Super America

by Anne Panning

  “Don’t you think people would look at us a little funny,” I said, “if we showed up with our spears, right here in town?” I was trying not to be a downer about it, but the idea seemed pretty unrealistic.

  “I’ve got to tell Stella,” he said. “She’ll be psyched.”

  I tried this time to be more positive. If I didn’t, I might be spending a lot of nights alone while the two of them hunted dark waters together. “I mean,” I started over, “I’m sure there are lots of frogs in there. God, yeah.” I smiled at him as genuinely as I could, then went out a little further on a limb. “In fact, I could imagine this spot being our little secret. Just you and me. We could walk down here and, you know, make a date out of it. A little adventure.”

  “That’d be cool.” He seemed distracted, though, as if he were already hatching a plan to run by Stella. I had to admit I was jealous of not only their like-minded business sense but of their very mobility, which I was sure they both took completely for granted. Sometimes I felt more like a liability than a helpmate to Kenner, and Stella seemed to fill certain needs of his that I couldn’t.

  I drove him by the new dollar store that had opened up on the edge of town. Lots of crappy cars and a few rickety ten-speed bikes were parked out front. The building next door to it had been demolished, and little kids jumped around on the crumbly cement blocks. “So are you and Stella an item now or what?” The idea—however stupid—had been nagging at me for weeks. I signaled left and sort of chuckled. “Should I be worried my big sister is zeroing in on you?”

  “God, no!” He exhibited the proper amount of shock and derision so that I believed him.

  “Well, Stella seemed to be hinting at—”

  “She wants to piss you off,” Kenner said. He adjusted his train conductor cap, then wiped off the dust build-up on the dash. He definitely preferred to drive, not ride. “She lives to get your goat. You know that.” He seemed genuinely upset by my question. “And come on. Me and Stella? I don’t mean to dis your sister or anything, but she’s not exactly a looker. You know what I’m saying.”

  I nodded. “I know what you’re saying.”

  I swung us home, down Briar Street. I could see our little blue Cape in the distance. As we got closer, I saw Harley and Davis on the stoop, whining to get in.

  “And the money?” Kenner asked sheepishly. “I don’t think you ever said one way or the other.” Our car doors slammed, syncopated. I went for the house.

  “Let’s not fight right now,” I said, reaching for the cats. “Okay? I’m too tired to fight.”

  “Okay.” Kenner spanked me on the rear and followed me into the house, whooping.

  * * *

  On the last Friday night of August, almost two months after we began hunting frogs, Chez Menagerie was ready to open its doors for its grand opening. Kenner and I had harvested more frogs than we knew what to do with. I’d financed the new chairs, tables, steam table, and menus. The grand opening had been advertised in our town’s newspaper for two weeks, plus we’d put an ad in the city newspaper the week prior. We were all set to open, and Kenner and I sat waiting for Stella to show up.

  I had to admit that even I, the “downer,” the “naysayer,” was a little bit excited. I had learned things about frogs from Kenner that I’d never known before. Who knew they preferred their food moving, and that the Japanese had actually invented a motorized vibrating food tray that mimicked live bait? The bullfrog, I’d found out, was the largest North American species and grew up to a foot long. How any of this mattered was unclear, but Kenner had relayed it all to me with such relish that his enthusiasm and interest had somehow rubbed off on me. Our nighttime frog escapades were doing wonders for our love life. Plus, the more interested in frogs I became, the better Kenner and I got along and the less time we had to spend with Stella. In fact, we’d barely seen her at all the past couple of weeks.

  We’d taken to going on long rides after work on his Harley, me clutching his waist from behind, my hair blowing in strings out the bottom of my helmet. I liked it that way since my bad foot was irrelevant and we could both fly down the highway like the old days. We’d search out new frog sites and evaluate their potential for a harvestable population. We’d picnic by little secluded ponds and listen for the familiar croaks. Our lives had started to center around frogs, but instead of them disturbing me, I had grown to love the little guys, as well as their legs, fried in butter and smothered with garlic and lemon.

