In One Person (42 page)

The
other
“poor Tom”—namely, Atkins—told me that Kittredge had pulled off both parts with a noble-seeming indifference, and that Grandpa Harry had luxuriously indulged in the sheer awfulness of Lear’s eldest daughter.

“How was Delacorte?” I asked Atkins.

“Delacorte gives me the creeps,” Atkins answered.

“I meant, how was he as Lear’s Fool, Tom.”

“Delacorte wasn’t bad, Bill,” Atkins admitted. “I just don’t know why he always looks like he needs to
spit
!”

“Because Delacorte
does
need to spit, Tom,” I told Atkins.

It was after Thanksgiving—hence the winter-sports teams had commenced their first practices—when I ran into Delacorte, who was on his way to wrestling practice. He had an oozing mat burn on one cheek and a deeply split lower lip; he was carrying the oft-seen paper cup. (I noted that Delacorte had just
one
cup, which I hoped was not a multipurpose cup—that is, for both rinsing
and
spitting.)

“How come you didn’t see the play?” Delacorte asked me. “Kittredge said you didn’t see it.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him. “I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on.”

“Yeah, I know,” Delacorte said. “Kittredge told me about it.” Delacorte took a sip of water from the paper cup; he rinsed his mouth, then spit the water into a dirty snowbank alongside the footpath.

“I heard you were a very good Lear’s Fool,” I told him.

“Really?” Delacorte asked; he sounded surprised. “Who told you that?”

“Everybody said so,” I lied.

“I tried to do all my scenes with the awareness that I was dying,” Delacorte said seriously. “I see each scene that Lear’s Fool is in as a kind of death-in-progress,” he added.

“That’s very interesting. I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him again.

“Oh, that’s all right—you probably would have done it better,” Delacorte told me; he took another sip of water, then spit the water in the snow. Before he hurried on his way to wrestling practice, Delacorte suddenly asked me: “Was she
pretty
? I mean the transsexual librarian.”

“Yes,
very
pretty,” I answered.

“I have a hard time imagining it,” Delacorte admitted worriedly; then he ran on.

Years later, when I knew that Delacorte was dying, I often thought of him playing Lear’s Fool as a death-in-progress. I really
am
sorry I missed it. Oh, Delacorte, how I misjudged you—you were more of a death-in-progress than I ever imagined!

It was Tom Atkins who told me, that December of 1960, how Kittredge was telling everyone I was “a sexual hero.”

“Kittredge said that to you, Tom?” I asked.

“He says it to everyone,” Atkins told me.

“Who knows what Kittredge really thinks?” I said to Atkins. (I was still suffering from the way Kittredge had delivered the
disgusting
word when I’d least expected it.)

That December, the wrestling team had no home matches—their earliest matches were away, at other schools—but Atkins had expressed his interest in seeing the home wrestling matches with me. I’d earlier resolved to see no more wrestling matches—in part because Elaine wasn’t around to see the matches with me, but also because I was bullshitting myself about trying to boycott Kittredge. Yet Atkins was interested in watching the wrestling, and his interest had rekindled mine.

Then, that Christmas of 1960, Elaine came home; the Favorite River dormitories had emptied for the Christmas break, and Elaine and I had the deserted campus largely to ourselves. I told Elaine absolutely everything about Miss Frost; my session with Dr. Harlow had provided me with sufficient storytelling practice, and I was eager to make up for those years when I’d been less than candid with my dear friend Elaine. She was a good listener, and not once did she try to make me feel guilty for not telling her about my various sexual infatuations sooner.

We were able to speak frankly about Kittredge, too, and I even told Elaine that I “had once had” a crush on her mother. (That Mrs. Hadley no longer attracted me in that way made it easier for me to tell Elaine about it.)

