In One Person (45 page)

It being Christmas break, I did not necessarily expect to see Mr. Lockley at the check-out desk of the academy library, but there he was—as if it were a working night, or perhaps the alleged “nonpracticing homosexual” (as Mr. Lockley was called, behind his back) had nothing else to do.

“No luck with Uncle Bob finding the ’40
Owl,
huh?” I asked him.

“Mr. Fremont believes he returned it, but he did
not
—that is, not to my knowledge,” Mr. Lockley stiffly replied.

“I’ll just keep bugging him about it,” I said.

“You do that, Billy,” Mr. Lockley said sternly. “Mr. Fremont does not often frequent the library.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” I said, smiling.

Mr. Lockley did not smile—certainly not at Elaine, anyway. He was one of those older men who lived alone; he would not take kindly to the coming two decades—by which time most (if not all) of the all-boys’ boarding schools in New England would finally become coeducational.

In my estimation, coeducation would have a humanizing effect on those boarding schools; Elaine and I could testify that boys treat other boys better when there are girls around, and the girls are not as mean to one another in the presence of boys.

I know, I know—there are those diehards who maintain that single-sex education was more rigorous, or less distracting, and that coeducation came with a cost—a loss of “purity,” I’ve heard the Mr. Lockleys of the boarding-school world argue. (Less concentration on “academics,” they usually mean.)

That Christmastime night, all Mr. Lockley could manage to direct to Elaine was a minimally cordial bow—as if he were saying the unutterable, “Good evening, knocked-up faculty daughter. How are you managing now, you smelly little slut?”

But Elaine and I went about our business, paying no attention to Mr. Lockley. We were alone in the yearbook room—and more alone than usual in the otherwise abandoned academy library. Those old
Owl
s
from ’37, ’38, and ’39 beckoned us, and we soon found much to marvel about in their revealing pages.

W
ILLIAM
F
RANCIS
D
EAN WAS
a smiling little boy in the 1937
Owl,
when he would have been twelve. He seemed a charmingly elfin manager of the 1936–37 wrestling team, and the only other evidence Elaine and I could find of him was as the prettiest little girl in the Drama Club photos of that long-ago academic year—a scant five years before I would be born.

If Franny Dean had met the older Mary Marshall in ’37, there was no record of it in the
Owl
of that year—nor was there any record of their meeting in the ’38 and ’39
Owls,
wherein the wrestling-team manager grew only a little in stature but seemingly a lot in self-assurance.

Onstage, for the Drama Club, in those ’38 and ’39 yearbooks, Elaine and I could tell that the future Harvard-boy, who’d chosen “performer” as his career path, had developed into a most fetching femme fatale—he was a nymphlike presence.

“He was good-looking, wasn’t he?” I asked Elaine.

“He looks like you, Billy—he’s handsome but different,” Elaine said.

“He already must have been dating my mother,” I said, when we’d finished with the ’39
Owl
and were hurrying back to Bancroft Hall. (My dad was fifteen when my mom was nineteen!)

“If ‘dating’ is the right word, Billy,” Elaine said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You have to talk to your grandpa, Billy—if you can get him alone,” Elaine told me.

“I could try talking to Uncle Bob first, if I can get Bob alone. Bob isn’t as smart as Grandpa Harry,” I said.

“I’ve got it!” Elaine suddenly said. “You talk to the admissions man first, but you tell him you’ve
already
talked to Grandpa Harry—and that Harry has told you everything he knows.”

“Bob’s not that dumb,” I told Elaine.

“Yes, he is,” Elaine said.

We had about an hour alone in Elaine’s fifth-floor bedroom before Mr. and Mrs. Hadley came home from the movie in Ezra Falls. It being the Christmas holiday, we figured that the Hadleys and my mother and Richard—together with Aunt Muriel and Uncle Bob—would have stopped for a drink somewhere after the movie, and they had.

