Frog (11 page)

He takes off the typewriter cover, picks up the first draft of a manuscript, bounces it on the table till it's stacked and squared, puts it down, reads the title page—OK, nothing much, but he'll make it better, turn it into something—puts paper into the typewriter and sits back and thinks. Why did I shake the baby like that yesterday? I could hurt its brain. Bleeding in the brain. I could kill it. Some kind of hematoma. Subdural. Read about it in the paper last week. Mother's lover did it to her four-month-old baby. “She was crying,” she said. “We couldn't sleep. He didn't mean to harm it.” Something like what I did. I was trying to work and she wouldn't sleep even during the time she usually does, even after I walked her a lot and two diaper changes. Why am I such a cruel prick sometimes? She was crying. Babies cry. I also squeezed her too tight. In anger. I could hurt her kidneys. One of her inner organs—she's so small: several of them at one time—by squeezing her like that. Why did I also drop her on the bed from so high up? Why from any height? I was actually mad at her. For keeping me from my work. She was taking up too much of my time. But I could have hurt her back. Broken it. Maybe done something to her head. I still might have. I said to her but very low so Denise wouldn't hear: “I'm mad, you little bastard, can't you see? Why are you crying so much? Stop it.” People will find out. Denise will. That's not the problem. Problem is why I do it. She cried for about a half-hour straight. Denise was napping in our bedroom at the other end of the hall. I didn't want her to get up and say something like “She's not hungry, I just fed her, so maybe she needs her diapers changed or you're not walking her right. Or she could have developed a diaper rash. You check? But I can't get up every time. I need some rest.” The baby's cries are penetrating, but so what? When I held her to my chest and walked her, she screamed in my ear. I said “Damn, must you do that?” and reamed my ear with my finger, though it wasn't in any way bad as that. I was doing that for her. It's stupid. She also slobbered on my neck and on my shoulder right through the shirt, but what of it? If it gets to me—any of it—admit it and wake Denise and say “Much as I know you need the rest and I hate doing this, I have to have a ten-minute break. If you can't get her to sleep, I'll take over and you go back to bed.” I did the same with Olivia. Denise never found out. One time she said from the next room “What's happening—why's she screaming?” and I said “I don't know, suddenly started, must be gas.” Treated her cruelly sometimes. Sometimes bordering on violence. A few times, violently. The first three months were the worst with her and when I lost control most often. She wouldn't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time and usually cried when she wasn't sleeping. When she was around two months old I held her upside down by her legs and said “Stop crying,” and swung her back and forth: “Stop crying I said.” A few times when I was alone with her and not even when she was crying—I was just frustrated at not having time to do what I wanted—I slammed the bed with my fists and screamed as loud as I could and just hoped the neighbors, if any were in, wouldn't say anything to Denise about it. I scared the hell out of Olivia then with my rage and screams. This happened over about two years. She'd burst out crying, and when she learned to say the word, called for her mommy, and I'd have to hold and comfort her till she stopped. I'm sure I've traumatized her. She gets scared when I raise my voice about anything, even when I'm just joking about something or on the phone with someone. Runs out of the room whenever one of the puppets or cartoon characters on that hour-a-day TV program acts threateningly or angrily. Won't let me read “The Three Bears” to her because Father Bear speaks in a loud gruff voice. Eva sleeps better than Olivia did and doesn't cry as much. If I hurt her—I didn't Olivia, at least physically, but could have the way I treated her sometimes—I know I'll pay for it always or pretty close. They get hungry. Gas. They cry when they're wet or tired. For a number of reasons when they're in pain or uncomfortable, and sometimes two or three of them combined. The bubbles hurt. The rash. They may also cry for reasons people can't be aware of. What's in their dreams perhaps. But none of that should get to me, or surely not as much.