Elaine was such a good friend to me that she actually volunteered to be the go-between—that is, should I want to try to arrange a meeting with Miss Frost. I thought about such a meeting all the time, of course, but Miss Frost had so clearly indicated to me her unwavering intentions to say good-bye—her “till we meet again” had such a
businesslike
sound to it. I couldn’t imagine that Miss Frost had meant anything clandestine or suggestive about how we might manage to “meet again.”

I appreciated Elaine’s willingness to be the go-between, but I didn’t for a moment delude myself by imagining that Miss Frost would ever make herself available to me again. “You have to understand,” I said to Elaine. “I think Miss Frost is pretty serious about
protecting
me.”

“As first experiences go, Billy, I think you’ve had a pretty good one,” Elaine told me.

“Except for the interference of my whole fucking
family
!” I cried.

“That’s just weird,” Elaine said. “It can’t be Miss Frost they’re all so afraid of. Surely they didn’t believe that Miss Frost would ever hurt you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“There’s something about
you
they’re afraid of, Billy,” Elaine told me.

“That I’m a homosexual, or that I’m bisexual—is that what you mean?” I asked her. “Because I think they’ve already figured that out, or at least they
suspect
it.”

“They’re afraid of something you don’t know yet, Billy,” Elaine told me.

“I’m sick of everybody trying to
protect
me!” I shouted.

“That may indeed be Miss Frost’s motive, Billy,” Elaine said. “I’m not so sure about what’s motivating your whole fucking
family,
as you say.”

M
Y CRUDE COUSIN
G
ERRY
came home from college that same Christmas break. In Gerry’s case, I use the
crude
word affectionately. Please don’t dismiss Gerry as a stridently angry lesbian who hated her parents and all heterosexuals; she had always loathed boys, but I’d foolishly imagined that she might like me a little bit, because I knew she would have heard about my scandalous relationship with Miss Frost. Yet, at least for a few more years, Gerry wouldn’t like gay or bisexual boys any better than she liked straight ones.

Nowadays, I hear my friends say that our society tends to be more accepting of gay and bi women than we are of gay and bi men. In our family’s case, there was little apparent reaction to Gerry being a lesbian, at least compared to almost everyone having a cow about my relationship with Miss Frost—not to mention my mom’s horror at how I was “turning out,” sexually. Yes, I know, it’s true that many people treat lesbians and bi women
differently
than they treat gay and bi men, but Gerry wasn’t
accepted
by our family as much as she was simply
ignored
by them.

Uncle Bob loved Gerry, but Bob was a coward; he loved his daughter, in part, because she was more courageous than he was. I think Gerry deliberately misbehaved, and not only to build a barrier around herself; I think she was aggressive and “crude” because this forced our family to
notice
her.

I had always liked Gerry, but I kept my fondness for her a secret. I wish I’d
told
her that I liked her—I mean, sooner than I did.

We would become better friends when we were older; nowadays, we’re quite close. I’m truly fond of Gerry—okay, in an odd way—but Gerry was not very likable when she was a young woman. All I’m saying is that Gerry
purposely
made herself unlikable. Elaine detested her, and would never like her—not even a little.

That Christmas, Elaine and I were up to our usual but separate pursuits in the yearbook room of the academy library. The library was open over the Christmas break—except for Christmas Day. Many of the faculty liked to work there, and Christmastime was when a lot of prospective students and their parents visited Favorite River Academy. My summer job, for the past three years, had been as a tour guide; I showed prospective students and their parents my awful school. I got a part-time job as a tour guide over the Christmas break, too; the boys among the faculty brats frequently did this. Uncle Bob, the admissions man, was our overly permissive boss.

Elaine and I were in the yearbook room when my cousin Gerry found us. “I hear you’re queer,” Gerry said to me, ignoring Elaine.

“I guess so,” I said, “but I’m attracted to some women, too.”

“I don’t want to know,” Gerry told me. “No one’s sticking anything up my ass, or anywhere else.”

“You never know till you try it,” Elaine said. “You might like it, Gerry.”

