Frog (48 page)

“I open the door and immediately feel a breeze in their apartment. Something's wrong. It's winter and this wind and my mother always keeps the windows shut in weather like this and all the downstairs rooms are lit. From the foyer I see what seem like little pieces of paper floating to the kitchen floor. A burglar, must have been going through something, her handbag, and scattered them, tissues and loose things, when he heard me and ran off. I yell ‘You're in fucking trouble with me, mugger,' and run to the kitchen, not there and no sound of him, look around for something to hit him with, nothing really good in sight and I open a kitchen drawer. The candlesticks in the dining room! And I run to it. They're on the table, I grab them, bang them on the table edge and yell ‘I'm going to pound the living shit out of you with these clubs I got so get the hell out, mugger, you better get the fuck out right away,' and with a candlestick raised to clip him I walk into the next room. No one there. Window's open, bars pried apart, so that's how he got in. He go out? Probably has a crowbar himself unless he left it outside. He go upstairs? Should I shut the window and lock it to keep him from coming back or make it a few seconds tougher for him to leave? I shut but don't lock it since nothing I do with the window will be better than anything else. I check the bathroom. Empty, same with the shower stall. Stairway and upstairs hallway lights are on. He can do something to me from the top of the stairs when I walk up, so I keep the candlesticks pointed out in front of me. If he has a gun I'm sunk. If there's more than one of them I'm probably sunk too but I have to take a quick look around to see that my folks are OK. Ceiling light's on and all the dresser drawers are out and one's on the floor and closet door's open in Vera's old room. I look inside the empty closet, toilet, under the bed. I go down the hall to the boys' room my father now sleeps in. Door's shut, room's dark, closet's open, drawers all out, but he seems to be sleeping peacefully. I get close and he's snoring softly. I kick around under the bed, poke inside the closet with a candlestick, other in my right hand always raised. He stirs, tries to turn over; I tiptoe out. Living room's unlit. I go through it, then back to whack the almost ceiling-to-floor drapes with the candlesticks, circle the easy chair and card table and feel under the couch to see no one's there, go to my mother's room at the end of the front hall. Hallway light's off, also the ones in her room. I stand by her door, don't hear anything. Behind me's the baby's room. It's always locked, when there's no guest occupying it, an added protection for them she thinks in case someone climbs in from the street. I turn the knob, doesn't open. I say ‘Mom, Mom.' No sound, can't hear her breathing. I've done this lots before, listened at her room after my nightly check of my father, and when I didn't hear her breathing I often thought she might have died in her sleep. ‘Mom, Mom, you OK?' I go in, come closer to her, listen but always looking around in case the thief springs out at me. Her bathroom. I go in it, shut the door, turn on the light, candlestick ready to clip him, open the shower door. I go back into her room, both closets are open, poke around inside them, kick under both beds, bend closer to her, still don‘t hear anything, put my ear near her mouth. She's breathing and from the little light on her face coming through the venetian blind slats seems to be all right. I check the rest of the closets in the apartment, curtains, under the piano, anyplace he could hide. I unlock the backyard door and go outside, see no crowbar or anything like that, must have been a very thin small man to get through those bars or a kid, or maybe the bars were pried apart by a man and a kid went through them into the apartment. They had to have come over one of the fences of the neighboring backyards. Two have barbed wire on them and another has what looks like razor blades on wire but nothing it seems someone with thick gardening gloves couldn't push aside to get over or through. I shout ‘Hello, hello. Tenants on West Seventy-fifth on the north side of the street and West Seventy-sixth on the south, or just the odd-numbered buildings on Seventy-fifth and the even-numbered ones on Seventy-sixth. This is Howard Tetch, son of the Tetches in number 37 on Seventy-fifth Street. A thief's been in my parents' apartment. Broke into it. Pried apart the bars of a backyard window and ransacked the place. Nobody's been hurt but the thief's out in one of these backyards now or on a roof, if he hasn't gotten away from the area by now or God knows into somebody else's place, so make sure all your windows and backyard doors are locked.' I start giving it again. Someone opens his window and says ‘Stop shouting.' I see the window but not the man. I say ‘Didn't you hear what