Note to Housesitter

Feed the frogs. Do not forget. Twice a day, two pinches.

Please don’t smoke in my office. My wife smokes in every other corner of the house, so feel free to light up in any other place. Just not in my office. My wife, she’s a horrific smoker. Two packs a day, through her mouth, out her nose. In one hole and out the other in obnoxious drags. She’s coughing every day, that raspy nicotine hacking all over the place. Doesn’t even cover her mouth because she’d have to put down her cigarette.

Febreze everything, aside from my office. There’s a few spray bottles under the sink – use them all. Please, spray everything. She hates the smell of Febreze so my only chance to get rid of the smoke stench is when she leaves. And open the windows, but not the one by the terrarium. She panics, thinks the frogs will hop out the entire three feet to the sill.

I’m sorry. I feel as though this might be inappropriate, but I have to; you’re a female. Do you think its normal for a fully grown woman to be raising frogs? I mean, I used to work in the city, so I didn’t know what she used to do all day. Now, I work out of my home office (which reminds me, water the plants in the office, they are not plastic), so I see what she does. She’s with them all day. I come out of my office for lunch (there’s fish sticks and such in the fridge if you get hungry) and I find her there, hovered over the terrarium, smoking of course, cooing, stroking, whispering in their ears. You might ask yourself if frogs even have ears. They do, behind their eyes. I don’t even know if my wife knows this.

It would be one thing if she was educated about these frogs. But she’s not. She’s never taken even the slightest interest in any science, let alone biology. There’s even a few books about reptiles and amphibians in our study, but she hasn’t touched them. I have leafed through them in a search for answer to questions like ‘why does my wife give her love to amphibian?’ This answer is not in Amazing Reptile and Amphibian Records or Carter’s Biology Handbook. There are mostly fun facts.

I can tell you frogs have the strangest breeding habits. In South America, the Surinam toad mates in water. Fellars are eight inches long, so it must be bizarre to see them in the act. The female releases eggs right then and the male fertilizes them and presses them into her back. They lay like that for a few hours while a cyst grows around the cluster of eggs. The male hops off, goes on his way, and for a few months the female carries them around in this crusty pouch on her back until it splits, releasing the baby frogs. Absolutely strange.

The locked door is a nursery. Please just stay away from it.

As far as the bedrooms go, you can sleep in any guest bedroom. Might I recommend the blue one; the down comforter always puts me right to sleep, regardless of how stressed I am. There are more sheets in the closet in the master bedroom. Feel free to use whatever you like. You’ll no doubt find the bottle of lubricant by the bedstand, next to her ashtray. Don’t judge me. She’s into it. I never really tried it before her, but she really wanted to. It’s amazing she ever got pregnant, because I swear we have anal more than the garden variety sex. (Don’t worry about the garden. Haven’t really got around to growing anything yet. Our old house had a little plot next to the screen door. I used to grow wildflowers. But this neighborhood code is strict about landscaping; only shrubs in the front.)

Another fun fact. I can tell you that frogs can live without food or air for a whole year. If they have air, they can survive for over two years. Sometimes, when they are young, they crawl through a small crevice in a rock to get at some insects inside. They gorge themselves, only to grow so large they can no longer leave through the crack. So they wait to die. One year, two years.

I suppose that’s not a horrible way to go. Two whole years to achieve inner peace, balance, readiness for the afterlife. Our last housesitter, little Spanish maid, devout Catholic, told my wife there was no room in heaven for her frogs. And she also told my wife smoking is a sin, a betrayal by poisoning God’s earthly temples with ash. We had to get a new house sitter.

Please don’t forget to feed the little squirts. Their food is next to the terrarium. Twice a day, two pinches.

Anal sex really isn’t that different. Takes a bit more preparation, little more pre-planning. I’m sorry, I hate to bring it up again, but I did once and I don’t want you to think we are strange. Forgive me, we are new to this whole middle-upper-class thing. We moved into this place right after I got my promotion a year ago. Maybe because I work here now it doesn’t feel like home yet. Aside from the stench of smoke everywhere. This house is just so big. She wanted a big house for the little guy on the way, but the little guy didn’t make it, so we’ve got this big empty space that still manages to suffocate me. I’m glad we are getting away from a bit. I was beginning to feel like one of those frogs inside a rock.

