Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  “Their high voices would drive me crazy. All at once, and the running. The pay’s slave wages for preschool teachers. I’m sure I wouldn’t be any better at discipline for kids that age. I’d have stomach-and headaches every workday and lots of anxiety on weekends and the last summer vacation month before school begins. As I did when I taught grade school and junior high. Maybe I should become a house painter. Wouldn’t take much to learn. Work alone or hire someone with me. Keep hiring, for they always quit. Worst kind of work in some ways. But I’d be able to take a radio along and I’d play good music all day. Or a tape cassette player. Nobody bothers painters playing music. They’d even welcome a different kind of music, for painters always play too loudly horrible kiddy music on awful radios with bad speakers. I suppose they’re afraid the radios would be stolen if they were any better. I’d stay close to my cassette player and tapes. Palestrina. I wouldn’t even know I was painting. Saint Matthew’s Passion. I’d get the job over double-time with a run of Mozart flute and piano concertos. Just go in, set up and work. Apartment a week or whatever it takes. I like the idea. I really do. Bartok’s quartets. Beethoven’s last ones. Acoustics might be better in completely empty rooms. Four-story brownstones might take two weeks—all of Bach’s cantatas or as many as are on tape. I’d do good work. They get good pay. Five hundred dollars a room. What’s it take to paint a room? A day? For two coats?”

  “The fumes. They’d get to you. I understand they make painters wacky after awhile and drive many of them to drink. Something in the paints and thinners acts as a catalyst for drinking.”

  “Maybe after twenty years of it. But I’ve painted. Room here and there. Did nothing like that to me. But it would get tedious, I suppose.”

  “So? Become a plumber. Everyone respects them. Study in a trade school at night, while you continue teaching, for half a year. However long it takes. And how long would it? I mean, if you’re going to think seriously about changing professions, then this is thinking seriously. You don’t want to become a master plumber right away. You can’t. Then go to work for someone. Firms, I bet, always need new plumbers. The plumbers who work for the company that takes care of this building are always changing. I asked why once. The plumber who fixed that last kitchen wall leak? Is it because the contractor has so many plumbers working for him? He said no, it’s because they’re always quitting. Wages are okay, but they get better offers elsewhere. And you’d save on the plumbing in our own house if we ever buy one.”

  “That part sounds good. But maybe I should work in an office. Writing for some concern. Publicity, public relations, advertising, technical copy, company newsletters.”

  “I’d think you’d want to stay away from those jobs. It might not be all that close to what you’re doing now but wouldn’t it interfere in your own work? You also don’t have the clothes.”

  “I’d buy a suit. And get my sport jacket mended and switch them around. Sport jacket with the pair of pants I have now and the pants from the suit. People at work would think I have four different outfits at least. Suit jacket with the pair of pants I have now. I’d buy another tie.”

  “You wouldn’t like the schedule. Not only nine to five but work on weekends and throughout your vacations. People in those businesses are always taking work home and getting work-related phone calls at night. And windowless offices, most of them. Or little cells in honeycombs. And the new typewriters. You can’t even manage an electric.”

  “I could try to learn. Or I’d bring my manual in.”

  “Someone could steal it, and what would you work on at home?”

  “I’d carry it to and from work every day.”

  “You’d have to take the subway or bus to work or walk. Think of getting into a crowded subway or bus or walking to and from work twice a day with a typewriter. Plus the books you’d invariably take to read on the subway and during lunch and probably a sack of vegetables and fruit to supplement your lunch besides the work you had and have to do at home.”

  “I’d buy a used very heavy table model and leave it. Or just a standard or portable model and hide it in the office at night. But maybe a telephone answering service. To work for one. When I was in radio news people thought I had a good voice. I didn’t think so. But taking calls for people. Switchboard operator for some company, even. I’d sit in a comfortable chair, read between calls. They must get ten minutes off every two hours.”

  “It’s called a break.”

