In One Person

by John Winslow Irving

  “An MFA in fucking what?” Elaine had asked more than ten years ago—when The River Bulletin had last heard a word from (or about) Kittredge. Elaine meant that it could have been a degree in acting, design, sound design, directing, playwriting, stage management, technical design and production, theater management—even dramaturgy and dramatic criticism. “I’ll bet he’s a fucking critic,” Elaine said. I told her I didn’t care what Kittredge was; I said I didn’t want to know.

  “Yes, you do want to know. You can’t bullshit me, Billy,” Elaine had said.

  Now here was the Racquet Man, slumped on a couch—actually sunken into a couch in Grandpa Harry’s living room, as if it would take a wrestling team to get Bob back on his feet.

  “I’m sorry about Aunt Muriel,” I told him. Uncle Bob reached up from the couch to give me a hug, spilling his beer.

  “Shit, Billy,” Bob said, “it’s the people you would least expect who are disappearing.”

  “Disappearing,” I repeated warily.

  “Take your classmate, Billy. Who would have picked Kittredge as a likely disappearance?” Uncle Bob asked.

  “You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” I asked the Racquet Man.

  “An unwillingness to communicate is more likely,” Uncle Bob said. His speech was so slowed down that the communicate word sounded as if it had seven or eight syllables; I realized that Bob was quietly but spectacularly drunk, although the gathering in memory of my aunt Muriel and my mother was just getting started.

  There were some empty beer bottles at Bob’s feet; when he dropped the now-empty bottle he’d been drinking (and spilling), he deftly kicked all but one of the bottles under the couch—somehow, without even looking at the bottles.

  I’d once wondered if Kittredge had gone to Vietnam; he’d had that hero-looking aspect about him. I knew two other Favorite River wrestlers had died in the war. (Remember Wheelock? I barely remember him—an adequately “swashbuckling” Antonio, Sebastian’s friend, in Twelfth Night. And how about Madden, the self-pitying heavyweight who played Malvolio in that same production? Madden always saw himself as a “perpetual victim”; that’s all I remember about him.)

  But, drunk as he was, Uncle Bob must have read my mind, because he suddenly said, “Knowing Kittredge, I’ll bet he ducked Vietnam—somehow.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” was all I said to Bob.

  “No offense, Billy,” the Racquet Man added, accepting another beer from one of the passing caterers—a woman about my mom’s age, or Muriel’s, with dyed-red hair. She looked vaguely familiar; maybe she worked with Uncle Bob in Alumni Affairs, or she might have worked with him (years ago) in the Admissions Office.

  “My dad was sloshed before he got here,” Gerry told Elaine and me, when we were standing together in the line for the buffet. I knew Gerry’s girlfriend; she was an occasional stand-up comic at a club I went to in the Village. She had a deadpan delivery and always wore a man’s black suit, or a tuxedo, with a loose-fitting white dress shirt.

  “No bra,” Elaine had observed, “but the shirt’s too big for her, and it’s not see-through material. The point is, she doesn’t want you to know she has breasts—or what they look like.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom, Billy,” Gerry said. “I know she was completely dysfunctional, but she was your mother.”

  “I’m sorry about yours,” I told Gerry. The stand-up comic made a horsey snorting sound.

  “Not as deadpan as usual,” Elaine would say later.

  “Someone’s gotta get the car keys from my fucking father,” Gerry said.

  I was keeping an eye on Grandpa Harry. I was afraid he would sneak away from the party, only to reappear as a surprise reincarnation of Nana Victoria. Nils Borkman was keeping an eye on his old partner, too. (If Mrs. Borkman was there, I either didn’t see her or didn’t recognize her.)

  “I’m back-watching your grandfather, Bill,” Nils told me. “If the funny stuff gets out of hand, I am emergency-calling you!”

  “What funny stuff?” I asked him.

  But just then, Grandpa Harry suddenly spoke up. “They’re always late, those girls. I don’t know where they are, but they’ll show up. Everyone just go ahead and eat. There’s plenty of food. Those girls can find somethin’ to eat when they get here.”

  That quieted the crowd down. “I already told him that his girls aren’t coming to the party, Bill. I mean, he knows they’re dead—he’s just forgetfulness exemplified,” Nils told me.