“I see you’re not pregnant,” Gerry said to her, “unless you’re already pregnant again, Elaine, and you’re not yet showing.”

“You got a girlfriend?” Elaine asked her.

“She could beat the shit out of you, Elaine,” Gerry said. “You, too—probably,” Gerry told me.

I could be forgiving of Gerry, knowing that Muriel was her mother; that couldn’t have been easy, especially for a lesbian. I was less inclined to forgive Gerry for how harsh she was with her father, because I had always liked Uncle Bob. But Elaine felt no forgiveness for Gerry at all. There must have been some history between them; maybe Gerry had hit on her, or when Elaine had been pregnant with Kittredge’s child, it’s entirely possible that Gerry had said or written something cruel to her.

“My dad’s looking for you, Billy,” Gerry said. “There’s a family he wants you to show the school to. The kid looks like a bed-wetter to me, but maybe he’s a homo, and you can suck each other off in one of the empty dorm rooms.”

“Jesus, you’re crass!” Elaine said to Gerry. “I was naïve enough to imagine that college would have civilized you—at least to some small degree. But I think whatever tasteless culture you acquired from your Ezra Falls high school experience is the only culture you’re capable of acquiring.”

“I guess the culture
you
acquired didn’t teach you to keep your thighs
together, Elaine,” Gerry told her. “Why not ask my dad to give you the master key to Tilley, when you’re showing the bed-wetter and his parents around?” Gerry asked me. “That way, you and Elaine can sneak a look at Kittredge’s room. Maybe you two jerk-offs can masturbate each other on Kittredge’s bed,” Gerry told us. “What I mean, Billy, is that you have to have a master key to show someone a dorm room, don’t you? Why not get the key to Tilley?” With that, Gerry left Elaine and me in the yearbook room. Like her mother, Muriel, Gerry could be an insensitive bitch, but—unlike her mother—Gerry wasn’t conventional. (Maybe I admired how angry Gerry was.)

“I guess your whole fucking family—as you say, Billy—talks
about
you,” Elaine said. “They just don’t talk
to
you.”

“I guess so,” I said, but I was thinking that Aunt Muriel and my mother were probably the chief culprits—that is, when it came to talking
about
me but not
to
me.

“Do you want to see Kittredge’s room in Tilley?” Elaine asked me.

“If
you
do,” I told her. Of course I wanted to see Kittredge’s room—and Elaine did, too.

I
HAD LOST A
little of my enthusiasm for perusing the old yearbooks, following my discovery that Miss Frost had been the Favorite River wrestling-team captain in 1935. Since then, I hadn’t made much progress—nor had Elaine.

Elaine was still stuck in the contemporary yearbooks; specifically, she was held in thrall by what she called “the Kittredge years.” She devoted herself to finding photos of the younger, more innocent-seeming Kittredge. Now that Kittredge was in his fifth and final year at Favorite River, Elaine sought out those photographs of him in his freshman and sophomore years. Yes, he’d looked younger then; the innocent-seeming part, however, was hard to see.

If one could believe Mrs. Kittredge’s story—if Kittredge’s own mother had really had sex with him when she said she did—Kittredge had not been innocent for very long, and he’d definitely not been innocent by the time he attended Favorite River. Even as a freshman—on the very day Kittredge had shown up in First Sister, Vermont—Kittredge hadn’t been innocent. (It was almost impossible for me to imagine that he’d
ever
been innocent.) Yet Elaine kept looking through those earliest photographs for some evidence of Kittredge’s innocence.

I don’t remember the boy Gerry had called the bed-wetter. He was (in all likelihood) a prepubescent boy, probably on his way to becoming straight or gay—but not on his way to becoming
bi,
or so I imagine. I don’t recall the alleged bed-wetter’s parents, either. My exchange with Uncle Bob, about the master key to Tilley, is more memorable.

“Sure, show ’em Tilley—why not?” my easygoing uncle said to me. “Just don’t show ’em Kittredge’s room—it’s not typical.”