  “I’m going to give Stella a call,” Kenner said now. He turned to the black wall phone, but just as he picked up the receiver, she came rushing through the door. It had started to rain outside, hard, and her red hooded sweatshirt was draped over her head like a cape. She had a bottle stuffed under her arm and shoved it at us like we’d won a prize. “Here you go,” she said. “Chinese restaurants usually put a good luck ceramic kitty in the window for prosperity, but I figured some cheap champagne would do us just fine.”

  She scooted past us, investigating the place. All the tables were covered in dark green tablecloths, and the silverware was rolled up in white paper napkins. To the left of the door, the steam table kept the frog legs hot and covered with sneeze guards. Next to the frog legs were vats of roasted potatoes, buttered carrots, green salad with purple cabbage, and rolls with butter. A sign we’d had commissioned at the local printing press said: “All-U-Can-Eat Frog Legs, $15.95!”

  “Isn’t that a little steep?” Stella said. She’d dressed up a little for the grand opening, which for her meant a white stretch halter top and black shorts. Her legs looked veiny and weak, like an old person’s, and somehow I felt sorry for her. “I thought we were gonna go for $9.95, just to get people in the door.”

  “Well,” I said, “we have to at least break even.” I saw her smirk at me, then roll her eyes at Kenner when she clearly thought I wasn’t looking.

  “It’s still a pretty good deal,” I insisted.

  She shrugged her bare shoulders, which were freckled and leathery. We’d all agreed to help out after our day jobs, just until we were up and running and had some money to pay for help. We decided we’d open at five and serve dinner from Thursday through Sunday nights only. Stella and I had agreed to wait tables while Kenner tended bar, even though we were still waiting on our liquor license. That part made me nervous, but I was doing my best to go with the spirit of things and not present obstacles.

  We all huddled back by the bar and waited. There was one window framed by a pink curtain that faced Main Street, and through it, we could see the rain gushing down the gutters and splashing into the street. Cars drove by, spraying through puddles that looked like lakes. We watched the few brave souls who did venture out rush into the bar across the street. We all knew about the two-for-ones from five to seven at the Pig’s Eye.

  “It sometimes takes a while for things to catch on,” Stella said, and tidied the straws and napkins on the bar. She looked away quickly, but I could have sworn she seemed on the verge of tears—or a nervous breakdown.

  Kenner’s response was to get pissed off. He paced back and forth between tables, then kept going up to the window and rapping on it with his knuckle. “This town sucks!” he said. “I mean, there’s what—two restaurants total in this town?” He sat down at one of the tables and drank the water that had ice melting in it. “You’d think people would be thrilled to have another choice! I mean, it’s the diner, with their soggy gravy all over everything, or the pizza place, whose sauce tastes like piss, and now us. I mean, we got frog legs! What more could people want?”

  I motioned for him to get up when I saw a family of four come rushing at the door. The man held a toddler in his arms, and the woman dragged a small boy by the hand. No sooner did we get them seated then another couple came in. “We’re meeting another couple,” they said, wiping their eyeglasses off with their napkins and shaking their umbrellas. Within the hour, six tables were filled, but the strange thing was that I didn’t recognize anyone, not a single person, and our
town was very small. As a letter carrier, I could safely say I knew almost everyone. I asked Stella and Kenner if they recognized anyone. They both shook their heads.

  It turned out every single customer was from out of town. Most had driven in from the neighboring city. Apparently, our advertising had paid off. In fact, one of the customers admitted to us, as he paid the tab, that he was writing a review and had decided to give us four stars for the food but only one for the atmosphere. He had a moustache and wore soft green corduroy pants and a blazer, even though it was late August and very humid. “If you want my advice,” he said, pen in his hand, “you pretty it up in here and you’ll do splendidly. Those frog legs are among the best I’ve ever had. Where do you import from? Thailand?”

  We all nodded our heads vaguely. He left us his card, and a very healthy tip, and disappeared with his companion, a silent but very attractive young man he did not introduce us to.

  “He’s gay as the day is long,” Stella said, and picked up his card. “Rumsford Sage,” she read. “Totally made-up name.”

  “But he liked our food!” I said. I wanted to dance, as if I’d somehow personally made all this happen. “Do you know what this could mean for us?”

