Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  On what would have been his sixtieth birthday Denise and the two girls go to his grave. He once said he wouldn’t mind being buried, if it was no trouble, near the cottage they summered at in Maine, his mother wanted him buried in Long Island between the grave of one of her children and the cenotaph of another, Denise went along with her because she was so insistent or emotional or something about it—“Last thing for the little time I’ve left I’ll ever ask of you,” that sort of thing—that Denise couldn’t resist and also because of the cost of a burial plot anywhere and maintaining it and the ticklishness of finding one in that Maine town which would admit a summer renter and one, counting the four summers Denise went there alone or with lovers, of only eleven years, who was also Jewish. They meet, without planning it, his brother there. He came with a prayer book, covers his head with his hand and reads the mourner’s prayer in phonetical Hebrew and then says “Maybe, as long as we’re all here, we should say something about Howard, even Eva. How we felt and have been feeling since and so on—you know, about him, theoretically reaching sixty, or just anything. Like to be first, Denise?” “You wouldn’t want to?” “I don’t know what to say yet, if I’m going to say anything but ‘Continue to read I mean rest in peace, if you are, my brother,’ and I thought I’d be polite. Please, you were the person closest to him ever, but if you don’t want to and everyone thinks it’s a bad idea…” “All I can say—” She turns to the grave. “All I can say is that—” “And about him being sixty, maybe that’s ridiculous. But say what you want. Please.” “All I can say is that I loved him—you, darling—very much, and still miss you and think you would have—no, he, him, he would have, because it’s so silly. I don’t believe in spirits or that he’s here in any immaterial way like that. Maybe that’s not the right word, or right word when employed like that, but this is where we plopped him, so fine, period. I’m sorry, sweethearts,” to the girls. “I don’t mean to scare you. Maybe your father’s spirit is here. I’m not saying I know one way or the other, or definitively. It would be nice to think he’s here in some way, or maybe not, for him—unrest. Anyway,” to the grave, “I think he would have wanted me to go on the way I had and approved of most of what I did. If you’re here and it’s true, my old darling, or just that you agree with me for the most part, knock twice or do something earthshaking to let us know, if it’s all right with the higher or lower authorities, if there are those too—With little major disruptive mourning at first, little to none thereafter, lots of sad semisleepless nights throughout it, taking over things as well as I feel I did.” “You did. Don’t let anybody say anything if anyone did,” Jerry says. “Nobody did that I know.” “Good. They were right. You had it tough and did a great job. And sorry for interrupting. Go on, if you’re not finished—please.” “Taking over the householding and child rearing and moneymaking and such completely—well, not completely. When I remarried two years later and for the months I knew him before, I got plenty of help from Eric. But also that: that he would have wanted me to remarry and so quickly, just so I’d get some help and wouldn’t be lonely, and also have another child, since a third’s what Howard and I had wanted and begun working on, and what else? Getting rid of all his manuscripts, unpublished and pubbed. I mustn’t forget that, since it seemed as important to him as almost anything for me to take care of if he suddenly died and was his written and several times his spoken wish. ‘If I die but before then can’t tend to this myself, after the craziness is over and everything’s clearer, out all these go,’ which he left in a letter envelope marked ‘Incalculably urgent’ and pasted on the inside manuscript cabinet door. ‘And don’t waste your time burning them or tearing them up. Green or black trash bags and probably the three-ply leaf kind; and all in one Wednesday or Saturday pickup and without telling anyone what’s inside.’ Actually, I shouldn’t lie here. Olivia’s giving me looks as if I’m lying, so I won’t. I did, after the postfunereal craziness and in a period of clarity, send a number of those manuscripts to publishers and parts of them to magazines, saying these were the last works of my recently deceased husband, hoping that might give them a sentimental and for the publisher a promotional edge, but they were just as swiftly returned as they had been before. Only after they’d been turned down four or five times each did I get rid of them. I did keep a few to remind myself of him whenever I wanted to—manuscripts that were clearly about his life with me and his work and also the girls and us. But after a year or so I forgot about or misplaced them, though I know I didn’t dispose of them, and now I haven’t a clue where those remaining manuscripts are. Probably with the note he left on the cabinet door and that folder I kept with all the new rejections