  “I know. I used to have them at jobs long ago and when I modeled. Maybe I could go back to artist-modeling. Twenty minutes on, five minutes off. Or was it ten off? Or twenty-five and five? That would have been awful. Didn’t pay well and no doubt still doesn’t. But male models are tough to get, I understand, if they’re not dancers. So they might be paid more. One of my students wrote an essay on it. She still models. Very curvacious body. But that painters would rather paint anyone but a male dancer. Too stiff and muscular and they often do dance warmups during poses. But no strap on I might get an additional dollar or two an hour.”

  “You’d earn enough, after posing forty hours a week, to feed us but not the cat.”

  “Then you’ll have to go back to full-time teaching sooner.”

  “Tell me. But say I was even able to get some adjunct work next year, who’ll see to the kids, sitters? All our earnings from your modeling and my odd-jobbing would go to them, so we wouldn’t even have enough to feed us. No, plumbing. If it’s fifty to sixty an hour now, it’ll be sixty to seventy next year. Once you have the know-how, put ads in the papers. Say you’re a very literate well-spoken plumber with a good voice and who’ll only play, while working, soft classical music on state-of-the-art radios and cassette players. Impeccably honest, fast-working, formerly a college teacher—people will love it; you’ll be swamped with business. You work very hard at learning, so in three years you’ll be a great plumber. You can then teach me. I should become a plumber too. Positions in my discipline are becoming too hard to get. We can go into business. Tetch and Spouse. Or Tetch and Teach or Teach and Teach or Spouse and Spouse. ‘Spouse and Spouse will plumb your house.’ Or simply: Tetch Plumbing Company. Or College Plumbing. Professor Plumbing. Or Ex-Profs or Professor and Professor Plumbing. The university jobs alone could keep us. We’ll advertise in their publications. Other teachers will also jump to hire us. You know that many of them feel they can only talk to and trust other teachers. We can do it for ten years and retire. Or think what else we want to do after ten years and retire. I’d like that too. Full-time retirement first. I’ve other things than teaching to do. Well train the kids in it, give them something to fall back on, since there’ll always be a need for plumbers. But while we work, same ratio: two days off for both of us, five days for whatever. And summers off. We can in fact go away summers to the same places you mentioned and get our plumbing licenses there and do summer plumbing to help defray our summer costs. That way, if summer plumbing’s really profitable, we might only have to work one day a week the rest of the year.”

  “Seriously, I have to do something else. Anything. Maybe a job in a department store. Pays minimum wage or a bit over, but right now, so what? Selling mens’ bathrobes and pajamas, I once did. And boys’ wear and toys, so I’ve experience there too. They can move me around various departments. The store troubleshooter. No, not boys. No toys. Too much shrieking, I remember. Mens’ pajamas and robes. Everyone knows his size or the woman knows the size her man takes or she just holds the pajamas up to me or asks me to try the robe on and says he’s a size or two smaller or around the same size. If he’s a lot taller or rounder than I, he’s extra large and maybe the sleeves have to be taken in a little, but that’s it, sale’s completed, ‘Cash or charge and will a simple bag or box do or do you want it gift wrapped, which you get at the service desk past those doors?’ They can always bring the garment back if it’s the wrong color or size. Even if the man took the pins and paper out and tried the pajamas on. Why would I care, even if he lost or tore some of th
e paper? Pajamas were easy to pin back and I found it kind of relaxing. Lay them out on the counter; it was like folding up a dummy. Bathrobes just got belted and hung back on the racks. Hour for lunch. Or was it forty minutes? Employees’ cafeteria, decent food at subsidized prices, separate dining room for execs or anybody for the day who got to wear a flower because the department was short. Only two-week summer vacations. That would hurt. But you see I have to do something else. I should have tried to become a professional baseball player. I was good but maybe not that much. The long ball. I had the wrists. It was exhilarating when I connected. But struck out too much going for the fences, which was sometimes humiliating. Could also peg it into home from the outfield without a bounce, but often too wild. Would have been retired by now, doing nicely. Gone back to school. Become a college teacher in something. Wouldn’t have minded it after fifteen-twenty years in baseball. The students would love an ex-pro ballplayer teaching them. Like a war hero to some, an actor who once had a Hollywood part or the lead in a well-known TV commercial, even if I’d only played triple-A ball. With my retirement pension or whatever players get, I could tell the university just one term only, two classes max, no freshman comp or film courses. That would be ideal.”