We’d had more than enough time to peruse the ’40
Owl
and look at all the photos of flaming Franny Dean—the prettiest boy in the class. William Francis Dean was a cross-dressing knockout in the photos from the Drama Club of that year, and there—at last, at the Senior Dance—was the missing picture Elaine and I had so fervently sought. There was little Franny holding my mom, Mary Marshall, in a slow-dancing embrace. Watching them, with evident disapproval, was big-sister Muriel. Oh, those Winthrop girls, “those Winthrop women,” as Miss Frost had labeled my mother and my aunt Muriel—giving them Nana Victoria’s maiden name of Winthrop. (When it came to who had the balls in the Marshall family, the Winthrop genes were definitely the ball-carriers.)

I wouldn’t wait long to trap Uncle Bob. The very next day, a prospective student and his parents were visiting Favorite River Academy; Uncle Bob gave me a call and asked if I felt like being a tour guide.

When I’d finished the tour, I found Uncle Bob alone in the Admissions Office; it being Christmas break, the secretaries weren’t necessarily working.

“What’s up, Billy?” Uncle Bob asked me.

“I guess you forgot that you actually
did
take the ’40
Owl
back to the library,” I began.

“I
did
?” Uncle Bob asked. I could see he was wondering how he would ever explain this to Muriel.

“It didn’t show up in the yearbook room by itself,” I said. “Besides, Grandpa Harry has told me all about ‘flaming Franny’ Dean, and what a pretty boy he was. What I don’t get is how it all began with my mom—I mean why and when. I mean, how did it start in the first place?”

“Franny wasn’t a bad guy, Billy,” Uncle Bob quickly said. “He was just a little light in his loafers, if you know what I mean.”

I’d heard the expression—from Kittredge, of course—but all I said was, “Why did my mom ever fall for him in the first place? How did it
start
?”

“He was an awfully young boy when he met your mother—she was four years older, which is a big difference at that age, Billy,” Uncle Bob said. “Your mom saw him in a play—as a girl, of course. Afterward, he complimented her clothes.”

“Her clothes,” I repeated.

“It seems he liked girls’ clothes—he liked trying them on, Billy,” Uncle Bob said.

“Oh.”

“Your grandmother found them in your mom’s bedroom—one day, after your mother had come home from the high school in Ezra Falls. Your mom and Franny Dean were trying on your mom’s clothes. It was just a childish game, but your aunt Muriel told me Franny had tried on
her
clothes, too. The next thing we knew, Mary had a crush on him, but by then Franny must have known he liked boys better. He was genuinely fond of your mom, Billy, but he mainly liked her clothes.”

“She still managed to get
pregnant,
” I pointed out. “You don’t get a girl pregnant by fucking her clothes!”

“Think about it, Billy—there was all this dressing and undressing going on,” Uncle Bob said. “They must have been in their underwear a lot—you know.”

“I have trouble imagining it,” I told him.

“Your grandpa thought the world of Franny Dean, Billy—I think Harry believed it could work,” Uncle Bob said. “Don’t forget, your mother was always a little
immature
—”

“A little simpleminded, do you mean?” I interrupted him.

“When Franny was a young boy, I think your mom sort of
managed
him—you know, Billy, she could kind of boss him around a little.”

“But then Franny grew up,” I said.

“There was also the guy—the one Franny met in the war, and they reconnected later,” Uncle Bob began.

“It
was
you who told me that story—wasn’t it, Uncle Bob?” I asked. “You know, the toilet-seat skipper, the man on the ship—he lost control of
Madame Bovary;
he went sliding over the toilet seats. Later, they met on the MTA. The guy got on at the Kendall Square station—he got off at Central Square—and he said to my dad, ‘Hi. I’m Bovary. Remember me?’ I mean
that
guy. You told me that story—didn’t you, Uncle Bob?”

“No, I didn’t, Billy,” Uncle Bob said. “Your dad himself told you that story, and that guy
didn’t
get off at the Central Square station—that guy stayed on the train, Billy. Your father and that guy were a
couple
. They may
still
be a couple, for all I know,” Uncle Bob told me. “I thought your grandfather told you
everything,
” he added suspiciously.

