In One Person

by John Irving

  The fucking word was not one that came to mind when I thought of her--in the same way that Miss Frost seemed an implausible Alberta--but when I looked at her, she was smiling. She was just teasing me; her long fingers now brushed my cheek.

  "A curious reference to the shadow word, William," she said. "Would it be the unpronounceable word that caused your unplanned exit from King Lear?"

  "It would," I told her. "I guess you heard. In a town this small, I think everyone hears everything!"

  "Maybe not quite everyone--possibly not quite everything, William," Miss Frost said. "It appears to me, for example, that you haven't heard everything--about me, I mean."

  I knew that Nana Victoria didn't like Miss Frost, but I didn't know why. I knew that Aunt Muriel had issues with Miss Frost's choice in bras, but how could I have brought up the training-bra subject when I had just expressed my love for everything about Miss Frost?

  "My grandmother," I started to say, "and my aunt Muriel--"

  But Miss Frost lightly touched my lips with her long fingers again. "Shhh, William," she whispered. "I don't need to hear what those ladies think of me. I'm much more interested in hearing about that project of yours in the old yearbook room."

  "Oh, it's not really a project," I told her. "I just look at the wrestling-team photos, mostly--and at the pictures of the plays that the Drama Club performed."

  "Do you?" Miss Frost somewhat absently asked. Why was it I got the feeling that she was acting--in a kind of on-again, off-again way? What was it she'd said, when Richard Abbott had asked her if she'd ever been onstage--if she'd ever acted?

  "Only in my mind," she'd answered him, almost flirtatiously. "When I was younger--all the time."

  "And what year are you up to in those old yearbooks, William--which graduating class?" Miss Frost then asked.

  "Nineteen thirty-one," I answered. Her fingers had strayed from my lips; she was touching the collar of my shirt, almost as if there were something about a boy's button-down dress shirt that had affected her--a sentimental attachment, maybe.

  "You're so close," Miss Frost said.

  "Close to what?" I asked her.

  "Just close," she said. "We haven't much time."

  "Is it time to close the library?" I asked her, but Miss Frost only smiled; then, as if giving the matter more thought, she glanced at her watch.

  "Well, what harm is there in closing a little early tonight?" she said suddenly.

  "Sure--why not?" I said. "There's no one here but us. I don't think Atkins is coming back."

  "Poor Tom," Miss Frost said. "He doesn't have a crush on me, William--Tom Atkins has a crush on you!"

  The second she said so, I knew it was true. "Poor Tom," which would become how I thought of Atkins, probably sensed I had a crush on Miss Frost; he must have been jealous of her.

  "Poor Tom is just spying on me, and you," Miss Frost told me. "And what does Kittredge want to talk to you about?" she suddenly asked me.

  "Oh, that's nothing--that's just a German thing. I help Kittredge with his German," I explained.

  "Tom Atkins would be a safer choice for you than Jacques Kittredge, William," Miss Frost said. I knew this was true, too, though I didn't find Atkins attractive--except in the way that someone who adores you can become a little attractive to you, over time. (But that almost never works out, does it?)

  Yet, when I began to tell Miss Frost that I wasn't really attracted to Atkins--that not all boys were attractive to me, just a very few boys, actually--well, this time she put her lips to mine. She simply kissed me. It was a fairly firm kiss, moderately aggressive; there was only one assertive thrust, a single dart of her warm tongue. Believe me: I'll soon be seventy; I've had a long lifetime of kisses, and this one was more confident than any man's handshake.

  "I know, I know," she murmured against my lips. "We have so little time--let's not talk about poor Tom."

  "Oh."

  I followed her into the foyer, where I was still thinking that her concern with "time" had only to do with the closing time of the library, but Miss Frost said: "I presume that check-in time for seniors is still ten o'clock, William--except on a Saturday night, when I'm guessing it's still eleven. Nothing ever changes at that awful school, does it?"

  I was impressed that Miss Frost even knew about check-in time at Favorite River Academy--not to mention that she was exactly right about it.

