by John Irving
To that end, I dropped out of the fall Shakespeare play--to Richard's oft-expressed disappointment. Richard had cast Kittredge as Edgar in King Lear. Furthermore, there was an unforeseen flaw in Richard's having cast me as Lear's Fool. When I was telling Mrs. Hadley that I wanted no part in the play, because Kittredge had "a hero's part"--not to mention that Edgar is later disguised as Poor Tom, so that Kittredge had essentially been given "a dual role"--Martha Hadley wanted to know how closely I'd looked over my lines. Given that my number of unpronounceables was growing, did I foresee that the Fool presented me with any vocabulary issues? Was Mrs. Hadley hinting that my pronunciation problems could excuse me from the play?
"What are you getting at?" I asked her. "You think I can't handle 'cutpurses' or 'courtesan,' or are you worried that 'codpiece' will throw me for a loop--just because of the whatchamacallit the codpiece covers, or because I have trouble with the word for the whatchamacallit itself?"
"Don't be defensive, Billy," Martha Hadley said.
"Or was it the 'arrant whore' combination that you thought might trip me up?" I asked her. "Or maybe 'coxcomb'--either the singular or the plural, or both!"
"Calm down, Billy," Mrs. Hadley said. "We're both upset about Kittredge."
"Kittredge had the last lines in Twelfth Night!" I cried. "Now Richard gives him the last lines again! We have to hear Kittredge say, 'The weight of this sad time we must obey: / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.' "
" 'The oldest hath borne most,' " Kittredge-as-Edgar continues.
In the story of King Lear--given what happens to Lear, not to mention the blinding of Gloucester (Richard had cast himself as Gloucester)--this is certainly true. But when Edgar ends the play by declaring that "we that are young / Shall never see so much nor live so long"--well, I don't know if that is universally true.
Do I dispute the concluding wisdom of this great play because I can't distinguish Edgar from Kittredge? Can anyone (even Shakespeare) know how future generations will or will not suffer?
"Richard is doing what's best for the play, Billy," Martha Hadley told me. "Richard isn't rewarding Kittredge for seducing Elaine." Yet it somehow seemed that way to me. Why give Kittredge as good a part as Edgar, who is later disguised as Poor Tom? After what had happened in Twelfth Night, why did Richard have to give Kittredge a role in King Lear at all? I wanted out of the play--being, or not being, Lear's Fool wasn't the issue.
"Just tell Richard you don't want to be around Kittredge, Billy," Mrs. Hadley said to me. "Richard will understand."
I couldn't tell Martha Hadley that I also didn't want to be around Richard. And what point was there, in this production of King Lear, to observe my mother's expression when she watched her father onstage as a woman? Grandpa Harry was cast as Goneril, Lear's eldest daughter; Goneril is such a horrid daughter, why wouldn't my mom look at anyone playing Goneril with the utmost disapproval? (Aunt Muriel was Regan, Lear's other awful daughter; I assumed that my mother would glower at her sister, Muriel, too.)
It wasn't only because of Kittredge that I wanted nothing to do with this King Lear. I had no heart to see Uncle Bob fall short in the leading-man department, for the good-hearted Bob--Squash Ball Bob, Kittredge called him--was cast as King Lear. That Bob lacked a tragic dimension seemed obvious, if not to Richard Abbott; perhaps Richard pitied Bob, and found him tragic, because Bob was (tragically) married to Muriel.
It was Bob's body that was all wrong--or was it his head? Bob's body was big, and athletically robust; compared to his body, Bob's head seemed too small, and improbably round--a squash ball lost between two hulking shoulders. Uncle Bob was both too good-natured and too strong-looking to be Lear.
It is relatively early in the play (act 1, scene 4) when Bob-as-Lear bellows, " 'Who is it that can tell me who I am?' "
Who could forget how Lear's Fool answers the king? But I did; I forgot that I even had a line. " 'Who is it that can tell me who I am,' Bill?" Richard Abbott asked me.