  Kenner nodded a sly smile and made like he was punching out a time clock. I could already imagine us out on the open road in our Winnebago, my withering stash of money buoyed up by our huge restaurant success. We could open more branches, hire people to run them, and disappear into the great world of leisure.

  The table with children spilled milk all over the floor, asked for more ketchup, and complained that the fries were cold. “Well, that’s because you’re taking a kazillion years to eat them,” Stella said. “I brought them out like an hour ago.”

  Kenner and I gave her hard looks, but when she handed the kid a quarter, everything seemed okay.

  Not everyone who came in ordered the frog legs. Some wrinkled up their noses. Some asked for things we didn’t have. (A dinosaur burger? What was that?) A couple people even looked at the menu and left. But as the night wound down, I’d occasionally grab Kenner around his skinny waist, snuggle up to him, and say, “I knew you could do it, baby. I just knew.” The look on his face told me we were back, and better than ever, and I could hardly wait to run my hands over his familiar, naked body.

  Stella watched us coldly; I could feel it, just as I could feel her loneliness every time Kenner and I really got along, really meshed. But I didn’t let her ruin things for me this time. I simply stood back and watched her bring out another fresh vat of frog legs. When she pulled off the lid, the steam rose like swirly smoke and, for a second, clouded my view of her. But then I saw her wipe her face and look off longingly, out the window, down the street.

  PINNED

  When I was nineteen, I fell in love with a big wrestler from Africa. He wasn’t Africa African, but a Midwestern white guy who grew up in Kenya, son of missionary parents. What impressed me about Matthew Knudson was not just his big barrel chest and trim little hips but his occasional spouting off in Swahili at parties just when things were getting dull. “What’s that you just said?” I asked him the first time we’d met. He said it again, in Swahili, and I shook my head. “No, no! In English. English, por favor!” I was a sophomore majoring in Spanish and psychology; I’d probably had upwards of six beers, and it wasn’t even midnight. I distinctly remember a big red X on my hand, proof that I’d paid my two dollars for a bottomless cup of Hamm’s. I also remember the gray fedora I wore with a feather arcing off the side. I was hopelessly theatrical and in need of attention; it was the mideighties; I had recently escaped a corn & soybean hometown and was ready to exchange my old self for a new.

  “I said, ‘Baby, anybody want to wrestle?’” With that, he grabbed the beer out of my hand, picked me up over his shoulder, and pinned me down on the moist shag carpet. I remember the wetness seeping through my shirt. More than that, though, I remember the feeling of his hard muscled legs straddling me. He was built tight, his pale skin seemingly strained over an enormous bulging body. His hands held mine up over my head, and I remember I could see his teeth—small, jagged, and widely spaced—grinding together, but also grinning. Big tennis shoes danced and stumbled dangerously around my head. My long blonde hair spread in strings around me. The retainer I wore to correct a childhood overbite slipped loose. Even my little John Lennon eyeglasses flew off, and I remember panicking that they’d be crunched underfoot and I’d have to wander home in a near-sighted fog.

  The thing was, I was pretty, if a bit unpolished. I could’ve had any number of boyfriends who’d have treated me kindly, opened doors, telephoned me daily, brought me flowers. But Matthew won fair and square. After a loud count of ten, he raised his hands in the air and proudly pronounced himself the winner.

  * * *

  By junior year, Matthew had lost his wrestling scholarship. He was living in his car, a brown Toyota hatchback with a luggage rack, on top of which he kept suitcases of clothes secured with bungee cords. Books filled the bulk of his car, mostly poetry and philosophy, but some gardening and horticulture texts; his most recent scheme was to become a ginseng farmer. Among other atrocities, the U.S. had just invaded Grenada, and Matthew had dyed an American flag black, hung it flapping out his back window to make a statement. “This country is fucked,” he said. He kept a can of beer in his cup holder and sipped at it in fast, jerky sips. I watched his Adam’s apple, transfixed. “I seriously think we need to get out of here before it’s too late. You in?”