  “Forgetfulness personified,” I said to the old Norwegian; he was two years older than Grandpa Harry, but Nils seemed a little more reliable in the remembering department, and in some other departments.

  I asked Martha Hadley if Richard had spoken yet. Not since the news of the accident, Mrs. Hadley informed me. Richard had hugged me a lot, and I’d hugged him back, but there’d been no words.

  Mr. Hadley appeared lost in thought—as he often did. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked about anything but the war in Vietnam. Mr. Hadley had made himself a droll obituarist of every Favorite River boy who’d bitten the dust in Vietnam. I saw that he was waiting for me at the end of the buffet table.

  “Get ready,” Elaine warned me, in a whisper. “Here comes another death you didn’t know about.”

  There was no prologue—there never was, with Mr. Hadley. He was a history teacher; he just announced things. “Do you remember Merryweather?” Mr. Hadley asked me.

  Not Merryweather! I thought. Yes, I remembered him; he was still an underclassman when I graduated. He’d been the wrestling-team manager—he handed out oranges, cut in quarters; he picked up the bloody and discarded towels.

  “Not Merryweather—not in Vietnam!” I automatically said.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so, Billy,” Mr. Hadley said gravely. “And Trowbridge—did you know Trowbridge, Billy?”

  “Not Trowbridge!” I cried; I couldn’t believe it! I’d last seen Trowbridge in his pajamas! Kittredge had accosted him when the round-faced little boy was on his way to brush his teeth. I was very upset to think of Trowbridge dying in Vietnam.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so—Trowbridge, too, Billy,” Mr. Hadley self-importantly went on. “Alas, yes—young Trowbridge, too.”

  I saw that Grandpa Harry had disappeared—if not in the way Uncle Bob had recently used the word.

  “Not a costume change, let’s hope, Bill,” Nils Borkman whispered in my ear.

  I only then noticed that Mr. Poggio, the grocer, was there—he who’d so enjoyed Grandpa Harry onstage, as a woman. In fact, both Mr. and Mrs. Poggio were there, to pay their respects. Mrs. Poggio, I remembered, had not enjoyed Grandpa Harry’s female impersonations. This sighting caused me to look all around for the disapproving Riptons—Ralph Ripton, the sawyer, and his no-less-disapproving wife. But the Riptons, if they’d come to pay their respects, had left early—as was their habit at the plays put on by the First Sister Players.

  I went to see how Uncle Bob was doing; there were a few more empty beer bottles at his feet, and now those feet could no longer locate the bottles and kick them under the couch.

  I kicked a few bottles under the couch for him. “You won’t be tempted to drive yourself home, will you, Uncle Bob?” I asked him.

  “That’s why I already put the car keys in your jacket pocket, Billy,” my uncle told me.

  But when I felt around in my jacket pockets, I found only a squash ball. “Not the car keys, Uncle Bob,” I said, showing him the ball.

  “Well, I know I put my car keys in someone’s jacket pocket, Billy,” the Racquet Man said.

  “Any news from your graduating class?” I suddenly asked him; he was drunk enough—I thought I might catch him off-guard. “What news from the Class of ’35?” I asked my uncle as casually as I could.

  “Nothing from Big Al, Billy—believe me, I would tell you,” he said.

  Grandpa Harry was making the rounds at his party as a woman now; it was at least an improvement that
he was acknowledging to everyone that his daughters were dead—not just late for the party, as he’d earlier said. I could see Nils Borkman following his old partner, as if the two of them were on skis and armed, gliding through the snowy woods. Bob dropped another empty beer bottle, and I kicked it under Grandpa Harry’s living-room couch. No one noticed the beer bottles, not since Grandpa Harry had reappeared—that is, not as Grandpa Harry.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Harry—yours and mine,” Uncle Bob said to my grandfather, who was wearing a faded-purple dress I remembered as one of Nana Victoria’s favorites. The blue-gray wig was at least “age-appropriate,” Richard Abbott would later say—when Richard was able to speak again, which wouldn’t be soon. Nils Borkman told me that the falsies must have come from the costume shop at the First Sister Players, or maybe Grandpa Harry had stolen them from the Drama Club at Favorite River Academy.

