Michah looked at her mother who was studying the dessert menu and thought she looked well enough for a woman nearing seventy. She seemed fine, had chosen this nice café when Michah phoned to suggest they get together for lunch. But there had been odd bits - the hesitation about where to sit and then the moving of her chair to a just-so position, especially when it faced toward the kitchen and not a window. And her mother was a bit distracted - yet, not unduly so, in Michah’s opinion. But daddy was concerned over the change in her and for daddy to take notice of anything much outside the many hobbies that had occupied him since his retirement, well, it warranted attention from the family.
Michah had a brother and two sisters in town and the outcome of a number of phone conversations and several emails had been to decide to get together with their mother, one on one. The luncheon date was the first in the plan. Michah had enjoyed it so far and thought to make an effort to do this more often, just not over a Concern.
“We must do lunch more often,” she said. Lily looked up and smiled. “I’d like that. I know you’re busy with work. I forgot to ask - how is Tia’s foot?”
Tia’s foot problem got discussed around the dessert selection but it was not an appropriate subject to accompany the enjoyment of a rose geranium brownie and wild strawberries in a lavender custard so they ate for awhile in silence, sharing their choices.
Michah had been wondering how to bring up the Concern. “Is there something going on in your life that you’d like to tell me about?” she asked. Her direct approach was likely the reason the siblings had convinced her to be the first in the approach.
Lily’s gaze shot back from her rather prolonged surveillance of the cash register.
“What do you mean?”
“You seem different lately.”
Lily did not speak what she immediately thought - “How would you know, I hardly ever see you,” but took the time to rethink her answer. As she did so she pursed her lips and Michah marveled, as she had many times before, how the lines in her mother’s top and bottom lip seemed to line up precisely in a perfect pattern when pressed together.
Into the lengthening silence Michah said, “Dad’s worried about you.”
“He’s not.” Lily declared. “He hardly knows I’m there most of the time.”
“He is.” Michah stirred her coffee.
“ He would have said something.”
“He thinks you’re having an affair.”
Lily stared at her daughter, astonished. She mouthed the word but did not say it aloud and then frowned.
“Women of seventy do have affairs, Mother.” Michah, the precise daughter, felt the need to say.
“I’m still in my sixties, as you well know,” Lily answered testily.
“You know what I mean. I thought you were going to deny the possibility.”
“Oh I wasn’t going to deny it.” Lily saw her daughter’s mouth start to open in shock and a small part of her was pleased that both her husband and her daughter would entertain that suspicion. “But it’s not true.”
She wiped her lips on her napkin. “I guess if the old buzzard has noticed a change then the whole family is wondering.”
Michah smiled and nodded. Her mother had been calling Duke “the old buzzard” for all of their long marriage and Michah was comforted by hearing this term of endearment.
“Okay, so I’ll explain.” She gave another prolonged look at the cash register and then turned her attention wholly on Michah. Just then her cell phone rang. Michah was so used to hers ringing that she automatically reached toward her purse but stopped as Lily extracted hers from a jacket pocket. She’d had it for years but Michah had never become accustomed to her mother’s use of it.
Lily did not immediately stand up and go outside as most users did, pace back and forth, speak too loudly with frequent “excellent!”’s. She was old fashioned in her use of the technology, stayed in place and spoke quietly into the phone as if to another person at the table.
“I’ll talk to you later, I’m having lunch with one of my daughters,” was essentially all she said and ended the call.
“That’s part of it.” Lily said, indicating the cell phone as she replaced it in her pocket and for a small instant Michah wondered if her mother was somehow involved in drug dealing. A very small instant as Lily immediately added, “I’m a Frog.”
“Alzheimer’s,” was Michah’s next, panicked, thought.
But Lily was continuing, “That’s what we call ourselves. The Frogs. You know how in knitting when we rip something out we call it ‘frogging’ – rip it rip it rip it – “ Michah nodded, although she hadn’t known, - “ well that is what we decided we were doing. Ripping out, in a way, correcting mistakes, altering patterns, changing the course of a garment, a life.” She stopped and took a sip of coffee.