  “Shoot for that then.”

  “I’m not needed enough.”

  “Become a dean if you want something different but still want to stay in the university.”

  “You really have to be part of the academic community. I might have a good voice but I don’t speak well. They stump around the country promoting the university. My grammar’s too tied to my ears. I don’t have any advanced degrees and could never now sit in some classes and write a thesis to get one. They’d suspect me. What does a dean do?”

  “Intermediary between students and faculty. Evaluates requests for money. Mouthpiece for the chancellor. Depends on what you’d be dean of.”

  “I’m not smart enough that way and could never raise money or haggle over it. I don’t even know my own field well enough to talk coherently about it. I strictly dribble out what I know, while I’d think deans would have to show real expertise, or give a convincing show of it, and polish. Most chairmen and teachers are clever cookies and would read right through me. I’ve been lucky so far. Got the job because my own chairman thought he knew better about my deficits than I did. And since then have hidden from observation, torn up the more unfavorable student evaluations and written a few good ones for myself; things like that. One of the reasons I want out. It’s too bad it’s too late to be a fireman. When I lived with Lulu she urged me to become one. They had two openings in this town’s one firehouse and would train you. She knew two of the men in the company and said she’d speak to them. I could have done it. For a while it sounded exciting and the possible camaraderie with the men also appealed to me. Lulu had slept with both of them and I think twice a year or so still did it with one. She had so many things going I didn’t know about. Would have been interesting though.”

  “Fire fighting?”

  “Three men in a truck racing to put out a fire, hanging by the handstraps in back, all having slept with the same woman and maybe at that moment—wind whipping their rubber coats; well, I don’t want to build it up too much—talking about it. You get very close to your fellow firemen I understand—your lives depend on one another and so on. Three days on, four days off—something like that. So you eat and sleep with them, cook for them—I see them shopping together in A&P, big fire truck waiting outside. I’d be retired now also, or almost, after twenty years. It’s been that long since she suggested it.”

  “Why didn’t she think it’d be dangerous? Little houses, probably. You stand on a stepladder and squirt out the fires. No. But you could have got a lot of reading done waiting for alarms. You could even still be with Lulu, married, children, be a grandpa, or close. You also would have become an even better cook than you are now. Or a more efficient one, just luncheonette-style cooking, which could have opened up another profession for you.”

  “I did that during college at a coffee shop. Opened the place up mornings. Filled the steam table with water. Made bacon and eggs and such for early customers while I set up behind the counter. Fourteenth or Twenty-third on Broadway or Eighth Avenue. I remember a subway stop was right outside on the corner. That was supposed to be good for business. Steam smoking up the windows the first hour and then dripping down them, because I opened up just when the building’s heat was going on. It was also a drugstore. I wouldn’t do it again. Was run ragged. My legs wouldn’t hold me now. Same with waiting and bartending. You know, did it for a while till I was almost forty. Good work in that it didn’t take much brains and time flew if you were busy, which I usually was. A million things to do. Keep the sugar dispensers clean and filled, etcetera. Coffee, always making coffee, even at the bar. Could never get comfortable shoes. Actually soaked my feet in epson salts most times I got home.”

  “I hate saying it, but plumbing. You’re your own boss or could become one eventually, as you said your father always told you to be.”

  “I now wish I had become the dentist he wanted me to be most of all. ‘We’ll have a joint practice,’ he said. ‘Or we’ll open a second office—in the Chrysler Building.’ He said he had a friend there who could get us a good office. ‘It’s classy, not like the Garment Center. You work out of there, I’ll keep the old office. When I die you inherit them or sell whichever one you want or both and retire at fifty, fifty-five.’”

  “You’re afraid of blood, or recoil from it every time one of the girls cuts her finger or lips.”

