Stephen Dixon - Frog

Olivia’s on a hilltop, alone, blue sky, warm pleasant morning, no clouds, slight breeze, strong smell of clover in the air, faint buzz of bees in the wild flowers around, perfect day, nothing but trees, hills, bay and sky in view, picks a flower, smells it, smells sweet, holds it up and says “For you, father dear. I used to love picking and giving you flowers, making you bouquets, especially out of the wild ones with a few pretty leaves on the outsides of it making it look like a bridal or more like a bridesmaid’s bouquet. So here’s one more, ‘on the house’ as you used to say,” and throws it up. He shouts out “Got it. Thank you, my darling sweetheart; thousand billion thanks. I love you, my sweet münch. I take this flower and hold it to my chest. I take it and kiss it. If I wanted to be funny I’d say I take it and eat it. OK, I eat part of it, the tastiest petal and most digestible. I push it into my face. I put my nose so deep into it that some of the flower gets up my nose and tickles it and makes it tough for a moment for one nostril to breathe. I sneeze because of the tickling and maybe something in the flower. And finally I put the flower between my shoulder and chin — hold it to my shoulder with my chin — and keep it there. It’s a flower from you so that’s why I love it so much. It was picked with feeling. Hell, it was picked by you, meant for me, so that’s enough. When this flower dies a little a little of me will die too. Nah, not as bad as that. What should I say then? When it dies completely it’ll be dead completely, that’s all, so what else is new? but my love for you — well, we don’t want to get even hokier here, do we? No we don’t. So I’ll just say — I’m saying, in fact — thank you, thank you, you’re so kind, good, gentle, delicate, sensitive, clever, I’m so lucky, kiss kiss kiss. And it’s not my own hand I want to kiss either. Beautiful and daring too. What a kid.” She closes her eyes, squeezes them tight, clenches her knuckles. “Fucking shit piss ass pus,” she says.

Olivia’s asleep, he’s watching her from a few feet away, comes to her, gets on his knees and whispers into her ear “Can you hear me, darling? Is my voice getting in? Say no if you can’t, yes if you can. Nod then. Grit your teeth, growl. Do the old blink thing, three for whatever, four for whatever. Scowl, hum, quickly lift your brow. A sign’s all I want. Now I’ll shut my mouth — it can be done, I promise you, just listen or watch — and hold my breath and you say or give it. The sign, I mean; something.” “Yes,” she says without opening her eyes. “You know I loved you, don’t you? I don’t have to go into a long song and dance—” “No, don’t, I know,” face up, eyes still closed, head in the middle of the pillow which is right in the middle of the top part of the single bed, hands clasped on her stomach under the quilt, legs tight together and straight down to the end of the bed. “You holding some flowers in your clasp?” he says. “No, why, because I look as if I’m dead?” “Just lightening things up a bit; trying to; making talk. But God forbid. Never dead. Never you. What a thing. You’re just resting. I used to lie in bed like that, same way, but as a means to getting to sleep when I was having trouble sleeping, or trouble dropping off. Once asleep I slept. And you can, that way, when it’s successful, almost feel different parts of your body dropping off. Not almost — feel them peeling off. ‘Good night, feet,’ I used to say, when they went. Toes never went first; both whole feet always went together. Then ‘Good night, legs. Good night, waist. Sweet dreams, fingers. Nighty-night, neck,’ chin and so on right up the body and face till it worked its way to my brain. Then, if it got that far before I fell asleep, there’d be a click and I’d be out.” “I’m not lying here like this for that reason, and even unintentionally it’s never been successful. I’m doing it because it makes me feel peaceful and helps me to think.” “I can’t sleep either,” he says, “thinking how I might have hurt you sometimes.” “I can sleep, but hurt me how?” “Physically a few times — shaking you so hard when you were very small that I heard your bones crack as they do with an osteopath. Slapping you once or twice or even more than that — hands, once your cheek, other places, your butt — right up till you were past five. But verbally hurting you is what I really mean by hurt. Saying stupid rotten things. Also using sneers and snubs or just standoffish silence as weapons. Saying ‘Then I won’t talk to you.’ Or ‘ Then I don’t like you.’ Or ‘You little brat: fuck you then.’ Or staring at you as if you were a piece of human shit someone wanted me to pick up or just an idiot. Not often but enough. And then, not that I could have helped it, leaving you so early in your life. Relatively early in mine too, but that’s not the important thing here. That hurts me the worst. What it must have done to you. I know what it did, so why go into it?” “Sleep, Dada. It’s better for both of us.” “Sleep how? For a very long time? Past your own life? No, I’ve got to stop thinking that. But sleep for how long, my darling? You want me to go away forever then?” “No, appear, disappear, come back when you want — all that’s your prerogative — but maybe not as often. I love you, don’t worry, but having you here so often is just a little too much for me at times. You see that, don’t you?” “I see it and I understand the problem. But you understand my problem too, don’t you?” “Yes. Or I think I do, but let me make sure. What is the problem? And if there is one, how can it compare to mine?” “The problems are incomparable but mine still exists. The problem’s that I can’t stand being away from you for very long, nothing you don’t know. From your sister too, but you a little more so since I knew you so much more. I have to see you both, in other words, is the problem. If I don’t I go almost crazy. Sad with craziness, crazy with sadness. Both. Deeper, believe me, sometimes where my mind can’t even reach. Sometimes I’m at the breakdown stage in my head, so much do I want to see you when I know it’s too soon after the last, and that’s when I try to hold myself back most from coming, knowing what it does to you. So I think of seeing your sister, but I know what it does to her too. So I see you because I know you can take it, bad as it might be, better than she.” “I understand it then. It’s what I thought. But what can I tell you? Only that you have to think of my feelings too.” “I do, I do, what do you think I’ve been saying here? Too many times you had that problem of not listening to what people were saying, especially me, and especially when I was making the most sense or wanted something especially done, so for you to hear. ‘Olivia,’ I’d say, my voice with each time getting sharper, ‘that’s the third time I asked you to come to the table’ or ‘to clean up that mess.’ And a minute later: ‘Olivia, Olivia, this is the fourth and bloody well better be the last time I’m going to ask you to come to the table’ or ‘to clean up that mess.’ And you’d still sit at your little child’s table, doing your cutouts, or making a book, or talking to your stuffed animals, or building or drawing or just daydreaming but pretending not to hear me because if you did acknowledge hearing me you’d then have to take yourself away from whatever you were doing, and it would just tick me off. ‘Olivia, goddamnit,’ I’d say, ‘do you want me to shout? Because I’m getting there and you know how I can shout. Then what? You’ll say “You’re always exploding at me” or “getting hotheaded” or “cross,” and probably start crying, and I’ll say, disturbed by your crying, but still “And you didn’t deserve it every one of those times and this time too?” ‘No, what am I saying? You’ve been listening. And if you haven’t from time to time it’d be natural, since you’re in bed with the lights out and it’s late and you’re probably getting sleepy or have been sleepy for a while and maybe even been nodding out.” “I’m not, I haven’t been.” “Anyway, it’s got to be me again saying things meanly and crossly and so on, but doing what I was always good at, right? But mostly trying to get you to agree with me to let me see you more than you want or can take. I’m sure I could have said that shorter. But I’m telling you, my darling, lots of times I only come to you when it starts killing me from being away from you and I can’t stand it anymore or something forces me to you no matter how hard I force myself back.” ‘Then I have to say that from now on you’ve got to think of my feelings even more than you have, and to try even harder to force yourself back.” “I will. Much harder. Hard as I can and more, a lot more, though what’s to guarantee I’ll be able to, and if able to, have some to total success? No, I will be able to — I’ll force myself till I am, stay at it, think of nothing else but, etcetera, resist, and resist more, and so forth, unabridged diligence and every trick in the book. And if I can only come back to you once every other month, let’s say—” “Much too much.” “Once every three months then—” “Still too often, I’m afraid.” “Six months then, if that’s what you’d prefer — but seeing you like this, speaking to you when I come back or once every two or three times speaking to you if that’s what you’d prefer—” “It would be, I’m sorry. Maybe once in every four.” “Then done, good, don’t worry about it, because it’d be more than worth it to me. Worth it how? Worth all the effort? Worth all the killing-can’t-stand-it-pains-resistance-more-resistance-going-crazy and so on, I mean. It should be, at least. And if you change your mind and want me around even less than that, or talking to you like this less than that, or talking to you any old way — mumbling, lisping, sputtering, susurrating, anything you’d want less of — than I’d have to do what you say and try even harder there to pull it off, isn’t that so?” “If it’s what I’d want, yes. Sorry again but that’s the way it has to be.” “So I’ll do it; glad to. You watch, I will. But just know that when I’m not around you I’m almost always thinking of you.” “Try not to do so much of that too. It’s no good for you. I’m sure it usually leads to you wanting to come here and everything we’ve both said that goes with that. So try to sort of forget me too.” “You’ve done that with me?” “A little. I’ve had to.” “OK. If that’s what you wish, OK. In that I’ll forget you more than I have, I’m saying, which you probably know isn’t saying very much.”