for the family and write a book about it and make millions and not have to worry about anything again in her life.” He stops when he's out of breath; she turns south on Columbus and next thing he knows she's just a dot at the tip of Manhattan and then he can't see her. His father hands him binoculars and he looks through them and sees her walking as fast over a huge suspension bridge. Cars are speeding toward her but she zips around them. “Vera,” he yells, “Vera,” and then loses her. In another she's in a hospital sitting against the side of her bed. Frail, gaunt, hair a mess, skin yellow, sores on her legs, feet twisted in. “I've been thinking,” she says, “—do I smell bad?” “No, you don't smell bad,” he says. “Well I've been thinking. I don't want to live another minute and you have to help me do it.” “Do what, live?” “No not live.” “No, do, live. You smell good. Maybe there'll be a cure for you some day. Sure there will. I've read articles, people have sent you them.” “You think so?” “I'd almost stake my life on it.” Suddenly she's four or five, same ugly hospital clothes on though, and then quickly becomes around fifteen and her body starts blossoming, little bumps, then big breasts, hips develop, legs lengthen, thighs harden, and she's wearing a thin summer dress and Greek sandals, they used to call them, with the straps wrapped halfway up her calves, hole in her neck and shoulder slump gone, bed becomes a chaise longue on a patio somewhere, flowering trees behind her and behind them a lake. “I told you,” he says. “You did, didn't you, Mr. Knows-it-all and always so good to me, so prophetically correct and sweet, does anyone in the world deserve more than you?” and she gets up, comes over, puts his arms around her and her hands in his side pants pockets and kisses him on the mouth. “Oh boy, she's a hot number,” he thinks. “What am I going to do with her now?” In another she's stepping off a train onto an empty outdoor platform. Tall, meticulously dressed, hair done up, no sign of her illness. And must have been a long journey, he thinks, what with all the luggage that's now beside her. She seems to be looking around for someone as the train pulls away. He says “Hey, I'm here, over here,” and keeps shouting and waving as he approaches her, but she doesn't turn to him or seem to hear him. “Vera,” he says, standing next to her, “the trip's done wonders for you. What was it, some kind of tour of various spas?” She keeps looking around but never at him. Then she shakes her head, is disgusted, picks up two valises and what looks like a makeup case and walks to the small train station. He lifts her one trunk onto his back, almost collapses from it, holds it by an end strap with his hands over his shoulders, and follows her. “Right behind you,” he says, “if this thing doesn't kill me first. And hold the door, please, hold that door,” but she lets it swing back into his head. In another she's sitting at a table in the staff cafeteria of a junior high school he taught at for years, arguing with another teacher about a book they've all read. “The author