10. Frog Reads the News
Sits down, puts on his glasses, picks up the paper, unfolds it. Forgot the coffee. God, what a mind. Forget it. No, wants it. Paper’s better with it and it with the paper. Puts the paper down, goes into the kitchen, gets the mug off the stove, goes back to the living room, sits, where’s the paper? Sitting on it, sits up, paper, looks for his glasses. Can’t believe it. And sometimes he has to look for them ten minutes, fifteen. Goes into the kitchen, probably left them there. Not there. Makes a sweeping look around. They should keep the kitchen neater. Put away things that can be put away. Straighten out the cabinets and shelves, clean the table and countertops, sweep and mop the floor while they’re at it, wash the cabinet windows. Room’s too confusing now, things open and out of place, it irritates some sense of order in him. Denise thinks he goes too far when he calls something like this disorder. She left most of these things out and drawers and cabinet doors open. Closes and puts away a cereal box, shuts all the cabinet doors, starts for the living room, feels the glasses on his face. How come now and not before? It’s happened several times. Funny when it does. If Denise were here he’d tell her. Tell her before he’d tell her they should clean and keep the kitchen neater, clean the whole apartment, really. Dust, scour, sweep, vacuum, mop, tidy up. Get on their knees to clean the bathroom and kitchen baseboards — that’s how he does it. If she were in another room he’d go to it to tell her about losing his glasses. “Searched I don’t know how long for them.” He’d exaggerate. Actually searched three to four minutes and maybe a minute of that were his thoughts about cleaning the kitchen, but to make the story better he’d say ten minutes, fifteen. “High and low, this place and that. Even looked in the breadbox and refrigerator, thinking, who knows, maybe I left them there. Maybe twenty minutes. Went through all the rooms. Got mad, even, and called myself an incredibly absentminded jerk. I finally gave up and settled back in my reading chair with my spare pair of glasses. I searched that long for them, even though I have this extra pair, because the lost pair is the far better pair by far. Both bifocal parts are larger, less scratched, and the side supports clench my temples better. Well, and this is almost too ridiculous to tell. Unbelievable too. But when I put the spare pair on they hit up against the lost pair already on my face. For about ten seconds I had two pairs of glasses on my face, and for a few seconds I didn’t know why I couldn’t get the spare pair closer to my face.” Maybe he wouldn’t go that far. Wonders what two pairs would be like to read with or just look at things through. Try it. Too much effort. No, do. Also in case she asks what they were like to have on. Goes to his study, gets the spare pair off the worktable, goes back to his reading chair, sits, sips, puts the second pair over the first and looks at the paper. When he fits the two together he can read as well as he can with one pair on, at least for the short time he tries it. Surprises him. Distance? Looks around the room — everything seems the same; no headache or eyestrain — out the window. Man he recognizes from the neighborhood jogs by in a jogging suit, pushing a stroller. Could be dangerous if he slips or the stroller hits an uneven pavement block. Lots of them around from the tree roots underneath. Eva’s flipped over in it once and he’s taken a couple of spills the last few months just walking casually but not abstractedly alone. Seen him a few times when they both pushed strollers opposite ways at a normal walking pace, and they smiled or waved. Even thought of stopping him to talk about what it’s like having children so late, man being around his age, and possibly sharing some child-rearing ideas, and maybe next time he will. Would like to see himself in the glasses, for he must look silly. But no mirror in the room and not the time of day to see his reflection in the window. Second pair back in its case, looks at the front page.
Hot and humid it says when it’s mild and dry. Photo of the president with his hands cupped to his mouth, probably shouting to reporters. “We’re off for both a working and resting weekend,” he could be saying. “That’s not what we asked, sir.” “Kiss my ass, you snooping sonofabitch,” he says very low. It’s picked up by a TV news crew’s long-distance microphone. “Hear what he said?” the sound man says to the crew’s reporter. “No, what?” and when he finds out he yells to the president, who’s holding his hair down because of the wind from the helicopter’s rotors, “Kiss my what, Mr. President?” “I thought we banned those blasted spy mikes from the grounds,” he says to an aide. “No, sir, do you want us to?” “What I’d really like,” he whispers as they walk up the steps to the helicopter, “is to ban those leeches from coming twenty miles from me and my family.” “One last shot, sir?” the aide says. The president grabs his wife’s hand, fingers her palm in a way so she’ll count three and turn around with him and they’ll smile and wave good-bye.
“Will you play Bambi with me?” Olivia says. “I wonder if someone should expect someone else, no matter how young — I mean, within reason — to say ‘excuse me’ first if he or she expects to intrude on the first person’s thoughts.” “What?” “Nothing. I didn’t say it well. Just babblebraining again.” “What?” “What what? What what? Jesus, can’t you let me have five freaking minutes of reading peace?” “I’m sorry. Sorry.” That beaten look. No, another kind. Eyes like what? But a bit put on. “Actually, I’m sorry. First for cursing.” Dog being berated, rabbit threatened with beheading; somewhere between those. “Come on, don’t look at me like that any more.” “But I’m still sad.” “Well, all right. Maybe you should be. For dumb. I was. For blowing up. Why can’t I get it right with you the first time? Straight. You’re so bloody disarming.” “I’m not bloody.” “Just disarming. That’s to have no arms. I don’t. You take my arms away. Arms for the poor?” and holds out his. “No, I’m not supposed to have any. Because you make me armless, harmless, got it? Don’t worry, it’s not a word you have to worry about yet.” “What isn’t?” “Disarming. But I was serious, even if I didn’t express it clearly before, that I need a little peace here sometimes. When I need it, in other words. Which means if you have to be in this room — and why shouldn’t you when you want, since it’s the common room, for us all — please be quieter when you see me reading, or thinking — you know,” and shuts his eyes, stoops his head a little and holds his hands open above his head and makes as if he’s slowly lowering something over it. “I need peace too,” she says. “So go get it. Look at a book. Read the newspaper. But not noisily, snapping the newspaper sheets and stuff. Here, take it, I’m done,” and holds it out. “I don’t want it. I can’t read.” “You can read some words. ‘Stop. Go. Cold. Hot. Humdrum. Singsong, jingle-jangle. Regurgitation.’ Well, they all could be the same word, just about,” and puts his finger under a word in the paper’s maxim at the top left-hand comer of the front page: “News.” “News.” “Good, you got something from it. Lot more than I have lately.” Puts his finger under the word again. “Snooze.” “No, news.” “Right. Forgot. You know, my father — that was abad lesson, wasn’t it, my news example.” “Why?” ‘Too pushy on my part. Too obvious, which doesn’t mean pushy. It means, well, too easy to see. Pushy means — well, not even pushy. Opinionated, that’s what I was. Making you, or trying to, believe what I believe with my illustration about news, my example. But what I started to say was that my father loved telling me — no, none of that too.” “Your father’s dead.” “Yes.” “Were you very sad?” “It was a long series, meaning one after the other, of serious illnesses he had before he died. I was already a grown man. He wasn’t like me in most ways — certainly didn’t act to me much like the way I do to you. I was very sad when he died. And he had many good qualities. Lots about him that was good. He was usually more cheerful than I am. He worked much harder too. He was a better provider, but stingier. He made more money than I, so we lived better in lots of ways — nannies, a big apartment, new cars, camps for the kids all summer. That’s being a better provider. Stingy means he wasn’t as free with his loot — remember