"It's your line, Nymph," Kittredge whispered to me. "I had anticipated that you might have a little trouble with it." Everyone waited while I found the Fool's line. At first, I wasn't even aware of the pronunciation problem; my difficulty in saying this word was so recent that I hadn't noticed it, nor had Martha Hadley. But Kittredge, clearly, had detected the potential unpronounceable. "Let's hear you say it, Nymph," Kittredge said. "Let's hear you try it, anyway."
"Who is it that can tell me who I am?" Lear asks.
The Fool answers: "Lear's shadow."
Since when had the shadow word given me any grief in the pronunciation department? Since Elaine had come back from that trip to Europe with Mrs. Kittredge, when Elaine seemed as insubstantial as a shadow--at least in comparison to her former self. Since Elaine had come back from Europe, and there seemed to be an unfamiliar shadow dogging her every step--a shadow that bore a ghostly but ultrasophisticated resemblance to Mrs. Kittredge herself. Since Elaine had gone away again, to Northfield, and I was left with a shadow following me around--perhaps the disquieting, unavenged shadow of my absent best friend.
" 'Lear's . . . shed,' " I said.
"His shed!" Kittredge exclaimed.
"Try it again, Bill," Richard said.
"I can't say it," I replied.
"Maybe we need a new Fool," Kittredge suggested.
"That would be my decision, Kittredge," Richard told him.
"Or mine," I said.
"Ah, well--" Grandpa Harry started to say, but Uncle Bob interrupted him.
"It seems to me, Richard, that Billy could say 'Lear's reflection,' or even 'Lear's ghost'--if, in your judgment, this fits with what the Fool means or is implying," Uncle Bob suggested.
"Then it wouldn't be Shakespeare," Kittredge said.
"The line is 'Lear's shadow,' Billy," my mother, the prompter, said. "Either you can say it or you can't."
"Please, Jewel--" Richard started to say, but I interrupted him.
"Lear should have a proper Fool--one who can say everything," I told Richard Abbott. I knew, as I was leaving, that I was walking out of my final rehearsal as a Favorite River Academy student--my last Shakespeare play, perhaps. (As it would turn out, King Lear was my last Shakespeare play as an actor.)
The faculty daughter whom Richard cast as Cordelia was and remains so completely unknown to me that I can't recall her name. "An unformed girl, but with a crackerjack memory," Grandpa Harry had said about her.
"Neither a present nor a future beauty," was all my aunt Muriel said of the doomed Cordelia, implying that, in King Lear, no one would ever have married this Cordelia--not even if she'd lived.
Lear's Fool would be played by Delacorte. Since Delacorte was a wrestler, he'd probably learned that the part was available because Kittredge had told him. Kittredge would later inform me that, because the fall Shakespeare play was rehearsed and performed before the start of the wrestling season, Delacorte wasn't as ill affected as he usually was by the complications of cutting weight. Yet the lightweight who, according to Kittredge, would have had the shit kicked out of him in a heavier weight-class, still suffered from cotton-mouth, even when he wasn't dehydrated--or perhaps Delacorte dreamed of cutting weight, even in the off-season. Therefore, Delacorte constantly rinsed his mouth out with water from a paper cup; he eternally spat out the water into another paper cup. If Delacorte were alive today, I'm sure he would still be running his fingers through his hair. But Delacorte is dead, along with so many others. Awaiting me, in the future, was seeing Delacorte die.
Delacorte, as Lear's Fool, would wisely say: " 'Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest.' " Good advice, but it won't save Lear's Fool, and it didn't save Delacorte.
Kittredge acted strangely in Delacorte's company; he could behave affectionately and impatiently with Delacorte in the same moment. It was as if Delacorte had been a childhood friend, but one who'd disappointed Kittredge--one who'd not "turned out" as Kittredge had hoped or expected.
"Then it wouldn't be Shakespeare," Grandpa Harry said.
"I'm not prompting the rinsing and spitting, Richard," my mom said.
"Delacorte, you will kindly do your rinsing and spitting backstage," Richard told the compulsive lightweight.
"It was just an idea," Kittredge had said with a dismissive shrug. "I guess it will suffice that we at least have a Fool who can say the shadow word."