Darwin’s frog, lives in South America. Female lays thirty eggs, and the male guards them for two weeks. Get this: he hops around with them in his mouth for two whole weeks. Thirty little droplets grow, feed on their yolks, ooze out of their eggs, and jump out of their father’s vocal pouch already half an inch big. Incredible. The responsibility. I think my wife wasn’t ready for it. All she worried about was getting a new house so our kid wouldn’t be cramped. She smoked up until the day we lost him. She went on an IV for a few days. On the way home, she made me stop to get some cigarettes. There was a pet store down the road. She bought her frogs.

These things are sad. I was sad. But they happen to everyone. They don’t mean we throw everything away and give our love to amphibians, you know? Aside from the frogs and the anal sex, we really aren’t interesting people. Don’t bother looking for anything else strange. There’s a safe in my office that just contains paperwork and a few invaluables. Nothing interesting in the medicine cabinet, just run of the mill Aspirin, Tylenol, Nyquill. Speaking of which, you know the phrase, frog in the throat? Originated in the middle ages. They used to think that the best way to cure a sore throat was to actually place a frog in ones mouth. The slime from the frog’s skin would coat the throat, apparently counteracting the victim’s phlegm.

Might I share a joke with you? Again, most likely inappropriate, but now that I work here I don’t have much contact with coworkers. I have to tell someone this. I’ve found a rather amusing solution to my “situation” – my wife’s smoking, her frogs, the anal sex. I was thinking about sticking a few of her frogs up her ass to satisfy whatever that sexual… need is. Maybe it could crawl up through her and sit in her throat for a while to cure that cough. In one hole and out the other.

WHAT IT TASTES LIKE

Allie. I never really liked your name. I would have preferred to call you Alyssa. I liked that a little better. You told me no, that’s what Ryan called you, so I called you Allie and I didn’t really like it.

They are suddenly calling you Alyssa now. I have half a mind to tell them you wouldn’t like it, but it’s probably not relevant. Not a lot is relevant now.

My left hand is cuffed to the chair and I’ve bitten all the nails on my right hand. I can taste you, Allie. In the crevices of my nails. Allie, what a strange thing, to taste you right now. What a disgusting, beautiful, tragically intense thing. After the blood, the snot, the tears, to taste you.

I keep biting. I bite hard, and deep. There’s a bit of blood now. I’m worried the police officer is going to think that it’s your blood, that I hit you more than once and got your blood on my hands, he’s already asked me about this and I said I hadn’t, it was only once, but now there’s blood on my hands. I suck the blood out. I can’t taste you anymore, Allie. I’ll never taste you again.

Allie, remember when you told me to stop biting my nails? I think of this now because I don’t know what else to think of. You said it was a bad habit. I said that if I quit biting my nails, I’d be perfect, and nobody's perfect, and I did that thing with my shoulders and palms and corners of my mouth that you love, that you loved. You laughed, Allie. You used to laugh, Allie.

Nobody's perfect, Allie. I never liked your name.

This isn't about you

There was a time that I began to believe that there was only so much of my love for you left, that because you weren’t generating it anymore, or maybe it would be me who generated the love for myself, whichever, whatever, that every memory and thought of you used up a little bit of my reserve. That this reserve was quantifiable, a thin, blue viscous fluid in a sac somewhere inside me, perhaps behind my lungs, maybe in a hollow space in my pelvis, I did not know. Inside of me somewhere. And once I believed it was in there, I found it was impossible to not think about it. It's impossible, absolutely impossible to not think about something. I could only forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to.

And fuck, fuck, if this reservoir exists, if this is true, I wasted so much of it in those first few nights with my cold bed and hot tears and the trying to convince myself that if I could just fall asleep, just close my eyes and slow down my thoughts, you’d crawl in beside me whenever you got back from wherever it is you’ve been. Where have you been? I’ve convinced myself you will return, with a new story about what happened at the traffic light, maybe you'd have a new t-shirt from this week-long convention you’ve been at, actually you'd probably just pass out and wait till morning to explain. Where have you been? I leave my door unlocked and it sickens me. I wake up alone, maybe with a little less of that clear blue fluid, maybe with none at all, maybe there never was any. I shower, and watch the water drain from the tub.