In One Person

by John Winslow Irving

  We were all standing in the stage area, which was brightly lit; my stage manager had already dimmed the houselights. In our black box, we can position the audience where we want them; we can move the seats around. Sometimes, the audience completely encircles the stage or sits facing one another with the stage between them. For Romeo and Juliet, I had all the seats form a shallow horseshoe around the stage. With the houselights dimmed, but not dark, I could watch the rehearsals from any seat in the audience and still see well enough to read my notes—or write new notes.

  It was my gay Benvolio who whispered in my ear, while all of us were still waiting for Manfred (my trouble-making Tybalt) to get back to campus from his wrestling match. “Mr. A.—I see him,” my Benvolio whispered. “That guy who’s looking for you—he’s in the audience.” With the houselights dimmed, I could not make out the man’s face; he was sitting in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped seats, about four or five rows back—just out of reach of the spotlights illuminating our stage.

  “Should we call Security, Mr. A.?” Gee asked me.

  “No, no—I’ll just see what he wants,” I told her. “If I appear to be stuck in an unwelcome conversation, just come interrupt us—pretend you have to ask me something about the play. Make up anything that comes to mind,” I said.

  “You want me to come with you?” my bold Nurse, the field-hockey player, asked me.

  “No, no,” I told the fearless girl, who was spoiling for a fight. “Just be sure I know when Manfred gets here.”

  We were at that point in our rehearsals where I like to have the kids run their lines consecutively; I didn’t want to be rehearsing either piecemeal or out of sequence. My ever-ready Tybalt is an inciting presence in act 1, scene 1. (Enter Tybalt, drawing his sword, as the stage directions say.) The only rehearsing I wanted to do without Manfred was that small set piece the Chorus says, the prologue to the play.

  “Listen up, Chorus,” I said. “Run through the prologue a couple of times. Take note that the most important line ends not with a comma, but a semicolon; pay attention to that semicolon. ‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life’; please pause after the semicolon.”

  “We’re here, if you need us, Mr. A.,” I heard Gee say—as I went up an aisle to the fourth or fifth row of seats, into the dimly lit audience.

  “Hey, Teacher,” I heard the man say, maybe a split second before I could clearly see him. He might as well have said, “Hey, Nymph”—that’s how familiar his voice was to me, almost fifty years after I’d last heard it. His handsome face, his wrestler’s build, his slyly confident smile—they were all familiar to me.

  But you’re supposed to be dead! I was thinking—the “of natural causes” was the only doubtful part. Yet this Kittredge, of course, couldn’t have been my Kittredge. This Kittredge was only slightly more than half my age; if he’d been born in the early seventies, when I’d imagined Kittredge’s son had been born, he would have been in his late thirties—thirty-seven or thirty-eight, I would have guessed, upon meeting Kittredge’s only child.

  “It’s truly striking how much you look like your father,” I said to young Kittredge, holding out my hand; he declined to shake it. “Well, of course, I mean if I had seen your father at your age—you look as I imagine he must have looked in his late thirties.”

  “My father didn’t look at all like me when he was my age,” the young man said. “He was already in his early thirties when I was born; by the time I was old enough to remember what he looked like, he already looked like a woman. He hadn’t had the surgical reassignment yet, but he was very passable as a woman. I didn’t have a father. I had two mothers—one of them was hysterical most of the time, and the other one had a penis. After the surgery, as I understand it, he had some kind of vagina. He died of AIDS—I’m surprised you haven’t. I’ve read all your novels,” young Kittredge added, as if everything in my writing had indicated to him that I easily could have died of AIDS—or that I should have.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say to him; as Gee had said, he was upset. As I could see for myself, he was angry. I tried to make small talk. I asked him what his dad had done for a living, and how Kittredge had met Irmgard, the wife—this angry young man’s mother.

  They’d met skiing—Davos, or maybe Klosters. Kittredge’s wife was Swiss, but she’d had a German grandmother; that’s where the Irmgard came from. Kittredge and Irmgard had homes in the ski town and in Zurich, where they’d both worked at the Schauspielhaus. (It was quite a famous theater.) I imagined that Kittredge had liked living in Europe; no doubt, he was used to Europe, because of his mother. And maybe a sex-change surgery was more easily arranged in Europe—I had no idea, really.

  Mrs. Kittredge—the mom, I mean, not the wife—had killed herself soon after Kittredge’s death. (There was no doubt she’d been his real mother.) “Pills,” was all the grandson would say about it; he clearly wasn’t interested in talking to me about anything except the fact that his father became a woman. I began to get the feeling that young Kittredge believed I had something to do with what he saw as a despicable alteration.

  “How was his German?” I asked Kittredge’s son, but that was of no concern to the angry young man.

  “His German was passable—not as passable as he was as a woman. He didn’t make any effort to improve his German,” Kittredge’s son told me. “My father never worked as hard at anything as he worked at becoming a woman.”

