by John Irving
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. Kittredge 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."
Quite possibly, Mrs. Kittredge had more in mind than helping Elaine out of a jam; the deal she made with the Hadleys probably kept Kittredge in school. "Moral turpitude" was among the stated grounds for dismissal at Favorite River Academy. For a senior at the school to impregnate a faculty child--remember, Elaine was not yet eighteen; she was under the age of legal maturity--certainly struck me as base or depraved or vile behavior, but Kittredge stayed.
"You're traveling with Kittredge's mother--just the two of you?" I'd asked Elaine.
"Of course it's just the two of us, Billy--who else needs to come along?" Elaine responded.
"Where in Europe?" I asked.
Elaine shrugged; she was still throwing up, though less frequently. "What does it matter where it is, Billy? It's somewhere Jacqueline knows."
"You're calling her Jacqueline?"
"She asked me to call her Jacqueline--not Mrs. Kittredge."
"Oh."
Richard had cast Laura Gordon as Viola; Laura was now a senior in the high school in Ezra Falls. According to my cousin Gerry, Laura "put out"--not that I saw, but Gerry seemed well informed about such matters. (Gerry was a university student now, at last liberated from Ezra Falls.)
If Laura Gordon's breasts had been too developed for her to be cast as Hedvig in The Wild Duck, they should have disqualified her for Viola, who somehow has to disguise herself as a man. (Laura would need to be wrapped flat with Ace bandages, and, even so, there was no flattening her.) But Richard knew that Laura could learn her lines on short notice; that she looked nothing like my twin notwithstanding, she wouldn't be a bad Viola. The show went on, though Elaine would miss our performances; she would linger in Europe--recuperating, I could only guess.
The Clown's song concludes Twelfth Night. Feste is alone onstage. " 'For the rain it raineth every day,' " Kittredge sang four times.
"The poor kid," Kittredge had said to me, about Elaine. "Such bad luck--her first time, and everything." As had happened to me before, I was speechless.
I didn't notice that Kittredge's German homework was any worse, or any better. I didn't even notice my mother's expression when she saw her father onstage as a woman. I was so upset about Elaine that I forgot about my plan to observe the prompter.
When I say that the Hadleys sent Elaine away "in stages," I mean that the trip to Europe--not to mention the obvious reason for that trip--was just the beginning.
The Hadleys had decided that their dormitory apartment in an all-boys' school was the wrong place for Elaine to finish her high school years. They would send her away to an all-girls' boarding school, but not until the fall. That spring of 1960 was a write-off for Elaine, and she would have to repeat her sophomore year.
It was said publicly that Elaine had had "a nervous breakdown," but everyone in a town as small as First Sister, Vermont, knew what had happened when a girl of high school age withdrew from school. Everyone at Favorite River Academy knew what had happened to Elaine, too. Even Atkins understood. I came out of Mrs. Hadley's office in the music building, not long after Elaine had disembarked for Europe with Mrs. Kittredge. Martha Hadley had been undone by the ease with which I'd pronounced the abortion word; she'd dismissed me from our appointment twenty minutes early, and I encountered Atkins on the stairwell between the first and second floors. I could see it crossing his mind--that it was not yet time for his appointment with Mrs. Hadley, but his struggle with the time word clearly prevented him from saying it. Instead he said, "What kind of breakdown was it? What does Elaine have to be nervous about?"
"I think you know," I said to him. Atkins had an anxious, feral-looking face, but with dazzling blue eyes and a girl's smooth complexion. He was a junior, like me, but he looked younger--he wasn't yet shaving.
"She's pregnant, isn't she? It was Kittredge, wasn't it? That's what everybody's saying, and he isn't denying it," Atkins said. "Elaine was really nice--she always said something nice to me, anyway," he added.
"Elaine really is nice," I told him.
"But what's she doing with Kittredge's mother? Have you seen Kittredge's mom? She's not like a mom. She's like one of those old movie stars who is secretly a witch or a dragon!" Atkins declared.
"I don't know what you mean," I told him.
"A woman who used to be that beautiful can never accept how--" Atkins stopped.
"How time passes?" I guessed.
