Frog (54 page)

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 conditions 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 really 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