by John Irving
"That's very interesting. I'm sorry I missed it," I told him again.
"Oh, that's all right--you probably would have done it better," Delacorte told me; he took another sip of water, then spit the water in the snow. Before he hurried on his way to wrestling practice, Delacorte suddenly asked me: "Was she pretty? I mean the transsexual librarian."
"Yes, very pretty," I answered.
"I have a hard time imagining it," Delacorte admitted worriedly; then he ran on.
Years later, when I knew that Delacorte was dying, I often thought of him playing Lear's Fool as a death-in-progress. I really am sorry I missed it. Oh, Delacorte, how I misjudged you--you were more of a death-in-progress than I ever imagined!
It was Tom Atkins who told me, that December of 1960, how Kittredge was telling everyone I was "a sexual hero."
"Kittredge said that to you, Tom?" I asked.
"He says it to everyone," Atkins told me.
"Who knows what Kittredge really thinks?" I said to Atkins. (I was still suffering from the way Kittredge had delivered the disgusting word when I'd least expected it.) That December, the wrestling team had no home matches--their earliest matches were away, at other schools--but Atkins had expressed his interest in seeing the home wrestling matches with me. I'd earlier resolved to see no more wrestling matches--in part because Elaine wasn't around to see the matches with me, but also because I was bullshitting myself about trying to boycott Kittredge. Yet Atkins was interested in watching the wrestling, and his interest had rekindled mine.
Then, that Christmas of 1960, Elaine came home; the Favorite River dormitories had emptied for the Christmas break, and Elaine and I had the deserted campus largely to ourselves. I told Elaine absolutely everything about Miss Frost; my session with Dr. Harlow had provided me with sufficient storytelling practice, and I was eager to make up for those years when I'd been less than candid with my dear friend Elaine. She was a good listener, and not once did she try to make me feel guilty for not telling her about my various sexual infatuations sooner.
We were able to speak frankly about Kittredge, too, and I even told Elaine that I "had once had" a crush on her mother. (That Mrs. Hadley no longer attracted me in that way made it easier for me to tell Elaine about it.) Elaine was such a good friend to me that she actually volunteered to be the go-between--that is, should I want to try to arrange a meeting with Miss Frost. I thought about such a meeting all the time, of course, but Miss Frost had so clearly indicated to me her unwavering intentions to say good-bye--her "till we meet again" had such a businesslike sound to it. I couldn't imagine that Miss Frost had meant anything clandestine or suggestive about how we might manage to "meet again."
I appreciated Elaine's willingness to be the go-between, but I didn't for a moment delude myself by imagining that Miss Frost would ever make herself available to me again. "You have to understand," I said to Elaine. "I think Miss Frost is pretty serious about protecting me."
"As first experiences go, Billy, I think you've had a pretty good one," Elaine told me.
"Except for the interference of my whole fucking family!" I cried.
"That's just weird," Elaine said. "It can't be Miss Frost they're all so afraid of. Surely they didn't believe that Miss Frost would ever hurt you."
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
"There's something about you they're afraid of, Billy," Elaine told me.
"That I'm a homosexual, or that I'm bisexual--is that what you mean?" I asked her. "Because I think they've already figured that out, or at least they suspect it."
"They're afraid of something you don't know yet, Billy," Elaine told me.
"I'm sick of everybody trying to protect me!" I shouted.
"That may indeed be Miss Frost's motive, Billy," Elaine said. "I'm not so sure about what's motivating your whole fucking family, as you say."
MY CRUDE COUSIN GERRY came home from college that same Christmas break. In Gerry's case, I use the crude word affectionately. Please don't dismiss Gerry as a stridently angry lesbian who hated her parents and all heterosexuals; she had always loathed boys, but I'd foolishly imagined that she might like me a little bit, because I knew she would have heard about my scandalous relationship with Miss Frost. Yet, at least for a few more years, Gerry wouldn't like gay or bisexual boys any better than she liked straight ones.
Nowadays, I hear my friends say that our society tends to be more accepting of gay and bi women than we are of gay and bi men. In our family's case, there was little apparent reaction to Gerry being a lesbian, at least compared to almost everyone having a cow about my relationship with Miss Frost--not to mention my mom's horror at how I was "turning out," sexually. Yes, I know, it's true that many people treat lesbians and bi women differently than they treat gay and bi men, but Gerry wasn't accepted by our family as much as she was simply ignored by them.
