Stephen Dixon - Frog

Olivia calls Eva and says “I had a dream last night that Dad — Howard — returned. That he just came back, like that — knocked on the door, looked very old. Sunken cheeks, completely bald, no way we’d ever seen him in person or photos. Ugly face hairs, teeth rotted and cracked, little pits and bites around his mouth, and he said to me when I opened the door and immediately started screaming, for he was also in these awful torn clothes and smelled like piss so it really seemed as if he’d just stepped out of the grave, ‘I am your father, Chütchkie.’ That was his favorite nickname for me. ‘I want to hug and kiss you but know what a mess I am. I want to swing around with you on a gate again but know I’ll disintegrate if touched. I want to say I’m always near you, hideous as that thought must be to you, or almost always near — I stay away when it’s discreet for me to. If there was only some way for me to really return. If I only could.’ That’s when he started digging his long fingernails into his forehead. ‘If I could only be in normal clothes and health for someone my age and just talk to you on the phone, even, or whatever they have today where people communicate with one another from different places. To write a letter to you, even, if those things are still sent. I’d deliver it personally. I’d be satisfied just to slip it under your door. Leave it on your front steps. When I was alive I used to think a lot about what I’d do if you died first. I wouldn’t be able to go on, I decided, and never decided against that. I loved your mother and sister but could have survived either of their deaths, though would always have been sad after that, or almost always, maybe because I would have had you to hold on to. But you , plop, I would have disappeared. The things you did and said that made me so happy. “I remember when I was born.” ‘Here he’s quoting me when I was around four-and-a-half, which actually happened. ‘“It was dark, crowded and wet.” ‘For some reason he found that brilliant, Mother said. I apparently also claimed I heard music when I was in the womb, though admittedly close to term. “That piece,’ I said about some Haydn piano variation or sonata the record player was playing, ‘I remember it when I was inside Mother,’ and sure enough he had played it nearly every day for a month when she was pregnant. I don’t trust that reminiscence, but he went for it. Then in the dream he goes on about his favorite memory of me. How he came into my room when I was sitting busily working at my little kid’s table with crayons, pencils, a huge sheet of paper. After a few minutes I turned around, he said, and announced ‘“I’m drawing a picture of a zoo for the kids in my class so they’ll know where they’re going tomorrow. Here’s a cage. There’s a chattering monkey. Up here’s a bird with many colors. Over there’s an ice cream man and balloons. The sun’s shining because it’s such a nice day. Way in the background it’s raining, but that’s over another city. There’s all of us on the grass having fun. Adam, Claire, the two Ryans, Marianne…. Over here’s a dog walking by with his master, glad to be so close to so many different kinds of animals. He’s telling his master that — see the barking lines? The sky is blue, the trees are green, flowers are floating down from the branches, the girls are all wearing pretty colorful dresses, the boys are in new jeans. The hearts I put around the picture are for decoration and how we all feel. Over here’s a giraffe I didn’t draw very well, but I think I got the neck and spots on it OK. When it’s done I’ll cut it out, and after my class uses it I’ll give it to you. Are you proud of me for what I’m doing, Daddy?” My Church,’ he said to me, I have to come back to you, there are no two ways about it. I have to continue where I left off. I want to buy food for you, go to the zoo with you, read you a story, listen to you make up poetry, kiss you good night, dim your light, sprawl on the floor beside your bed with my head on your legs till you’re asleep, maybe hold your hand while I’m doing it if you don’t mind for me to, shut your light off, slowly close your door, stand outside your room with my head against the door jamb thinking of the things we did together that day or I saw you do, what we might do the next. My dearest’—this is still Howard talking—’I loved you more than I loved anyone in any way in my life. Your mother knew. We had few secrets and none about that. Eva I loved enormously also but didn’t have the time with her I had with you. I’m sure, though maybe not, since she was the second and I loved my first so much, but it very well could have been the same with her or fairly close if I’d had two more years. Maybe there’s something you can do to help me come back. Sounds silly, but church after church was built on miracles, or for the most part, and still keep themselves going that way somewhat or their holds over their flocks, so maybe those things do exist. Love would be able to set one off if anything could, I’d think, or one as deep and tight as mine, though so many people like me or in my position I’ll say must feel and think that, so the chances if there are any must be very slight. But try to think of something to help me. And Eva. Speak to your sister and see. Maybe my big advantage over the others is that I was lucky to have such smart capable girls. Funny, but those were the exact adjectives my father used to say about his boys.’ Then the dream ended. What do you make of it? I’m just following instructions. I didn’t repeat any of it to hurt you.” “It’s a good dream,” Eva says. “Maybe even a great one. I know I never had one better or near so good. Big, strong, clear, reverberatory, though with little take to the give. So much like a fine short slow artsy European movie, more Nordic than Alpine or Mediterranean, and one that most viewers wouldn’t take to unless their life stories approximated yours. To be shown in four or five select theaters around the country, is the way I’d distribute it. Not much profit, in other words, and no bundle to be made through public TV either, since it wouldn’t get on till 11:00 P.M. And that it sunk in so much. Improbable, if it had come from anyone else. I wish I saw him in a dream like that. All bones and stink and rot and monolog — I wouldn’t care so long as I knew it was he and he spoke to me or at least showed he saw me or heard. Even in a quick daydream, just ‘Hello and good-bye and I love you, my little pancake,’ or just some rapid eye contact, but it’s never happened and by now I’m convinced it never will. Think of it: all these years and all my efforts. Staring at his photos and reading some of his manuscripts and also published stuff before I went to bed — even the most autobiographical ones and especially the few where even I’m included, albeit as a crawl-in — just to help it happen. But it’s really too late at night or early in the morning for me to speak coherently about it. Tomorrow, or much later today — whichever comes first. You still at the same temp job? Say, I just had a brainstorm. Maybe if we went to church some quiet afternoon when hardly anyone but the sexton was there and prayed for him to return in one real wholesome recognizable human piece. Dad as you knew him or, more orderly, as he would have, devoid of all debilitating diseases, aged. Synagogues have never been good for that for me. I never got the impression prayer will get you anywhere there. No incense essence or votary candles for sale or come-in-and-pray-anytime policy or transformed or sorrow-torn or just trouble-free people on their knees, and they certainly don’t promise to get you a step or two closer to heaven or away from hell. But tell me where you’re working now.” “My last week secretarying. It’s no good for my brain.” “Then you phone me at my studio, since you get the freebie and by leaving soon have much less to lose. Maybe I can fly in to see you in a week and we’ll devise some plan like that praying-at-a-church, to bring him back if just for an hour or a day.”