The night he got down on his knees, when Olivia was around one and sleeping in a crib, and he practically prayed his apologies to her. Closed his eyes, clasped his hands, said “I'm sorry, my sweetheart, for acting so horribly to you. I don't know what gets into me sometimes, I swear. Please forgive me.” Cried. Then for another year continued to treat her badly, though maybe less so and not as cruelly. He doesn't want it to be like that with Eva. Wants to stop now. This moment, the end. Has to tell himself that yesterday was the last time he'll treat her like that, squeeze and shake her hard and drop her on the bed and so on. Also has to tell Denise what he's done with both children. That he knows he won't do. But if he stops, he won't have to tell her anything, unless he later finds out Olivia or Eva has been physically damaged in a way he could have been responsible for. Then, since it's possible if the doctors know how it happened they might have a better chance of correcting it, he thinks he'd admit what he's done, but isn't sure. Probably not.

He looks at the manuscript. Doesn't like the title now. Needs one before he can start completing a piece. It's part of its completeness. That's always been the case and he doesn't want to start changing his work habits now. Maybe by the time he gets to the bottom of the page he'll have come up with a title. But he's never done it that way. Just call it “Jobs,” that's all. “Just Jobs” is even better, for that's what it's about. A man's jobs. Just about an endless series of them for forty years with no end in sight. Just tired old age in sight, with maybe some savings and pension for him and his wife to get by but little energy left to start or complete any creative work anymore. He writes “Just Jobs” at the top and starts typing. It starts: “I start, deliver, come back, sort, pack, box, wrap, deliver, get a little tip, back, sort, pack, box, wrap, again and again for a couple-years. My first job. I'm ten.” Awful, and he tears it out of the typewriter and throws it into the wastebasket, rips the manuscript up and dumps it into the basket. A ripped piece stays on the basket lip and just as he reaches over to tip it in, drops on the floor on the other side. Always something sometimes; where it never goes just right. He leans over. Paper's just out of reach and he doesn't want to get up to get it. Too tired. But he likes a neat room, always has, everything in its place, something about visual aesthetics and also if things look too chaotic, which doesn't take much for him, he gets disoriented and begins thinking he can't find anything and even starts typing the wrong keys. Won't even put up with a small paperclip or piece of paper the size of a small paperclip on the floor. Maybe a staple or two, pulled out of paper with his thumbnail or that had been jammed in the stapler, is about all the disorder he can put up with on his floor or desk. Stands, picks up the paper and puts it in the basket. “Now don't try to climb out. You do—” Why's he talking like that? Fun, that's all, having some, but suddenly it sounded too strange to him. Not that if Denise overheard him through the door he couldn't explain it to her. “I was having a heart-to-heart with my heart.” No, that would make it worse. But to himself, he just doesn't like it. Wasting time too. Sits.

Never ripped up a first draft of anything and felt regret after. If a piece doesn't feel good—if he's not excited by it after he's done the first draft—it's just no good or not worth working on to finish it. Something will replace it. Always has. Either something new, which he'd try now if he had the time, or the other first-draft manuscript.

He puts that one on the table where the first one was, paper into the typewriter, likes the title, types it at the top and starts typing from the manuscript. It starts: “So he goes down. Went down. That's the right expression. Babies are ‘put down,' which has nothing to do with it, just what he's been doing lately. The expression we always used about him and is most common. Quite common. Just very common. His brother Lon. Twenty years ago and more. Much more. Twenty-five. Twenty-six to be exact. But here he is, back. Just rang the bell downstairs. I said into the intercom ‘Yes?' He said ‘Lon.' I pressed the button to let him in and he came up. ‘Lonathan, Lonald, Lonnie, why hello. I want you to meet my family. That's what I've regretted most about your not being here all these years and having gone down in that ship. Is that the right expression, I mean, term?' ‘It'll do,' he says. ‘That you never met my wife, my first child and now my second. I'm not saying my first child is my second but that I have one. Two to be exact. Daughters. You always said you wanted sons. Lonsons, you called them. Oh Lon, I've missed you so, which goes way beyond any regrets I've had that you never met my wife and kids.' I take his hand and kiss it. It's made of sand, falls apart while I'm spitting.”

Rips it out of the typewriter. No good and never will be, and throws it into the basket. Where was his mind when he did it? Worries him. Never did anything this bad, so maybe something's now missing. He rips up the manuscript and drops it into the basket. Never ripped up two first drafts at one sitting before. They were written back to back shortly after he finished the last piece, so maybe something's been missing awhile without him knowing it. Maybe the last finished piece is nothing what he thinks it is. No, don't overdo it. These two as first drafts and possible finished manuscripts, stank and should have been dumped right after he did them. All he needs is some time to do a good one, but maybe the next sitting.