  The withered and arthritic hand that held out a new beer to my uncle Bob did not belong to the caterer with the dyed-red hair. It was Herm Hoyt—he was only a year older than Grandpa Harry, but Coach Hoyt looked a lot more beaten up.

  Herm had been sixty-eight when he was coaching Kittredge in ’61; he’d looked ready to retire then. Now, at eighty-five, Coach Hoyt had been retired for fifteen years.

  “Thanks, Herm,” the Racquet Man quietly said, raising the beer to his lips. “Billy here has been asking about our old friend Al.”

  “How’s that duck-under comin’ along, Billy?” Coach Hoyt asked.

  “I guess you haven’t heard from her, Herm,” I replied.

  “I hope you’ve been practicin’, Billy,” the old coach said.

  I then told Herm Hoyt a long and involved story about a fellow runner I’d met in Central Park. The guy was about my age, I told the coach, and by his cauliflower ears—and a certain stiffness in his shoulders and neck, as he ran—I deduced that he was a wrestler, and when I mentioned wrestling, he thought that I was a wrestler, too.

  “Oh, no—I just have a halfway-decent duck-under,” I told him. “I’m no wrestler.”

  But Arthur—the wrestler’s name was Arthur—misunderstood me. He thought I meant that I used to wrestle, and I was just being modest or self-deprecating.

  Arthur had gone on and on (the way wrestlers will) about how I should still be wrestling. “You should be picking up some other moves to go with that duck-under—it’s not too late!” he’d told me. Arthur wrestled at a club on Central Park South, where he said there were a lot of guys “our age” who were still wrestling. Arthur was confident that I could find an appropriate workout partner in my weight-class.

  Arthur was unstoppably enthusiastic about my not “quitting” wrestling, simply because I was in my thirties and no longer competing on a school or college team.

  “But I was never on a team!” I tried to tell him.

  “Look—I know a lot of guys our age who were never starters,” Arthur had told me. “And they’re still wrestling!”

  Finally, as I told Herm Hoyt, I just became so exasperated with Arthur’s insistence that I come to wrestling practice at his frigging club, I told him the truth.

  “Exactly what did you tell the fella, Billy?” Coach Hoyt asked me.

  That I was gay—or, more accurately, bisexual.

  “Jeez . . .” Herm started to say.

  That a former wrestler, who’d briefly been my lover, had tried to teach me a little wrestling—strictly for my own self-defense. That the former wrestling coach of this same ex-wrestler had also given me some tips.

  “You mean that duck-under you mentioned—that’s it?” Arthur had asked.

  “That’s it. Just the duck-under,” I’d admitted.

  “Jeez, Billy . . .” old Coach Hoyt was saying, shaking his head.

  “Well, that’s the story,” I said to Herm. “I haven’t been practicing the duck-under.”

  “There’s only one wrestlin’ club I know on Central Park South, Billy,” Herm Hoyt told me. “It’s a pretty good one.”

  “When Arthur understood what my history with the duck-under was, he didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter of my coming to wrestling practice,” I explained to Coach Hoyt.

  “It might not be the best idea,” Herm said. “I don’t know the fellas at that club—not anymore.”

  “They probably don’t get many gay guys wrestling there—you know, for self-defense—is that your guess, Herm?” I asked the old coach.

  “Has this Arthur fella read your writin’, Billy?” Herm Hoyt asked me.

  “Have you?” I asked Herm, surprised.

  “Jeez—sure, I have. Just don’t ask me what it’s about, Billy!” the old wrestling coach said.

  “How about Miss Frost?” I suddenly asked him. “Has she read my writing?”

  “Persistent, isn’t he?” Uncle Bob asked Herm.

  “She knows you’re a writer, Billy—everybody who knows you knows that,” the wrestling coach said.

  “Don’t ask me what you write about, either, Billy,” Uncle Bob said. He dropped the empty bottle and I kicked it under Grandpa Harry’s couch. The woman with the dyed-red hair brought another beer for the Racquet Man. I realized why she’d seemed familiar; all the caterers were from the Favorite River Academy dining service—they were kitchen workers, from the academy dining halls. That woman who kept bringing Bob another beer had been in her forties when I’d last seen her; she came from the past, which would always be with me.