of his work and the list of what manuscript went where and when. Maybe, if his spirit’s here and wants to tap for something it or he deems important, it can tap for that—once for whether I should try to find the manuscripts and send them out again, for maybe the promotional edge is even greater now—the widow who finds her husband’s lost manuscripts after almost ten years—or two, to find them and put them in the next trash pickup—OK, enough, and everyone here should know that when I said I had plenty of semisenseless nights after he died, or however I put it, I meant that for a couple of weeks I felt I could have killed myself if I’d had the easy means and no kiddies and cat—that that’s how, well, that that’s just how, well, just end of graveside chat, and I’ve gone on so queerly long. Olivia?” “I miss him too much to say anything.” “So say nothing,” Jerry says. “Nothing’s fine sometimes.” “I also wouldn’t know what to say. I’m too young to say anything that intelligent or right or unembarrassing. Or maybe I’m just intelligent enough not to say anything that young and innocently wrong and so not very embarrassing, or not for so long. Something, though, but you know.” “So what have I been saying?” Jerry says. “Really, my little olive, probably my idea wasn’t that smart a one for you kids. What do you think, Denise—should we put a closure on it for now?” “I think if they want to say something at his grave, now’s a good opportunity. Nobody but you has been out here for years. And as a family we haven’t been here since the stone was put up, and even then, Eva wasn’t with us. But it’s up to Olivia.” “I’m so unhappy,” Olivia says, “that if I did say anything—but I’m already crying while I’m saying this, which was what I was about to say—I’d cry.” “Honestly, I don’t see the point to this anymore,” Jerry says. “The point,” Denise says, “is that if it’s simply a big quick emotional hurt that can get somewhere nothing else has been able to, all the better for her while we’re here and he’s there, spirit or spiritless. Tell a story then or an anecdote of you and your father, or anything.” “Or nothing. Excuse me again, Denise, but as I said before,” to Olivia, “nothing’s OK too, and at times can be perfect.” “Jell-O,” Olivia says. “OK, Jell-O. What?” “Just Jell-O. Something that happened. It just popped into my head. Not a real standout memory or one that’s going to do anything moving to me. But it’s as good as any between us, and it was so like him, I think. It typified.” “Tell it, I never heard it,” Eva says. “Now I think I forgot it.” “Come on!” “I was around five and it was a Sunday. It had to be a Sunday since that’s what he was talking about. And I couldn’t have been more than five years and seven months, since that’s what I was when he died. And it was about Jell-O because of what comes next. I was sick and he was going food-shopping and Mother asked him to bring back, guess. It was all I could digest, etcetera, except maybe applesauce, which I don’t think we ever ran out of, even on the road, for fifteen years.” “Jell-O was just about the only liquid you’d take when you were very ill,” Denise says. “So. When he came back he was talking in this funny ethnic accent he always seemed to come back with from this particular market because of the people who shopped and worked there, he said.” “Baltimore-Jewish,” Denise says; “you can say it.” “He always caught it like a cold, he said—in fact, the ‘Jewish flu’ he called it, and then in that accent—I can’t do it, so I won’t even try, or I’ll s
ound silly. Vs for Ws and so on and lots of ichs and uchs. But that he got my favorite Jell-O flavor. ‘What kind?’ I probably said and he said ‘Onion Jell-O.’ No, this is too dumb.” “You can’t stop now,” Eva says, “and it’s new.” “I said ‘But this is lime,’ and showed him the lime picture on the Jell-O box and he said ‘No, that’s a very old onion, which turns green inside like a lime. Cut any old onion in half and you’ll see how green it is.’ I didn’t know what a real green onion was then. If I did I’m sure I would have said, just to try to be a match for him, ‘But a green onion is a very young one.’ And I’m sure he would have said to that ‘Well this a prematurely old green onion—something happened to it in its youth. In its salad days, we could say,’ and have to explain what that meant since I wouldn’t have known about that too. And then given several ridiculous but sort of sensible reasons why the green onion became prematurely old. Green onion disease or fell in love with a leek who thought he was too young for her, etcetera. Anyway, I said Is that true, Mommy?’ about the old onion turning green like a lime, and she shook her head and I said ‘She says it’s not true.’ And he said ‘No, she’s shaking her head, all right, but on Sunday’—maybe I made him sound too anti-Jewishy before, and at a Jewish cemetery too. He isn’t; he wasn’t. I’m sure.” “You didn’t sweetheart,” Denise says. “He sounds fine. Go on, finish.” “‘But on Sundays,’ he said, ‘when you shake your head it means yes, and when you nod it means no. I’m surprised, you being such an intelligent girl, you didn’t know that.’ Is that true, Mommy?’ I asked and you shook your head and he said ‘You see? She’s shaking her head. So what I said’s true.’ That’s all. Story’s over. I knew—” “No, it was fine,” Denise says. “Lively, revealing; just right.” “It was flat, stilted, long-winded. I didn’t catch him. I never catch him. Too much made up.” “Can I go now?” Eva says. “It’s getting late and maybe too cold for all of you and I’m a little tired from standing,” Jerry says. “Sit on the grass, Uncle Jerry.” “You can’t sit on the grass.” “Give her a minute,” Denise says; “we’ll all button up our coats.” “I wish I could have got to know him,” Eva says. “I think I knew a little of him. I remember him playing peekaboo with me. I think I remember that and also him holding my hand. This one,” showing the right. “And him feeding me. I’m in that special baby’s chair attached to a table, he’s sitting beside me with a book opened for me and saying ‘You eat, I read,’ and I think I’m saying ‘Bunny, bunny’ in the way you said I did,” to Denise. “Maybe that’s remembering more than there was. But I do remember once lying beside him on the bed in my parents’ room while he was watching the news and he put his arm around me and I rested my head on his chest and I think I was holding the bottle by the nipple between my teeth and he kissed the top of my head many times. Milk in the bottle and he was propped up against pillows and maybe only kissed me once or twice. But that one I remember a lot. I can’t remember anything else right now except through the photos of him with me and what other people have said about him over and over again till it’s maybe become what I think I saw. Or was that Olivia’s idea? She always gets there first.” “Do not.” “Anyway, what else, since I don’t think I’ve said anything yet. I like the man Mom married next but I never felt he was my father. I can say that without hurting your feelings, can’t I, Mom? Well, too late. Of course I’m glad you married Eric and it was nice of him to adopt us and that you love him real well, as you say. The truth is, I’m not telling the truth. I think I felt I had to say those things because we’re standing here, something of him must be around in the air or underneath, and I’m superstitious and maybe a little scared. The truth is, Eric to me is my father and my real actual father, Howard, is like a ghost, a nobody, a shadow. Really, most like a shadow. A shadow holding my hand, a shadow feeding and kissing me. An apparition, I mean. See it but not feel it. That must be old stuff. I can never be original. Olivia can. Not that I don’t admire her for it. I do, it’s wonderful, I’m envious in the most generous way. ‘My sister,’ I say, ‘she’s great.’ So what do I have to say after all my eagerness to speak? And because it is getting chilly and poor Uncle Jerry looks both bored and tired.” “Just a bit tired, sweetie.” “I’ve nothing to say. All this time, and with an all-ears audience, and nothing. If I’ve one thing to say it’s I wish he hadn’t died so soon. If I’ve two, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t combine one and two into one, it’s I wish he had taken care of himself better so he wouldn’t have died so soon. I don’t know what that would have meant.” “Entailed,” Olivia says. “And you shouldn’t think he was at fault. He might have ran himself too hard, but what he got ran in his family, and he did reach fifty. Maybe we’ll get what he got and not reach forty.” “Romantic nonsense,” Denise says. “Just get checkups and don’t think it.” “Then the two of you should have had me sooner, so I could have had the experiences with him Olivia did. And the photos. And you should have pushed them too, Ollie, saying ‘Sister, I want a baby sister, baby baby sister,’ but saying it so many times and in such a loud whiny voice that they would have started me sooner rather than listen to you anymore. Three years sooner, even two, I’ll take two. I’ll take one. I would have come out something the same. We look alike, Olivia and I, just as all of Uncle Jerry’s kids and us look alike, so I probably would have been a slightly different looking person with the same name. An inch shorter or taller. I mean, when I’m fully grown. I’ll take taller. I’ll take prettier. I’ll take Olivia’s complexion and hair and nose and frailer legs. I’ll take anything to have definite memories of me with him. Mine, I mean. A quotient—that’s the right word, right?