  I watched her lock the door to the library and turn off the outdoor light; she left the dim light in the foyer on, while she went about the main library, killing the other lights. I had completely forgotten that I'd asked her advice--on the subject of a book about my having a crush on Kittredge, and "trying not to"--when Miss Frost handed me a slender novel. It was only about forty-five pages longer than King Lear, which happened to be the story I'd read most recently.

  It was a novel by James Baldwin called Giovanni's Room--the title of which I could barely read, because Miss Frost had extinguished all the lights in the main library. There was only the light from the dimly lit foyer--scarcely sufficient for Miss Frost and me to see our way to the basement stairs.

  On the dark stairs, lit only by what scant light followed us from the foyer of the library--and a dull glowing ahead of us, which beckoned us to Miss Frost's cubicle, partitioned off from the furnace room--I suddenly remembered that there was another novel I wanted the confident librarian's advice about.

  The name Al was on my lips, but I could not bring myself to say it. I said, instead: "Miss Frost, what can you tell me about Madame Bovary? Do you think I would like it?"

  "When you're older, William, I think you'll love it."

  "That's kind of what Richard said, and Uncle Bob," I told her.

  "Your uncle Bob has read Madame Bovary--you can't mean Muriel's Bob!" Miss Frost exclaimed.

  "Bob hasn't read it--he was just telling me what it was about," I explained.

  "Someone who hasn't read a novel doesn't really know what it's about, William."

  "Oh."

  "You should wait, William," Miss Frost said. "The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you believe that your future relationships will have disappointing--even devastating--consequences."

  "I'll wait to read it until then," I told her.

  Her bedroom and bathroom--formerly, the coal bin--was lit only by a reading lamp, affixed to the headboard of rails on the old-fashioned brass bed. Miss Frost lit the cinnamon-scented candle on the night table, turning off the lamp. In the candlelight, she told me to undress. "That means everything, William--please don't keep on your socks."

  I did as she told me, with my back turned to her, while she said she would appreciate "some privacy"; she briefly used the toilet with the wooden seat--I believe I heard her pee, and flush--and then, from the sound of running water, I think she had a quick wash-up and brushed her teeth in the small sink.

  I lay naked on her brass bed; in the flickering candlelight, I read that Giovanni's Room was published in 1956. From the attached library card, I saw that only one patron of the First Sister Public Library had checked out the novel--in four years--and I wondered if Mr. Baldwin's solitary reader had in fact been Miss Frost. I did not finish the first two paragraphs before Miss Frost said, "Please don't read that now, William. It's very sad, and it will surely upset you."

  "Upset me how?" I asked her. I could hear her hanging her clothes in the wardrobe closet; it was distracting to imagine her naked, but I kept reading.

  "There's no such thing as trying not to have a crush on Kittredge, William--'trying not to' doesn't work," Miss Frost said.

  That was when the penultimate sentence of the second paragraph stopped me; I just closed the book and shut my eyes.

  "I told you to stop reading, didn't I?" Miss Frost said.

  The sentence began: "There will be a girl sitting opposite me who will wonder why I have not been flirting with her"--I stopped there wondering if I would dare to continue.

  "It's not a nov
el your mother should see," Miss Frost was saying, "and if you're not prepared to talk about your crush on Kittredge with Richard--well, I wouldn't let Richard know what you're reading, either." I could feel her lie down on the bed, behind me; her bare skin touched my back, but she'd not taken off all her clothes. She gently took hold of my penis in her big hand.

  "There's a fish called a shad," Miss Frost said.

  "A shad?" I asked; my penis was stiffening.

  "Yes--that's what it's called," Miss Frost told me. "It migrates upstream to spawn. Shad roe is a delicacy. You know what roe is, don't you?" she asked me.

  "The eggs, right?"

  "The unborn eggs, yes--they take them out of the female fish, and some people love to eat them," Miss Frost explained.

  "Oh."

  "Say 'shad roe' for me, William."

  "Shad roe," I said.

  "Try saying it without the r," she told me.

  "Shadow," I said, without thinking; my penis and her hand had most of my attention.

  "Like Lear's shadow?" she asked me.

  "Lear's shadow," I said. "I didn't want a part in the play, anyway," I told her.

  "Well, at least you didn't say Lear's shad roe," Miss Frost said.

