Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  After the first sip, when Jerry held up his glass of scotch and they silently toasted as they just about always did with their first drink, Howard didn’t touch it. After awhile he wasn’t even aware he was holding it. He was surprised, when he later walked downstairs, the drink hadn’t dropped out of his hand. He could hardly speak. Tried a couple of times, couldn’t. Said a few times to himself while Jerry told him about Alex “I don’t believe this, I just don’t. It can’t be happening, couldn’t have happened.” His throat was a lump. Maybe that was why he couldn’t speak or didn’t want to. He knew what his voice would sound like and that he’d start crying while he spoke or right after, when what he wanted was to sit calmly as he could and hear everything Jerry was telling him. He was looking for something hopeful in what Jerry was saying. That the storm hadn’t been so bad, or if it had, that the ship hadn’t gone down, or if it had, that Alex had got on a lifeboat and had already been saved or had survived on the lifeboat till now and would be saved in a day. His fingers felt cold, tingled; chest as if a cold wind whirled around in it. That was what came to him then. Except for a few quick looks at Jerry, he stared into space, at the floor, window, wall of lithos, maybe his glass without realizing it, the baby, Iris. She continued to nurse, sounds of it no longer irritated him. Probably because he told himself a few minutes into Jerry’s account “Worrying about some stupid nursing sounds now? That’s ridiculous.” She took the baby off her breast and held him on her shoulder to burp. Her exposed nipple was erect, fat, very red, wet. It looked like a worm coming out of sand. That also came to him then. Because it glistened he thought it must be the one just sucked. Hadn’t seen. Only looked at her breast when she wasn’t looking at him and Jerry was looking somewhere else. First he looked at Jerry to see he wasn’t looking at him, then at Iris’s face and then quickly back to Jerry and if he still wasn’t looking at him, quickly at her breast. He was probably caught looking at it by one or both of them a few times, but didn’t think of it then. What might they have said later? “Fucking guy, at a time like this, trying to sneak a peek?” “It’s natural, he’s curious, and it certainly doesn’t bother me.” If Iris was looking at him when he looked at her face, he nodded or shook his head and looked away. Breast was big and full. Before she got visibly pregnant she seemed, from seeing her in a swimsuit and T-shirt several times, almost flat chested. He’d once looked down one when she didn’t have a bra on, didn’t see much but bumps. He pictures his lips kissing and tugging at the tip of it, fingers gently pinching the nipple and finger circling its rim. He’d dreamt of making love with her, or starting to, both times both of them naked on the couch and floor and playing with each other when the door banged open and a gruff voice bawled “Virus,” but didn’t think anything of that then. Baby burped. “That-a-boy,” and she put her breast to his mouth which quickly latched on to it. She mostly gazed at his head while he sucked, played with his fingers. Light in the room seemed dimmer than when Howard had come in. Jerry might have dimmed it with a new kind of light switch device he’d recently installed himself that had a name like a heat regulator. Alex had been the handiest, Jerry next, Howard far behind. Alex could take apart and reassemble clocks and radios when he was seven. Just opened them up and went right at it. Maybe Jerry dimmed the lights whenever she started nursing. He remembers her once talking at length about the sensitivity of babies’ eyes to sunlight and high-wattage bulbs and fluorescent lights and how even a little of these lights could later lead to color or night blindness. Nobody spoke for about ten minutes, maybe twenty. Solo piano music on the record player. Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, someone like that, inclined toward the high keys and feathery, which Howard just heard but it could have been on since he got there. For all he knew Jerry might have turned the record over a few minutes ago. “you all right?” Jerry said. “Hmm?” “So silent. I can imagine. Listen, it’s still not that absolutely hopeless. Even better than that. Did you see the looks Iris was giving me before?” “Nuh.” “Well she was, because I’m sure she thinks I made things out to be much worse than she knows even I believe. There’s still some hope. Possibly even plenty. We’re both sure—Iris and I—there is.” Good moment to look at her even while Jerry was looking at him. Few minutes the feeding would be done and blouse buttoned. Doesn’t know why he wanted to look so much then. Just young and horny perhaps, sometimes overcoming everything, or he wanted