I was saying? Thief in the neighborhood. Broke into my parents' apartment just ten minutes ago. The Tetches. He's the former dentist in number 37—his shingle was outside for more than forty years till a few years ago—and she you always see around. You must have seen her from your window there if you can see me. When it's nice out she has coffee and a cigarette out here a few times a day and in the summer waters these bushes and her plants. My father too-reading his newspaper and even in the cold weather when it's not too cold, sitting here with a blanket around him.' ‘Stop shouting, people are sleeping,' and closes his window. Some lights have gone on or are going on in other apartments, a few windows open, but all behind shades or in the dark. I go back in, bolt and lock the door, go to my father's room. Though I yelled almost right under his window, he's still sleeping peacefully, or maybe he woke up and went back. I check his bag. Full. I empty it in the toilet and attach it back to the tube. I check his diapers. Empty. I hate doing it but when he's shit I change them. Those two jobs are mostly what I come here for around this time every night and to see if there are any messages my mother's left me in the kitchen about what I could do for her or Dad the next day or phone messages I might have got here because I have no phone. I go to her room. She's sleeping. I get down on my knees by her bed and say ‘Mom, Mom, it's me, wake up. It's OK, Dad's all right, but wake up, I have to tell you something.' She stirs. ‘Can I turn on the light?' I say. ‘Turn it on. Everything's all right?' ‘Fine, considering. Listen, don't panic but a thief's been in the apartment,' I know. He was in this room. I first thought it was you. But to make sure because of what's been happening in the neighborhood lately I kept my mouth shut. In fact it happened to Aunt Bertha and Irv where they live a year ago, so I knew what to do. You remember: Rose slept through it but Irv kept quiet when the burglar lifted his wallet off the night table and slid his hand under their pillows and got Irv's watch. So, when I heard this man opening drawers and going through them and closets, I knew it wasn't you. I figured if he thought I was asleep he wouldn't bother me. At least the chances of it would be better than if he thought I was awake and could later identify him. Of course if he wanted more than he got, then wake or asleep he'd beat me up till he got it out of me. But I must have fallen asleep after he left the room. Don't ask me how. I was scared to hell and planned to just lie there for fifteen minutes and then go to your father. It's probably because I didn't sleep all last night, your father got me up so much with his bad dreams and making ishy. But you say he's OK?' ‘Still sleeping; I emptied his bag. And the man only got into your pocketbook, it seems; presumably took all your cash and credit cards.' ‘The cards I keep hidden elsewhere. But the money, good, let him. I always keep some in there and the pocketbook in a conspicuous spot on top of the kitchen radio, just in case for things like this. Thirty-one—three crisp tens and an old single—as if that's all I have, plus change, which might be enough to satisfy a thief to think his break-in was worth it. He break anything?' ‘Just this,' and I show her a candlestick. I got those from my Uncle Leibush as a wedding present. Dad and I did.' ‘The other one's just as dented. I did it, I'm afraid. I was going to hit him with it. I bashed the table with them—I'd come in on him while he was going through your pocketbook—so he'd be afraid I was serious and had something really lethal to get him with and race the hell out of here.' ‘Which table?' ‘The dinning room one.' ‘My good table? I bought it when we moved in here. You can't get anyone to fix those anymore or get any silver candlestick like these without paying for an expensive antique. And it's a soft silver; won't go back. But you got excited for a good cause. Do I have to get dressed now? Police say they're coming right over? Usually, if the thief's gone, they take their time.' ‘You know, I forgot to call them. I'll do it right away.' ‘Maybe my insurance covers the table and candlesticks. By all rights it should. But probably they'll say the damage could have been avoided.' ‘So say the thief did the bashing. That he saw me come in, grabbed the candlesticks and banged them on the table and said to me “One step, sucker, and I'll smash your head in.” I'll tell the police that's what he did and said.' ‘You'd be lying. And please don't tell Dad what you said you'd say, for that's just what he'd want you to do too, get the insurance. And listen. If he's not up and doesn't get up again tonight, we should let him sleep and not even disturb him with it later.' ‘The police will probably want to see his room.' ‘If we can't stop them—for what are they really going to find?—let's let him sleep till they come.'”

