Stephen Dixon - Frog

“She was born on the lower East Side. Her father from her descriptions of him was a benevolent tyrant.” Weak, weak. “A dictatorial benevolist.” Forget it, besides wrong. “A disapproving wretch, egotist, let’s face it: a mean bastard who spent more time trimming and waxing his Franz Josef mustache than with his kids.” She’d never. How does she describe him? “Everyone feared him.” “My mother sipped her drink, took a deep drag on her cigarette, said ‘Could you pour some more in it? I’ve been a good girl by nursing it for an hour, but now it’s all melted ice.’ Then ‘When my sisters and I saw him on the street we’d cross to the other side to avoid greeting him. Because whenever we did happen to meet him on the stairs coming up or turning a corner, he always criticized us. “Your hair’s uncombed, your button’s undone, retie your shoelaces and pull up your socks — you look like a slut.” He owned a liquor store-restaurant. Let’s face it — a gin mill. The Polish girls who worked for us — they all had names like Sophie and Anna and Christina — also cooked for the bar’s free-food counter. One time one of those big pots the food was cooking in…. One time a very big pot of stew, which when they were scoured and we were a little younger we also took baths in, fell off the stove on top of Aunt Rose. It scalded her whole body almost, till this day she won’t eat any hot meat dish like that or really any liquid that’s hot except tea. She had to be rushed to the hospital. What am I talking about? — the doctor came. I was the fastest one home at the time — I used to win all the athletic contests in grammar school, besides all the musical and intellectual ones too for girls — so I ran to get him.’” Weak, weak.

“His mother did very well in school. When she graduated high school she told her father she wanted to be a doctor. He said ‘One doctor in the family’s enough.’ Her eldest brother was an intern then. ‘Women worked as secretaries or assistants or nurses or stayed home.’ She then wanted to be a lawyer. Her father said ‘One lawyer in the family’s enough.’ Her next eldest brother was in law school. ‘How many ambulances you think there are to chase? Besides, women don’t become lawyers unless they don’t want to have children and want to live only with women and smoke cigars and be like that.’ Then an architect. ‘I don’t want any architects in the family, not for my sons or my girls. For one thing, it’s no profession for a Jew. It’s all run by Gentiles and they’ll keep you standing there for years before they give you even a tent to design. For another reason, because I won’t let you try to do something stupid and useless like that where as a woman you’ll have double no chance. Maybe you got the brains for it — that I can’t say. But get a job that can carry you till you make a good marriage — that’s all you need. You want to continue reading — to improve yourself or because you like books — do it while nursing your children or watching them in the playground.’ She got an office job; evenings and on matinee days she danced in a big Broadway review. Some man she knew, and without telling her, had sent her photo to a beauty contest sponsored by a newspaper. ‘I think it was the whole city I represented,’ she said about it recently, ‘or maybe just Manhattan. In fact, first I was Miss Rockaway, then from that I became Miss Brooklyn, though I’d never stepped in that borough except to go to its beaches sometimes, and then Miss New York, so it had to be for the whole city and maybe even for the state. It was so long ago. I can’t look in the mirror most times when I think what a pretty face and shape I had then.’ ‘You’re still quite beautiful and you’ve kept your weight down,’ he said. ‘For my age, perhaps, but that counts for next to nothing. Maybe less than that, for people look at me, when I’ve done my face and hair right and I don’t have these rags on and what I’m wearing is basically black, and think “She must have been very beautiful once — a hundred years ago.” Anyway, I kept lots of photos but never clippings of those contests and shows, since I didn’t want my dad finding them and learning about me. He thought all beauty contestants and show people were goats and tramps. In a way he was right, besides too much liquor and taking whatever drugs we had then and some of the men playing with boys. But I was nothing but a good girl right to the time I married your father.” Weak, weak.

“As a boy I loved looking at the albums and manila envelopes of photos from when my mother was a showgirl and beauty contest winner. None of the bathing beauty photos show her with a ribbon across her chest saying what Miss she was. ‘Because of my dad I only kept the ones that had nothing like that on them. Ones he might find, let him think I was girlishly posing for a boyfriend or a roving photographer on a boardwalk or beach.’ ‘But it was in the papers, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Good point; I didn’t think of that then. No, now I remember. It was in them but nowhere near as much then, and he only read the Yiddish and Polish dailies, which had nothing about it.’ ‘Then his customers could have told him.’ ‘That’s true. If they did, he never said. My feeling is none ever said anything because they knew he’d get so mad they’d be banned from his bar for life.’ She said she was Miss New York. Her sister Rose said it was Miss Coney Island. ‘I was her chaperon at it — Mama wouldn’t let her go otherwise — so I remember.’ ‘Then how’d she get to the Miss America contest?’ I said. ‘She became Miss Brooklyn or something — Coney Island being in that borough — but that part I know less of. It was your Aunt Bitty who chaperoned her to that one, though she wasn’t your aunt then because you weren’t alive yet, and she died a few years after that.’ My father said that whatever Miss my mother said she was is true. ‘She’s got a memory like a machine that never stops. And all that was a little before I met her. Only thing my mother and I were interested in was that she came to me a whole woman. You think that’s funny — go on, laugh, wise guy — but it should still be important to you, if you were smart. Of course, if she hadn’t been what we thought she was, I wouldn’t have tossed her back, though I might have asked her father for a larger dowry.’ ‘You would have told him?’ ‘Probably not, since he was already very generous. Gave me a gold watch, a big wedding — Cantor Rosenblatt sang, considered the best cantor in the world then — plus some cash to start the apartment with. I probably would have just lied to my mother and then done a lot of davening in shul because of it.’ ‘Because of what — lying to your mother, or the other?’ ‘What are you, a cop? Because of everything and nothing, you satisfied?’” Doesn’t work. Concentrate.

“His mother was almost Miss America. First or second runner-up — she was never sure, she said, even when it happened. One photo he especially liked of her then had her in a one-piece bathing suit, barefoot, holding a ball over her head. A beauty. He should borrow it to show his daughters, or just pull it out of the breakfront drawer next time they’re there. ‘This is Grandma can you believe it? When she was younger than your mother is now by almost twenty years, and thirty years younger than I.’ Short black hair, big dark eyes, radiant smile—” Not radiant. Beaming smile, bouncy smile, just a big beautiful mesmerizing smile. Checks the thesaurus. “Short dark hair, big black eyes, bright smile, brainy face, bathing beauty figure — for then. She was curvy but slim, with small breasts. ‘I wouldn’t win with those breasts today,’ she said. ‘But they were good enough to nurse four normal-sized babies and each for more than a year. Doing it so long probably kept you kids from getting fat like your father in later age, if you have his genes for that.’ Long perfect legs. Near perfect. Almost perfect. Athletic. ‘The woman who became Miss America—’”