In One Person (44 page)

“So fucking
what
!” Gerry kept saying. She’d obviously not looked over the yearbook in close detail, nor had she seen those earlier yearbooks (’37, ’38, ’39), where there might have been photographs of William Francis Dean when he was only twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. How
had I overlooked him? If he’d been a four-year senior in ’40, he could have started at Favorite River in the fall of 1936—when William Francis Dean would have been only
eleven
!

What if my mom had known him then, when he’d been an eleven-year-old? Their “romance,” such as it was, might have been vastly different from the one I’d imagined.

“Did you see anything of the alleged
womanizer
in him?” I asked Gerry, as Elaine and I quickly searched through the head shots of the graduating seniors in the Class of 1940.

“Who said he was a
womanizer
?” Gerry asked me.

“I thought
you
did,” I said, “or maybe it was something you heard your mother say about him.”

“I don’t remember the
womanizer
word,” Gerry told me. “All I heard about him was that he was kind of a
pansy
.”

“A
pansy,
” I repeated.

“Jesus—the repetition, Billy. It’s got to stop,” Elaine said.

“He wasn’t a
pansy
!” I said indignantly. “He was a
womanizer
—my mom caught him kissing someone
else
!”

“Yeah—some other
boy,
maybe,” my cousin Gerry said. “That’s what I heard, anyway, and he sure looks like a
poofter
to me.”

“Like a
poofter
!” I cried.

“My dad said your dad was as flaming a fag as he ever saw,” Gerry said.

“As flaming a fag,” I repeated.

“Dear God, Billy—please stop it!” Elaine said.

There he was: William Francis Dean, as pretty a boy as I’d ever seen; he could have passed for a girl, with a whole lot less effort than Miss Frost had put into
her
transformation. It was easy to see why I might have missed him in those earlier yearbooks. William Francis Dean looked like me; his features were so familiar to me that I must have skipped over him without really seeing him. His choice of college or university: “Harvard.” His career path: “performer.”

“Performer,” I repeated. (This was before Elaine and I had seen any other photographs; we’d seen only the requisite head shot.)

William Francis Dean’s nickname was “Franny.”

“Franny,” I repeated.

“Look, Billy—I thought you knew,” Gerry was saying. “My dad always said it was a double whammy.”

“
What
was?” I asked her.

“It was a double whammy that you would be queer,” Gerry told me. “You had Grandpa Harry’s homo genes on the maternal side of your family, and on the paternal side—well, shit, just
look
at him!” Gerry said, pointing to the picture of the pretty boy in the Class of ’40. “On the paternal side of your frigging gene pool, you had flaming Franny Dean! That’s a double fucking whammy,” Gerry said. “No wonder Grandpa Harry adored the guy.”

“Flaming Franny,” I repeated.

I was reading William Francis Dean’s abbreviated bio in the ’40
Owl. Drama Club (4).
I had little doubt that Franny would have had strictly women’s roles—I couldn’t wait to see those photos.
Wrestling team, manager (4).
Naturally, he’d not been a wrestler—just the manager, the guy who made sure the wrestlers had water and oranges, and a bucket to spit in, and all the handing out and picking up of towels that a wrestling-team manager has to do.

“Genetically speaking, Billy, you were up against a stacked deck,” Gerry was saying. “My dad’s not the sharpest saw in the mill, but you were dealt the double-whammy card, for sure.”

“Jesus, Gerry—that’s enough for now,” Elaine said. “Would you just leave us, please?”

“Anyone would know you’ve been making out, Elaine,” Gerry told her. “Your tits are so small—one of them’s fallen out of your bra, and you don’t even know.”

“I love Elaine’s breasts,” I said to my cousin. “Fuck you, Gerry, for not telling me what I never knew.”

“I thought you
did
know, asshole!” Gerry shouted at me. “Shit, Billy—how could you
not
know? It’s so fucking
obvious
! How could you be as queer as you are and
not
know?”

“That’s not fair, Gerry!” Elaine was shouting, but Gerry was gone. She left the door to the dormitory hall wide open when she went. That was okay with Elaine and me; we left the apartment shortly after Gerry. We wanted to get to the academy library while it was still open; we wanted to see all the photos we could find of William Francis Dean in those earlier yearbooks, where I had missed him.

Now I knew where to look: Franny Dean would be the prettiest girl in the Drama Club pictures, in the ’37, ’38, and ’39
Owl;
he would be the most effeminate-looking boy in the wrestling-team photos, where he would
not
be bare-chested and wearing wrestling tights. (He would be
wearing a jacket and a tie, the standard dress code in those years for the wrestling-team manager.)

Before Elaine and I went to the old yearbook room in the academy library, we took the ’40
Owl
up to the fifth floor of Bancroft Hall, where we hid it in Elaine’s bedroom. Her parents didn’t search through her things, Elaine had told me. She had caught them at it, shortly after she’d returned from her trip to Europe with Mrs. Kittredge. Elaine suspected them of trying to discover if she was having sex with anyone else.

After that, Elaine put condoms everywhere in her room. Naturally, Mrs. Kittredge had given her the condoms. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Hadley took the condoms as a sign that Elaine was being sexually active with an
army
of boys; more likely, I knew, Mrs. Hadley was smarter than that. Martha Hadley probably knew what the plethora of condoms meant: Stay the fuck out of my room! (After that one time, Mr. and Mrs. Hadley did.)

The ’40
Owl
was safe in Elaine Hadley’s bedroom, if not in mine. Elaine and I could look at all the photos of flaming Franny Dean in that yearbook, but we both wanted to see the pictures of the
younger
William Francis Dean first. We would have the rest of our Christmas vacation to learn everything we could about the Favorite River Class of 1940.

