Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  “He’s in his mother’s neighborhood and decides to drop in. Though he has the keys to her apartment, he’ll ring the vestibule bell. If she doesn’t answer, he won’t let himself in. She could be napping, resting, taking a bath, just wanting her privacy. She’s walking up the steps of her building’s areaway when he’s coming down the block. ‘Mom?’ he yells from across the street. She doesn’t look his way. ‘Mom, Mom?’ he yells, crossing the street. She reaches the sidewalk, holding on to the wall and then the short iron fence on top of it to get there, stops, takes a deep breath, and starts down to Columbus Avenue. Probably has her hearing aid turned off or else not in. He starts to run after her, then thinks follow her, see what she does for a while, he’s always been interested and has never done it before, maybe because this is the first chance he’s had. So he follows from about fifty feet behind. If she sees him hell say he just rang her apartment bell, she didn’t answer, he didn’t want to disturb her by letting himself in if she was home, and was heading now to Broadway to catch the subway or bus. She walks slowly. Every three buildings she stops to rest. She looks at the sky or the tops of buildings while she’s standing still, to the sides, a couple of times behind. He doesn’t wave and she doesn’t seem to notice him or not as her son. One time he pretends to tie his shoe when she looks at him, another time when she turns his way he actually has to tie that same shoe. She’s carrying a small canvas shopping bag and she probably has her handbag in it. She has on the black sneakers he convinced her to buy a few years ago to make walking easier, or they could be a second pair. Black slacks, shirt and jacket and with her hair handsomely combed and pinned back, so she could be dressed for going to just about anywhere: a movie, stores, a stroll. Near the end of the block she stops and looks at the second-story window of the building she’s in front of. She smiles and waves to it. The window opens, a woman’s head sticks out. ‘How are you, Marion?’ his mother says. ‘Fine, thanks; nice day for getting out, I’d say. How is everything?’ ‘All right, considering. I thought I’d do a little shopping.’ ‘What I should do with the weather this nice. And the family?’ ‘You know—you hear from them and you don’t. And yours?’ ‘As well as can be expected.’ ‘The same thing?’ his mother says. ‘But worse.’ They chat for a few more minutes. He sits on a stoop, takes a book from his jacket pocket and pretends to read while listening to them. His mother tells her to try to come for lunch tomorrow or the next day. ‘Nothing elaborate; we’ll talk.’ ‘The next day I can make it.’ ‘Then I’ll see you there at noon if I don’t see you on the street before then, dear.’ She waves, Marion waves, and she goes to the corner. She looks left and right, then across the avenue as if she’s only now deciding which way to go. Left, crosses the street, stops at the third store along Columbus, goes inside, comes out with an ice cream cone, strawberry it seems, sits on the bench in front of the store and eats it. He looks in the window of a children’s toy and clothing store next to the ice cream shop. If she sees him and calls out his name he’ll say ‘Mom, oh hi, I was in the neighborhood, stopped to look at all the nice things in that store for Olivia and Eva, not that I’d ever buy anything—way too expensive—but I was on my way to see you. In fact I was going to call you at the corner phone there in about ten seconds. I guess I would have got nobody home.’ A young woman and her daughter sit beside her, filling up the bench, the girl right next to her. ‘Hello,’ she says to the girl. ‘You know, I once had a little girl—you’re around what, seven, eight?’ ‘Six.’ ‘Six? My, how much more grown up you look. And what am I talking about? I’ve a granddaughter your age and had two your age before they grew up and became big. But my daughter when she was six had long dark hair like yours and was slim and pretty like you too and she also loved ice cream cones. What’s your favorite flavor? I bet I can guess.’ ‘Flavor?’ ‘What ice cream cone do you like best?’ her mother says to her. ‘Vanilla.’ ‘Say it to the lady, and in a loud clear voice; don’t be shy or intimidated.’ ‘Vanilla!’ ‘I’ve told her a hundred times: If there’s anything I can do to prepare her for the adult world, it’s that. I won’t have her—you know, mealy.’ ‘My granddaughter too. But that was my favorite flavor when I was six,’ his mother says to the girl. ‘Till I switched to strawberry—I don’t know why I did—and it was my daughter’s favorite flavor all her life. Vanilla was.’ The two women talk while the girl eats her ice cream and looks at the traffic and people passing. The talk quickly gets into large families—the woman came from one, so did his mother—‘The Jews years ago and the Irish forever,’ his mother says, ‘nothing insulting intended’—and then their voices gradually get lower and he hears the words ‘breasts … breast-feeding … warm compresses on them to draw the milk up, and also drinking dark beer and stout.’ His mother’s giving advice—‘I nursed all mine for more than a year and nobody thought I had the equipment for more than two months’—but it must be for someone the woman knows, for her breasts don’t seem like a nursing mother’s and her stomach’s flat, and where’s the baby if she has one? Maybe at home with a nanny or someone, and he could be all wrong about her breasts. A woman he knew who he thought was almost flat chested, and when she took off her blouse the first time, ‘Oh my goodness, gosh, I had no idea, not that it should mean that much or I’d feel any different to you if they weren’t so large, but still…’ and went up to her from behind and put his hands around her on them. She still had her bra on and when she unhooked it and slid off the shoulder straps and twisted her head around to kiss him, breasts and bra fell into his hands. Palo Alto, back of a house by the train tracks, twenty-three years ago. The woman and daughter stand up; the two women shake hands. His mother finishes the ice cream in the cone, bites off a piece of the cone, looks around before spitting it into the paper napkin he didn’t know she was holding, drops the napkin and cone into a trash can beside the bench and continues down Columbus. She still stops every forty feet or so, sometimes a deep breath. A young woman passing her looks at her standing still, stops a few feet away to look back at her, goes back and says ‘Is everything OK?’ ‘Yes, thank you. Just resting, but I can make it fine to where I’m going, dear.’ ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’ ‘Positively. You’re a sweetheart for asking.’ Sidewalk’s now crowded because of a row of vendors near the curb and the enclosed restaurant patios jutting out from the buildings. Her eyesight’s not good and she refuses to wear her glasses outdoors, so there’s even less chance she’ll recognize him now. She does, he’ll say ‘Mom, why hi, I was just over your place, rang the outside bell, no response, so I let myself in—I hope you don’t mind—and when I saw you weren’t home, thought you might be on Columbus or in one of the stores here and came to look for you. If you weren’t, or I couldn’t find you, I was even going to walk to Broadway to D’Agostino’s and Fairway, the two other places I thought you might be. Like to stop in for a coffee or snack someplace, on me?’ She crosses the next street and goes into the supermarket at the corner. He follows her, picks up a basket by the door, puts a few beers in it from the cases stacked at the front of the store, too good a buy, loses her, looks up the nearest aisle, goes to the entrance and looks up the first aisle and sees her at a meat counter looking at what’s there. She takes out a chicken—whole, parts, he can’t tell—puts it in her cart, some beef—cubes for stew, looks like—at the dairy section gets cottage cheese, yogurt, two or three different foreign cheeses, goes down an aisle and gets scouring powder, big box of laundry detergent—how’s she going to carry it all? Probably will have it delivered—Brillo, silver polish, floor wax, then several cans of tuna, seltzer, marmalade, English muffins, lettuce, carrots, radishes, scallions, bananas, kiwi, a cantaloupe. ‘You think this is ready?’ she says to the woman who weighs the produce. The woman taps and smells the cantaloupe and presses its ends, says ‘Think I know what I’m doing? I see the regular man doing it, I do it. But he’s off today, so don’t go by me.’ ‘Let’s say if you were thinking of buying it-would you?’ ‘You’re asking me that, customer to customer, I
would, ‘cause it’s a great buy, and I’d keep it in a warm spot for a few days, but not the stove, you know? Now the bananas,’ weighing them—his mother puts the cantaloupe back—‘yours are good, you could eat them while you’re walking home. But the ones over there—too green, so I wouldn’t touch them.’ I think those are Spanish bananas—plantanos, I think they’re called—and are supposed to be green. You cook them.’ ‘Do you? They look like green bananas to me that’ll take weeks to ripen.’ ‘That reminds me,’ and she squeezes a number of avocados, puts two of them in her cart. ‘Nice talking to you, dear’ she says. ‘Same here. Have a good one.’ Package each of figs and dates, jar of apple sauce, several jars of baby food pear sauce, two six-packs of Dutch beer from the cases in front, and goes to the checkout counter, writes out two delivery forms, pays by check, says ‘I wrote on it to leave the packages by the door,’ gives a dollar tip for the delivery boy and leaves. He quickly pays for his beers on the express line, goes outside and sees her crossing the avenue at the corner. She buys a used book at a vendor’s table on the sidewalk, goes into a card and party goods store at the corner and through the window he sees her smiling and another time laughing as she reads some cards. She takes one to the counter up front, he goes to the open door to listen. She sees him he’ll say ‘Mom, hi, I happened to be in the neighborhood for something (he’ll think of what), passed this store and saw you in it, but for some reason I could never stand these kinds of shops. Too what? Schlocky, meretricious, if I’ve got the word right for what I mean, and that cloying incense smell from the candles or something—soap, I don’t know—though maybe that’s all unfair of me and I don’t really catch their value and worth—the stores’, not of course the candles’. Anyway, I decided to wait out here till you came out or saw me from inside.’ But the beers. ‘Mom, hi, I was looking for you on Columbus, saw a good buy for Dutch beer advertised on Pioneer’s window, so went in and bought a few and coming out of the store saw you crossing the avenue…. You were in Pioneer at the same time? Amazing, but I just shot in and out. Anyway, saw you were having such a good time browsing through the cards—they can be very funny, I know—that I thought I wouldn’t spoil your fun so would just wait outside. What do you say? Like to have a bite or drink someplace?’ She tells the salesman behind the counter how different cards are from what she remembers them ten, fifteen years ago. ‘I’m almost sure I told you this before, but I can’t believe how risqué some of them are. I’m no prude, but do they really permit it? Can someone be arrested for sending one of the dirtier cards through the mail? I’m not joking. Monkeys doing it with people in one. Grotesque statues having orgies with figures in paintings. I’m sure it isn’t only that my attitude can be a little out of date.’ ‘Oh no, we get complaints about them from every age. But plenty of people, and I’m not justifying the cards, find them funny and cute, and they cost more than the others, so the owner’s happy. But you got a good traditional one—one of my favorites, both universal and clever. Whoever’s getting it will get a big lift.’ He wonders who that is. Nobody’s birthday or wedding anniversary’s coming up that he knows, and from what the man said he doubts it’s for a religious holiday. Friend of hers he doesn’t know of? Better yet. He turns to the window as she leaves, looks at the party material while watching her reflection cross the avenue. How would he have explained his window-looking? ‘I was thinking of the kids—their birthdays—I know that’s three and four months from now, but you have to plan ahead…. But what crap. And the prices!’ She sits at a table in front of a Mexican restaurant. He sits at an outside table of the adjoining restaurant—Indian; he didn’t even look—and when the waiter comes up, ‘No food, please; just a European or Japanese beer, or Indian if you got.’ She orders nachos and cheese and a draft beer. Draft he should have asked for. She leafs through the book she bought while she eats and drinks. She sees him he’ll say ‘Mom, I don’t believe it, patio-to-patio restaurants—what a fantastic surprise. I called you just ten minutes ago—was in the neighborhood so thought “Why not?” But wanting to know if you’d like to go out for exactly what you’re having now, a snack and beer. I didn’t know you liked those nacho things. I can’t—the cholesterol; my doctor would have a heart attack—but you’re incredible, arteries like a child’s, and if I had known I would have suggested taking you to a Mexican restaurant long ago. There must be some things there I could eat. But think my patio will mind if I move my beer to yours? I’ll just drink up and pay up and get a beer at your table.’ She reads several pages in the middle, the last page, closes the book and has a look as if she doesn’t know by what she’s read if she wants to read the whole book, looks at the people passing, lights one of those he supposes he could call them cheroots. A young man at a table on one side of her asks if he could bum one from her. ‘Of course—take two; less I smoke of these, the better.’ He takes one, asks what book she’s reading, she lights his cheroot with her lighter. Asks if she reads a lot. Was she a teacher at one time? Has she always loved good literature? He wishes he read more. He wanted to read that very same book for years, but in college was too busy with studies, in graduate school too busy with his thesis and teaching, and now at his job too busy working. ‘Carry it with you,’ she says. ‘On the subway or whatever you take. Long elevator waits. That’s what my son says he does and he gets an extra ten-fifteen pages a day in that way. Here; it only cost me a measly two dollars and I know after a few minutes with it I’ll never finish it. At my age—well, anyway.’ He wants to give her the two dollars; she won’t think of it. ‘Then let me treat you to another beer.’ ‘No, one’s my limit in the afternoon.’ Thanks her and says he’s going to do as she says: ‘Read between the cracks.’ She doesn’t understand. ‘It’s an expression: whenever I find a few minutes free.’ ‘That’s it,’ smiles, pulls a newspaper out of her bag and reads. He sits back and opens the book and looks at her. ‘Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you again, but I just noticed you read without glasses. You’ve never worn them and you’ve read so much? What’s your secret?’ ‘I wear a pair for distance sometimes but don’t really need them. Neither of my parents needed glasses either, though my father wore them because he thought they made him look more like Emperor Franz Josef.’ ‘Which emperor was he?’ ‘Of Austria and Hungary before the first World War. He idolized him; emulated many of his mannerisms and dress; so much so there was a framed photograph of him—this big—over my parents’ bed. Strange now when I mention it.’ The man thinks about it: one eyebrow up, couple of forehead furls. She reads the front page for a few minutes, pays, wishes the man a good day—he’s startled away from the book, waves it at her and says ‘So far, great; thanks’—and heads back up Columbus. On the next block someone shouts ‘Mrs. Tetch? Pauline?’ and runs over to her. Woman he knew from the neighborhood when he moved back to it fifteen years ago and introduced his mother to. They kiss, woman asks how she is, his mother says ‘All right, I suppose, for an old dust bag like me.’ If either sees him—he’s looking at one of the sidewalk tables: unisex jewelry: rings, earrings, nose rings, clips and things for the hair—he’ll say he was on the subway uptown, got off to see his mother—‘But how are you, how are you, a great double surprise,’ and kiss them. The woman’s talking about diet, health, alternative medicine, good food, lots of organically grown fruit juices and greens and grains, a mail order house in Pennsylvania where you can get health foods sent to you—she’ll bring her the catalog; ‘A lot more expensive than store-bought health food—you can even get fresh apples and carrots and bread and nondairy cheese—but it comes right to your door, so why not try it? It can give you a few extra years.’ ‘I’m too old to start into that,’ his mother says. ‘Where were you thirty years ago?’ They talk for around ten minutes in the middle of the sidewalk. People have to walk around them; one man passing him says to his companion ‘What’s with those two? Don’t they know they’re holding up traffic? People can be so unaware.’ He wants to say to him ‘Come on, give them a break; she’s an old lady.’
He crosses the sidewalk to a store window; men’s clothes, too fancy and expensive for him; but what would they say if they saw him? ‘You, the original cheap jeans and T-shirt guy, thinking of buying those clothes?’ ‘Oh my God—hi. I was just on my way to see my mother. Truth is, I saw you two there but was curious, long as I was in the neighborhood and you were still busy talking, as to what these stores think men wear these days? Obviously plenty of men do wear what’s in there, since half of them on the street have on a lot of the same stuff in the window along with some of the self-mutilating jewelry there on the sidewalk. But what a surprise. How are you both? I don’t know which of you I should kiss first.’ The women are kissing goodbye. His mother holds and pats the woman’s hand and says ‘You know I always had a special place in my heart for you the moment I first met you and was devastated for you when Barry died.’ ‘I know; thanks, Pauline; no one could have been kinder after.’ He forgot about Barry, doesn’t think he’s thought of him for years, even though he has two of his huge paintings hanging in his home, which the woman had given him, and had wheeled him in the park every day for an hour or so for a few weeks before he died. His mother continues up Columbus, stops, rests, looks in store windows—women’s shoes, women’s handbags and gloves—goes into a gourmet shop and has some things weighed; about a quarter-pound of sliced turkey breast, he sees through the window; salads scooped into half-pint and pint containers; a pickle and two onion rolls. She makes onion rolls better than he’s bought anywhere, even when they’re a couple of days old, but they’re usually to give away; she hardly eats what she bakes. She puts the grocery bag into her shopping bag, stops in front of the ice cream store—she’s not going to get another cone, is she?—sits on the bench. She tells the young man eating ice cream beside her that her heart suddenly started palpitating rapidly; she felt faint, that’s why she’s sitting without buying an ice cream. ‘Though I bought one from here just before.’ Should he go to her, say he overheard, is she all right, does she want him to hail a cab to get her home or to a doctor or hospital? The man says ‘Do you want me to do anything?’ ‘Excuse me, what? My hearing aid is going on and off again.’ ‘I said do you want me to do anything for you—your heart?’ ‘No, thank you, it’s just about passed. It always does after I sit or lie down for a few minutes. It wasn’t serious, so don’t worry. And my hearing aid’s working again.’ What would he say if she had died right in front of him? He wouldn’t say anything. He’d get down on his knees, hold her face to his till the police or ambulance came, cry and cry, and only if somebody thought he was crazy and wanted to get him away from her, say ‘I’m her son.’ She asks where the man’s bicycle is. He’s in bicycling gear—backwards cap, shirt, special pants and shoes, fingerless gloves. He points to a bike fastened to a parking sign pole. ‘When you were buying your ice cream, weren’t you afraid it would get stolen?’ ‘Even the best bike thief couldn’t break that lock in less than two minutes. It’s made of the highest-tension steel—you’d need the kind of clippers that not even police cars carry—and I never keep my eyes off it for more than a minute.’ He’s looking in the window of the children’s toy and clothing store of before, would give the same excuse to her he thought up then. ‘From what I’ve read,’ she says, ‘these city thieves are always one step ahead of the police in the latest gadgets in everything—guns, bulletproof vests, picks for locks, even knockout darts. And maybe they’ll just want to take the wheels and leave the lock and frame part behind. You always have to be more careful than you think.’ ‘If they’re that desperate,’ but he can’t hear the rest of what the man says because of a truck with a defective muffler and bouncing-around cargo driving past. She pretends to have heard, nodding while he talked, or maybe she’s become adept at reading lips. She says she’s completely better now, thanks him for his concern and walks to the corner and goes up her street. A landlord on the block stops her to talk. He turns around, opens his book and takes out a pen and uncaps it and holds it over a page. If either of them sees him he’ll say he saw them just now but suddenly got an idea about this book, which he’ll be teaching next term, and wanted to write it down before he forgot it. ‘Hi, how are you though? Nice to see you both. Funny, but I was just on my way to see you, Mom.’ The landlord says ‘You can’t walk along Columbus—but every nice day, not only weekends—without getting bumped into or pushed into the street or asked or even threatened for money by beggars, though most of them look as if they live better than you or me. The clothes they got. And why aren’t they working at a real job when they’re so strong looking and young? I’m not talking about the skinny women with the children, who are pitiful.’ ‘No one panhandled me this time,’ his mother says, ‘but I know what you mean. Maybe they’re just—the healthier looking ones—not in their right minds.’ ‘Oh they’re in their right minds, all right. To work like that for your money? Your hand out—sometimes two hands out for two people at once—and a few of the same words each time: “Money for food?” “Money to get back to Trenton?” One actually told me that, and next day he told me the same thing. “Money for my babies?”—but you don’t see the babies; it’s just a line. And no physical effort in it either, and I hear some of the better ones pull in four to five hundred a week tax free and probably with Monday-Tuesday off. I’d take the job if it was offered me.’ There must be more to it than that for most of them. Like I said: troubled heads; drugs. But I can never refuse anybody begging. It doesn’t happen that often, and what’s a dime?’ ‘A dime? You give them a dime and they’ll throw it back if not poke you. It’s a dollar for coffee. It’s two dollars for subway fare for him and his friend. It’s five dollars to help get him a hotel suite so he doesn’t die homeless in the street.’ ‘No they wouldn’t. Still, I like Columbus better now. It’s prettier, more exciting. You have a greater choice of places to eat.’ ‘But to shop? For the essentials?’ ‘There are still some stores for that, or you go to Seventy-second or Amsterdam. But because of all the people walking and hanging around on it, the neighborhood’s safer than it ever was.’ ‘This one’s getting robbed, that one’s being raped, and you say it’s safer. Not the sidestreets. And the worst elements are coming here for a day, while before because they lived here you at least knew their face.’ ‘So it’s the same. Or worse in ways. I forgot. I’d have to ask the police what they have to say.’ She then asks about a new form the city sent landlords regarding property taxes. ‘I don’t understand it,’ the woman says. ‘As usual it’s too complicated for the average nonlegal mind.’ ‘That’s why I brought it up. Neither did I or Mr. Benjamin up the block, but I thought maybe you or your husband might.’ ‘No, but we’re seeing our accountant early next week about lots of things and he’s very good at those. If we find how to fill it out, want me or Lloyd to drop by and help you?’ ‘Please or else I’ll have to travel downtown to the city rent office for it. And of course you’ll take home some fresh cookies I’m baking this weekend and a couple of frozen zucchini breads.’ She continues up the block, stops, deep breath, steps off the curb carefully, crosses the street and carefully steps onto the sidewalk in front of her building. She takes out her handbag, reaches into it, probably for keys, though he’s told her to have her keys ready for use in her pocket before she even starts up the street, and if outside her pocket, then concealed in her hand. She takes out the card she bought, slips it most of the way out of the envelope and looks at it and smiles. Puts the card back into her bag and pulls out her keys. She looks around. He’s told her to do this before she goes downstairs to her building, in case anyone’s around who looks as if he might follow her into the vestibule. Anyone is, she’s to walk to Columbus, where there are always more people than on her street, and if the person follows her, to go to a store marked Safe Haven on the window or door and tell someone there to call the police. She turns around, still looking for suspicious strangers, he supposes, and sees him across the street waving at her. She waves back and he crosses the street and says ‘Mom, how are you? I was in the neighborhood,’ an
d kisses her on the cheek.”