Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  “A photo of his mother. Mother’s photo. Mother photo. Photo of mother. Photo, just ‘Photo’: She’s on a boardwalk, is young, late teens, very early twenties, leaning against a railing, beach and water behind her, in a swimsuit, could be any beach, no cliffs to the side or boulders in the water, flat and endless sea and sky, holding an American flag on her shoulder, doesn’t seem to be cold, big patriotic smile as if it was a nice bright day to be saying ‘I’m proud to hail from the good old USA,’ while the strollers on either side of her have heavy coats and furry hats and caps on and seem to be shivering. He found it in a drawer of photographs in her apartment. Had gone through the drawer to find snapshots of her and his dad and one of them both, small enough to put in his wallet. Wanted to open the picturefold to show people his gorgeous mother and handsome rugged-looking dad, the two lovey-dovey or kittenish together, the era. Showed the photo to her and she couldn’t place it. ‘Maybe it was from my bathing-beauty days, but they were always in August or July. I did a little modeling then too and of course those chorus parts in dancing movies. But I can’t think of a movie or ad where I wasn’t in flapper clothing or skimpy or lavish costumes, some weighing a ton with a ten-foot train picking up spit and stuff from the floor, and I never did a bathing suit ad, if they even had them then. Maybe the models in the photo are the people in warm clothing. You know: being photographed in the summer for the fall or winter lines and they just happened to be walking on the boardwalk to their shoot when my photographer snapped me. But that wouldn’t account for their frozen appearances. But look at me there. I’m a hideous old hag now but I think you can say then, despite my funny plastered-down hair and overluxurious lipstick and rouge and the unflattering bathing costume that also fattens my thighs, that I might be considered beautiful. Men clamored after me, photographers were always stopping me on the street or at the beach asking me to pose, and I was forever getting pinched, propositioned and whistled at. And though I was only a chorus dancer I still got more love letters and hot poems and flowers and candies and cheap jewelry and other junk than the stars did and I had to devise all kinds of ways to avoid those lechers after the show. Most of them thought I was an ignorant city kid turned promiscuous hoofer and just wanted to butter me up before taking me to bed. But I was impossible to get as your father liked to attest. The hardest he ever met, which I think is why he married me. He could have had as a wife a number of well-to-do fairly good-looking women with not half bad bodies and from much finer families. But he invested so much money and effort into our courtship that he wanted to get some returns. I think he got the best of the deal. I’m sure he continued to play around now and then. He practically ruined us with his reckless investments and avoidable run-ins with the law. For the first dozen years of our marriage he saw a lot more of his mother and sister and cronies than he did me. And he was hardly there for you kids ever and with his indifferent to painful dental care to you all and refusal to let me send any of you to another dentist, helped deplete most of your teeth. While I was a virgin when I married him. Always stayed faithful and available. Never argued with his tyrannical momma or demanded more than the most necessary domestic things. Did what I could to clean up the messes he left and quarrels he started over money with shopkeepers and such and never got a nod of thanks for it. Threatened to leave him I don’t know how often. And even though he never said a word or slipped up a sign to suggest he’d mind much if I went, I never even stayed away a day. And then, while I was also playing nurse and nurse’s aide to your sister till she died, I took care of him as if he were an infant for the last ten years of his sick old age.’”

