Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  “‘When I was a little girl,’ his mother said, ‘till I got to around ten, we slept two to three to a bed. Girls with girls, of course, boys altogether. Under lots of thick quilts when it was cold, one pillow per bed, and four of the girls in two beds in one tiny room and three boys and my two older sisters in two beds in another small room. My mother or one of the Polish girls would have to wake us up because we slept so heavily. She’d bang two pots together most times to do it or tinkle a spoon against a glass if we were already stirring. Strange we all slept the same, for in the next room the others had to be gotten up that way too. And also that we were all sent to bed the same time, even though there was twelve years between the oldest and youngest. I suppose my mother wanted to make sure she got an hour to herself. Or if there was any hanky-panky between her and Uncle Leibush, who lived with us, that would be a good time, with my Dad still at work.’ For years after she got married she woke up around eleven or even noon. The children would be in school or in the nursery or bedroom with the live-in maid. His father would have left for work at seven. ‘Some people like to have their teeth fixed before they go to work,’ he said, ‘because it’s their only free time to or they think if they’re still half asleep they won’t feel as much pain. And lots of my patients I don’t give novocaine to when they need it because they want to keep the bill down.’ Then she’d come into the kitchen in her bathrobe, make fresh coffee (his father had his breakfast made by the maid), read the paper, smoke some cigarettes, have a second or third coffee, then bathe and dress. ‘It was a little bit too hedonistic,’ she said, ‘but I loved it while it lasted. It made me feel like a real lady and late at night I got lots of good reading done.’ She changed this routine when his father went to prison and she had to get a full-time job. Then she’d be up before seven, shower and dress, get the children up and ready for school, let the nanny in for the youngest child, make herself a quick breakfast, leave the house with her two youngest sons but in front of the building go left to the subway station while they went the other way to school. ‘A kiss, a kiss, a kiss,’ he remembers her saying on the sidewalk, after his brother and he started off, and she’d get down almost on one knee so they could one at a time or together come into her arms easier and kiss her. A few months after his father got out of prison she started getting up around nine, after the children had left for school. They had a housekeeper who’d make breakfast for his father, wake the children up and help then off to school, take the youngest to kindergarten and pick her up and take care of her the rest of the day. His father had a number of jobs for about ten years before he got his dental license back. Factory worker, shoestore salesman, department store floorwalker, then for eight years selling materials in the Garment Center. He always left early to get to work before anyone else. ‘No matter how menial a job it is, the boss appreciates it,’ he said, ‘and the extra hour gives you a jump on everyone else. So you do it for show and possible advancement and the little time alone everybody needs and to make more money.’ She was an interior decorator by then—she’d taken an interior design program at night while he was in prison—and once her business got going she’d usually begin seeing clients around 11 a.m. His parents came home around the same time at night and there was lots of takeout Chinese-American food and dishes like lasagna and roast turkey and flanken soup she’d cook to last three to four days. She started sleeping poorly twenty-five years ago, she said, when his sister’s disease got much worse and the first symptoms of his father’s showed. ‘I got up five to six times a night, just as I do now, but then to help them, running from one room to the other sometimes.’ He said a few times it could be the black coffee now she drinks late at night and, after his sister died, the hard liquor she seems to start drinking around noon. ‘I don’t drink coffee after dinner and I only nurse a drink or two a day, and when you’re here for dinner or a chat and the way you pour, maybe a bit more.’ He once checked her bourbon bottle and in three days it was two-thirds gone. ‘You have anyone over for drinks since I was here last?’ and she said ‘No, why?’ ‘This bottle. You couldn’t have consumed that much since then. The woman who cleans up for you, maybe?’ ‘You mean to sneak? No, and what about how much is gone? I bought that bottle almost two weeks ago. They say twenty-two shots to a bottle, so it’s right on time.’ ‘I think I opened it for you when I was here last,’ and she said ‘Couldn’t be, since you were here about six days ago and I never could have drank so much in that time.’ ‘That’s not the way I remember it, but I could be wrong.’ ‘You’re wrong, believe me, dead wrong. I’d be puking every night instead of just tired if I put so much away. As I’ve told you, I nurse my drinks, put lots of water in them, and ice, which becomes even more water the way I drink them, and lots of times after that ice melts I put in some more. Sometimes I think it’s the taste of the bourbon-tinted water I like rather than the bourbon.’ Almost every time he speaks to her on the phone she complains she didn’t sleep well the previous night. ‘Last night I was up almost the entire time. I put on the TV at four in the morning and watched it—the cable weather station, as nothing more interesting was on—till six, while I read and did my needlepoint, and then lay in bed for an hour trying to keep my eyes closed till it took away too much energy from me and I got up for the day. I know old people don’t need that much sleep, but a few hours wouldn’t kill me.’ From what he’s seen and she’s said over the years her day runs something like this: bed by eight or nine, sleep till ten or eleven, read a book or watch TV in the sitting room while she sews or does needlepoint, back in bed listening to radio call-in shows and reading and sometimes sleeping for an hour, in the kitchen around three or four, a drink, some coffee, watch TV or read or both, back in bed, sleep for an hour or so, up, coffee, bathe, fresh coffee, half a toasted bagel or slice of dry toast, read the Times delivered to her building’s vestibule, maybe make cookies or bread, preparing them now, baking them later, every other day a short walk around the neighborhood or block but sometimes, even when the weather’s nice and she’s feeling well, not leaving the house for three straight days, shopping for food, about every other week stopping to sit for an hour on a bench on one of the Broadway islands and listening to other elderly people talk, a phone call or two, her sister, her sister-in-law, a real estate agent calling to see if she’s interested in selling her building, slice of bread or the other half of that bagel with cottage cheese for lunch, maybe a tomato or green pepper slice and a couple of radishes or celery stalks, drink before, drink after, sip it, forget where the drink is, pour a new one, drink from it, the other, thinking they’re both the same glass, bourbon, little water, lemon slice or twist if one’s been left over from the last time he was there or if he cut a number of them for her later and put them in wax paper and told her where they were in the refrigerator, since she likes twists better than slices, every five days or so opening her mailbox, every other day for an an hour working on the books for the building which she hates, every Friday telling the cleaning woman what work needs to be done and pitching in with some of the lighter chores, once or twice a week letting a building inspector in or oil burner man downstairs or accepting a package for a tenant or telling the delivery boy to leave her groceries on her doormat and then dragging the box or bags into the foyer and almost item by item carrying the groceries to the kitchen, once or twice a month depositing the rent checks in the bank and getting a few weeks’ cash, seeing her doctor and dentist twice a year, week every summer staying with him and Denise in Maine, drink before dinner, dinner around six, slice of Gruyère or Brie or tallegio cheese on bread, maybe a baked potato with a pad of butter or butterless sweet potato or yam and piece of fish or half a can of white tuna or piece of chicken from a breast she baked and which’ll last three days and a salad or a carrot and a few of her cookies but never her own bread, those loaves she gives away to neighbors or freezes for her sons or grandchildren who once every week or two stop by or come for dinner which they usually bring cooked and prepared or make there with their ow
n food, about two out of every three Sundays lunch at home with her sister-in-law and then a walk along Columbus or Broadway to look at the shop windows and perhaps have an ice cream or in Central Park if it’s not crowded or rowdy or the music too loud and then sitting, before her sister-in-law takes the bus home, along the wall outside the park opposite the bus stop, drink after dinner which she nurses till she puts the glass with whatever’s left in it into the refrigerator for the next day or carries it to bed. ‘If you are going to drink,’ he’s said to her in various ways, ‘and I’m sure a little of it’s OK—blood vessels, and to relax or for the lift it gives and just to have something in your hand other than another coffee or cigarette—why not wine or beer? The hard stuff isn’t good for your stomach after a certain age, at least not more than a shot a day. Fifty, I’d think, if you’ve drunk your share for a while, is when one should call it quits with it, and you’ve gone more than thirty years past that. Fine, means great constitution, ability to withstand liver and kidney corrosion or wherever it is. And your mind’s still sharp, which I hope, if I inherited it right, means good news for me. But from my own experiences, it gives you a gnawing often aching feeling in your gut that keeps you up nights or a good slice of them. Or a glass of sherry or port, if you want to drink something late at night to help you sleep, another of its pluses, but not the cheap stuff but the better Californian or Iberian kind. And no coffee after three or four in the afternoon, and if you can keep it down to just one in the morning and then tea after and preferably herbal or vegetable teas or substitute coffees bought in health food stores, even better.’ ‘When I was a girl,’ she answered him once, ‘I thought I’d never take a drop of alcohol in my life. I was surrounded by it, that’s why. My dad owned a saloon downstairs and the fumes from it rose to where it got in our bedroom window three flights up or through the floorboards some way, passing through the ceilings between us. I wasn’t crazy. My sisters smelled it too and we always woke up with the stench in our hair and on our freshly laid-out clothes. His clothes also stunk from it and from cigarette and cigar smoke, something I also thought I’d never touch or marry a man who did, because he was in that place fourteen hours a day. I blamed alcohol for my not seeing him except an hour at dinner when he came up and if I bumped into him on the street during one of his brisk walks when he said he had to get out or not breathe, which is another reason I hated alcohol so much, though he never drank anything but a little schnapps every now and then and several glasses of religious wine on the holidays.’ She often looks exhausted when he visits her and says she hasn’t slept well the previous nights. She quickly uses up bathrobes and he’s been buying her one every other Christmas. He once said ‘Maybe it’s your mattress that’s keeping you from sleep,’ and went to her room and felt it and said ‘It’s lumpy, slumps sharply to the side, I’m surprised you don’t roll off it and end up sleeping on the floor. Let me get you a new one—a whole new bed, even. This year’s Christmas gift instead of another plaid robe.’ ‘What for? It’s still a good bed. Aunt Teddy gave it to me when I had my double one taken out.’ ‘That’s my point. It was probably her son’s first bed. Even if the frame’s still OK, the mattress must be sixty years old. Get rid of it. Get a double one so you can turn over in it without falling out, have a place to put your books and newspapers on when you read in bed and then fall asleep while reading without being poked or rattled by them.’ ‘Why a double for a single woman? And then I’ll have to buy several changes of sheets to replace the ones I gave you when I sold the double bed.’ ‘I’ll give you them back. Or buy you some all-cotton ones for the ones you gave me. As a birthday gift if you won’t take so much for Christmas. But a single bed’s for kids just out of the crib and convicts; it’s too confining, part of some punishment.’ ‘I’ll think about it, maybe it’s not a bad idea,’ but she’ll never let him buy it for her nor get one herself. It’d have to collapse first and be declared unrepairable by both his brother and he and the super. Then she’d say she doesn’t care what size bed she gets, queen, double or single: she won’t sleep well on it anyway. When he moved out of town and came in for a weekend on some business or just to see her and slept in the old boys’ room in her apartment, he’d hear her late at night or very early morning flushing the toilet, chopping or slicing vegetables on a cutting board, prowling about the house with her slippers flopping and sometimes past his door with a glass tinkling, could smell cigarette smoke, sometimes hear the TV going, hear her hacking loudly or trying to cough up phlegm or blowing a clot out of her nose, smell bread or cookies baking, coffee brewing, a stew starting which she’d jar and give him to take home because she doesn’t eat red meat, twice heard her typing, forgot to ask what but he thinks a letter because after one of those times she asked him to mail one for her when he goes out. Later those mornings he’d say she seemed to have slept badly last night and she’d usually say ‘I slept better than I have since the last time you stayed over. I don’t know why, since I’m no longer afraid of a breakin after all those locks and bars and alarms and steel doors I had installed, but my mind feels much easier with you here.’ Sometimes he’s said ‘I hate to bring this up again but maybe you’d always sleep well if you didn’t drink and smoke and have coffee so late at night.’ ‘What drinking?’ and one time he mentioned the glass tinkling and she said ‘That tinkling was from an inch of drink I put back in the refrigerator yesterday and added some ice to this morning and which will probably be, because you’re staying another night, the first of the only two I’ll have all day.’ One time she said ‘Leave me alone, stop hounding me about it, for what other pleasures do I get? If I lived this long with them in pretty good health, I’m not about to die because of them, and if I suddenly did, what of it? I’m already eight years older than your father was when he died at a respectable age and some twenty years older than my parents ever got and which I never thought I’d be.’ ‘When I was a girl,’ she said recently, ‘I was spilling over with self-respect. I dressed beautifully, did my nails, we had a girl for this but to get it done the way I liked I ironed my own clothes, bathed with a special rough soap to clean out my pores, washed my hair every night even though I had to boil water to do it, combed and brushed my hair till it shone, held it with tortoiseshell barrettes I saved up months for to get, was always chipper and alert in the morning, sharpest one at home and in class, would often run to school just to get out of breath because it felt so good, could beat up some of the bigger boys when they got too cheeky with me, played ball so well and ran so fast that I was called, in spite of my good looks and feminine clothes, a tomboy, ran errands for money after school till around dusk and between each of them studied my schoolbooks. Later on I found I wasn’t a day person anymore though I certainly kept up my appearance and wardrobe. Now with old age everything’s gone to pot. I could care less what I look like. I forget to eat and don’t bother with makeup or wear nice clothes and do little with my hair, though the beauty parlor I went to for forty years is still right around the corner. I’m a mess and I should do something to correct it. Maybe now that you’re here for the weekend I will. You’ve always let me know when I’ve let myself go and I’m grateful for it.’ ‘You haven’t, and when have I let you know that much? You still look good—your skin and the way you carry yourself and the texture and nice gray color of your hair, and unlike most old people your nose hasn’t grown too long and in fact has stayed thin. What I wonder about is why you wear torn stained housecoats around the house and slippers and socks that are falling apart when you must have new ones or the money to buy them.’ ‘Because I can’t sleep and so always wear the easiest clothes to slip off just in case I suddenly feel like getting into bed, and also that I’ve become a slob. But keep harping on me about this and also what you’re not saying about my hair and face and I’ll change.’ When he lived in the city and she invited him for dinner, he’d sometimes ring her bell, get no answer, let himself in with keys, call out for her, go to her bedroom door to see if she was asleep or sick. Sometimes
