by John Irving
"You mean 'vagina,' Tom?"
Atkins nodded vigorously; I thought poor Tom had that verge-of-tears aspect, in the way he wouldn't stop nodding his head, but Mrs. Hadley saved him from crying--albeit only momentarily.
"Tom Atkins!" Martha Hadley called down the stairwell. "I can hear your voice, but you are late for your appointment! I am waiting for you!"
Atkins started to run up the stairs, without thinking. He gave me a friendly but vaguely embarrassed look, over his shoulder; I distinctly heard him call to Mrs. Hadley as he continued up the stairs. "I'm sorry! I'm coming!" Atkins shouted. "I just lost track of the time!" Both Martha Hadley and I had clearly heard him.
"That sounds like a breakthrough to me, Tom!" I hollered up the stairs.
"What did you just say, Tom Atkins? Say it again!" I heard Mrs. Hadley call down to him.
"Time! Time! Time!" I heard Atkins crying, before his tears engulfed him.
"Oh, don't cry, you silly boy!" Martha Hadley was saying. "Tom, Tom--please stop crying. You should be happy!" But I heard Atkins blubbering on and on; once the tears started, he couldn't stop them. (I knew the feeling.)
"Listen to me, Tom!" I called up the stairwell. "You're on a roll, man. Now's the time to try 'vagina.' I know you can do it! If you can conquer 'time,' trust me--'vagina' is easy! Let me hear you say the vagina word, Tom! Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!"
"Watch your language, Billy," Mrs. Hadley called down the stairwell. I would have kept up the encouragements to poor Tom, but I didn't want Martha Hadley--or another faculty person in the music building--to give me a restriction.
I had a date--a fucking date!--with Miss Frost, so I didn't repeat the vagina word. I just went on my way down the stairs; all the way out of the music building, I could hear Tom Atkins crying.
IT'S EASY TO SEE, with hindsight, how I gave myself away. I wasn't in the habit of showering and shaving before I went out in the evening to the library. While I was in the habit of not saying to Richard or my mom which library I was going to, I suppose I should have been smart enough to take Giovanni's Room with me. (I left the novel under my pillow, with Elaine's bra, but that was because I wasn't intending to return the book to the library. I wanted to lend it to Tom Atkins, but only after I'd asked Miss Frost if she thought that was a good idea.)
"You look nice, Billy," my mother commented, as I was leaving our dormitory apartment. She almost never complimented me on my appearance; while she'd more than once said I was "going to be good-looking," she hadn't said that in a couple of years. I'm guessing that I was already too good-looking, in my mom's opinion, because the way she said the nice word wasn't very nice.
"Going to the library, Bill?" Richard asked me.
"That's right," I said. It was stupid of me not to take my German homework with me. Because of Kittredge, I was almost never without my Goethe and my Rilke. But that night my book bag was practically empty. I had one of my writing notebooks with me--that was all.
"You look too nice for the library, Billy," my mom said.
"I suppose I can't go around looking like Lear's shadow, can I?" I asked the two of them. I was just showing off, but, in retrospect, it was inadvisable to give my mother and Richard Abbott a taste of my newfound confidence.
It was only a little later that same evening--I'm sure I was still in the yearbook room of the academy library--when Kittredge showed up at Bancroft Hall, looking for me. My mother answered the door to our apartment, but when she saw who it was, I'm certain she wouldn't have invited Kittredge in. "Richard!" she no doubt called. "Jacques Kittredge is here!"
"I was hoping for a word with the German scholar," Kittredge said charmingly.
"Richard!" my mom would have called again.
"I'm coming, Jewel!" Richard would have answered. It was a small apartment; while my mother wanted nothing to do with talking to Kittredge, I'm sure she overheard every word of Kittredge's conversation with Richard.
"If it's the German scholar you're looking for, Jacques, I'm afraid he's gone to the library," Richard told Kittredge.
"Which library?" Kittredge asked. "He's a two-library student, that German scholar. The other night, he was hanging out in the town library--you know, the public one."
"What's Billy doing in the public library, Richard?" my mom might have asked. (She would have thought this, anyway; she would have asked Richard later, if not while Kittredge was still there.)
"I guess Miss Frost is continuing to advise him about what to read," Richard Abbott may have answered--either then or later.