To me, Kittredge would be more philosophical. "Look at it this way, Nymph--there's no such thing as a working actor with a restricted vocabulary. But it's a positive discovery, to be made aware of your limitations at such a young age," Kittredge assured me. "How fortuitous, really--now you know you can never be an actor."
"You mean, it's not a career choice," I said, as Miss Frost had once declared to me--when I'd first told her that I wanted to be a writer.
"I should say not, Nymph--not if you want to give yourself a fighting chance."
"Oh."
"And you might be wise, Nymph, to clarify another choice--I mean, before you get to the career part," Kittredge said. I said nothing; I just waited. I knew Kittredge well enough to know when he was setting me up. "There's the matter of your sexual proclivities," Kittredge continued.
"My sexual proclivities are crystal-clear," I told him--a little surprised at myself, because I was acting and there wasn't a hint of a pronunciation problem.
"I don't know, Nymph," Kittredge said, with that deliberate or involuntary flutter in the broad muscles of his wrestler's neck. "In the area of sexual proclivities, you look like a work-in-progress to me."
"OH, IT'S YOU!" Miss Frost said cheerfully, when she saw me; she sounded surprised. "I thought it was your friend. He was here--he just left. I thought it was him, coming back."
"Who?" I asked her. (I had Kittredge on my mind, of course--not exactly a friend.)
"Tom," Miss Frost said. "Tom was just here. I'm never sure why he comes. He's always asking about a book he says he can't find at the academy library, but I know perfectly well the school has it. Anyway, I never have what he's looking for. Maybe he comes here looking for you."
"Tom who?" I asked her. I didn't think I knew a Tom.
"Atkins--isn't that his name?" Miss Frost asked. "I know him as Tom."
"I know him as Atkins," I said.
"Oh, William, I wonder how long the last-name culture of that awful school will persist!" Miss Frost said.
"Shouldn't we be whispering?" I whispered.
After all, we were in a library. I was puzzled by how loudly Miss Frost spoke, but I was also excited to hear her say that Favorite River Academy was an "awful school"; I secretly thought so, but out of loyalty to Richard Abbott and Uncle Bob, faculty brat that I was, I would never have said so.
"There's no one else here, William," Miss Frost whispered to me. "We can speak as loudly as we want."
"Oh."
"You've come to write, I suppose," Miss Frost loudly said.
"No, I need your advice about what I should read," I told her.
"Is the subject still crushes on the wrong people, William?"
"Very wrong," I whispered.
She leaned over, to be closer to me; she was still so much taller than I was, she made me feel that I hadn't grown. "We can whisper about this, if you want to," she whispered.
"Do you know Jacques Kittredge?" I asked her.
"Everyone knows Kittredge," Miss Frost said neutrally; I couldn't tell what she thought about him.
"I have a crush on Kittredge, but I'm trying not to," I told her. "Is there a novel about that?"
Miss Frost put both her hands on my shoulders. I knew she could feel me shaking. "Oh, William--there are worse things, you know," she said. "Yes, I have the very novel you should read," she whispered.
"I know why Atkins comes here," I blurted out. "He's not looking for me--he probably has a crush on you!"
"Why would he?" Miss Frost asked me.
"Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't any boy have a crush on you?" I asked her.
"Well, no one's had a crush on me for a while," she said. "But it's very flattering--it's so sweet of you to say so, William."
"I have a crush on you, too," I told her. "I always have, and it's stronger than the crush I have on Kittredge."
"My dear boy, you are so very wrong!" Miss Frost declared. "Didn't I tell you there were worse things than having a crush on Jacques Kittredge? Listen to me, William: Having a crush on Kittredge is safer!"
"How can Kittredge be safer than you?" I cried. I could feel that I was starting to shake again; this time, when she put her big hands on my shoulders, Miss Frost hugged me to her broad chest. I began to sob, uncontrollably.
I hated myself for crying, but I couldn't stop. Dr. Harlow had told us, in yet another lamentable morning meeting, that excessive crying in boys was a homosexual tendency we should guard ourselves against. (Naturally, the moron never told us how we should guard ourselves against something we couldn't control!) And I'd overheard my mother say to Muriel: "Honestly, I don't know what to do when Billy cries like a girl!"