  "Lear's shadow," I repeated.

  "And what's this that I've got in my hand?" she asked me.

  "My penith," I answered.

  "I wouldn't change that penith for all the world, William," Miss Frost said. "I believe you should say that word any fucking way you want to."

  What happened next would usher in the unattainable; what Miss Frost did to me would prove inimitable. She pulled me suddenly to her--I was flat on my back--and she kissed me on my mouth. She was wearing a bra--not a padded one, like Elaine's, but a see-through bra with only slightly bigger cups than I'd expected. The material was sheer, and much silkier than the soft cotton of Elaine's bra, and--to compare it to the more utilitarian undergarments in my mother's mail-order catalogs--Miss Frost's bra was not in the training-bra category; it was altogether sexier and more sophisticated. Miss Frost also wore a half-slip, of the slinky kind women wear under a skirt--this one was a beige color--and when she straddled my hips and sat on me, she appeared to hike up the half-slip, well above mid-thigh. Her weight, and how firmly she held me, pressed me into the bed.

  I held one of her small, soft breasts in one hand; with my other hand, I tried to touch her, under her half-slip, but Miss Frost said, "No, William. Please don't touch me there." She took my straying hand and clasped it to her other breast.

  It was my penis that she guided under her half-slip. I had never penetrated anyone, and when I felt this most amazing friction, of course this felt like penetration to me. There was a slippery sensation--there was absolutely no pain, yet my penis had never been so tightly gripped--and when I ejaculated, I cried out against her small, soft breasts. I was surprised that my face was pressed against her breasts and her silky bra, because I didn't remember the moment when Miss Frost had stopped kissing me. (She'd said, "No, William. Please don't touch me there." Obviously, she couldn't have been kissing me and speaking to me at the same time.)

  There was so much I wanted to say to her, and ask her, but Miss Frost was not in a mood for conversation. Perhaps she was feeling the curious constraints of "so little time" again, or so I managed to convince myself.

  She drew a bath for me; I was hoping that she would take off the rest of her clothes and get into the big tub with me, but she did not. She knelt beside that bathtub with the lion paws for feet, and the lion heads for faucets, and she gently bathed me--she was especially gentle with my penis. (She even spoke of it affectionately, using the penith word in a way that made us both laugh.)

  But Miss Frost kept looking at her watch. "Late for check-in means a restriction, William. A restriction might entail an earlier check-in time. No visits to the First Sister Public Library after closing time--we wouldn't like that, would we?"

  When I had a look at her watch, I saw it was not even nine-thirty. I was just a few minutes' walk from Bancroft Hall, which I pointed out to Miss Frost.

  "Well, you might run into Kittredge and have a German discussion--you never know, William," was all she said.

  I had noticed a wet, silky feeling, and when I touched my penis--before stepping into the bath--my fingers had a vaguely perfumy smell. Maybe Miss Frost had used a lubricant of some kind, I imagined--something I would be reminded of years later, when I first smelled those liquid soaps that are made from almond or avocado oil. But, whatever it was, the bath had washed it away.

  "No detours to that old yearbook room--not tonight, William," Miss Frost was saying; she helped me get dressed, as if I were a child going off to my first day of school. She even put a dab of toothpaste on her finger, and stuck it in my mouth. "Go rinse your mouth in the sink," she told me. "I assume you can find your way out--I'll lock up again, when I go." She kissed me then--a long, lingering kiss that caused me to put both my hands on her hips.

  Miss Frost quickly intercepted my hands, taking them from her slinky, knee-length half-slip and clasping them to her breasts, where (I had the distinct impression) she believed my hands belonged. Or perhaps she believed that my hands didn't belong below her waist--that I should not, or must not, touch her "there."

  As I made my way up the dark basement stairs, toward the faint light that was glowing from the foyer of the library, I was remembering an idiot admonition in a long-ago morning meeting--the always-numbing warning from Dr. Harlow, on the occasion of a weekend dance we were having with a visiting all-girls' school. "Don't touch your dates below their waists," our peerless school physician said, "and you and your dates will be happier!"

  But this couldn't be true, I was thinking, when Miss Frost called to me--I was still on the stairs. "Go straight home, William--and come see me soon!"