—dumber or smarter. I’ll take smarter, but if dumber, then not so much so. Meaning, where it’d incapacitate me. And I wouldn’t take sickness either. Throwing up a dozen more times than I’d normally do over fifty years, fine, but nothing life-lasting or short-living like Howard’s sister Mira.” “Vera,” Jerry says. “Right over here. I’m going to ask you all at the end to put a small stone on her monument just so she doesn’t feel ignored. Dad’s too, if we can find that many, though I doubt it would bother him, and he’s probably sleeping through all this or thinking we’re all such sentimental fools. Your Uncle Alex’s is only a cenotaph, so we don’t have to worry about his feelings unless this is where he decided to settle, and why wouldn’t he? So his too, but by then we’ll probably have to share a single stone. But is that all, Eva? I’m not rushing, simply asking you, but also shivering a bit, as I’d like to say something too.” “All. You didn’t like what I said, right?” “No no, sweetie.” “Not bright, too shallow, nothing from inside.” “No, it was smart, something, not shallow; felt, so very nice indeed. And what’s the difference? If anybody wasn’t a speaker it was your father. He’d appreciate someone trying to find the right words and failing at it. And his daughter? You can bet, not that failing’s what you did, but he distrusted people who didn’t hem and haw. But—Howard, on your sixtieth birthday, and are we supposed to believe that? My stringbean kid brother, the boy I ignored for his first twenty years? But you see the respect, I’d say love, you have from all those who were so very close to you. As you can also see, I’m not that hot at this either—and Mom, who’s all right. Still hanging in there, drinking, smoking, coffeeing, reading without glasses and pretending to hear, a little more lined but still a beauty, was a trifle too, what was the word Eva used? frail, to undergo today. But she said to give you her love, and even confessed to me that you were her favorite after Alex of the boys, but she also said she had to admit that Alex had the advantage in that department of having a natural sweet disposition since birth, compared to us, and dying young and being the first boy to go. But—let’s see. I shouldn’t go on at length, for one who complained about the cold, so just may your soul rest in peace, if it hasn’t been, and continue to for eternity, if it has, if that doesn’t seem too deathlike a fate. That’s all I can say, and I think everyone here shares those sentiments, besides joining with Mom in sending our strongest expressions
of love,” and breaks down. “Amen,” Denise says and puts her hands on the backs of her children who are hugging Jerry, was looking at Howard’s stone so didn’t see if he’d beckoned to them in some way first or they came to him on their own.

  Olivia calls Eva and says “I had a dream last night that Dad—Howard—returned. That he just came back, like that—knocked on the door, looked very old. Sunken cheeks, completely bald, no way we’d ever seen him in person or photos. Ugly face hairs, teeth rotted and cracked, little pits and bites around his mouth, and he said to me when I opened the door and immediately started screaming, for he was also in these awful torn clothes and smelled like piss so it really seemed as if he’d just stepped out of the grave, ‘I am your father, Chütchkie.’ That was his favorite nickname for me. ‘I want to hug and kiss you but know what a mess I am. I want to swing around with you on a gate again but know I’ll disintegrate if touched. I want to say I’m always near you, hideous as that thought must be to you, or almost always near—I stay away when it’s discreet for me to. If there was only some way for me to really return. If I only could.’ That’s when he started digging his long fingernails into his forehead. ‘If I could only be in normal clothes and health for someone my age and just talk to you on the phone, even, or whatever they have today where people communicate with one another from different places. To write a letter to you, even, if those things are still sent. I’d deliver it personally. I’d be satisfied just to slip it under your door. Leave it on your front steps. When I was alive I used to think a lot about what I’d do if you died first. I wouldn’t be able to go on, I decided, and never decided against that. I loved your mother and sister but could have survived either of their deaths, though would always have been sad after that, or almost always, maybe because I would have had you to hold on to. But you, plop, I would have disappeared. The things you did and said that made me so happy. “I remember when I was born.” ‘Here he’s quoting me when I was around four-and-a-half, which actually happened. ‘“It was dark, crowded and wet.” ‘For some reason he found that brilliant, Mother said. I apparently also claimed I heard music when I was in the womb, though admittedly close to term. “That piece,’ I said about some Haydn piano variation or sonata the record player was playing, ‘I remember it when I was inside Mother,’ and sure enough he had played it nearly every day for a month when she was pregnant. I don’t trust that reminiscence, but he went for it. Then in the dream he goes on about his favorite memory of me. How he came into my room when I was sitting busily working at my little kid’s table with crayons, pencils, a huge sheet of paper. After a few minutes I turned around, he said, and announced ‘“I’m drawing a picture of a zoo for the kids in my class so they’ll know where they’re going tomorrow. Here’s a cage. There’s a chattering monkey. Up here’s a bird with many colors. Over there’s an ice cream man and balloons. The sun’s shining because it’s such a nice day. Way in the background