  “Oh.”

  “When he was dying, he told me that something happened here—when you knew him,” Kittredge’s son said to me. “Something started here. He admired you—he said you had balls. You did something ‘inspiring,’ or so he told me. There was a transsexual involved—someone older, I think. Maybe you both knew her. Maybe my father admired her, too—maybe she inspired him.”

  “I saw a photo of your father when he was younger—before he came here,” I told young Kittredge. “He was dressed and made up as a very pretty girl. I think something started, as you say, before he met me—and all the rest of it. I could show you that photo, if you—”

  “I’ve seen those photographs—I don’t need to see another one!” Kittredge’s son said angrily. “What about the transsexual? How did you two inspire my father?”

  “I’m surprised to hear he ‘admired’ me—I can’t imagine that I did anything he would have found ‘inspiring.’ I never thought he even liked me. In fact, your father was always rather cruel to me,” I told Kittredge’s son.

  “What about the transsexual?” young Kittredge asked me again.

  “I knew the transsexual—your father met her only once. I was in love with the transsexual. What happened with the transsexual happened to me!” I cried. “I don’t know what happened to your father.”

  “Something happened here—that’s all I know,” the son said bitterly. “My father read all your books, obsessively. What was he looking for in your novels? I’ve read them—I never found my father there, not that I would necessarily have recognized him in your pages.”

  I thought of my father, then, and I said—as gently as I could manage—to Kittredge’s angry son, “We already are who we are, aren’t we? I can’t make your father comprehensible to you, but surely you can have some sympathy for him, can’t you?” (I’d never imagined myself asking anyone to have sympathy for Kittredge!)

  I had once believed that if Kittredge was gay, he sure looked like a top to me. Now I wasn’t so sure. When Kittredge had met Miss Frost, I’d seen him change from dominant to submissive—in about ten seconds.

  Just then Gee was there, in the row of seats beside us. My cast for Romeo and Juliet had surely heard the raised voices; they must have been worried about me. No doubt, they could hear how angry young Kittredge was. To me, he seemed just a callow, disappointing reflection of his father.

  “Hi, Gee,” I said. “Is Manfred here? Are we ready?”

  “No—we still don’t have our Tybalt,” Gee told me. “But I have a question. It’s about act one, sc
ene five—it’s the very first thing I say, when the Nurse tells me Romeo is a Montague. You know, when I learn I’m in love with the son of my enemy—it’s that couplet.”

  “What about it?” I asked her; she was stalling for us both, I could see. We wanted Manfred to arrive. Where was my easily outraged Tybalt when I needed him?

  “I don’t think I should sound sorry for myself,” Gee continued. “I don’t think of Juliet as self-pitying.”

  “No, she’s not,” I said. “Juliet may sound fatalistic—at times—but she shouldn’t sound self-pitying.”

  “Okay—let me say it,” Gee said. “I think I’ve got it—I’m just saying it as it is, but I’m not complaining about it.”

  “This is my Juliet,” I told young Kittredge. “My best girl, Gee. Okay,” I said to Gee, “let’s hear it.”

  “‘My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!’” my Juliet said.

  “That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her, but young Kittredge was just staring at her; I couldn’t tell if he admired her or suspected her.

  “What kind of name is Gee?” Kittredge’s son asked her. I could see that my best girl’s confidence was a little shaken; here was a handsome, rather worldly-looking man—someone not from our Favorite River community, where Gee had earned our respect and had developed much confidence in herself as a woman. I could see that Gee was doubting herself. I knew what she was thinking—in young Kittredge’s presence, and under his intimidating scrutiny. Do I look passable? Gee was wondering.

  “Gee is just a made-up name,” the young girl evasively told him.

  “What’s your real name?” Kittredge’s son asked her.

  “I was George Montgomery, at birth. I’m going to be Georgia Montgomery later,” Gee told him. “Right now, I’m just Gee. I’m a boy who’s becoming a girl—I’m in transition,” my Juliet said to young Kittredge.

  “That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her again. “I think you said that perfectly.”

  One glance at Kittredge’s son told me: He’d had no idea that Gee was a work-in-progress; he hadn’t known she was a transgender kid, on her brave way to becoming a woman. One glance at Gee told me that she knew she’d been passable; I think that gave my Juliet a ton of confidence. I realize now that if Kittredge’s son had said anything disrespectful to Gee, I would have tried to kill him.

  At that moment, Manfred arrived. “The wrestler is here!” someone shouted—my Mercutio, maybe, or it might have been my gay Benvolio.

  “We have our Tybalt!” my strong Nurse called to Gee and me.

  “Ah, at last,” I said. “We’re ready.”

  Gee was running toward the stage—as if her next life depended on starting this delayed rehearsal. “Good luck—break a leg,” young Kittredge called after her. Just like his father—you couldn’t read his tone of voice. Was he being sincere or sarcastic?