to take his mind off what Jerry was saying. Both. Maybe deeper, more complicated. When he got home he probably looked out his bedroom window as he did almost every night in hopes of seeing the woman in the next building’s back apartment undressing or walking to and from another room nude. Nipple was in the baby’s mouth, blouse somehow hid the rest of her breast, either unknowingly or something new. “It’s got to turn out all right,” Howard said to Jerry. “Ships just don’t suddenly disappear in the middle of the North Atlantic like that.” “It wasn’t in the middle. It was estimated to be about three days past the Irish coast which, weatherwise, is a real trouble area.” “Whatever. But to get even a little irrational about it, ships with Alex on them just don’t disappear, period.” “Some ships, even much larger ones—and for argument’s sake we’ll forget Alex being on this one—do suddenly disappear without a trace, or with only a minor one. Not all in the North Atlantic, though the greater ratio of them do, but around the world. It’s nothing mysterious. They hit something and go down fast. An iceberg, a tree. Or something explodes in them or breaks apart, the ship splitting cleanly in two sometimes.” “Come on.” “No, it happens. I questioned this expert with the same ‘come on’ when he told me. You would never think that someone you really know can be the one that something like this happens to when it only happens once or twice a year. But some ship has to be the one, and quite a number of men have to be on that ship and have it happen to them.” “Well, Alex’s ship wasn’t the one. It didn’t suddenly sink, so couldn’t have disappeared. It’s either—something tells me this—still out there, adrift, though for some reason hasn’t been located. Or has already docked or just drifted to some landing—some little uninhabited island or atoll somewhere—went aground, even, I think they call it, on a pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere—and will get in touch with whoever it’s supposed to fairly soon.” “I want to believe that as much as anyone. But we also shouldn’t be too unrealistic. Same when you go to the hospital for a simple tonsillectomy, we’ll say. There has to be some self-preparation for an accident—for the worst. Great surgeons, as well as highly precise machines—” “No mistakes. If so, they’ll be corrected. Look, I really got to go. It’s been a little too much,” and he stood up. “Do you want me to walk you?” “I’ll be all right.” Kissed Iris on the cheek, patted the baby’s head but was careful not to touch where they’d said the soft spot still was. Scared him. He’d imagined a few times his finger going all the way in, wondered why kids that age didn’t wear helmets or something. Iris said “You don’t know—Jerry would never say it—how hard it was for him to tell you this. Also, now that the folks know you know, it isn’t going to be easy with them. So be—well, it’s not my place—but try to be extra solicitous and patient.” “She’s got a point.” “I will, don’t worry.” “Also, because I know how you can get sometimes, though this is perhaps asking you to go too much against your nature, try not to break up in front of them. They’ll see you, and then who knows what?” “He’ll know what to do.” “Don’t let off steam or tears. Got it.” “You know it’s only for their good I asked,” she said. “Of course. I only repeated it to remember. Honestly.” Jerry walked him to the door. “What else is there to say? I don’t envy you at home. Mom will hold up but Dad’s sure to cave in.” He held out his arms, eyes seemed wet. Howard went to him, Jerry hugged him, they cried. He walked downstairs. He still had his drink. He drank it down. Ice cubes the size of small pebbles and he chewed them. He wanted to return the glass. About to ring the bell, put the glass on the doormat, then to the side of the door so they wouldn’t kick it when they left in the mor
ning. Walked downstairs. When he got home his mother was waiting up for him. She was having a drink and smoking a cigarette. She’d smoked several, probably had drunk several. “Jerry told you? Dad’s a wreck. Neither of us had the heart to say anything to you ourselves. Or the courage—which one? What’s the difference? I had to give him sleeping pills. The first pills like that he ever took, but I told him they were very strong aspirins. A professional man—his patients practically live on those kinds of aspirins—you’d think he’d know. He probably did but he’d never admit it. My poor boy. What a disaster for all of us. It would be so nice to fall asleep for two straight weeks. But the truth is we can do more good by staying awake. Talking to the authorities. Doing what we can to see that the search planes stay up one more day. But what do you think? Will the ship ever be found? Did Jerry hear anything new? Or should we simply give up and tear all our hair out now?”

