Stanzi—Monday Afternoon—Frogs in Jars
There is a note on the table. It says Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.
It’s only four o’clock.
So I walk over to Chick’s Bar and find them at the corner table. When they see me, they climb underneath and hide. They climb into two jars of formaldehyde and become frogs. I pick up the jars and take them home.
The doctor from my family therapy arrives. He still looks like Sidney from M*A*S*H and I know he can save the frogs that are now sitting on the breakfast bar.
We sit in a circle. Me, Mama-in-a-jar, Dr. M*A*S*H, and Pop-in-a-jar.
I say, “They’re dead frogs floating in formaldehyde.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Mama says. “I am not a dead frog.”
Pop doesn’t say anything.
“Why do you say this, ____________?” the doctor asks.
“Stanzi,” I correct. “My name is Stanzi.”
“Well then, Stanzi, why do you say your parents are dead frogs? They’re sitting right here.”
“They won’t talk about Ruthie,” I say. “And they take me to school shooting sites and call it vacation.”
Dr. M*A*S*H looks at Mama and Pop for verification. They nod but don’t seem to see that their vacations are in any way creepy.
“I talk about Ruthie all the time,” Mama says. “I never stop talking about Ruthie.”
“I have never heard you talk about Ruthie,” I say.
“That’s because you weren’t listening,” Pop says. “We talk about her all the time.”
“Is this true?” Dr. M*A*S*H asks me.
“No.”
He looks at me like I’m an insect, lying to make my life harder.
I say, “They drink all day at Chick’s Bar. They drink all night, too. They leave me a note that says Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights every night.”
“We’ve never left a note like that in our lives,” they answer.
I walk to the sideboard and open the middle cabinet door and remove hundreds and hundreds of notes. They all say Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights. Some are on white paper. Some are on the backs of junk mail. Some are on sticky notes. I pull them all out and place them, in piles, on the kitchen table.
“Is this your handwriting?” the doctor asks them.
“Yes,” Mama says.
“Do you think Stanzi wrote these herself?” he asks.
“No,” Pop says.
“And do you talk about Ruth, the way you said you did a minute ago?”
“No,” Mama says. “If I had to talk about it, I would end up in the looney tunes.”
“She would,” Pop agrees.
I’m still on my knees clearing out the sideboard of notes.
There is a hole in the back of the cabinet.
I crawl through it.
I’m in the dangerous bush man’s bush.
He is here, naked and drinking tea with Patricia.
I say, “Why did we go all that way only to come back?”
“You know why,” Patricia says.
“Because you’re in love and needed rescuing?” I ask.
“I didn’t need rescuing,” she says. “I was on my way here anyway. Eventually.”
The bush man says, “I could have taken Gustav’s helicopter and gone myself.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“You made us go,” I say.
“I didn’t make you do anything,” he says, then offers me a madeleine cookie.
“Love is funny, isn’t it?” Patricia asks.
Thwap-thwap-thwap.
I sit and chew my madeleine cookie and I wonder if I could be Constanze Mozart and if Gustav could be Wolfgang and if we might, one day, sit naked in a bush drinking tea. This morning we kissed on the grass in his backyard. There is a lovely evergreen behind the birdbath.
“I think that’s possible,” Patricia says.
“Anything is possible,” the bush man says.
I ask for another cookie for Gustav, who is landing the invisible helicopter where we kissed earlier this morning, and they give me three. I leave the bush and walk across the street to see him landing right where we landed two weeks ago. Back then, I was a naked frozen baby being born. This time I’m Stanzi, wearing my lab coat, crawling through holes.
Gustav jumps out of the invisible cockpit and I walk over to him and give him the cookies.
He says, “She gave me credit.”
“Did she see it?” I ask.
“No.”
“But she gave you credit?”
“Full credit.”
Today it’s a red helicopter. Who knows what people will believe tomorrow?