"I gotta be going," Kittredge probably said. "Just tell the German scholar that I did pretty well on the quiz--my best grade ever. Tell him he was dead-on about the 'passion brings pain' part. Tell him he even guessed right about the 'terrifying angel'--I nailed that part," Kittredge told Richard.
"I'll tell him," Richard would have said to Kittredge. "You got the 'passion brings pain' part--you nailed the 'terrifying angel,' too. I'll be sure to tell him."
By then, my mother would already have found the library book in my bedroom. She knew that I kept Elaine's bra under my pillow; I'll bet that's the first place she looked.
Richard Abbott was a well-informed guy; he may have already heard what Giovanni's Room was about. Of course, my German homework--the ever-present Goethe and Rilke--would have been visible in my bedroom, too. Whatever was preoccupying me, in which library, it didn't appear to be my German homework. And folded in the pages of Mr. Baldwin's superb novel would have been my handwritten notes--quotations from Giovanni's Room included, of course. Naturally, "stink of love" would have been among my jottings, and that sentence I thought of whenever I thought of Kittredge: "With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes."
Kittredge would have been long gone from Bancroft by the time Richard and my mom drew their conclusions and called the others. Maybe not Mrs. Hadley--that is, not at first--but certainly my meddlesome aunt Muriel and my much-abused uncle Bob, and of course Nana Victoria and First Sister's most famous female impersonator, Grandpa Harry. They must have all drawn their conclusions, and even come up with a rudimentary plan, while I was still in the process of leaving the old yearbook room; by the time their plan of attack took its final form, I'm sure I was already en route to the First Sister Public Library, where I arrived shortly before closing time.
I HAD A LOT on my mind about Miss Frost--especially after seeing the 1935 Owl. I did my best not to linger over that heartthrob of a boy on the '31 wrestling team; there wasn't anyone who arrested my attention in the Favorite River Academy yearbook of 1932, not even among the wrestlers. In the Drama Club photos from '33 and '34, there were some boys-as-girls who looked convincingly feminine--at least onstage--but I didn't pay very close attention to those photographs, and I completely missed Miss Frost in the wrestling-team pictures of the '33 and '34 teams, when she was in the back row.
It was the '35 Owl that was the shocker--what would have been Miss Frost's senior year at Favorite River Academy. In that year, Miss Frost--even as a boy--was unmistakable. She was seated front-row center, because "A. Frost" was noted as the wrestling captain in '35; just the initial "A." was used in the captions under the team photo. Even sitting down, her long torso made her a head taller than any of the other boys in the front row, and I spotted her broad shoulders and big hands as easily as I doubtless would have if she'd been dressed and made up as a girl.
Her long, pretty face had not changed, though her thick hair was cut unfamiliarly short. I quickly flipped to the head shots of the graduating seniors. To my surprise, Albert Frost was from the town of First Sister, Vermont--a day student, not a boarder--and while the eighteen-year-old Albert's choice of college or university was cited as "undecided," the young man's chosen career was revealing. Albert had designated "fiction"--most fitting for a future librarian and a handsome boy on his way to becoming a passable (albeit small-breasted) woman.
I guessed that Aunt Muriel must have remembered Albert Frost, the handsome wrestling-team captain-
-Class of '35--and that it was as a boy that Muriel meant Miss Frost "used to be very good-looking." (Albert certainly was.)
I was not surprised to see Albert Frost's nickname at Favorite River Academy. It was "Big Al."
Miss Frost hadn't been kidding when she'd told me that "everyone used to" call her Al--including, very probably, my aunt Muriel.
I was surprised that I recognized another face among the head shots of the graduating seniors in the Class of 1935. Robert Fremont--my uncle Bob--had graduated in Miss Frost's class. Bob, whose nickname was "Racquet Man," must have known Miss Frost when she was Big Al. (It was one of life's little coincidences that, in the '35 Owl, Robert Fremont was on the page opposite Albert Frost.)
I realized, on that short walk from the yearbook room to the First Sister Public Library, that everyone in my family, which for a few years now included Richard Abbott, had to have known that Miss Frost had been born--and, in all likelihood, still was--a man. Naturally, no one had told me that Miss Frost was a man; after all, a lack of candor was endemic in my family.