  I remember the rain wiggling down my window as we drove all over the city looking for an open diner. The light was pearly gray and sad and put me in a mood I couldn’t name. Matthew had terrible, sporadic acne, and his normally pink face looked purple with pain. Everything seemed ready to erupt.

  I’d just won a big scholarship to keep me going, tuition-wise, for another year and asked Matthew to attend the ceremony at school as my guest. “But you have to dress up,” I told him. “It’s steak and champagne.” Somehow I hadn’t yet learned to anticipate his flareups. They always blindsided me when I should have seen them coming. I remember the silence he issued after my invitation.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” He ran a red light, because as he always said, no cop, no stop. A neon Open sign glowed up ahead, and Matthew gunned it into the parking lot. “This isn’t about books!” He ground the stick into first, cranked on the parking brake with a flexed arm. “This is about values and beliefs! Who does this country think it is? My parents had the right idea. Fucking Kenya.” He placed a big warm hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. He was always offering me massages, but the presses felt like pinches and hurt more than helped.

  Finally, he got out, slammed his door, but I still sat there. The rain sprayed in gauzy sheets across the pavement, and I could see it drenching Matthew, who wore no coat, carried no umbrella. He knocked on my window and jumped up and down. “Come on!” he said. “I’ll go to the damn thing if it’s so important!” He pointed to a big sign in the window that said Breakfast 24/7, then patted his stomach. I remember the way he laughed then, raised his hands up to the rain, and shouted, “I love you! I fucking love you!” He sunk his knee down into a puddle and opened his arms to me. I couldn’t resist, but I remember worrying about how I’d ever get through school when he seemed perpetually perched between failing out and dropping out, not to mention driving me crazy.

  At the ceremony, I felt proud and important, as I should’ve. I’d won a prestigious full tuition waiver plus living expenses for a year and had a chance to repeat the scholarship the following year if I kept my grades up. I listened hard to the speeches; I wore hose and borrowed pumps; I remember holding my knife and fork European style as I ate, something new I’d learned from a foreign student. Matthew drank heavily. He ate too quickly and complained of a sore stomach before they’d even brought dessert. There were carnations on the tables; I remember they were pink, edged faintly with white, and just when I dared to give Matthew a glare t
o behave, he reached right out and ate the carnations in the vase, one right after the other. He patted his lips with a napkin when he was through, then gave me a look I knew I’d never forget. It was both sorry and contemptuous.

  * * *

  I’d been seeing Matthew over a year before I had my first orgasm. It was the end of junior year; I was studying for my art history mid-term, trying to sear images of Tintoretto and Daret and Greuze into my memory. Matthew, long since dropped out of school, was giving me a foot massage, only his hands kept creeping further and further up my leg. My roommates at the time were at a football game. The apartment we lived in was cramped, and Matthew’s nearly constant presence had been the source of numerous “house meetings.” Their ultimatum, “He goes or you both go,” hadn’t seemed to register with Matthew, but instead of confronting me, my roommates had taken to vacating the apartment whenever he was around. To his credit, Matthew tried to make himself indispensable to them. He’d change the oil in their cars, make them pancakes and bacon for breakfast, shovel the walk, and write their Shakespeare papers for them when they’d waited until the last minute and were bereft of ideas.

  I remember on that cold, slushy Sunday, I didn’t care. I let the heavy art history textbook slide to the floor and let Matthew’s hands wander. Sex with Matthew was, if not always satisfying, at least a sensual feast. He was forever rubbing almond oil onto my shoulder blades, burning cinnamon-scented candles, playing Bolero or Billie Holiday in the background, draping us with silken sheets the color of sherry, then drawing us a bath laced with cream and nutmeg. That afternoon, we kissed, undressed, caressed. On my tiny single bed, we rolled on top of each other. I remember looking out the window at a squirrel running furiously up a bare maple tree. We were doing it, and then it happened. I remember my body locked tightly into position and wouldn’t move, so Matthew kept moving. In fact, I remember him cheering when he realized what was happening. When it was his turn, he shouted, “Let’s wrestle!” then rolled me over. I remember gazing out the window as the sleet turned to snow, and it all seemed so beautiful, every blink felt positively luscious, until I heard my roommates come home.