“Part of a police report my mother gave. ‘I was in my bank, doing my normal weekly depositing and wanting to withdraw a little cash. Suddenly behind me I hear “Nobody move, everybody get down, this is a robbery.” Really, in that order—“Don't move, get down.” What did they think we should do? Because if you can get down without moving, you're really doing something. It was stupid. Unfair too, for someone could get killed not doing the right thing because of these confusing orders. And if you didn't speak English which a lot of people in this city don't, or not well enough to understand that hurried garbled gibberish, what then? But that fits my theories about bank robbers. That they're all stupid. If they were the least bit smarter they wouldn't be robbing banks, for one thing. For I'm sure, what with bank guards and plainclothesmen and just armed storeowners bringing in their own money, they have more of a chance of getting shot in one than we do with so many of them robbing banks. But you don't want my theories, so I'll stick to as close an account as I can give. This man said “Don't move, get down, robbery. Pull your coats over your heads or just keep your eyes shut and your face flat against the floor.” Finally we knew. We should get down—for how else can you put your face to the floor?—and not keep our coats over our heads standing up. It sometimes takes cunning to be an innocent bystander. And right after that he confirmed our hunches about what to do by shouting “Now down, down, nobody make a move. First one to pick his head up gets it blown off.” By this time I was already getting down to the floor. I didn't fly to it. I couldn't. I got down slowly, one knee, then the other, then spread myself flat on my stomach and chest. If I had tried to get down quicker I might have broken a hip. I knew that and hoped the robbers would know why I was getting down so slowly. They must have. For though I was, from what I saw, the last one to get down by almost a minute, they didn't complain. And since I had no sweater or coat for my head, though they didn't say sweater, they just said coat, but I'm sure a sweater would have been all right, I put my arms over it and kept my eyes shut tight for the rest of the time till they left. From what the tellers said later, there must have been six to seven of them. For each line had a man or woman with a handgun, they said, and one who could have been either. And there were five lines operating. I remember that, quickly observing which one was the shortest to get on, when I came in. And behind us were two different men's voices ordering the customers on line and all around to get down and stay there. Though maybe it was just one man with a couple of different voices: high and low, excited and controlled. Anyway, that was all there was to it for me. They told us to stay put on the floor where we were for ten minutes after they left, but most of us got up the second a teller shouted they were gone. All this a bit hard to believe, wouldn't you say? Happening in the middle of the city, fifty customers or so in the bank and maybe fifteen bank employees, two of them armed guards in uniforms, plus another five thousand people strolling and pushing strollers and selling umbrellas and things in the street right outside and going in and out of the subway entrance in front of the bank. And to top it off, two policemen from a double-parked police car right across Broadway having a snack in a café. They didn't go through my pocket book or anybody else's, the robbers. One man, after everybody got up, did stay on the floor weeping, and a whole bunch of us went over to comfort him. It seemed he'd been robbed something like this—guns, get to the floor!—just a few months before, but in that one he also was kicked when he didn't unzip his jacket pocket fast enough to turn over his wallet. He was afraid they were the same gang and they'd rough him up and maybe even kill him because he recognized them, besides crying because it happened twice in so short a time. We told him not to worry. That this can't be the only gang in the city robbing banks. And since this one did it differently than his last one—didn't take our wallets and watches and things, and waved pistols instead of shotguns behind us—it almost had to be a different gang. He said that suppose it happens again? What's he to think every time he goes to a bank? I told him that if I've been going to a bank about once a week for more than sixty years and this was the first time it happened to me, chances of it happening to him a third time in the next year were slight. Someone else said that the first fifty of those sixty years weren't such violent ones in the city and so shouldn't count, but anyway what I said seemed to calm the man. Only other thing I can remember now is how one customer started complaining, about ten minutes after the robbers left, if this meant there wasn't going to be any bank service here for a few hours. No one else of us did. In fact a group of us said that once the police finished questioning us we'll share a cab to the nearest Chase branch on Broadway and Sixty-third and maybe even have lunch together after to talk about all this.'”