Uncle Bob loved Gerry, but Bob was a coward; he loved his daughter, in part, because she was more courageous than he was. I think Gerry deliberately misbehaved, and not only to build a barrier around herself; I think she was aggressive and "crude" because this forced our family to notice her.
I had always liked Gerry, but I kept my fondness for her a secret. I wish I'd told her that I liked her--I mean, sooner than I did.
We would become better friends when we were older; nowadays, we're quite close. I'm truly fond of Gerry--okay, in an odd way--but Gerry was not very likable when she was a young woman. All I'm saying is that Gerry purposely made herself unlikable. Elaine detested her, and would never like her--not even a little.
That Christmas, Elaine and I were up to our usual but separate pursuits in the yearbook room of the academy library. The library was open over the Christmas break--except for Christmas Day. Many of the faculty liked to work there, and Christmastime was when a lot of prospective students and their parents visited Favorite River Academy. My summer job, for the past three years, had been as a tour guide; I showed prospective students and their parents my awful school. I got a part-time job as a tour guide over the Christmas break, too; the boys among the faculty brats frequently did this. Uncle Bob, the admissions man, was our overly permissive boss.
Elaine and I were in the yearbook room when my cousin Gerry found us. "I hear you're queer," Gerry said to me, ignoring Elaine.
"I guess so," I said, "but I'm attracted to some women, too."
"I don't want to know," Gerry told me. "No one's sticking anything up my ass, or anywhere else."
"You never know till you try it," Elaine said. "You might like it, Gerry."
"I see you're not pregnant," Gerry said to her, "unless you're already pregnant again, Elaine, and you're not yet showing."
"You got a girlfriend?" Elaine asked her.
"She could beat the shit out of you, Elaine," Gerry said. "You, too--probably," Gerry told me.
I could be forgiving of Gerry, knowing that Muriel was her mother; that couldn't have been easy, especially for a lesbian. I was less inclined to forgive Gerry for how harsh she was with her father, because I had always liked Uncle Bob. But Elaine felt no forgiveness for Gerry at all. There must have been some history between them; maybe Gerry had hit on her, or when Elaine had been pregnant with Kittredge's child, it's entirely possible that Gerry had said or written something cruel to her.
"My dad's looking for you, Billy," Gerry said. "There's a family he wants you to show the school to. The kid looks like a bed-wetter to me, but maybe he's a homo, and you can suck each other off in one of the empty dorm rooms."
"Jesus, you're crass!" Elaine said to Gerry. "I was naive enough to imagine that college would have civilized you--at least to some small degree. But I think whatever tasteless culture you acquired from your Ezra Falls high school experience is the only culture you're capable of acquiring."
"I guess the culture you acquired didn't teach you to keep your thighs together, Elaine," Gerry told her. "Why not ask my dad to give you the master key to Tilley, when you're showing the bed-wetter and his parents aro
und?" Gerry asked me. "That way, you and Elaine can sneak a look at Kittredge's room. Maybe you two jerk-offs can masturbate each other on Kittredge's bed," Gerry told us. "What I mean, Billy, is that you have to have a master key to show someone a dorm room, don't you? Why not get the key to Tilley?" With that, Gerry left Elaine and me in the yearbook room. Like her mother, Muriel, Gerry could be an insensitive bitch, but--unlike her mother--Gerry wasn't conventional. (Maybe I admired how angry Gerry was.) "I guess your whole fucking family--as you say, Billy--talks about you," Elaine said. "They just don't talk to you."
"I guess so," I said, but I was thinking that Aunt Muriel and my mother were probably the chief culprits--that is, when it came to talking about me but not to me.
"Do you want to see Kittredge's room in Tilley?" Elaine asked me.
"If you do," I told her. Of course I wanted to see Kittredge's room--and Elaine did, too.
I HAD LOST A little of my enthusiasm for perusing the old yearbooks, following my discovery that Miss Frost had been the Favorite River wrestling-team captain in 1935. Since then, I hadn't made much progress--nor had Elaine.