“This is all about knitting?” Michah asked, her voice expressing disbelief.
“No, that’s a metaphor. Why we call ourselves Frogs.”
“Who’s “we”?” Michah asked, hoping to put some sense into the conversation.
“Oh, some people I know. Women, mostly, so far. A few men are becoming a part of it.” She had a thought that maybe Duke would add this to his list of hobbies, now that he seemed to have involved himself by being concerned. She had a sudden feeling of regret that this would change her relationship with one of the men, a widowed brother of one of the women. As she was giving a small sigh Michah leaned across the table and suggested, “Mother, why don’t you start at the beginning.”
“Sure.” They waited while the server refilled their coffee cups. “A few months ago one of my neighbors – you don’t know her – was upset because her granddaughter was being bullied by a group of girls at school. Not bullied in the usual sense, more being pressured to do things for them like loan homework or pass notes or clean their lockers. Not serious but not nice. Demeaning. This girl was afraid of them but also pleased to be part of them, even in this way.”
Lily had another lingering glance at the cash register.
“Then it did get nasty. They convinced her to go into a store and look like she was stealing something, make it rather obvious that she had taken something and put it in her pocket, something quite expensive. But then she was to put it back, not obviously, before she left the store. Of course she would be followed from the place and brought back and asked to empty her pockets. She did so and, of course, nothing was found.”
Michah was spellbound. “What was the point?”
“Well, the theory was that the store would be so embarrassed over the ‘mistake’ that this girl could then, in subsequent visits, take things but they would not accost her even if they did suspect her. So that was the plan.”
“Sounds dumb.”
“It was dumb.”
“But wouldn’t the store be extra watchful, possibly not allow her in again?”
“I guess they couldn’t enforce this, citizen’s rights or something. I don’t know. In any case she told her grandmother all about it – this was after the first encounter and she was terrified of actually trying to leave the store with something – and Betty told me, that’s my neighbor, and she and I and another friend were together one afternoon knitting squares for the hospice afghans.” Lily paused to take a breath. “We said there must be a way we could help and well – we came up with a name, said we’d become Frogs, and talked about all sorts of ways of putting an end to this.
“We didn’t do anything then but the idea was in my mind when I was in that record store in the mall. I was looking for something for Duke’s nephew,” (his name was Bob but there were five Bobs in the family so she described him thusly) and happened to see the girl who I knew to be the ringleader of the bullies. She’s actually the daughter of one of the women at my church, I had her in a youth group last year, and – well, her parents thought she could do no wrong. Or maybe they just needed their eyes opened.”
Lily paused again and gave a tight grin. “I guess I was the one responsible for opening their eyes.”
“I’m agog, Mother, “ Michah said, waiting.
“In a nutshell, I dropped a CD into the open pocket of her backpack and when she was leaving the store the security alarm went off and she was found to have unpaid merchandise.”
Michah stared at her mother. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“But how did you do it – I mean, what if she had noticed, what if anyone else had noticed? You could have been charged as an accomplice if anyone had seen.”
“Well, of course there was that risk. I’m afraid I acted on impulse and it was likely beginner’s luck. I’ve been much more careful and thoughtful since – “
“There have been more - !?” Michah squeaked but Lily was continuing – “and I did wear a disguise. I mean, when I saw this girl, and suddenly had the idea of dropping something into the gaping pocket of her backpack, I realized she would recognize me so I took my reading glasses out of my purse and put them on and sort of squinted and then I put on that rain scarf that I never wear even if it is raining because it looks so tacky, and I buttoned up my coat right to the top and sort of hunched. Nobody notices old women who look like that, believe me.”
“I would,” Michah objected, as much to the thought of her mother testing this fact of nonentity as to her increasing awareness that it was indeed true.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Lily told her mildly. “You bumped my cart in Loblaws the other day and said I’m sorry but you didn’t know it was me.”