  “The wrestlin’ club is the New York Athletic Club—they have other sports there, for sure, but they weren’t bad at wrestlin’, Billy. You could probably do some practicin’ of your duck-under there,” Herm was saying. “Maybe ask that Arthur fella about it, Billy—after all these years, I’ll bet you could use some practicin’.”

  “Herm, what if the wrestlers beat the shit out of me?” I asked him. “Wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of Miss Frost and you showing me a duck-under in the first place?”

  “Bob’s asleep, and he’s pissed all over himself,” the old coach abruptly observed.

  “Uncle Bob . . .” I started to say, but Herm Hoyt grabbed the Racquet Man by both shoulders and shook him.

  “Bob—stop pissin’!” the wrestling coach shouted.

  When Bob’s eyes blinked open, he was as caught off-guard as anyone working in the office of Alumni Affairs at Favorite River Academy ever would be.

  “España,” the Racquet Man said, when he saw me.

  “Jeez, Bob—be careful what you say,” Herm Hoyt said.

  “España,” I repeated.

  “That’s where he is—he says he’s never coming back, Billy,” Uncle Bob told me.

  “That’s where who is?” I asked my drunken uncle.

  Our only conversation, if you could call it that, had been about Kittredge; it was hard to imagine Kittredge speaking Spanish. I knew the Racquet Man didn’t mean Big Al—Uncle Bob wasn’t telling me that Miss Frost was in Spain, and she was never coming back.

  “Bob . . .” I started to say, but the Racquet Man had nodded off again. Herm Hoyt and I could see that Bob was still pissing.

  “Herm . . .” I started to say.

  “Franny Dean, my former wrestlin’-team manager, Billy—he’s in Spain. Your father is in Spain, Billy, and he’s happy there—that’s all I know.”

  “Where in Spain, Herm?” I asked the old coach.

  “España,” Herm Hoyt repeated, shrugging. “Somewhere in Spain, Billy—that’s all I can tell ya. Just keep thinkin’ about the happy part. Your dad is happy, and he’s in Spain. Your mom was never happy, Billy.”

  I knew Herm was right about that. I went looking for Elaine; I wanted to tell her that my father was in Spain. My mother was dead, but my father—whom I’d never known—was alive and happy.

  But before I could tell her, Elaine spoke to me first. “We should sleep in your bedroom tonight, Billy—not in mine,” she began.

  “Okay—” I said.

  “If Richard wakes up and decides to say
something, he shouldn’t be alone—we should be there,” Elaine went on.

  “Okay, but I just found out about something,” I told her; she wasn’t listening.

  “I owe you a blow job, Billy—maybe this is your lucky night,” Elaine said. I thought she was drunk, or else I’d misheard her.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m sorry for what I said about Rachel. That’s what the blow job is for,” Elaine explained; she was drunk, extending the number of syllables in her words in the overly articulated manner of the Racquet Man.

  “You don’t owe me a blow job, Elaine,” I told her.

  “You don’t want a blow job, Billy?” she asked me; she made “blow job” sound as if it had four or five syllables.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want one,” I told her. “España,” I said suddenly, because that’s what I wanted to talk about.

  “España?” Elaine said. “Is that a kind of Spanish blow job, Billy?” She was tripping a little, as I led her over to say good night to Grandpa Harry.

  “Don’t worry, Bill,” Nils Borkman suddenly said to me. “I am unloading the rifles! I am keeping a secret of the bullets!”

  “España,” Elaine repeated. “Is it a gay thing, Billy?” she whispered to me.

  “No,” I told her.

  “You’ll show me, right?” Elaine asked. I knew that the trick would be keeping her awake until we were back in Bancroft Hall.

  “I love you!” I said to Grandpa Harry, hugging him.

  “I love you, Bill!” Harry told me, hugging me back. (His falsies had to have been modeled on someone with breasts as big as my aunt Muriel’s, but I didn’t tell my grandfather that.)

  “You don’t owe me anything, Elaine,” I was saying, as we left that River Street house.

  “Don’t say good night to my mom and dad, Billy—don’t get anywhere near my dad,” Elaine told me. “Not unless you want to hear about more casualties—not unless you have the stomach to listen to more fucking body-counting.”

  After hearing about Trowbridge, I truly didn’t have the stomach for more casualties. I didn’t even say good night to Mrs. Hadley, because I could see that Mr. Hadley was loitering around.