  “Her father barges into the apartment, pushes her husband aside, tells her he’s going to pack all her things and take her and the kids to stay with him till he finds her her own place. She says she can’t leave him. It’ll be just what he wants. He’s at least an adequate provider though so niggardly at times, even if he’s always the big spender with his friends, that she has to steal from his wallet when he’s sleeping or showering or forge his signature on savings withdrawl slips. It isn’t that she still has a lot of feeling for him left. He’s too thoughtless and avaricious and there’s never any real lovingness or anything much there but self-centeredness and she expects he’ll one day give her syphilis if she ever gets back in his bed. He treats the children like distant relatives or better yet as if they’re the next-door neighbor’s or even better yet as if he’s their avuncular bachelor uncle who once every two years comes to visit them for a few days. He simply isn’t cut out to be a husband or father, but as a devoted brother and son he’s the best. They weren’t kidding, whoever told her, that they broke the mold when they made him. But it’s no joke. He’s going to be in serious trouble one day, not just some petty night-in-the-clink stuff, and that’s when she’ll pack up the kids and leave here. She’ll have to. He’ll wind up in prison and she won’t be able to afford this place. But to give him that pleasure now? He won’t moon for her or beat out his brains as to what he did wrong that she left and he’ll even be relieved to be on the loose again. Even? He’ll call it a red-letter day, whatever that is. Besides all that she’s sick of him needing her just to have someone handy to shut-up, keep the kids out of his hair, cook and serve him elaborate just-like-momma-made breakfasts and dinners every day when he wasn’t taking other people out to eat or mooching a meal, and to throw her weekly allowances across the dinner table at her as if she weren’t a low-priced chippy but a clean whore. None of these are really good-enough reasons and it isn’t that she feels the kids need at least a shadow of a father around till they’ve reached whatever’s that certain age, but for no known reason to herself she’s going to stay, and she takes out the few clothes he put into the valise, closes it, puts the clothes back in the drawers and asks him to put the valise back up in the closet.”

  “For a few years he thought of himself as a serious painter and painted nothing for most of those years but large canvases based on photographs of his parents with his two older brothers. They were six and two then, seven and three, five and one, four and a few months, and in a few of them and especially in the ones he liked to paint most, she was pregnant with him. You couldn’t tell from the photographs but she told him she was when he showed her them. ‘That’s you,’ she said, pointing to her flat belly. ‘I carried small. People when they saw me in my eighth month would often say I never looked slimmer, am I on a special diet? My diet was that I didn’t eat much when I was pregnant because almost everything I ate I threw up. That meant you kids came out frail and diminutive, and two of the three boys were so unnourished they almost died from it, but I forget which ones. Anyway, the third was almost no better off. I was nauseous with all my boys from the day after conception till a minute before they put me out to deliver them. In fact with you that’s how I knew I was pregnant. But with Vera, don’t ask me why, I didn’t have a single sick minute with. And she came out twice the size of any of you, and rosy, exuberant, almost a movielike version of a lively newborn, and howling inside the birth canal during the last few seconds of travel before she shot out. People have always said that was impossible, but I heard her. All ironic, of course, since by the time she was three she was sick with the disease that would gradually ravage her till she became half her natural weight and greatly shrunken, all feathers and empty bones. But the sickest I ever got was with you. I often couldn’t leave my bed for days. If I look happy in this photo with you it was because I was a good poser, having had a little experience as a dancer and model, since at no time did I feel any cause to smile. I literally cursed you daily for being inside me and I think a few times I consciously tried to abort you and swore over and over never another. But while I was so sick, tossing around all night and not permitted any more complex medicine than a spoonful or two of simple pink antacid for fear it’d harm the baby—doctors knew so little about it then—your father slept like a log and groused when I didn’t, since in bed I sometimes kicked him in the belly for being so healthy and sl
eeping so well. But for all those nine miserable months, I had nine wonderful ones nursing each of you. It was a pleasure in every way. Your father loved the way I’d filled out and, let’s face it, got all hepped up when he saw my breasts spread and the baby being fed, and became for the only time sort of solicitous and very affectionate to me and I also never felt hungrier or physically better. But nothing was worth so much nausea and I cursed you boys so much when I was carrying you that I’m surprised none of you came out with the plague. Maybe Vera’s illness came from all those accumulated curses against her brothers finally heard. A backlog of them and really only one higher being to answer them, so it took a while and because of the delay got misdirected. Odd how it turned out, with you the worst to me ending up the healthiest child. But who knows what Alex’s health would have been if he hadn’t drowned when he was twenty-six—maybe a lot better than yours. But if there’s one thing I really know it’s that I would have, if given half the chance, died right then and there or just a slow death but with her pain and disfiguring illness, simply to give her a completely-free-of-it healthy or just normal few years. But who’s to say what I’m saying has any sincerity behind it when I know even when I’m saying it that wishes aren’t granted and prayers are never answered nor curses ever heard.’ ‘Well, I think we should at least leave a little of it open,’ he said and she said ‘If you want.’”