he’d leave a note that he was here and left and other times he’d sit in the kitchen for an hour or two sipping scotch and listening to a classical music station if it had good music while reading one of her newspapers or the book he always carried with him when he went out, then would leave a note saying he waited for her, she must have slept badly last night so he was glad she was able to nap for so long, hope it isn’t that she’s coming down with something, he took some salad and cheese and bread so don’t worry—he ate plenty and had a drink too and he’ll call her tomorrow around noon. A few times he’d hear her clopping in her slippers from her bedroom, then she’d come into the kitchen in her bathrobe, say she was sorry but she’d only put her head down to rest a few minutes, she wasn’t hungry but he should go ahead and have something, and she’d turn on the ovens and burners to warm up the food. He’d eat just enough to satisfy her and eventually convince her to have a slice of toast and cheese and glass of milk or some cottage cheese or yogurt before she had a drink. ‘When I was young I talked and talked and talked,’ she once said. ‘Some people thought it a problem. When I got older I just talked and talked. By your age I was listening more than talking, and now I have nothing to say.’ When he sat with her at one of these dinners or took her out to eat, after they talked about the food or the restaurant table and her health and she asked and he briefly told her how his work and other things were going, they didn’t talk much unless he thought up things to ask her, a lot of which he’d asked before and so often knew the answers: what she did the last couple of weeks, whom she’s seen and spoken to recently, anything interesting or unusual that might have happened to her lately, what’s the book she’s reading about? she go to any recent movies or see anything she liked on TV? anything particularly excite or disturb her in the papers? what about that woman with the strange Indian name who eagerly testified against her mother who’s a judge? what about that beast who beat his child into a coma and then instead of helping her smoked cocaine after? how’d she get along when Dad was in prison? was it tough going back to full-time work after so long? any friends or relatives cut her off once that mess started? any of the women she danced with on stage or in movies become celebrated actresses or dancers or known in any way? who were some of the more famous headliners in the show? she have anything to do with them offstage? ever see Gershwin? she remember her first impression when she heard Stravinsky or Bartok or even Mahler? she ever try to return to the stage after her father pulled her off? did he actually drag her off during a performance or rehearsal or just told her not to go to the theater again? she have any interest in the election? she ever have any interest in politics? who was the president she admired most? What’s she think of this new information that Roosevelt didn’t do enough to save the European Jews? other than the fellow she’s mentioned a lot were there other men she was in love or infatuated with or could possibly have married before she met Dad? he fool around a lot or was that all just gossip? how would they have split up the kids or time with them if they had divorced? how close did it get and how often? what was it like living for a while with someone she didn’t like? either of them take it out on the kids? did she ever think of living with a man when she was unmarried? what stopped her and would it stop her if she were a young woman today? did her father fool around? what was it like living by gaslight? her eyes get tired reading or playing the violin or was the light as bright as in the average-lit room today? how’d firemen reach the top floors of six-story and seven-story walkups then? were the Lower East Side streets as teeming as it’s been said? she feel safe alone on them at night? can she recall a woman or girl getting raped on the street or in a park or anywhere then by a stranger? what kind of violence did she witness then outside her apartment? were there still many horses on the streets? she get interested in the book he gave her last week? if she has a choice does she prefer what’s been called a good biography or a great fiction? her parents have a radio or telephone when she was a girl? did radios play classical music then or just what did they have on them? she go to concerts or poetry readings or art galleries and museums when she was in her early twenties or even in her teens? what she think then of Picasso and Braque and Matisse and artists like that? she read or see or was aware of any of the literary magazines? Pound, Eliot, Stevens? when she first hear of Ulysses the book? anyone she know bring it in as contraband or buy it when it came out here? how’s her sister doing? she hear from