In One Person

by John Winslow Irving

  And there was Mr. Ripton—Ralph Ripton, the sawyer. He operated the main blade at Grandpa Harry’s sawmill and lumberyard; it was a highly skilled (and dangerous) position in the mill, to be the main-blade operator. Ralph Ripton was missing the thumb and first two joints of his index finger on his left hand. I’d heard the story of the accident many times; both Grandpa Harry and his partner, Nils Borkman, liked to tell the blood-spattered tale.

  I’d always believed that Grandpa Harry and Mr. Ripton were friends—they were more than fellow workers, surely. Yet Ralph didn’t like Grandpa Harry as a woman; Mr. Ripton had an angry, condemning expression whenever he saw Grandpa Harry onstage in a female role. Mr. Ripton’s wife—she was completely expressionless—sat beside her overcritical husband as if she’d been brain-damaged by the very idea of Harry Marshall performing as a woman.

  Ralph Ripton skillfully managed to pack his pipe with fresh tobacco; at the same time, he never took his hard eyes from the stage. I guessed, at first, that Mr. Ripton was loading up his pipe for a smoke at the intermission—he always used the stump of his severed left index finger to tamp the tobacco tightly into the bowl of his pipe—but I later noticed that the Riptons never returned after the intermission. They came to the theater for the devout purpose of hating what they saw and leaving early.

  Grandpa Harry had told me that Ralph Ripton had to sit in the first or second row in order to hear; the main blade in the sawmill made such a high-pitched whine that the saw had deafened him. But I could see for myself that there was more wrong with the sawyer than his deafness.

  There were other faces in the collective audiences—many regular customers in those front-row seats—and while I didn’t know most of their names or their professions, I had no difficulty (even as a child) recognizing their obdurate dislike of Grandpa Harry as a woman. To be fair: When Harry Marshall kissed as a woman—I mean when he kissed another man onstage—most of the audience laughed or cheered or applauded. But I had a knack for finding the unfriendly faces—there were always a few. I saw people cringe, or angrily look away; I saw their eyes narrow with disgust at Grandpa Harry kissing as a woman.

  Harry Marshall played all kinds of women—he was a crazy lady who repeatedly bit her own hands, he was a sobbing bride who was ditched at the altar, he was a serial killer (a hairstylist) who poisoned her boyfriends, he was a policewoman with a limp. My grandfather loved the theater, and I loved watching him perform, but perhaps there were folks in First Sister, Vermont, who had rather limited imaginations; they knew Harry Marshall was a lumberman—they couldn’t accept him as a woman.

  Indeed, I saw more than obvious displeasure and condemnation in the faces of our townsfolk—I saw more than derision, worse than meanness. I saw hatred in a few of those faces.

  One such face I wouldn’t know by name until I saw him in my first morning meeting as a Favorite River Academy student. This was Dr. Harlow, our school’s physician—he who, when he spoke to us boys, was usually so hearty and cajoling. On Dr. Harlow’s face was the conviction that Harry Marshall’s love of performing as a woman was an affliction; in Dr. Harlow’s expression was the hardened belief that Grandpa Harry’s cross-dressing was treatable. Thus I feared and hated Dr. Harlow before I knew who he was.

  And, even as a backstage child, I used to think: Come on! Don’t you get it? This is make-believe! Yet those hard-eyed faces in the audience weren’t buying it. Those faces said: “You can’t make-believe this; you can’t make-believe that.”

  As a child, I was frightened by what I saw in those faces in the audience from my unseen, backstage position. I never forgot some of their expressions. When I was seventeen, and I told my grandfather about my crushes on boys and men, and my contradictory attraction to a made-up version of Martha Hadley as a training-bra model, I was still frightened by what I’d seen in those faces in the audience at the First Sister Players.

  I told Grandpa Harry about watching some of our fellow townspeople, who were caught in the act of watching him. “They didn’t care that it was make-believe,” I told him. “They just knew they didn’t like it. They hated you—Ralph Ripton and his wife, even Mrs. Poggio, no question about Dr. Harlow. They hated you pretending to be a woman.”

  “You know what I say, Bill?” Grandpa Harry asked me. “I say, you can make-believe what you want.” There were tears in my eyes then, because I was afraid for myself—not unlike the way, as a child, I had been afraid backstage for Grandpa Harry.