Michah was speechless. “That was you? I didn’t notice – “
“Exactly.”
“But, what were you doing?”
“Oh, something else. A little harder to explain. Trying to prevent a dear old lady who has no need at all to do so from hiding expensive cuts of meat in her bulk food bags of flour or bird seed.”
They allowed for another coffee refill. Michah was wishing she had not chosen decaffeinated.
“You do this all the time?”
“Well, there seems to be the need.” She was beginning to delight in impressing her daughter. “That call was from one of us Frogs who wants help stopping the bike thefts in his neighborhood if not actually getting back his son’s bike that was stolen. We’re setting up situations to see what happens, see who takes the bikes.”
“That is definitely dangerous, Mom!” She lowered her voice as a few people at nearby tables looked at them. “Don’t do it!”
Lily realized her bragging had gone too far. Now Michah really would be on her case. She needed to repair the damage. “Oh give me credit for not doing anything stupid, please. The man setting this up has a digital camera and plans to photo whoever approaches the set-up bikes and simply take the photos to the police.” This was a total falsehood. The Frogs wanted to avoid anything to do with courts and the law if they could help it.
“But what about having to appear in court, then?” Michah was asking.
“Well, I’m not planning on being a part,” she hedged. Actually the whole idea was a fait accompli. Lily, in old lady garb, had been sitting at a bus stop near the set-up bike intending to be merely an onlooker but when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a young man stop and handle the chain as if he were having difficulty with the lock and knew it was likely metal cutters making the front of his jacket heavy, he looked so much like one of her grandsons that she piped up, remembering to alter her voice, “Well, what a nice bike. Just like my grandson’s. He loves his bike. Worked all last summer to buy it.” The youth looked at her. She looked calmly back. He dropped his eyes and muttered, “I must have left the key at home, better go and get it.”
“I’m pretty sure it was shame I saw in his eyes,” she told another Frog later, while discussing the scene. “So I think my bursting into speech was a success.”
“I’m glad you’re not going to be a part of that,” Michah was saying, interrupting her memory. “You could get hurt. I almost wish you were having an affair. Seems it would be much simpler and far less dangerous.”
“Hah,” replied her mother, “Your father would likely kill me.”
They both laughed. Then Lily suddenly said, “Want to see me in action?” And before Michah could answer, her mother had taken the bill, put on her reading glasses, tilted her head so she was squinting through them, rose and walked in a stoop to the cash register. Michah could hear her speaking to the cashier in a rather dithery voice.
Money was given, change received. There was a pause. Lily did not drop the mess of change and bills the cashier had given her into the gape of her purse as expected. She continued to hold it out and stared at it. “Oooops, sorry,” the cashier said prettily, and dropped another coin into Lily’s hand. Lily held the stance and looked from the change into the cashier’s eyes. The girl turned red. Lily did not say anything but she suddenly stood up straight again and slowly replaced the change in her purse.
“I think she got the point,” Lily said to Michah when they were out on the sidewalk and Michah was holding the vehicle’s door open for her mother. She noted that Lily could leap more nimbly into the van than she, with her back problem, could. It didn’t seem fair.
“Is that why you were watching her?” Michah wanted to know.
“I’ve been here a couple of times before and both times the change was short. I was watching today because she tended to hand back the money to older people, or people talking and not watching her, in a handful, not count it out. And every so often she would casually slip her hand into the pocket of her vest. I suspect she was transferring the amount shortchanged there so the till would balance at night. It doesn’t take much each time, quarters, dimes, nickels all add up. Today my change was short a loonie. I’ll likely suggest some other Frogs eat there and see what they experience.”
“I don’t think the family is ready for all this,” Michah sighed. “Why on earth are you doing it?” She climbed slowly into the van, favoring her spine.
“It makes me feel good,” Lily said simply. And she’d ripped out a lot of knitting, over the years, to make it better. Frogging seemed to come naturally to her.
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