any of her favorite nieces and nephews? doctors think Uncle Lewis will pull through? when and where did she learn to drive and in what kind of car? what was the farthest she ever drove west? what’s she remember of World War I? outside of lighting candles on Friday nights once Vera got very sick was she ever religious? what was the thinnest she ever saw Dad? does she remember him ever having more hair? what did they discuss then? was it ever a problem for her that he rarely read books and perhaps outside of grade school never a line of poetry? were there sex manuals at the time? her brother Leonard and older sisters prepare her in any way for sex? were there blacks in her elementary and high schools? what did she do the day of the Crash? she remember the day Roosevelt died when they were all in the same room crying? what forms of contraception were used in the teens, twenties and thirties other than condoms, the rhythm method or where the man pulls out or woman moves aside? any one teacher make a difference? what were some of the beers sold in her father’s saloon? Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Mann, Kafka or Babel? what can she remember about the bohemian art scene in Greenwich Village then? the village life of her parents and what they said about their parents’ before her parents boated over here? what meals she like best that her mother or her mother’s Polish girls or Dad’s mother cooked? they lock the doors at night then? when he was a boy they really keep the lobby and front doors unlocked when school was out or just over for the day? any relatives of hers and Dad’s still over there when the Nazis came? when she go up in her first plane? she have any Gentile friends she could take home when she was a schoolgirl or from her jobs later on? she ever go out with a non-Jew? what was Cuba like on their honeymoon? she get drunk on rum there? what did bathtub gin taste like? she ever take a drug in the twenties just to get high? she read Gertrude Stein or just about her in the papers during her famous trip here? Hemingway when he was starting out? is he right that she never liked Faulkner and why? what did she and Dad do in Europe that time they went other than drinking beer at Heidelberg Castle and champagne at the Folies Bergère? what was it again Dad said to Jimmy Durante and Durante then said to him at that Coney Island nightclub or beerhall where he entertained? she ever go to Luna Park and what was it like? did a proper young woman ever go into a subway washroom? she ever get along well with anyone from Dad’s family? what made her call Dad’s father such a schnook and schmo? What were the Polish towns again her parents and Dad’s came from? when she was pregnant with him and before she had to change his name to one with an H when Dad’s mother died where’d she come up with Peter Anthony? what was it like being in the opening-night audience of a new O’Neill play? they ever go to the ballet? would she like to one of these days? what was the greatest single thing including mind-reading acts and trained elephants that she’s seen on a stage? the day Lindbergh landed? has she changed her mind about Israel and the Palestinians in any way? she read the paper today? how about that cult leader on the West Coast who as a disciplinary example to the rest had his little daughter beaten to death and then hung out a window by a rope? outside of lynchings were there things like that then? she really come in second or third in a Miss America contest or did it have a different name then or was all that just to enthrall the kids? did Fitzgerald’s antics and works make an impression on her early on? was the Charleston difficult to learn? has life sort of measured up to what she thought? she often talks about death but if she stayed healthy would she like to live another twenty-thirty years? is there any philosophy she’s followed or thinks she should have? if she had one or two pieces of general life advice for him what would it or they be? what were condition
s like giving birth in a hospital then? did he really start to come out in a taxi? was she allowed to watch or assist her brothers and sisters being born on the kitchen table? does she know how either of her parents were born? what’s she think of him as a father? are there any similarities he has to Dad other than physical? what did Dad truly think of him? what were some of the nicest and worst things he used to say about him? would she be honest for once and say what she thinks are her greatest disappointments regarding him? does he measure up in any way to what she thought he’d be like or be? she think he has any regrets how things have turned out for him and his present prospects? any writer she thought great whom she hasn’t heard anything about or much for fifty to sixty years? Dad ever take him for a solitary stroll in his pram? did Sophie Tucker really sit with them at the nightclub she was singing at and try to drink Dad under the table? he really do his term standing on one foot or was all that just a big boast? how was it Edward G. Robinson sat for a few hours in their breakfast room one afternoon? she remember the time he was small and fell down a coal chute up the block and she had to pay the coal man a dollar to climb in after him? the time a popsicle got stuck to his tongue and she thought the best thing to stop him from crying hysterically and possibly choking on it was to pull it off? wasn’t that earthquake something with the ratio of killed to injured ten to one? what was the worst personal and worldly catastrophe she’s heard of or had? the worst worldly or