"Yes!" he cried. "Women like Mrs. Kittredge hate young girls. Kittredge told me," Atkins added. "His dad left his mom for a younger woman--she wasn't more beautiful, just younger."
"Oh."
"I can't imagine traveling with Kittredge's mother!" Atkins exclaimed. "Will Elaine have her own room?" he asked me.
"I don't know," I told him. I hadn't thought about Elaine sharing a room with Mrs. Kittredge; it gave me the shivers just to think about it. What if she wasn't Kittredge's mother, or anyone's mother? But Mrs. Kittredge had to be Kittredge's mom; there was no way those two were unrelated.
Atkins had inched his way past me, up the stairs. I took a step or two down the stairs; I thought we were through talking. Suddenly Atkins said, "Not everyone here understands people like us, but Elaine did--Mrs. Hadley does, too."
"Yes," was all I said, continuing down the stairs. I tried not to consider too carefully what he'd meant by people like us, but I was sure that Atkins wasn't exclusively referring to our pronunciation problems. Had Atkins made a pass at me? I wondered, as I crossed the quad. Was that the first pass that a boy like me ever made at me?
The sky was lighter now--it didn't get dark so soon in the afternoon--but it would already be past nightfall in Europe, I knew. Elaine would be going to bed soon, in a room of her own or not. It was warmer now, too--not that there was ever much of a spring in Vermont--but I shivered as I crossed the quadrangle, on my way to my Twelfth Night rehearsal. I should have been thinking of my lines, of what Sebastian says, but I could only think of that song the Clown sings before the final curtain--Feste's song, the one Kittredge sang. ("For the rain it raineth every day.")
Just then, it began to rain, and I thought about how Elaine's life had been changed forever, while I was still just acting.
I HAVE KEPT THE photographs Elaine sent me; they were never very good photos, just black-and-white or color snapshots. Because of how many of my desktops these pictures have sat on--often in sunlight, and for so many years--the photographs are badly faded, but of course I have no trouble recalling the circumstances.
I just wish that Elaine had sent me some pictures of her trip to Europe with Mrs. Kittredge, but who would have taken those photographs? I can't imagine Elaine sna
pping photos of Kittredge's fashion-model mother--doing what? Brushing her teeth, reading in bed, getting dressed or undressed? And what might Elaine have been doing to inspire the artist-as-photographer in Mrs. Kittredge? Vomiting into a toilet from a kneeling position? Waiting, nauseated, in the lobby of this or that hotel, because her room--or the room she would share with Kittredge's mom--wasn't ready?
I doubt there were many photo opportunities that captured Mrs. Kittredge's imagination. Not the visit to the doctor's office--or was it a clinic?--and certainly not the messy but matter-of-fact procedure itself. (Elaine was in her first trimester. I'm sure the procedure was a standard dilation and curettage--you know, the usual scraping.)
Elaine would later tell me that, after the abortion, when she was still taking the painkillers--when Mrs. Kittredge would regularly check the amount of blood on the pad, to be sure the bleeding was "normal"--Kittredge's mom felt her forehead, to ascertain that Elaine didn't have a fever, and that was when Mrs. Kittredge told Elaine those outrageous stories.
I used to think the painkillers might have been a factor in what Elaine remembered, or believed she heard, in those stories. "The painkillers weren't that strong, and I didn't take them for more than a day or two," Elaine always said. "I wasn't in a whole lot of pain, Billy."
"But weren't you drinking wine? You told me that Mrs. Kittredge gave you all the red wine you wanted," I would remind Elaine. "I'm sure that you weren't supposed to mix the painkillers with alcohol."
"I never had more than a glass or two of red wine, Billy," Elaine always told me. "I heard every word that Jacqueline said. Either those stories are true, or Jacqueline was lying to me--and why would anyone's mother lie about that kind of thing?"
Admittedly, I don't know why "anyone's mother" would make up stories about her only child--at least, not that kind--but I don't hold Kittredge or his mom in the highest moral esteem. Whatever I believed, or didn't, about the stories Mrs. Kittredge told Elaine, Elaine seemed to believe every word.