It occurred to me, as I stood looking at my frightened face in that mirror in the dimly lit foyer of the town library, where Tom Atkins had so recently startled himself, that almost anyone of a certain age in First Sister, Vermont, would have known that Miss Frost was a man; this surely included everyone over the age of forty who had seen Miss Frost onstage as an Ibsen woman in those amateur productions of the First Sister Players.
I had subsequently found Miss Frost in the wrestling-team photos in the '33 and '34 yearbooks, where A. Frost was not quite so big and broad-shouldered; in fact, she'd stood so unsure of herself in the back row of those team photos that I had overlooked her.
I'd overlooked her, too, in the Drama Club photographs. A. Frost was always cast as a woman; she'd been onstage in a variety of female roles, but wearing such absurd wigs, and with breasts so unsuitably big, that I had failed to recognize her. What a lark that must have been for the boys--to see their wrestling-team captain, Big Al, flouncing around onstage, pretending to be a girl! Yet, when Richard had asked Miss Frost if she'd ever been onstage--if she'd ever acted--she'd answered, "Only in my mind."
What a lot of lies! I was thinking, as I saw myself shaking in the mirror.
"Is someone here?" I heard Miss Frost call. "Is that you, William?" she called, loudly enough that I knew we were alone in the library.
"Yes, it's me, Big Al," I answered.
"Oh, dear," I heard Miss Frost say, with an exaggerated sigh. "I told you we didn't have much time."
"There's quite a lot you didn't tell me!" I called to her.
I saw that, in anticipation of my arrival, Miss Frost had already killed the lights in the main library. The light that glowed upward, from the bottom of the basement stairs--the basement door was open--bathed Miss Frost in a soft, flattering light. She sat at the checkout desk with her big hands folded in her lap. (I say the light was "flattering" because it made her look younger; of course that also might have been the influence of my seeing her in those old yearbooks.)
"Come kiss me, William," Miss Frost said. "There's no reason for you not to kiss me, is there?"
"You're a man, aren't you?" I asked her.
"Goodness me, what makes a man?" she asked. "Isn't Kittredge a man? You want to kiss him. Don't you still want to kiss me, William?"
I did want to kiss her; I wanted to do everything with her, but I was angry and upset, and I knew by the way I was shaking that I was very close to crying, which I didn't want to do.
"You're a transsexual!" I told her.
"My dear boy," Miss Frost said sharply. "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me--don't make me a category before you get to know me!"
When she stood up from her desk, she seemed to tower over me; when she opened her arms to me, I didn't hesitate--I ran to her strong embrace, and kissed her. Miss Frost kissed me back, very hard. I couldn't cry, because she took my breath away.
"My, my--what a busy boy you've been, William," she said, leading me to the basement stairs. "You've read Giovanni's Room, haven't you?"
"Twice!" I managed to say.
"Twice, already! And you've found the time to read those old yearbooks, haven't you, William? I knew it wouldn't take you long to get from 1931 to 1935. Was it that wrestling-team photo in '35--was that the one that caught your eye, William?"
"Yes!" I scarcely managed to tell her. Miss Frost was lighting the cinnamon-scented candle in her bedroom; then she turned off the reading lamp that was fastened to the headboard of her brass bed, where the covers were already turned down.
"I couldn't very well have kept you from seeing those old yearbooks--could I, William?" she went on saying. "I'm not welcome in the academy library. And if you hadn't seen that picture of me in my wrestling days, surely somebody would have told you about me--eventually. I'm frankly astonished that someone didn't tell you," Miss Frost said.
"My family doesn't tell me much," I told her. I was undressing as quickly as I could, and Miss Frost had already unbuttoned her blouse and taken off her skirt. This time, when she used the toilet, she didn't mention the matter of her privacy.
"Yes, I know about that family of yours!" she said, laughing. She hiked up her half-slip, and--first lifting the wooden toilet seat--she peed standing up, rather loudly, but with her back to me. I didn't see her penis, but there was no doubt, from the forceful way she was pissing, that she had one.
I lay naked on the brass bed and watched her washing her hands and face, and brushing her teeth, in that little sink. I saw her wink at me in the mirror. "I guess you must have been a pretty good wrestler," I said to her, "if they made you captain of the team."