personal catastrophe she’s ever known? how well can she still speak Yiddish and French? would she like to go to a kosher restaurant one of these days? would she make gefilte fish for him and his family if he brought over all the ingredients and the three kinds of fishes he thinks it is already ground? what were the first words he said? she recall his first steps or were there just too many kids? who of her brood showed the most intelligence and coordination and creative abilities and sensitivity and things like that from the start? does she still have that synagogue say memorial prayers every year for Vera and Alex and Dad? what’s she think of people spending more than they earn or can pay back in good time? did she or Dad instill ideas of frugality or penuriousness in him or she think they came on their own? Not that he’s really that interested in it but does she think the federal deficit’s going to cause another depression or runaway inflation or will ever be improved? does she still think of Vera and Alex every day as she said some years back? she mind him asking questions like that? she think Gorbachev will carry it off or summarily get poisoned by the Kremlin kitchen like perhaps the last two or three guys? was she one who thought Stalin a louse from the start? is there anything she wants to ask him? is there any one woman he’s known she’s intensely disliked? does he ask too many questions? is there anything she’s been curious about him for years but never said? is there anything she thinks he wouldn’t answer or face himself? how does she think things are going between him and Denise? as husbands come and go where would she rate him? if she can’t really hear him then doesn’t she think she should get her hearing aid checked or just go for another ear exam after so many years? is there anything to this that he can’t remember her or Dad ever reading to him? did Dad like to put him on his shoulders or when he was very small carry him in one arm? how did she take him along when she wasn’t using a nanny or stroller or older brother or pram? she still get her teeth checked twice a year? did she ever get a response or even a thank-you from any of the people she sent his last work to? which of the desserts looks good to her even though he knows she won’t touch it? does she think he drinks too much wine with his food? what is it about this place that they always go to it when there are ten other restaurants within a ten-block range of her house? Sometimes he’s suggested she go to her general man and get a prescription for a mild sleeping pill or tranquilizer to help her sleep. She’s said ‘I never took one of those things in my life, never wanted to though sometimes I probably needed to, and it’s not because I think I’ll get addicted, but I’m not about to start taking them now.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I want to fall asleep when it’s natural to and not through stimulants.’ ‘They’re not stimulants. They’re relaxants or whatever the technical term is.’ ‘They stimulate you to relax or sleep. They do something or they wouldn’t have to be prescribed.’ ‘You take coffee; that’s a stimulant.’ ‘Not for that. I take it to relax and pass the time away and because I like the taste of it, something you could never say about a tranquilizer or sleeping pill. And it does relax me, the two or three cups I have, but not enough for sleep.’ ‘Then alcohol. You take that and technically it’s a depressant, isn’t it, which I think would be worse than a relaxant or sleeping pill to get you to sleep.’ ‘It doesn’t get me to sleep, even though you’ve told me to take a glass of sherry or port at night for that, and it doesn’t depress me. If anything, it picks me up and keeps me going gently, the one or two drinks I have in a day’ ‘Then go to a drugstore and buy a bottle of Nytol or one of those.’ ‘Sometimes the over-the-counter drugs are more dangerous than the prescribed ones. You know that when they suddenly jump to have to being prescribed.’ ‘But it’s been years of you not sleeping well—ten, maybe fifteen.’ ‘That’s OK; I’m still healthy for my age. If it slows me down at times, it’s better than dropping me dead. And when all my worries go, good sleep will come.’ Whenever she says something like this he doesn’t want to say ‘What worries?’ He knows she’ll say ‘Bills to pay, checkbooks to balance, getting over to the bank, filling out complicated city forms, the building, waiting all day for oil burner men and inspectors and delivery boys to come.’ He calls and says ‘Hi, Mom, it’s me, Howard, how are you?’ and she says ‘All right, I guess. I was up all night.’ Usually he says ‘I’m sorry, what’s wrong?’ but this time he says ‘Sorry to hear that.’ Sometimes he thinks ‘I’ve heard all this so much and in the same exact delivery and the same lines,’ while she’s saying something like ‘I should sleep better tonight though, now that I’ve spoken to you.’ The conversations are always short. He doesn’t like talking on the phone to anyone or not for long and if he’s particularly brief that call she says ‘Is anything the matter with you? You don’t sound well.’ ‘No no, I’m fine.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah, sure, in the pink.’ She always ends the call with ‘Thanks for calling, and I love you,’ unless she’s very tired or sick, and he usually says ‘Same here with me, much love’ or ‘Me too.’ ‘When will I see you?’ she says this time and he says ‘I’ll try to come in soon.’ ‘Good. How are the children—Denise, the whole family, of course?’ ‘Fine, fine.’ ‘Nobody with colds—nothing like that? With the weather so changeable as it’s been, that’s when they come.’ ‘No.’ ‘Good. And how are you?’ ‘Fine, you know me—almost always healthy. But how you doing? Everything’s OK?’ ‘I don’t sleep. I just can’t these days. Maybe an hour, two. I seem to worry about everything—the bills, paperwork for the city I don’t have to have in for weeks to some of it for three months. It’s stupid, but I do.’ ‘I’ve said this before, and I’m not saying it now to make you upset or that I expect you to change your mind or anything, but you really should go to your doctor and have him prescribe something very mild to help you sleep. Or just talk to him over the phone and have him do it. I’m even surprised, when he last saw you, he didn’t suggest it on his own.’ ‘He did, but I told him what I’m telling you now. I never took them and I’m not about to start. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I know that at my age I should relax about life a little, so why do I worry about these things so much? When I figure it out, I just might relax. Because I’m not sick for someone so old, knock wood. None of the ailments. And I have enough savings and income from the building to live without struggling, and a roof nobody’s going to take away from me. It must be my nature to worry over nothing, I suppose. But the children, Denise—they’re all okay?’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Good. You?’ ‘Fine, thanks.’ ‘I’m glad. Any of them around so I can speak to them?’ I’m calling from school and am actually on a ten-minute break from class.’ ‘Then I won’t keep you. And nothing’s r
eally happened in my life since I last spoke to you, so I don’t—except one thing. Did I tell you about Cousin Nathaniel?’ ‘No.’ ‘I didn’t tell you? You know who I’m talking about?’ ‘Nat, Ida’s son. What’s wrong? He’s OK, isn’t he?’ ‘He’s finished. Beyond life. I read this little newspaper article about it days before I heard it. It’s a real story. You have another minute? Or call me back when you do or I’ll call you if I don’t hear from you.’ ‘No, tell me, what?’ ‘He was stabbed to death. In his apartment. I read this little article in the Times last week—’ ‘Stabbed to death?’ ‘First hit on the head all over. Then stabbed as if the person went completely crazy when doing it. Cut to pieces, hacked. But this article I read—At the bottom corner of the page, could easily be missed, so I don’t know what attracted me to it, said an unidentified man was found stabbed to death with multiple wounds in his apartment on Avenue J. Neighbors had complained of the smell for four days, so they called the police. Or he’d been there for four days and they only started smelling it for three or two. When it said Avenue J, I wondered if it could be him. He’d taken over Ida’s apartment when she died, which was their whole family’s once—you remember, when you were all young. How much older would he be than you?’ ‘Seven years, eight. But because I think he’s a few years older than Jerry, maybe even more. But good God. Dinners all the time there. Fridays. I can’t believe it. In the same apartment.’ ‘That’s what I thought when I first read the article. When it said unidentified man I almost knew it was him.’ ‘But Avenue J’s a long avenue. Thousands of people must live on it, so I don’t see how you could have thought it was him.’ ‘It just entered my mind. Because he was such a loner, maybe. And he was so strange, I heard, these last few years—worse than he ever was—that who knows what kind of people he might have hung around with or let in for what. His sister didn’t. And he’s the only person I know who lives on Avenue J since his mother died. But that’s just half the story, what I told you. Hanna—I’m not going to get you in trouble with your school?’ ‘No, what?’ ‘What?’ ‘His sister Hanna.’ ‘She called me a few days after he was found and told me it all. The funeral was only last Sunday. I don’t know why it slipped my mind not to call you when I found out. I guess I didn’t think you’d be that interested or just that you’re so occupied with all the work you do and just the problems with small children—sickness and things.’ ‘But I don’t understand you. He was my favorite cousin when I was a boy. So really the only one I ever got close to, since I hardly knew the others. He and Hanna, but he would also come over to the house, take Alex and me places.’ ‘That I didn’t know. But it was at Pinelawn or something. A veteran’s cemetery on Long Island. Funeral and burial both. Hanna was hysterical most of the call. But she said that’s where he always wanted to be buried, to save on the cost for them, since he’d been almost penniless for years. Taps and everything, she said they had at it; beautiful chapel and immaculate grounds, so as nice a place to be as anywhere. And everything except the rabbi, since she wanted her own, and half the casket paid by the government. I didn’t go because I didn’t know of it and I couldn’t have got out anyway and I don’t think Jerry would have driven me.’ ‘Sure he would have if he wasn’t supposed to be out of town that day. He’s told me Nat was his favorite cousin too.’ ‘I wish I had known that. But how they couldn’t identify him immediately when they knew he lived in that apartment I don’t understand. Maybe he just never went out much lately or only when neighbors and the super couldn’t see him. He had that kind of peculiarity in him. What I’m saying is his appearance might have changed so much recently—starving himself, if he was so penniless, though I’m sure he could have eaten anytime he wanted at Hanna’s or her girls’ or borrowed if he needed from her—that they didn’t recognize him. Or else—’ ‘Come on, don’t go off like that.’ ‘Why? Since he lost his shoe store, or walked away from it—the story’s never been straight—he’s been peddling toys up and down Broadway and not making a dime from it. He was sloppy, dirty, half the time unshaven for days, Hanna said. Nothing like his father, who was always perfectly groomed and spotless—so nobody wanted to buy from him and he was stuck with what he wanted to sell. Hanna said the police were letting her into his apartment for the first time this week and I bet she finds nothing but toys and thousands of his old jazz records.’ ‘About his appearance change, I bumped into him last year at around 116th and Broadway and he didn’t look much different than he did at Dad’s funeral, only paunchier. We had a nice chat on the street. I wanted to take him in for coffee, but he said he had to deliver the boxes he was carrying.’ ‘Those were the toys. He was too ashamed to tell you he’d become a peddler. But I didn’t know you saw him.’ ‘I told you then. I was staying with you that weekend. I even brought up the records with him—that when we were kids he used to bring us into his room to play them for us—but he said he got rid of them twenty years ago.’ ‘Anyway, the story is that he went to the veteran’s office in Brooklyn to collect his pension check-no one gets them mailed, or social security checks, in his neighborhood, Hanna said. Afraid they’ll be stolen from their mailboxes, if the boxes still even have locks on them. And then he cashed it at another desk and left with a man he seemed to only have just met there, people said. It was obviously this man who went home with him and killed him for the money he saw he had. The door wasn’t broken in or fiddled with. The police said it looked exactly like something somebody would do who walked in with him—a friend, or someone later let in. Nathaniel couldn’t have had much money if it was a veteran’s pension he was on. He was nothing but a buck private, if I remember, and had no disability from the war. Though who knows what Dad might have arranged for him years ago and even what that man might have thought he had. He saw two hundred dollars in Nathaniel’s hands, he imagined two thousand in his home. But Dad did that for Nathaniel’s father when he fell off a stepladder through a window at work. Workmen’s Compensation and his insurance company wanted to give him the bare minimum—said it was his fault plus something about the store not having him properly on the payroll. Dad spoke to some people and maybe even fixed things with some schmears and got him full disability pay for life and also for Ida after Jack died. Your father was very smart about things like that when people didn’t work for it or deserve it and my guess is that Ida asked Dad to do that for Nathaniel too when she saw the kind of character he was going to end up as. He’d do anything for that family—there was no better brother and son. And then Nathaniel, as the way I see it, with a temper sometimes like his mother’s and Grandma Tetch. You remember all the stories I’ve told you about her. She used to beat her children with broomsticks, Ida included. That whole family, except your father, were either weaklings or violently nuts. Anyway, when the man wanted the money, Nathaniel must have fought and talked back like I think he would because of his temper, and that’s when he got beaten on the head several times and stabbed when he kept on fighting. You have to admire him if that’s what happened, though I don’t know how many times your father told him, when he had his shoestore and there was a chance he might get robbed—you know, they all worshiped Dad and usually took his advice—to just give the money up and anything else they wanted.’ ‘What a way to go though. Just awful, awful.’ ‘Terrible, I know. And they don’t think they’ll ever get the guy. Somebody nobody ever saw before in the veteran’s office, if it was him. And if it wasn’t him who did it, then the police are really stumped, according to Hanna. Not that she wants him caught. She’s afraid if he is, then his friends or the killer out on bail will come after her for no better reason then that he’ll think she pressed the police to catch him or she knows something more about him than she does. She knows nothing, she says, and wants to keep it that way, so she’s not pressing. That’s what she told me. You ever hear anything like that? But look at me. Before all this about Nathaniel I was going to say nothing happened in my life since I last spoke to you, and in a way that’s still true. But what’s the best time to call you so I get you and c
an speak to everyone else?’ ‘Six.’ Then that’s when I’ll call. Not tomorrow, since I just spoke to you, but the next day or the weekend. I’m tired now but I’m sure I’ll be in much better shape to talk next time.’ ‘Stay well, then.’ ‘Thank you and thanks for calling, and I love you.’ ‘Same here with me, Mom.’ ‘What?’ I said much love to you too and I hope you’re feeling better—have had enough sleep, aren’t so tired—you know, the next time.’ ‘Something must be wrong with our connection all of a sudden, or this hearing aid. It works and it doesn’t. I think it’s even made my hearing worse, for it was never that bad where I didn’t hear anything. Let me adjust it…. There, now say something.’ ‘Hello, hello, I’m speaking, can you hear me, Mom’?’ ‘No, nothing, just faintly, as if you’re a million miles away. What time did you say was the best to call, and loudly’ ‘Six, six.’ ‘What?’ ‘Six! Six!’ ‘Oh, I’ll just take my chances and call some time this Saturday, but only after I get this rotten thing fixed. I’m sorry, dear. Bye.’”