  “I stole Elaine Hadley’s bra, because I wanted to wear it!” I blurted out.

  “Ah, well—that’s a good fella’s failin’, Bill. I wouldn’t worry about that,” Grandpa Harry said.

  It was strange what a relief it was—to see that I couldn’t shock him. Harry Marshall was only worried about my safety, as I’d once been afraid for his.

  “Did Richard tell you?” Grandpa Harry suddenly asked me. “Some morons have banned Twelfth Night—I mean, over the years, total imbeciles have actually banned Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, many times!”

  “Why?” I asked him. “That’s crazy! It’s a comedy, it’s a romantic comedy! What could possibly be the reason for banning it?” I cried.

  “Ah, well—I can only guess why,” Grandpa Harry said. “Sebastian’s twin sister, Viola—she looks a lot like her brother; that’s the story, isn’t it? That’s why people mistake Sebastian for Viola—after Viola has disguised herself as a man, and she’s goin’ around callin’ herself Cesario. Don’t you see, Bill? Viola is a cross-dresser! That’s what got Shakespeare in trouble! From everythin’ you told me, I think you’ve noticed that rigidly conventional or ignorant people have no sense of humor about cross-dressers.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed,” I said.

  But it was what I had failed to notice that would haunt me. All those years when I was backstage, when I had the prompter’s perspective of those front-row faces in the audience, I had neglected to look at the prompter herself. I had not once noticed my mother’s expression, when she saw and heard her father onstage as a woman.

  That winter Sunday night, when I walked back to Bancroft, after my little talk with Grandpa Harry, I vowed I would watch my mom’s face when Harry was performing as Maria in Twelfth Night.

  I knew there would be opportunities—when Sebastian was not onstage but Maria was—when I could spy on my mother backstage and observe her expression. I was frightened of what I might see in her pretty face; I doubted she would be smiling.

  I had a bad feeling about Twelfth Night from the start. Kittredge had talked a bunch of his wrestling teammates into auditioning. Richard had given four of them what he’d called “some smaller parts.”

  But Malvolio isn’t a small part; the wrestling team’s heavyweight, a sullen complainer, was cast in the role of Olivia’s steward—an arrogant pretender who is tricked into thinking that Olivia desires him. I must say that Madden, the heavyweight who thought of himself as a perpetual victim, was well cast; Kittredge had told Elaine and me that Madden suffered from “going-last syndrome.”

  In those days, all dual meets in wrestling began with the lightest weight-class; heavyweights wrestled last. If the meet was close, it came down to who won the heavyweight match—Madden usually lost. He had the look of someone wronged. How perfect that Malvolio, who is jailed as a lunatic, protests his fate—“‘I say there was never man thus abused,’” Madden, as Malvolio, whines.

  “If you want to be in character, Madden,” I heard Kittredge say to his unfortunate teammate, “just think to yourself how unfair it is to be a heavyweight.”

  “But it is unfair to be a heavyweight!” Madden protested.

  “You’re going to be a great Malvolio. I know you are,” Kittredge told him—as ever, condescendingly.

  Another wrestler—one of the lightweights who struggled to make weight at every weigh-in—was cast as Sir Toby’s companion, Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The boy, whose name was Delacorte, was ghostly thin. He was often so dehydrated from losing weight that he had cotton-m
outh. He rinsed his mouth out with water from a paper cup—he spat the water out into another cup. “Don’t mix your cups up, Delacorte,” Kittredge told him. (“Two Cups,” I’d once heard Kittredge call him.)

  We would not have been surprised to see Delacorte faint from hunger; one rarely saw him in the dining hall. He was constantly running his fingers through his hair to be sure it wasn’t falling out. “Loss of hair is a sign of starvation,” Delacorte told us gravely.

  “Loss of common sense is another sign,” Elaine said to him, but this didn’t register with Delacorte.

  “Why doesn’t Delacorte move up a weight-class?” I’d asked Kittredge.

  “Because he would get the shit kicked out of him,” Kittredge had said.

  “Oh.”