So there I was, in the First Sister Public Library, crying like a girl in Miss Frost's strong arms--having just told her that I had a stronger crush on her than the one I had on Jacques Kittredge. I must have seemed to her like such a sissy!
"My dear boy, you don't really know me," Miss Frost was saying. "You don't know who I am--you don't know the first thing about me, do you? William? You don't, do you?"
"I don't what?" I blubbered. "I don't know your first name," I admitted; I was still sobbing. I was hugging her back, but not as hard as she hugged me. I could feel how strong she was, and--once again--the smallness of her breasts seemed to stand in surprising contrast to her strength. I could also feel how soft her breasts were; her small, soft breasts struck me as such a contradiction to her broad shoulders, her muscular arms.
"I didn't mean my name, William--my first name isn't important," Miss Frost said. "I mean you don't know me."
"But what is your first name?" I asked her.
There was a theatricality in the way Miss Frost sighed--a staged exaggeration in the way she released me from her hug, almost pushing me away from her.
"I have a lot at stake in being Miss Frost, William," she said. "I did not acquire the Miss word accidentally."
I knew something about not liking the name you were given, for I hadn't liked being William Francis Dean, Jr. "You don't like your first name?" I asked her.
"We could begin with that," she answered, amused. "Would you ever name a girl Alberta?"
"Like the province in Canada?" I asked. I could not imagine Miss Frost as an Alberta!
"It's a better name for a province," Miss Frost said. "Everyone used to call me Al."
"Al," I repeated.
"You see why I like the Miss," she said, laughing.
"I love everything about you," I told her.
"Slow down, William," Miss Frost said. "You can't rush into crushes on the wrong people."
Of course, I didn't understand why she thought of herself as "wrong" for me--and how could she possibly imagine that my crush on Kittredge was safer? I believed that Miss Frost must have meant merely to warn me about the difference in our ages; maybe an eighteen-year-old boy with a woman in her forties was a taboo to her. I was thinking that I was legally an adult, albeit barely, and if it were true that Miss Frost was about my aunt Muriel's age, I was guessing that she would have been forty-two or forty-three.
"Girls my own age don't interest me," I said to Miss Frost. "I seem to be attracted to older women."
"My dear boy," she said again. "It doesn't matter how old I am--it's what I am. William, you don't know what I am, do you?"
As if that existential-sounding question wasn't confusing enough, Atkins chose this moment t
o enter the dimly lit foyer of the library, where he appeared to be startled. (He told me later he'd been frightened by the reflection of himself he had seen in the mirror, which hung silently in the foyer like a nonspeaking security guard.)
"Oh, it's you, Tom," Miss Frost said, unsurprised.
"Do you see? What did I tell you?" I asked Miss Frost, while Atkins went on fearfully regarding himself in the mirror.
"You're so very wrong," Miss Frost told me, smiling.
"Kittredge is looking for you, Bill," Atkins said. "I went to the yearbook room, but someone said you'd just left."
"The yearbook room," Miss Frost repeated; she sounded surprised. I looked at her; there was an unfamiliar anxiety in her expression.
"Bill is conducting a study of Favorite River yearbooks from past to present," Atkins said to Miss Frost. "Elaine told me," Atkins explained to me.
"For Christ's sake, Atkins--it sounds like you're conducting a study of me," I told him.
"It's Kittredge who wants to talk to you," Atkins said sullenly.
"Since when are you Kittredge's messenger boy?" I asked him.
"I've had enough abuse for one night!" Atkins cried dramatically, throwing up his slender hands. "It's one thing to have Kittredge insulting me--he insults everyone. But having you insult me, Bill--well, that's just too much!"
In an effort to leave the First Sister Public Library in a flamboyant pique, Atkins once again encountered that menacing mirror in the foyer, where he paused to deliver a parting shot. "I'm not your shadow, Bill--Kittredge is," Atkins said.
He was gone before he could hear me say, "Fuck Kittredge."
"Watch your language, William," Miss Frost said, putting her long fingers to my lips. "After all, we're in a fucking library."