O
VER THAT SAME
C
HRISTMAS
dinner of 1960, when I’d asked Gerry to get me the ’40
Owl,
Nils Borkman had managed a moment—when we were briefly alone—to confide in me.

“Your librarian friend—they are
roadrailing
her, Bill!” Borkman whispered harshly to me.

“
Railroading
her—yes,” I said.

“They are stereo sex-types!” Borkman exclaimed.

“Sexual stereotypes?” I asked.

“
Yes
—that’s what I said!” the Norwegian dramaturge declared. “It’s a pity—I had the perfect parts for you two,” the director whispered. “But of course I cannot put Miss Frost onstage—the Puritan sex-types would
stone
her, or something!”

“The perfect parts in
what
?” I asked.

“He is the
American
Ibsen!” Nils Borkman cried. “He is the
new
Ibsen, from your backward American South!”

“
Who
is?” I asked.

“Tennessee Williams—the most important playwright since Ibsen,” Borkman reverentially intoned.

“What play is it?” I asked.

“Summer and Smoke,”
Nils answered, trembling. “The repressed female character has another woman smoldering inside her.”

“I see,” I said. “That would be the Miss Frost character?”

“Miss Frost would have been a
perfect
Alma!” Nils cried.

“But now—” I started to say; Borkman wouldn’t let me finish.

“Now I have no choice—it’s Mrs. Fremont as Alma, or nobody,” Nils muttered darkly. I knew “Mrs. Fremont” as Aunt Muriel.

“I think Muriel can do
repressed,
” I told Nils encouragingly.

“But Muriel doesn’t
smolder,
Bill,” Nils whispered.

“No, she doesn’t,” I agreed. “What was my part going to be?” I asked him.

“It’s still yours, if you want it,” Nils told me. “It’s a small role—it won’t interfere with your work-home.”

“My homework,” I corrected him.

“
Yes
—that’s what I said!” the Norwegian dramaturge declared again. “You play a traveling salesman, a young one. You make a pass at the Alma character in the last scene of the play.”

“I make a pass at my aunt Muriel, you mean,” I said to the ardent director.

“But not onstage—don’t worry!” Borkman cried. “The hanky-panky is all imagined; the repetitious sexual activity happens later, offstage.”

I was pretty sure that Nils Borkman didn’t mean the sexual activity was “repetitious”—not even offstage.

“
Surreptitious
sexual activity?” I asked the director.

“Yes, but there’s no hanky-panky with your auntie onstage!” Borkman assured me, excitedly. “It just would have been so
symbolic
if Alma could have been Miss Frost.”

“So
suggestive,
you mean?” I asked him.

“Suggestive
and
symbolic!” Borkman exclaimed. “But with Muriel, we stick to the suggestive—if you know what I mean.”

“Maybe I could read the play first—I don’t even know my character’s name,” I said to Nils.

“I have a copy for you,” Borkman whispered. The paperback was badly beaten up—the pages had come unglued from the binding, as if the excitable director had read the little book to death. “Your name is Archie Kramer, Bill,” Borkman informed me. “The young salesman is supposed to wear a derby hat, but in your case we can
piss-dense
with the derby!”

“
Dispense
with the derby,” I repeated. “As a salesman, what do I sell?”

“Shoes,” Nils told me. “In the end, you’re taking Alma on a date to a casino—you have the last line in the play, Bill!”

“Which is?” I asked the director.

“ ‘Taxi!’ ” Borkman shouted.

Suddenly, we were no longer alone. The Christmas-dinner crowd was startled by Nils Borkman shouting for a taxi. My mother and Richard Abbott were staring at the paperback copy of Tennessee Williams’s
Summer and Smoke,
which I held in my hands; no doubt they feared it was a sequel to
Giovanni’s Room
.

“You want a
taxi,
Nils?” Grandpa Harry asked his old friend. “Didn’t you come in your own car?”

“It’s all right, Harry—Bill and I were just shop-talking,” Nils explained to his colleague.

“That would be ‘talkin’ shop,’ Nils,” Grandpa Harry said.

“What part does Grandpa Harry have?” I asked the Norwegian dramaturge.

“You haven’t offered me a part in anything, Nils,” Grandpa Harry said.

“Well, I was
about
to!” Borkman cried. “Your grandfather would be a brilliant Mrs. Winemiller—Alma’s mother,” the wily director said to me.

“If you do it, I’ll do it,” I said to Grandpa Harry. It would be the spring production for the First Sister Players, the premiere of a serious drama in the spring—my last onstage performance before my departure from First Sister and that summer in Europe with Tom Atkins. It would not be for Richard Abbott and the Drama Club, but I would sing my swan song for Nils Borkman and the First Sister Players—the last time my mother would have the occasion to
prompt
me.

I liked the idea of it already—even before I read the play. I’d only glanced at the title page, where Tennessee Williams had included an epigraph from Rilke. The Rilke was good enough for me. “Who, if I were to cry out, would hear me among the angelic orders?” It seemed that, everywhere I looked, I just kept happening upon Rilke’s terrifying angels. I wondered if Kittredge knew the German.

“Okay, Bill—if you do it, I’ll do it,” Grandpa Harry said; we shook on it.

Later, I found a discreet way to ask Nils if he’d already signed up Aunt Muriel and Richard Abbott in the Alma and John roles. “Don’t worry, Bill,” Borkman told me. “I have Muriel and Richard in my pocket-back!”

“In your back pocket—yes,” I said to the crafty deerstalker on skis.

That Christmastime night when Elaine and I ran across the deserted Favorite River campus to the academy library—on our eager way to the old yearbook room—we saw the cross-country ski tracks crisscrossing the campus. (There was good deer-hunting on the academy cross-country course, and the outer athletic fields, when the Favorite River students had gone home for Christmas vacation.)