  Two other wrestlers were cast as sea captains. One of the captains isn’t very important—he’s the captain of the wrecked ship, the one who befriends Viola. I can’t remember the name of the wrestler who played him. The second sea captain is Sebastian’s friend Antonio. I’d earlier feared that Richard might cast Kittredge as Antonio, who is a brave and swashbuckling type. There is something so genuinely affectionate in Sebastian’s friendship with Antonio, I was anxious how that affection would play out—I mean, in the case of Kittredge being Antonio.

  But Richard either sensed my anxiety or knew that Kittredge would have been wasted as Antonio. In all likelihood, Richard, from the start, had a better part in mind for Kittredge.

  The wrestler Richard chose for Antonio was a good-looking guy named Wheelock; whatever was swashbuckling about Antonio, Wheelock could convey.

  “Wheelock can convey little else,” Kittredge told me about his teammate. I was surprised that Kittredge seemed to feel superior to his wrestling teammates; I’d heretofore thought it was only the likes of Elaine and me he felt superior to. I saw that I’d underestimated Kittredge: He felt superior to everyone.

  Richard cast Kittredge as the Clown, Feste—a very clever clown, and a somewhat cruel one. Like others of Shakespeare’s fools, Feste is smart and superior. (It’s no secret that Shakespeare’s fools are often wiser than the ladies and gentlemen they share the stage with; the Clown in Twelfth Night is one of those smart fools.) In fact, in most productions I’ve seen of Twelfth Night, Feste steals the show—Kittredge certainly did. That late winter of 1960, Kittredge stole more than the show.

  I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN as I crossed the quadrangle that night, following my conversation with Grandpa Harry, that the blue light in Elaine’s fifth-floor bedroom window was—as Kittredge had called it—a “beacon.” Kittredge had been right: That lamp with the blue shade was shining for him.

  I’d once imagined that the blue light in Elaine’s bedroom window was the last light old Grau saw—if only dimly, as he lay freezing. (A far-fetched idea, perhaps. Dr. Grau had hit his head; he’d passed out in the snow. Old Grau probably saw no lights at all, not even dimly.)

  But what had Kittredge seen in that blue light—what about that beacon had encouraged him? “I encouraged him, Billy,” Elaine would tell me later, but she didn’t tell me at the time; I had no idea she was fucking him.

  And all the while, my good stepfather, Richard Abbott, was bringing me condoms—“Just to be safe, Bill,” Richard would say, as he bestowed another dozen rubbers on me. I had no use for them, but I kept them proudly; occasionally, I masturbated in one.

  Of course, I should have given a dozen (or more) condoms to Elaine. I would have somehow summoned the courage to give them all to Kittredge, if I’d known!

  Elaine didn’t tell me when she knew she was pregnant. It was the spring term, and Twelfth Night was only a few weeks away from production; we’d been off-script for a while, and our rehearsals were improving. Uncle Bob (as Sir Toby Belch) was making us howl every time he said, “‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’”

  And Kittredge had a strong singing voice—he was quite a good singer. That song the Clown, Feste, sings to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew Aguecheek—the “O mistress mine, where are you roaming?” song—well, it’s a sweet but melancholic kind of song. It’s the one that ends, “Youth’s a stuff will not endure.” It was hard to hear Kittredge sing that song as beautifully as he did, though the slight mockery in his voice—in Feste’s character, or in Kittredge’s—was unmistakable. (When I knew about Elaine being pregnant, I would remember a line from one of the middle stanzas of that song: “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”)

  There’s no question that Elaine and Kittredge did their “meeting” in her fifth-floor bedroom. The Hadleys were still in the habit of going to the movies in Ezra Falls with Richard and my mom. I remember there were a few foreign films with subtitles that did not qualify as sex films. There was a Jacques Tati film showing in Vermont that year—Mon Oncle, was it, or maybe the earlier one, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday?—and I went to Ezra Falls with my mom and Richard, and with Mr. and Mrs. Hadley.

  Elaine didn’t want to come; she stayed home. “It’s not a sex film, Elaine,” my mother had assured her. “It’s French, but it’s a comedy—it’s very light.”

  “I don’t feel like light—I don’t feel like a comedy,” Elaine had said. She was already throwing up at Twelfth Night rehearsals, but no one had figured out that she had morning sickness.

  Maybe that’s when Elaine told Kittredge that he’d knocked her up—when her family and mine were watching a Jacques Tati film, with subtitles, in Ezra Falls.