  We have so little time! I almost called back to her--one of those premonitory thoughts I would remember later, and forever, though at the time I imagined I was thinking of saying it just to see what she would say. Miss Frost was the one who seemed to think we had so little time, for whatever reason.

  Outside, I had a passing thought about poor Atkins--poor Tom. I was sorry that I'd been mean to him, though it made me laugh at myself to recall I had ever imagined he might have a crush on Miss Frost. It was funny to think of them being together--Atkins with his pronunciation problem, his complete incapability of saying the time word, and Miss Frost saying it every other minute!

  I had passed the mirror in the dimly lit foyer, scarcely looking at myself, but--in the star-bright September night--I considered that I had looked much more grown up to myself (than before my encounter with Miss Frost, I mean). Yet, as I made my way along River Street to the Favorite River campus, I reflected that I could not tell from my expression in the mirror that I'd just had sex for the first time.

  And that thought had an unnerving, disturbing companion--namely, I suddenly imagined that maybe I hadn't had sex. (Not actual sex--no actual penetration, I mean.) Then I thought: How can I be thinking such a thing on what is the most pleasurable night of my young life?

  I as yet had no idea that it was possible not to have actual sex (or actual penetration) and still have unsurpassable sexual pleasure--a pleasure that, to this day, has been unmatched.

  But what did I know? I was only eighteen; that night, with James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room in my book bag, my crushes on the wrong people were just beginning.

  THE COMMON ROOM IN Bancroft Hall was, like the common rooms in other dorms, called the butt room; the seniors who were smokers were allowed to spend their study hours there. Many nonsmokers who were seniors thought it was a privilege too important to be missed; even they chose to spend their study hours there.

  No one warned us of the dangers of secondhand smoke in those fearless years--least of all our imbecilic school physician. I don't recall a single morning meeting that addressed the affliction of smoking! Dr. Harlow had devoted his time and talents to the treatment of exces
sive crying in boys--in the doctor's stalwart belief that there was a cure for homosexual tendencies in the young men we were becoming.

  I was fifteen minutes early for check-in; when I walked into the familiar blue-gray haze of smoke in the Bancroft butt room, Kittredge accosted me. I don't know what wrestling hold it was. I would later try to describe it to Delacorte--who I heard didn't do a bad job as Lear's Fool, by the way. Between rinsing and spitting, Delacorte said: "It sounds like an arm-bar. Kittredge arm-bars the shit out of everyone."

  Whatever the name of the wrestling hold is, it didn't hurt. I just knew I couldn't get away from him, and I didn't try. It was frankly overwhelming to be held so tightly by Kittredge, when I had just been held by Miss Frost.

  "Hi, Nymph," Kittredge said. "Where have you been?"

  "The library," I answered.

  "I heard you left the library a while ago," Kittredge said.

  "I went to the other library," I told him. "There's a public library, the town library."

  "I suppose one library isn't enough for a busy boy like you, Nymph. Herr Steiner is hitting us with a quiz tomorrow--I'm guessing more Rilke than Goethe, but what do you think?"

  I'd had Herr Steiner in German II--he was one of the Austrian skiers. He wasn't a bad teacher, or a bad guy, but he was pretty predictable. Kittredge was right that there would be more Rilke than Goethe on the quiz; Steiner liked Rilke, but who didn't? Herr Steiner also liked big words, and so did Goethe. Kittredge got in trouble in German because he was always guessing. You can't guess in a foreign language, especially not in a language as precise as German. Either you know it or you don't.

  "You've got to know the big words in Goethe, Kittredge. The quiz won't be all Rilke," I told him.

  "The phrases Steiner likes in Rilke are all the long ones," Kittredge complained. "They're hard to remember."

  "There are some short phrases in Rilke, too. Everyone likes them--not just Steiner," I warned him. " 'Musik: Atem der Statuen.' "

  "Shit!" Kittredge cried. "I know that--what is that?"

  " 'Music: breathing of statues,' " I translated for him, but I was thinking about the arm-bar, if that was the wrestling hold; I was hoping he would hold me forever. "And there's this one: 'Du, fast noch Kind'--do you know that one?"