“It looks like there’s more to ask Grandpa Harry about,” I told Uncle Bob.

The admissions man was staring sadly at the floor of his office. “Did you have a good tour, Billy?” he asked me, a little absently. “Did that boy strike you as a promising candidate?”

Of course I had no memory of the prospective student or his parents.

“Thanks for everything, Uncle Bob,” I said to him; I really did like him, and I felt sorry for him. “I think you’re a good fella!” I called to him, as I ran out of the Admissions Office.

I knew where Grandpa Harry was; it was a workday, so he wouldn’t be at home, under Nana Victoria’s thumb. Harry Marshall didn’t get a schoolteacher’s Christmas break. I knew that Grandpa Harry was at the sawmill and the lumberyard, where I soon found him.

I told him I’d seen my father in the Favorite River Academy yearbooks; I said that Uncle Bob had confessed everything he knew about flaming Franny Dean, the effeminate cross-dressing boy who’d once tried on my mother’s clothes—even, I’d heard, my aunt
Muriel’s
clothes!

But what was this I’d heard about my dad actually visiting
me
—when I was sick with scarlet fever, wasn’t it? And how was it possible that my father had actually told me that story of the soldier he met in the head of the Liberty ship during an Atlantic winter storm? The transport ship had just hit the open seas—the convoy was on its way to Italy from Hampton Roads, Virginia, Port of Embarkation—when my dad made the acquaintance of a toilet-seat skipper who was reading
Madame Bovary
.

“Who the hell was that fella?” I asked Grandpa Harry.

“That would be the someone
else
your mom saw Franny kissin’, Bill,” Grandpa Harry told me. “You had scarlet fever, Bill. Your dad heard you were sick, and he wanted to see you. I suspect, knowin’ Franny, he wanted to get a look at Richard Abbott, too,” Grandpa Harry said. “Franny just wanted to know you were in good hands, I guess. Franny wasn’t a bad guy, Bill—he just wasn’t really a
guy
!”

“And nobody told me,” I said.

“Ah, well—I don’t think any of us is proud of
that,
Bill!” Grandpa Harry exclaimed. “That’s just how such things work out, I think. Your mom was hurt. Poor Mary just never understood the dressin’-up part—she thought it was somethin’ Franny would outgrow, I guess.”

“And what about the
Madame Bovary
guy?” I asked my grandfather.

“Ah, well—there’s people you meet, Bill,” Grandpa Harry said. “Some of ’em are merely encounters, nothin’ more, but occasionally there’s a love-of-your-life meetin’, and that’s different—you know?”

I had only two times left when I would see Miss Frost. I
didn’t
know about the long-lasting effects of a “love-of-your-life meetin’ ”—not yet.

The next-to-last time I saw Miss Frost was at a wrestling match—a dual meet at Favorite River Academy in January 1961. It was the first home meet of the season; Tom Atkins and I went together. The wrestling room—at one time, it was the only gym on the Favorite River campus—was an ancient brick building attached to the more modern, bigger gym by an enclosed but unheated cement catwalk.

The old gym was encircled by a wooden running track, which hung over the wrestling room; the track sloped downward at the four corners. The student spectators sat on the wooden track with their arms resting on the center bar of the iron railing. On this particular Saturday, Tom Atkins and I were among them, peering down at the wrestlers below.

The mat, the scorers’ table, and the two team benches took up most of the gym floor. At one end of the wrestling room was a slanted rectangle of bleachers, with not more than a dozen rows of seats. The students considered the bleachers to be appropriate seating for the “older types.” Faculty spectators sat there, and visiting parents. There were some townspeople who regularly attended the wrestling matches, and they sat in the bleachers. The day Elaine and I had seen Mrs. Kittredge watch her son wrestle, Mrs. Kittredge had sat in the bleachers—while Elaine and I had closely observed her from the sloped wooden running track above her.