  When Elaine knew she was pregnant, she eventually told her mother; either Martha Hadley or Mr. Hadley must have told Richard and my mom. I was in bed—naturally, I was wearing Elaine’s bra—when my mother burst into my bedroom. “Don’t, Jewel—try to take it easy,” I heard Richard saying, but my mom had already snapped on my light.

  I sat up in bed, holding Elaine’s bra as if I were hiding my nonexistent breasts.

  “Just look at you!” my mother cried. “Elaine is pregnant!”

  “It wasn’t me,” I told her; she slapped me.

  “Of course it wasn’t you—I know it wasn’t you, Billy!” my mom said. “But why wasn’t it you—why wasn’t it?” she cried. She went out of my room, sobbing, and Richard came in.

  “It must have been Kittredge,” I said to Richard.

  “Well, Bill—of course it’s Kittredge,” Richard said. He sat on the side of my bed, trying his hardest not to notice the bra. “You’ll have to forgive your mom—she’s upset,” he said.

  I didn’t reply. I was thinking about what Mrs. Hadley had said to me—that bit about “certain sexual matters” upsetting my mother. (“Billy, I know there are things she’s kept from you,” Martha Hadley had told me.)

  “I think Elaine will have to go away for a while,” Richard Abbott was saying.

  “Away where?” I asked him, but Richard either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell me; he just shook his head.

  “I’m really sorry, Bill—I’m sorry about everything,” Richard said. I had just recently turned eighteen.

  It was then I realized that I didn’t have a crush on Richard anymore—not even a slight one. I knew I loved Richard Abbott—I still do love him—but that night I’d found something I disliked about him. In a way, he was weak—he let my mother push him around. Whatever my mom had kept from me, I knew then that Richard was keeping it from me, too.

  IT HAPPENS TO MANY teenagers—that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. It happens to some teenagers when they’re younger than I was, but I was a brand-new eighteen when I simply tuned out my mother and Richard. I trusted Grandpa Harry more, and I still loved Uncle Bob. But Richard Abbott and my mom had drifted into that discredited area occupied by Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria—in their case, an area of carping, undermining commentary to be ignored or avoided. In the case of Richard and my mother, it was their secrecy I shunned.

  As for the Hadleys, they sent Elaine “away” in stages. I can only guess what passed between Mrs. Kittre
dge and the Hadleys—the deals adults make aren’t often explained to kids—but Mr. and Mrs. Hadley agreed to let Kittredge’s mother take Elaine to Europe. I have no doubt that Elaine wanted the abortion. Martha Hadley and Mr. Hadley must have agreed it was best. It was definitely what Mrs. Kittredge had wanted. I’m guessing that, being French, she knew where to go in Europe; being Kittredge’s mom, she may have had some previous experience with an unwanted pregnancy.

  At the time, I imagined that a boy like Kittredge had gotten girls pregnant before—he easily could have. But I was also thinking that Mrs. Kittredge might have needed to get herself out of a jam—I mean, when she was younger. It’s hard to explain what gave me that idea. I had overheard a conversation at a Twelfth Night rehearsal; I’d wandered into the middle of something Kittredge and his teammate Delacorte were saying—Delacorte, the rinser and spitter. It sounded as if they’d been arguing; it seemed to me that Delacorte was frightened of Kittredge, but so was everyone.

  “No, I didn’t mean that—I just said she was the most beautiful mother of the mothers I’ve met. Your mom is the best-looking—that’s all I said,” Delacorte was anxiously saying; then he rinsed and spat.

  “If she’s anyone’s mother, you mean,” Kittredge said. “She doesn’t have a very motherly look, does she? She looks like someone who’s asking for trouble—that’s what she looks like.”

  “I didn’t say what your mom looks like,” Delacorte insisted. “I just said she was the most beautiful. She’s the best-looking mom of all the moms!”

  “Maybe she doesn’t look like a mom because she isn’t one,” Kittredge said. Delacorte looked too frightened to speak; he just kept rinsing and spitting, clutching the two paper cups.

  My idea that Mrs. Kittredge might have needed to get herself out of a jam came from Kittredge; he was the one who said, “She looks like someone who’s asking for trouble.”