  “She visits her husband in prison. It’s a long train ride up, or seemed that way, but now looking back she sees it couldn’t have been more than an hour and a half, maybe two. The trains were very old, the windows were still open in the hot weather then; the passenger cars were more like very long subway cars going aboveground, but between stations not as fast. All that, plus stopping at every stop, probably had something to do with making the trip seem longer. Also that she had to take the subway to Times Square and then the Forty-second Street shuttle to Grand Central to get the train. If it had had a shiny high-speed look to it she might have remembered it as going faster. It also could have been her mood. She never felt good going, always felt worse returning, so she was never able to sleep or read on the train, even a newspaper. He was awful then: cranky, angry, bitter, inconsiderate, unfeeling. Tough as it was for him to be there, it wasn’t so easy for her either. But he never said things to her like ‘How you holding up? It must be rough, not just this back-and-forth trip, but taking care of the kids and being so short of cash and going along on your own day to day. I’m miserable without you too and for what I’ve done to you, but please don’t let that add to your upset; I’ll get through it OK.’ She left the children in the care of someone. All of them except the youngest go to the same elementary school three blocks from their home, so the helper only has a few hours with them. She’s allowed to see him once a month for up to two hours, and once a week for ten minutes if she wants. Documentary trips they call those. Sign this, that’s it, out. She’s never gone up for just those ten minutes. Wants no part of them: so cold. If there’s business between them she saves it for the long visit when they can also talk about other things. The business stuff can be brutal and it’s also a long trip and so many preparations and expensive for just ten minutes. They’re not allowed to touch. Signs say it everywhere, unless the couple is given written permission by the chief guard. ‘They might give it if I’m a perfect boy for a year,’ her husband once said. ‘But fingers through the hole only, so expect no kiss.’ Glass is between them where they sit. A screened hole the size of a silver dollar in it to talk through and a hole the size of his fist at the bottom of it to eventually touch fingertips she hopes and to put things through for him to sign if she has to. When that happens a guard unlocks the hole on her side, another guard stands beside her husband, and the paper and pen, having been inspected by the chief guard in the anteroom before she comes into this meeting room, are put through by the guards. Then the hole’s locked, and after he signs, hole’s unlocked and the pen and paper’s passed through to her guard who reads it to see her husband didn’t write anything he wasn’t supposed to, like, she supposes, ‘Put a hand grenade in a cake to help me escape,’ or even ‘I love you dearly and want to screw you madly,’ and given to her. Today she wants him to sign a change-of-name form for the kids. ‘Where does that leave me?’ he says. She says ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It means no one will ever know me through my kids.’ ‘It doesn’t have to mean that. It could mean we just wanted to make their lives simpler by anglicizing their names. But all right, I warned you not to do it, you kept doing it. I warned you some more, you kept doing it some more and a whole slew of other stupid things which thank God—don’t worry, nobody can hear me—you were never caught at. I warned and warned you even more—’ ‘Stop harping on me. Don’t be a bitch. You know I don’t like bitches. I never did and you’re acting like a total worthless foul-mouthed nagging bitch of all time. It makes you look ugly when by all rights you could be pretty.’ ‘Insults won’t change my mind or the conversation’s direction.’ ‘Sticks and stones, go on and tear me to pieces and chew up my bones, think I care? Think I’d dare? blah-bah-bah, you rotten bag. Just lay off.’ ‘Stop being a jackass and trying to avoid this. Please sign. That’s all I ask. Please please sign.’ ‘Why?’ ‘We’ve gone over it.’ ‘Why?’ ‘It’s best for the kids.’ ‘How?’ ‘You’re like a broken record.’ ‘How?’ ‘Because they’re being hounded, as I’ve already told you, hounded by their schoolmates and people because their father’s in prison and lost his dental license and was involved in a smelly citywide scandal and newspaper stories and photos of you and the whole world and his brother knows of it and other things. Because you’re famous in the most terrible low way. And through you, guess.’ ‘So it’ll be better by the time I come out.’ ‘The news stories. Think, why don’t you. Just don’t sit there pigheaded, unconcerned for anyone but you. People will never forget, or not for thirty years. The Mirror’s centerfold photo of you on the courthouse steps, for one thing.’ ‘What was so wrong with it? I was dressed well, looked good, big smile, wasn’t in cuffs.’ “The lousy change, nickels and dimes, falling through your pants pocket and rolling down the steps and you chasing after it like a snorting hog.’ ‘What’s the snorting? What’s with these pigs?’ ‘Panting. You were out of shape. But for the money, is what I mean. The same kind of man running after petty change where he could break his neck or get a stroke, would try to save a few dollars in fines by bribing a building inspector. Whatever it was, that’s why they took it and used it and it was ugly.’ ‘I told you to sew those holes.’ ‘That’s hardly my point. Besides, you cram so much change and keys in them, your pockets are always going to have holes.’ ‘I need the change for the bus and subway. And newspapers.’ ‘Since when do you buy your own newspaper?’ ‘I buy it.’ ‘Maybe the Sundays. The rest you take out of garbage cans.’ ‘Sometimes if it’s a clean one and just laying there on top, but obviously clean and looking almost unread, why not? Why waste? So many people waste. I was brought up poor and taught not to.’ ‘Sometimes some of the ones you brought home had spit on them, and once, dog doody.’ ‘I didn’t see. The subway station was poorly lit or something. But one out of a hundred. So what?’ ‘Let’s drop the subject and concentrate on the other one.’ ‘What other one? If it’s what I think it is, there isn’t any other one.’ ‘Three people have already sent that photo to me through the mail. All anonymously. What did you do to make so many enemies? Anyway, it’s an example of how many people know about it regarding the children.’ ‘I didn’t make enemies. If I made a lot more money than most other dentists, maybe that’s why. Jealousy, and this is how they get even with me, but behind my back. Or there are thousands of crazy people in the city who do nothing all day but read the papers. And when they see a man down, someone they’ve never even laid eyes on but through the papers think they know, they get their kicks pushing him further. But believe me, people will forget. In a year, two at the most. I’ll be old news, or their minds don’t remember that far. The few who don’t forget, the hell with
them. I’ll tell all those nutjobs and sickies that I did it standing on one foot.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘That it was easy—this is—and in some ways, even good for me. I’ve met lots of decent people here. Gentlemen. Men of means. Big successes in all kinds of fields. Future clients, some of them. They have me working in the prison clinic’ ‘I know.’ ‘So, for one thing, I’m able to stay in touch with the latest dental gadgets and machines. It’s very well equipped. But best yet, I see twenty patients a day, all men from the prison. No thieves or killers but tax evaders, embezzlers, extortionists, but not strong-armed ones, plus some draft dodgers. Those I don’t especialy like, in what they’re doing, but that’s their business. And then the conscientious ones who won’t go into the army for their own more personal reasons. Moral, religious, none of which I go along with or else don’t understand, but at least they’re better types. And they all got teeth. Most, I just look in their mouths, pick around a little and take an x-ray or two to satisfy them, since they usually have nothing wrong with them a quick prison release wouldn’t cure or else need major bridgework, some of them complete upper and lower plates, which the prison’s not going to put out for. They let me extract and fill and even do root canal to as many teeth as I want, since they don’t want their immates walking around in pain and maybe kicking someone over it. But they feel the more expensive work, which means sending it out to a dental lab, the prisoner should pay for himself on the outside. All of which is to the good, since when a lot of these men get out they’ll come to me.’ ‘How? You won’t have a license to work when you get out.’ ‘Ill get it in a year, maybe two.’ ‘You might get it in ten years if you’re lucky. That’s what I’ve been told.’ ‘By who?’ ‘The license people and Democratic club leaders you sent me to speak to for you.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it much sooner. But till I do I’11 get different kind of work and do very well in it. I did in dentistry—started with borrowed money and no more skills than the next dentist—I can do well in other things. And by working at it long and hard and mixing in the right places a lot. I bought a house for us from it, didn’t I? A building, Five stories of it and you decorated it to your heart’s content.’ ‘Fine. One where it cost more to keep up than the rents we get plus all the problems that go along with it.’ ‘What problems? Be like me. Tenant complains, tell him to move out if he doesn’t like it. And we also got our apartment from it. Two floors. And my office, so those were supposed to make up the difference. And it was an investment if the neighborhood ever turned good. Not only that, we had other things. A full-time maid. One left, another came the next day. And a car whenever we needed one. And summer vacations for all of us but especially all summer for you and the kids. So stop complaining. I can do all that again no matter what I go in to. And maybe a little dentistry—the hell with them—you know,’ and he makes jabbing motions with his thumb over his shoulder, indicating he’ll do it on the side or behind their backs. ‘Till everything comes through.’ ‘That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. They’ll find out-one of your good friends who’s an enemy will squeal—and you’ll land right back here getting acquainted with all the latest dental instruments.’ ‘Anyway, no job is that complicated unless it’s a real profession like dentistry and medicine and law. But I’m sure I won’t have to do anything else for very long. The people you spoke to were being extra cautious. You’re my wife? How do they know you also weren’t working for the state, in return for helping to reduce my sentence or getting my license back, by letting them say “Well, now, you want him to get his license back sooner than ten years you’ll have to pay for it.” They’re no dopes. I never should have sent you to them, but thanks for trying. Because of course they built up the time to you till I get my license back and pretended to be saints. But when I see them I’ll talk to them like a boy from the boys. And on a park bench—no one in fifty feet of us or where the air can be bugged—and not in a restaurant or room. I know what to do.’ ‘What? Bribing them?’ ‘Shut your mouth. That one they heard. Say something quick and silly as if you were joking.’ ‘They didn’t hear. And like how,’ she whispers, ‘by bribing them?’ ‘Shut up with that word. I’m serious. Smile. Make believe you’re laughing, the whole thing a joke.’ She smiles, throws her head back, closes her eyes, opens her mouth wide and goes ‘huh-huh-huh’ through it. ‘OK,’ her face serious again, ‘what’ll you do? The same stupid thing?’ ‘That time was a mistake. I did it to the wrong inspector.’ ‘He was a city investigator, not a building inspector.’ ‘I thought different. He was an impersonator, that’s what he was—a lowlife mockie bastard in it for a promotion or raise. Or maybe he does both—inspects, investigates—when there’s cause for alarm or just that things are getting too hot in the department that other inspectors are taking graft. So one true-blue one in there. But they all take, so they wouldn’t use an inspector to investigate.’ ‘You did it to all the inspectors. Fire, water, boiler, sewage—whatever they were, that was your philosophy in owning a building. Even if I’d seen to every inch of the building and complied to the last decimal to every city rule and law, matter of course you handed out fives and tens to them.’ ‘To keep them happy. They expect it. They don’t get it they feel unhappy and can write out ten violations at a single inspection, some that’ll cost hundreds to correct. Or my office. I got water and electricity and intricate machine equipment I depend on and I don’t want them closing me down even for a day. Every landlord knows that and every professional man who owns and works in his own building.’ ‘It’s a bad way to run a brownstone, and dishonest.’ ‘But it’s the practical way, or was. Did we ever get a violation before? Why do you think why not? They’re all on the take or were till the investigation, and probably now are again. There’s a lull, then it’s hot; it never stops. Cities are run on it, the mayor on down. What happened then was they were using me. They wanted to get a professional man bribing an investigator in personating an inspector so they could say “See, even doctors and dentists give bribes, so how bad is it that our building inspectors take them? Dentists earn five times as much as our inspectors and get from the public ten times the respect, but the briber is as serious a criminal as the bribee,” or whatever they call them, the bribed guy who takes. And that’s why they trapped me and that doctor in Staten Island and the CPA who owns a much bigger building—an apartment one, twelve stories—in the Bronx. I met them both, since they’re both here for around the same-length terms as mine. Nice family men and they shouldn’t be in prison. For what good does it? You want to make them pay, have them work in city clinics or helping the poor with their taxes for twenty hours a week for the next few years. Ten hours, but where it adds up to about what they’d put in nonsleeping time here.’ ‘Please sign the name change.’ ‘I can’t. I know you think it’s best for them, that it’s going to help their future. But today’s big graft and news story will be tomorrow’s trash, or something—yesterday’s news. Last year’s. Last two. That’s what I wanted to say. No one will ever have heard of the case or remembered my name from it by then. “Doc who? Nah, what graft story’s in the paper today?” And I’ll be out and practicing again with an even bigger clientele. And if I’m not? If they’re so stupid to deprive my family of a good livelihood and the country of a lot more income taxes because of some dumb bribe I gave a dumb building inspector or investigator or actor, then I’ll do something else. The Garment Center. I’ll sell dresses or sweaters or materials. One fine gentleman in here on some illegal immigration or something offense owns a large suit and cloak house on Thirty-fifth Street and says he’ll take me in as a salesman the minute I get out. If he’s still in here, he’ll tell his partner to put me on. Not road selling but the showroom. He thinks I’m sharp and palsy-walsy, so just the right type, besides knowing my way around and eager for money. And it’ll give the house a little extra class, having a doctor working for them. They all wanted to be doctors or dentists or their parents wanted them to. Or some other house if that one doesn’t work out. Most of the men here bullshit, so yo
u can’t really count on them. But I know lots of people in the Garment Center, and also one of the ones from here might come through. And in it for a couple of years, working very hard, I’ll learn enough to start my own business. I can do all that, why not? and then we’ll be rolling again. But to have my kids walking around with the name Teller when I’m Tetch? How am I to explain it?’ ‘You don’t have to.’ ‘No, I do.’ “Meet my son Gerald Teller?” “Was your wife married before and the boy kept his real father’s name?” “No, I’m his real father. Same blood and nose.” “Then why the different names?” “Because all the kids want to be bank tellers when they grow up and my wife thought it’d give them a head start.”’ ‘That’s just stupid,’ she says. ‘Why, you got a better explanation? OK. “Because I was in prison for being too honest and my wife thought to really jab the knife in me to get even she’d change the kids’ name so no one would know they were mine.” Because you don’t think that’s what people will ask? Over and over they will. For what father has a different name than his kids’?’ ‘People we know are always shortening or anglicizing their names. But if you don’t like that one, I was thinking of another. Tibbert. It sounded good.’ ‘It sounds awful. It has no meaning. It sounds like a bird or frog or some little barnyard animal singing by a brook or up a tree. “Tibbert! Tibbert!” Anyway, something silly sitting on a lily pad in a pond. Look, don’t give me that paper. You do, don’t give me the pen, because I won’t take both at the same time. I won’t be pressured. Just because I’m here, I haven’t become a jelly fish.’ ‘I’ll tell you what you’ve become.’ ‘Sure, and you’re my wife. But what about Tibbs as a name? We’ll start shortening the anglicized. Or Tubbs? Or Terbert? We can change Howard’s name to Herbert and he’ll be Herbert Terbert. Or forget the T. Who says in a name change it has to start with the same letter as Tetch? Sherbet. Gerald, Alex, Howard and Vera Sherbet. The Sherbet kids. They can go on stage. Tell jokes, take off their clothes, do little two-steps. I don’t know why, but it all sounds right. Or the Shining Sherbets. Up on the high wire. You can change your name to Sherbet too and go back on the stage or up there in the air with them. You still got the face and figure for it. Or just divorce me if you want.’ ‘Oh please.’ ‘I’m not kidding. You want it, you got it.’ ‘What are you talking about? Though don’t think for a few moments I haven’t thought of it.’ ‘So think of it some more, think of it plenty. What the hell do I care anymore? You’re so ashamed of me—’ ‘It’s not that—’ ‘You’re ashamed!’ ‘Well, I told you not to do—’ ‘You told me and you told me you told me and I did it and admit it and they had me and now I’m here doing it on one foot and soon I’ll be out on both, or not so soon but a lot sooner than any of my kids’ lifetimes so far and later everything will be forgetten and the same. Except I probably won’t be doing those things again, that’s for sure, but you’ll still be hocking me about it till I’m dead. In fact your hocking will make me dead. Look, you want a divorce, it’s yours, on a platter. Take the house, the kids, the platter and whatever you find in the mattresses. You find another kid there, take that one along too.’ ‘Don’t give me what I don’t want. When you get out and if you still want it, we’ll talk. The children will be a little older then and maybe more able to adjust to it. But not now.’ ‘Why not now? Why not? Why not?’ The guard on her side comes over. ‘Anything the matter?’ ‘Nothings the matter, thank you.’ ‘She says nothing but let me tell you what she wants me to do,’ tapping the glass to the paper on the table in front of her. ‘He knows,’ she says, ‘they all have to know. It had to be screened before it got to you.’ ‘So good, everyone knows. But did you know,’ he says to the guard, ‘she wants to force me to do it? She thinks I’ll bend, because prison somehow has weakened me, but not me, sir, not me.’ ‘Please, Simon, let it ride,’ she says. ‘OK, it’ll ride, to please you. Everything to please you, except that goddamn name change.’ ‘Let that ride too.’ ‘I’m afraid to say your time’s about up,’ the guard says to them. ‘That’s what I really came over to say’ ‘OK, OK, thanks, but just a few seconds more—How’s the new dentist doing in the office?’ he says to her. ‘Better than the last. He seems to be busy, mostly older people-plates, extractions, primarily, from talking to a few of them going in and out.’ ‘Just like me then. I pull out about ten teeth a day here and does it ever feel good. And some of these guys are bullvons, with teeth like dinosaurs’—I’ll pull out yours too, Mr. Carey, if you want me to—no charge.’ ‘Thanks but no. Ones I don’t need I let fall out.’ ‘Smart guy. And I know you’re Carey because you got it stitched on your jacket. Don’t let me fool you.’ ‘You didn’t.’ ‘But no plates here,’ he says to her. “They won’t shoot for it for the prisoners. But I already said that. I’m repeating myself when I’ve only seconds left. I’d like to be making them. Keep my hands in so I don’t get rusty. Does he pay the rent on time?’ ‘First of the month. And for the summer, when he was going to a dental convention in Chicago and then on to a vacation somewhere—Denver, he said; the Grand Canyon to hike and ride horses—’ ‘Lucky guy. Not the hiking, but I used to ride horses. Once in army training, then in Prospect Park a couple of times. I’ve pictures. You’ve seen them.’ ‘—he gave me two months in advance. I think he’ll be there for as long as we like.’ ‘Tell him not to get too tied to the place. Or why not? I’ll open an office someplace else. It doesn’t always have to be in my own home.’ ‘Time’s really up,’ Carey says. ‘Now we’re all breaking rules and can be penalized. Your wife, with shortening her visits. You, because of that. Me, in that they don’t like me being this lenient at the end of a visit and I get a talking-to—’ ‘Can I kiss her hand through the bottom hole here?’ ‘Afraid not.’ ‘Right now she wouldn’t go for it anyway’ He stands. ‘Goodbye, dear,’ she says. ‘I mean it: please call and write as often as you can. And try to forget most of what we went over today—what might disturb you.’ ‘The kids. Give them each a big kiss on the head from me.’ Carey signals a guard behind the glass, who goes over to her husband. ‘Tell them I love them like nobody does but don’t tell them where I am.’ Carey shuts the speaking hole. ‘Gerald knows.’ Her husband cups his hand to his ear and his expression says ‘What?’ ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble here,’ she says louder, ‘but Gerald knows.’ ‘Yeah, I know, I know,’ he shouts, ‘but not the others and tell Gerald not to tell.’ Carey opens the hole and says ‘Everything all right, Yitzik?’ Yitzik waves that everything’s fine, puts his hand on her husband’s shoulder and says ‘Please don’t make a fuss.’ ‘Me? A fuss? You hear that, Pauline? This nice guard here thinks I’m going to make a fuss—Not goodtime Simon, sir. Not a chance,’ and without looking at her or back at her he goes with the guard through a door. She puts the paper back into a manila envelope, winds the string around the tab in back to close it, goes through her door, is asked if anything was slipped to her by the prisoner and is given her pocketbook back, calls for a cab, leaves the prison, takes the cab to town, goes to a bar near the train station and has two strong drinks, something she only started doing every day once he went to prison and which she has one or two more of and never has supper or lunch the day she visits him.”