  I could see that my most assertive Nurse had pulled Manfred aside. No doubt, she was filling the hot-tempered Tybalt in—she wanted “the wrestler” to know there was a potential problem, a creep (as she’d called young Kittredge) in the audience. I was ushering Kittredge’s son to an aisle between the horseshoe-shaped seats, just accompanying the young man to the nearest exit, when Manfred presented himself in the aisle—as ready for a fight as Tybalt ever was.

  When Manfred wanted to speak privately to me, he always spoke in German; he knew I’d lived in Vienna and could still speak a little German, albeit badly. Manfred politely asked if there was anything he could do to help me—in German.

  Fucking wrestlers! I saw that my Tybalt had lost half his mustache; they’d had to shave one side of his lip before they gave him the stitches! (Manfred would have to shave the other half of his lip before we were in performance; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Tybalt with only half a mustache.)

  “Your German is pretty good,” young Kittredge, sounding surprised, said to Manfred.

  “It ought to be—I’m German,” Manfred told him aggressively, in English.

  “This is my Tybalt. He’s also a wrestler, like your father,” I said to Kittredge’s son. They shook hands a little tentatively. “I’ll be right there, Manfred—you can wait onstage for me. Nice lip,” I told him, as he was going down the aisle to the stage.

  Young Kittredge reluctantly shook my hand at the exit door. He was still agitated; he’d had more to say, but—in at least one way—he was not like his father. Whatever one thinks of Kittredge, I can tell you this: He was a cruel fucker, but he was a fighter. The son, whether he had wrestled or not, needed just one look at Manfred; Kittredge’s son was no fighter.

  “Look, here it is—I just have to say this,” young Kittredge said; he almost couldn’t look at me. “I don’t know you, I admit—I don’t have a clue who my father really was, either. But I’ve read all your books, and I know what you do—I mean, in your writing. You make all these sexual extremes seem normal—that’s what you do. Like Gee, that girl, or whatever she is—or what she’s becoming. You create these characters who are so sexually ‘different,’ as you might call them—or ‘fucked up,’ which is what I would call them—and then you expect us to sympathize with them, or feel sorry for them, or something.”

  “Yes, that’s more or less what I do,” I told him.

  “But so much of what you describe is not natural!” Kittredge’s son cried. “I mean, I know what you are—not only from your writing. I’ve read what you say about yourself, in interviews. What you are isn’t natural—you aren’t normal!”

  He’d held his voice down when he was talking about Gee—I’ll give him credit for that—but now Kittredge’s son had raised his voice again. I knew that my stage manager—not to mention the entire cast for Romeo and Juliet—could hear every word. It was suddenly so quiet in our little black-box theater; I swear you could have heard a stage mouse fart.

  “You’re bisexual, aren’t you?” Kittredge’s son then asked me. “Do you think that’s normal, or natural—or sympathetic? You’re a switch-hitter!” he said, opening the exit door; thank goodness, everyone could see he was finally leaving.

  “My dear boy,” I said sharply to young Kittredge, in what has become my lifelong imitation of the way Miss Frost so pointedly and thrillingly spoke to me.

  “My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!” Miss Frost had said to me; I’ve never forgotten it. Is it any wonder that this was what I said to young Kittredge, the cocksure son of my old nemesis and forbidden love?

  Acknowledgments

  Jamey Bradbury

  Rob Buyea

  David Calicchio

  Dean Cooke

  Emily Copeland

  Peter Delacorte

  David Ebershoff

  Amy Edelman

  Marie-Anne Esquivié

  Paul Fedorko

  Vicente Molina Foix

  Rodrigo Fresán

  Ruth Geiger

  Ron Hansen

  Sheila Heffernon

  Alan Hergott

  Everett Irving

  Janet Turnbull Irving

  Josée Kamoun

  Jonathan Karp

  Katie Kelley

  Rick Kelley

  Kate Medina

  Jan Morris

  Anna von Planta

  David Rowland

  Marty Schwartz

  Nick Spengler

  Helga Stephenson

  Abraham Verghese

  Edmund White

  ABOUT JOHN IRVING

  The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is A Prayer f
or Owen Meany (1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.

  In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules, a Lasse Hallström film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor, the 2004 film adapted from Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.

  In One Person is John Irving’s thirteenth novel.

  ALSO BY JOHN IRVING

  Setting Free the Bears

  The Water-Method Man

  The 158-Pound Marriage

  The World According to Garp

  The Hotel New Hampshire

  The Cider House Rules

  A Prayer for Owen Meany

  A Son of the Circus

  The Imaginary Girlfriend

  Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

  A Widow for One Year

  My Movie Business

  The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay

  The Fourth Hand

  A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound

  Until I Find You

  Last Night in Twisted River

  Copyright

  Simon & Schuster

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  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Garp Enterprises, Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020