  Ship’s a day away from Cuba. Almost two years after the revolution there. Carries lots of medical supplies originally bound for America, guns, launchers, plane and truck parts it hadn’t registered in England. Len tells Alex he’ll see he gets a good job and apartment and a fine-looking wife if he stays. “If you want, of course, fly back to New York day after we dock in Havana. Or Habana. Might as well get it right from the start. But why go back? You’ll live much better there than in the States and for a quarter of the money. Good food, cheap rum, great cafés, unbeatable natural scenery. Gorgeous, excitable, intelligent people, weather couldn’t be better, and soon free bread. Stay put. Write up a storm for fifteen years, then let the world see it. Most of the modern writers I’ve read rushed, rushed, rushed and were eaten up. Or twenty years, twenty-five. You’ll be the rare writer with a self-imposed postapprenticeship like that. And you’ll be right smack in the heart of a historical hot time, one the whole world’s noticing, but who the hell cares about that, right?” Alex likes most of the idea. Sees many women, marries, children, after awhile only speaks Spanish. His wife’s a doctor, professor. He builds houses, writes mornings, nights, days off. Misses his parents, brothers, sister. Periodically he wants to write them, call. Things get worse between the two countries, invasion, blockade, harder times. He’s told if he wants to leave, do it now, but without his family. He may also write to the States, but phone connections are finished. By now his parents must think he’s dead. Gotten over it. His whole family. Or maybe they haven’t, but he just doesn’t want to have anything to do with the life he had there. Is that it? Misses them all, but no one and nothing else. He wasn’t too happy there, he was also something of an adventurer, and now kind of likes it that everyone thinks the ship sank and he’s dead. Years. His father’s probably dead. Sick before, he couldn’t have lasted that much longer. If his mother’s also dead he’s sure he helped her go faster than she would have. For that he’s very sorry. There’s more. Knows the pain he caused but didn’t want to go back or let anyone know he was alive. Why? The first is easy to explain. In addition to what he’s said, he’d never go back without his family. But the other thing… probably because he wanted a new life, or a much different one then, with as little past as possible, a new name, even, though doesn’t quite know why. Why? Maybe it comes as close as possible to starting completely over and being someone else, with almost no past—but he’s said all that—no family scrutinizing what he’s doing, thinking they have the license to comment about and possibly try to change his actions, but that’s all. Is that it then? No. Not quite. Maybe doesn’t even come close. He just—how can he say this without repeating himself, with something that really gets it? He doesn’t know why he did it, and if he does know, why he continued doing it. He’s talking about not letting them know he was alive. Maybe he never really loved them that much. Never thought of that. But after about fifteen years he hardly thought of them anymore. After twenty-five years he maybe thought of two or three of them for a half-minute or so once or twice a year. They’d flash in, he’d think “I know you,” “I recognize her,” “That was Howard when he was a scrawny kid,” “Vera before she got sick,” “My father with one of his big cigars,” they’d flash out. About once every five years or so he got a little heartsick thinking of them, feeling awful about what he’d done, knowing that the ones still alive must think of him more often and much longer than he does them…. No, ship’s going down. Alarms, sirens, gail wind sounds, maybe hurricane winds. Worse than hurricane winds if there is anything like that. Lightning, thunder, violent rain. Never been in such a storm, heard of one. Can’t find a lifeboat or anyone on board. Moves around the ship best he can, holding on all the time so he won’t be thrown along a passageway, down a stairway, off the ship. Everyone seems gone. All the boats either smashed by the storm or in the water, some with men in them probably, though he didn’t see any of the boats go over and he can’t see them now and nobody answers his shouts. He didn’t understand the alarm system. It’s been explained to him and they even had a quick drill, but when he heard the different bells and sirens going he couldn’t tell which meant what. Asked some of the men below what the alarms meant and what he should do, where he should go, but they just shouted in Spanish at him or acted hysterically and pointed their battery lamps several different ways, one of them down, though they were on the lowest deck. Maybe the man meant the ship was going down, but he couldn’t speak a word of English or was unable to then and Alex couldn’t make himself understood in Spanish to him. He tried following two of them but lost them going through the ship. Couldn’t find Len. Went to his cabin; empty. Ship’s tipping up. He has to hold on to the railing or fall off the ship. Waves his flashlight and yells out to the water “Help, it’s Alex, the American, Americano, Captain Len’s friend, there’s no one here, I have to get on a lifeboat right away.” If he jumps he’ll die almost the second he hits the water. “If you’re lucky, that is,” Len had said. “If you’re unlucky it might take two minutes of the worst pain and dread imaginable, two to three, longer for the well-insulated or very fat guy. The shock of the frigid water and because you won’t be able to keep your neck above even with a lifejacket on. Or the greatest ecstasy, maybe, but that won’t last long.” Ship tips up again. He keeps yelling for help, waving the flashlight. Ship points straight up. He’s practically standing perpendicular to the deck, holding on tight as he can, flashlight falls to the water, when a wave smacks him, another one and another and he loses his grip and falls. Doesn’t want to survive the fall. He’s underwater, comes up. Water so cold he’s screaming in pain, then yells “Help, hombre here, in water, agua, agua, save me, drowning.” Sick in the stomach, throws up. Takes in a mouthful of water when he does. Goes under a little, comes up. Spikes in his head, legs feel chopped off. It’s all lost, he thinks. I can’t take it. Hands so numb he can’t unstrap his jacket. Straps loosen enough and he slips out of it, blows out his breath and lets himself go down. For a few seconds, while he’s going down, his mind whirls around, stops on a picture of his parents. It’s from an old photo.