it’s raining, but that’s over another city. There’s all of us on the grass having fun. Adam, Claire, the two Ryans, Marianne…. Over here’s a dog walking by with his master, glad to be so close to so many different kinds of animals. He’s telling his master that—see the barking lines? The sky is blue, the trees are green, flowers are floating down from the branches, the girls are all wearing pretty colorful dresses, the boys are in new jeans. The hearts I put around the picture are for decoration and how we all feel. Over here’s a giraffe I didn’t draw very well, but I think I got the neck and spots on it OK. When it’s done I’ll cut it out, and after my class uses it I’ll give it to you. Are you proud of me for what I’m doing, Daddy?” My Church,’ he said to me, I have to come back to you, there are no two ways about it. I have to continue where I left off. I want to buy food for you, go to the zoo with you, read you a story, listen to you make up poetry, kiss you good night, dim your light, sprawl on the floor beside your bed with my head on your legs till you’re asleep, maybe hold your hand while I’m doing it if you don’t mind for me to, shut your light off, slowly close your door, stand outside your room with my head against the door jamb thinking of the things we did together that day or I saw you do, what we might do the next. My dearest’—this is still Howard talking—’I loved you more than I loved anyone in any way in my life. Your mother knew. We had few secrets and none about that. Eva I loved enormously also but didn’t have the time with her I had with you. I’m sure, though maybe not, since she was the second and I loved my first so much, but it very well could have been the same with her or fairly close if I’d had two more years. Maybe there’s something you can do to help me come back. Sounds silly, but church after church was built on miracles, or for the most part, and still keep themselves going that way somewhat or their holds over their flocks, so maybe those things do exist. Love would be able to set one off if anything could, I’d think, or one as deep and tight as mine, though so many people like me or in my position I’ll say must feel and think that, so the chances if there are any must be very slight. But try to think of something to help me. And Eva. Speak to your sister and see. Maybe my big advantage over the others is that I was lucky to have such smart capable girls. Funny, but those were the exact adjectives my father used to say about his boys.’ Then the dream ended. What do you make of it? I’m just following instructions. I didn’t repeat any of it to hurt you.” “It’s a good dream,” Eva says. “Maybe even a great one. I know I never had one better or near so good. Big, strong, clear, reverberatory, though with little take to the give. So much like a fine short slow artsy European movie, more Nordic than Alpine or Mediterranean, and one that most viewers wouldn’t take to unless their life stories approximated yours. To be shown in four or five select theaters around the country, is the way I’d distribute it. Not much profit, in other words, and no bundle to be made through public TV either, since it wouldn’t get on till 11:00 P.M. And that it sunk in so much. Improbable, if it had come from anyone else. I wish I saw him in a dream like that. All bones and stink and rot and monolog—I wouldn’t care so long as I knew it was he and he spoke to me or at least showed he saw me or heard. Even in a quick daydream, just ‘Hello and goodbye and I love you, my little pancake,’ or just some rapid eye contact, but it’s never happened and by now I’m convinced it never will. Think of it: all these years and all my efforts. Staring at his photos and reading some of his manuscripts and also published stuff before I went to bed—even the most autobiographical ones and especially the few where even I’m included, albeit as a crawlin—just to help it happen. But it’s really too late at night or early in the morning for me to speak coherently about it. Tomorrow, or much later today—whichever comes first. You still at the same temp job? Say, I just had a brainstorm. Maybe if we went to church some quiet afternoon when hardly anyone but the sexton was there and prayed for him to return in one real wholesome recognizable human piece. Dad as you knew him or, more orderly, as he would have, devoid of all debilitating diseases, aged. Synagogues have never been good for that for me. I never got the impression prayer will get you anywhere there. No incense essence or votary candles for sale or come-in-and-pray-anytime policy or transformed or sorrow-torn or just trouble-free people on their knees, and they certainly don’t promise to get you a step or two closer to heaven or away from hell. But tell me where you’re working now.” “My last week secretarying. It’s no good for my brain.” “Then you phone me at my studio, since you get the freebie and by leaving soon have much less to lose. Maybe I can fly in to see you in a week and we’ll devise some plan like that praying-at-a-church, to bring him back if just for an hour or a day.”