"I didn't ask to be captain," she told me. "I just kept beating everybody--I beat everyone, so they made me captain. It wasn't the kind of thing you could refuse."
"Oh."
"Besides, the wrestling kept them all from questioning me," Miss Frost said. She was hanging up her skirt and blouse in the wardrobe closet; this time, she took her bra off, too. "They don't question you--I mean sexually--if you're a wrestler. It kind of keeps them off the track--if you know what I mean, William."
"I know what you mean," I told her. I thought that her breasts were wonderful--so small, and with such perfect nipples, but her breasts were bigger than poor Elaine's. Miss Frost had a fourteen-year-old's breasts, and they looked small on her only because she was so big and strong.
"I love your breasts," I said to her.
"Thank you, William. They won't get any bigger, but it's a wonder what hormones can induce. I guess I don't really need to have bigger ones," Miss Frost said, smiling at me.
"I think they're the perfect size," I told her.
"I assure you, I didn't have them when I wrestled--that wouldn't have worked out very well," Miss Frost said. "I kept wrestling--thus, I kept the questions at bay, all through college," she told me. "No breasts--no living as a woman, William--until after I was out of college."
"Where'd you go to college?" I asked her.
"Someplace in Pennsylvania," she told me. "It's no place you've ever heard of."
"Were you as good a wrestler as Kittredge?" I asked her. She lay down beside me on the bed, but this time when she took my penis in her big hand, I was facing her.
"Kittredge isn't that good," Miss Frost said. "He just hasn't had any competition. New England isn't exactly a hotbed for wrestling. It's nothing like Pennsylvania."
"Oh."
I touched her half-slip, in the area where I thought her penis was; she let me touch her. I didn't try to reach under the half-slip. I just touched her penis through the slinky material of her half-slip; this one was a pearl-gray color, almost the same color as Elaine's bra. When I thought of Elaine's bra, I remembered Giovanni's Room, which was under the same pillow.
The James Baldwin novel was so unbearably sad that I suddenly didn't want to talk about it with Miss Frost; instead, I asked her, "Wasn't it difficult being a wrestler, when you wante
d to be a girl and you were attracted to other boys?"
"It wasn't that difficult when I was winning. I like to be on top," she told me. "When you're winning in wrestling, you're on top. It was more difficult in Pennsylvania, because I wasn't winning all the time there. I was on the bottom more than I liked," she said, "but I was older then--I could handle losing. I hated being pinned, but I was pinned only twice--by the same fucking guy. Wrestling was my cover, William. Back then, boys like us needed a cover. Wasn't Elaine a cover, William? She looked like your cover to me," Miss Frost said. "Nowadays, don't boys like us still need a little cover?"
"Yes, we do," I whispered.
"Oh, now we're whispering again!" Miss Frost whispered. "Whispering is a kind of cover, too, I guess."
"You must have studied something in that college in Pennsylvania--not just wrestling," I said to her. "The yearbook said your choice of career was 'fiction'--kind of a funny career path, isn't it?" I asked her. (I believe I was just babbling, as a way to distract myself from Miss Frost's penis.)
"In college, I studied library science," Miss Frost was saying, while we went on holding each other's penises. Hers wasn't as hard as mine--not yet, anyway. I thought that, even not hard, her penis was bigger than mine, but if you're not experienced, you can't really estimate the size of someone's penis--not if you can't see it. "I thought that a library would be a fairly safe and forgiving place for a man who was on his way to becoming a woman," Miss Frost continued. "I even knew which library I wanted to work in--the very same academy library where those old yearbooks are, William. I thought: What other library would appreciate me as much as my old school library? I'd been a good student at Favorite River, and I'd been a very good wrestler--not so good by Pennsylvania standards, maybe, but I'd been very good in New England. Of course, when I came back to First Sister as a woman, Favorite River Academy wanted nothing to do with someone like me--not around all those impressionable boys! Everyone is naive about something, William, and I was naive about that. I knew my old school had liked me when I was Big Al; I was naive enough to be unprepared for them not liking me as Miss Frost. It was only because your grandpa Harry was on the board of the town library--this funny old public library, where I was way overqualified to be the librarian--that they gave me the job here."