  “I’d have adapted. A psychiatrist then. Or just a plain therapist. No, I don’t think like that. But they get paid fairly well, sit most of the time, hear lots of interesting stories, and you can do it in your own hours. Too much back-to-school involved. And do I really want to help people? I’m too self-interested. I’m only trying to find time for myself. But it wouldn’t take that much of an effort to become a plumber, I don’t think. First two years might be tough—schooling, apprenticing, adjusting to it, making mistakes. But that’s why you’re an apprentice. Senior plumbers work over you. But suppose he was some very dumb crude guy and twenty years younger than I? I could get through it. And customers would trust me, and I’d be patient—it might work. Because I can’t teach anymore. I’m a fake. I’m not giving the kids their money’s worth. I don’t care if they learn or not. I’m tired of it, that’s all. It’s the first job I’ve held for more than two years and it’s going on eight. I get along with just about no one there. It’s too connected to what I really do, as you said.”

  “You’re exaggerating. But look in the paper tomorrow. See what’s doing. Call around. The Yellow Pages. Various plumbing schools. Maybe it’s even easier than we think.”

  “But if the toilets are really stopped up? The floors covered with it? Not just shit but slop and gook of every kind. Tampons. A hand. Dead cats. Who knows what people throw down there.”

  “Everything, I’m sure. Speak to plumbers first. Maybe you don’t need such a strong stomach. Maybe they draw the line about what they have to clean up. And for the bigger things that get stuck, they have equipment to push them all the way through to the sewer.”

  “But if the customer’s an invalid? Dainty homes, where nobody touches anything dirty? Carpentry’s out of the question. I was always bad at it, even in Shop. Electricians do well but every now and then they get a terrific shock. Sometimes knocked off their feet and where their teeth chatter. They take it with the job. The anxiety of when I’d get it would stop me. I’ve had a couple. One when I was a boy where I couldn’t speak for minutes. Literally, my tongue wouldn’t function. What else is there? Typewriter repairman. One I go to charges twenty-two fifty an hour. But so intricate, and no doubt boring, and it would ruin what’s left of my eyes.”

  “Postman. But your feet, and you’re probably too old. Stay at what you have for the time being. Something might turn up. Or become a plumber and just accept cle
aning up crud once or twice a week and every so often putting your hand in something horrid.”

  “Garage mechanics always have oily hands and grease under their nails. Even those who wear gloves. I couldn’t come home to you and the kids like that every day. Even when they wash their hands raw with heavy-duty soap. After they quit the job or go on vacation it takes a few weeks for their hands to get normal again. That’s what Norton said. He did it for a year. If my hands were like that I doubt I could sleep. I’d sense them or would always be scratching the oily hand cracks. But maybe they like just about everyone else at his job gets used to those things too. Of course they do—they have to. Anyway, we should drop it for now—I should. It’s getting late.”

  “Just one thing. What did you mean before by ‘better intellectual sex’?”

  “‘Intellectuals have better sex’? Slower, more sensitive and imaginative, less taken in by family and institutional proscriptions. There was something else. But I’m probably all wrong.”

  13

  _______

  Frog Made Free

  He suddenly seems to have lost all his marbles. Doesn’t know where he is. Dark, feels movement, sounds of movement, so feels he’s going someplace. A car, but no seat, just a rough wood floor he’s on, so it isn’t. Bed of a truck, totally enclosed, shaking back and forth, moving slowly, but not the sounds of one, outside or underneath. A train, bouncing like one. Sounding like it. How could it be? Not a real train. Sure, one with something pulling it and on tracks, but what’s he, some bum tramping it in a boxcar? Smells like it, old hay, animal dung. He’s sitting on a floor, still a rough wood floor, thick liquid on it where one of his hands touches, back up against someone’s back, feet squashed against something like a crate or wall. Where’s his family? He’s no bum. Has a home, car, job, all small but as much as most, wife and kids he lives with, mother in a nearby city whom he helps support. They were with him just before, had to give away the dog, hours, a day, before he woke up. That’s it: was asleep. “Denise? Denise?”