He writes on the back of a thank-you card. “Dear Aunt Louise. Thank you for the lovely”—What did she give Eva? The acetate stretchie they gave a few days later to their super for his daughter's baby? He'd ask Denise now but doesn't want to waste even more time. Because he really could still begin a new piece. A quick first draft of a very short one or the beginning of a longer one. Puts the thank-you aside, paper into the typewriter, thinks who else hasn't he thanked yet whom he's supposed to? Denise writes all the thank-yous for presents from her friends and family, he does the ones from his, and friends they both have but didn't come into the relationship with, she'll write or ask him to. Lily and Ruben. “Dear Lily & Ruben,” he types. “You know how I hate these printed thank-you cards. Know from the note I inserted in the thank-you card for the gift you gave Olivia. But Denise felt, and I kind of go along with, that as long as we had them for O, we should for E, or else she might take it as some sort of rejection slip. Blip that slip. Just: Eva will feel quilty—what am I talking ‘guilty'? Rejected if she happens to find out later on. When she's 4, 14, even 24. Anyway, thanks for the silver baby cup. I hope it lasts longer than the one someone got Olivia when she was born. Hope it wasn't you, by the way. Be an awful way to find out what happened to it. Like all good silver, it wasn't indigestible. Indestructible. Unintentional. Trying to write this too fast. It was soft silver. That one I stepped on in the dark and squashed. The dark unlit room at night. I wasn't in the dark figuratively. Meaning, my figure was but my mind wasn't. Some thank-you. But really, thank you. This cup 111 keep off the floor, or at least when it's on the floor, the room in light. And I know the last cup didn't come from you. You gave that nice tartan wool crib blanket that Olivia sucked a few fringes off of but which Eva can still now use. See what a memory I gots?” Xes out the last sentence. “Both gifts were very generous of you. But you know, when we had the birth announcements made, something Denise also wanted and I only eventually went for, I wanted to have printed on them ‘Please, no gifts. Our apartment's one filled closet just from the gifts we got for Olivia's birth. At the most, have a cedar planted in Lebanon in Eva's name or give what you would've spent on a gift to your local right-to-abort clinic, no slur, smear, swipe, sneer or stigmata intended to our kids or any national or natal strife.' Should I also X those three sentences out? And the last plus this? Denise vetoed it. Not the Xing or to get gifts but because—lots of reasons. Smothering natural good-natured-ness, for one thing. Maybe making those, who hadn't planned to give gifts, self-conscious that they hadn't planned to, for another. More. That it might seem like a hidden signal, for those who were wavering or hadn't planned to, to give gifts. How? Some way. People know me by now? But Denise is well, Olivia's taking baby and banishment (confined to her own room for the 1st time in 15 months) pretty well, and I'm barren and wasted but fare-thee-well. What the hell's he mean by that? Time will tell. This's becoming a no-note. Beg-pardons, thanx, loves & bests from us all around, H.” Pulls it out, folds it up and sticks it in the card and looks for his address book. Not on the table where it usually is, so he'll look for it later, and puts the card on Aunt Louise's.

Now, and sticks paper into the typewriter. But a student paper. Should have it done with comments for a conference with the student day after next. If he gets all his school work out of the way he'd really feel free, if not for today then tomorrow, to do his own work. Gets the paper out of his briefcase, reads it quickly, types. “How can I begin to judge the content of your work when I can barely wade thru the poor punctuation, spelling, grammar, paragraphing, you name it? Plus, why the very skimpy margins, making it doubly difficult to read, 18–19 words to a line, 29–30 lines to a page? Save it for letters to friends or notes to yourself but not lit papers which the teacher, whose eyes are lousy to begin with and his glasses a year too old, has to read some 15 of at a time.” No, much too tough and self-something. Stupid, wrong, that's what it is. Try a gentler approach, but can't think how to do that with this paper now. Later, and puts the paper and what he's written about it on the cards.