Elaine was still stuck in the contemporary yearbooks; specifically, she was held in thrall by what she called "the Kittredge years." She devoted herself to finding photos of the younger, more innocent-seeming Kittredge. Now that Kittredge was in his fifth and final year at Favorite River, Elaine sought out those photographs of him in his freshman and sophomore years. Yes, he'd looked younger then; the innocent-seeming part, however, was hard to see.
If one could believe Mrs. Kittredge's story--if Kittredge's own mother had really had sex with him when she said she did--Kittredge had not been innocent for very long, and he'd definitely not been innocent by the time he attended Favorite River. Even as a freshman--on the very day Kittredge had shown up in First Sister, Vermont--Kittredge hadn't been innocent. (It was almost impossible for me to imagine that he'd ever been innocent.) Yet Elaine kept looking through those earliest photographs for some evidence of Kittredge's innocence.
I don't remember the boy Gerry had called the bed-wetter. He was (in all likelihood) a prepubescent boy, probably on his way to becoming straight or gay--but not on his way to becoming bi, or so I imagine. I don't recall the alleged bed-wetter's parents, either. My exchange with Uncle Bob, about the master key to Tilley, is more memorable.
"Sure, show 'em Tilley--why not?" my easygoing uncle said to me. "Just don't show 'em Kittredge's room--it's not typical."
"Not typical," I repeated.
"See for yourself, Billy--just show 'em another room," Uncle Bob told me.
I don't recall whose room I showed to the bed-wetter and his parents; it was the standard double, with two of everything--two beds, two desks, two chests of drawers.
"Everyone has a roommate?" the bed-wetter's mom asked; it was usually the mothers who asked the roommate question.
"Yes, everyone--no exceptions," I said; those were the rules.
"What's 'not typical' about Kittredge's room?" Elaine asked, after the visiting family was through their tour.
"We'll soon see," I said. "Uncle Bob didn't tell me."
"Jesus, no one in your family tells you anything, Billy!" Elaine exclaimed.
I'd been thinking the same thing. In the yearbook room, I was up only to the Class of '40. I had twenty years to go before I got to my own graduating class, and I'd just discovered that the yearbook for 1940 was missing. I'd skipped from the '39 Owl to '41 and '42, before I realized that '40 was gone.
When I asked the academy librarian about it, I said: "Nobody can check out a yearbook. The Owl for 1940 must have been stolen."
The academy librarian was one of Favorite River's fussy old bachelors; everyone thought that such older, unmarried males on the Favorite River faculty were what we called at that time "nonpracticing homosexuals." Who knew if they were or weren't "practicing," or if they were or were not homosexuals? All we'd observed was that they lived alone, and there was a particular fastidiousness about the way they dressed, and the way they ate and spoke--hence we imagined that they were unnaturally effeminate.
"Students may not check out a yearbook, Billy--the faculty can," the academy librarian said primly; his name was Mr. Lockley.
"The faculty can," I repeated.
"Yes, of course they can," Mr. Lockley told me; he was looking through some filing cards. "Mr. Fremont has checked out the 1940 Owl, Billy."
"Oh."
Mr. Fremont--Robert Fremont, Class of '35, Miss Frost's classmate--was my uncle Bob, of course. But when I asked Bob if he was finished with the '40 Owl, because I was waiting to have a look at it, good old easygoing Bob wasn't so easygoing about it.
"I'm pretty sure I returned that yearbook to the library, Billy," my uncle said; he was a good guy, basically, but a bad liar. Uncle Bob was a fairly forthright fella, but I knew he was hanging on to the '40 Owl, for some unknown reason.
"Mr. Lockley thinks you still have it, Uncle Bob," I told him.
"Well, I'll look all around for it, Billy, but I swear I took it back to the library," Bob said.
"What did you need it for?" I asked him.
"A member of that class is newly deceased," Uncle Bob replied. "I wanted to say some nice things about him, when I wrote to his family."
"Oh."
Poor Uncle Bob would never be a writer, I knew; he couldn't make up a story to save his ass.
"What was his name?" I asked.
"Whose name, Billy?" Bob said in a half-strangled voice.
"The deceased, Uncle Bob."
"Gosh, Billy--I can't for the life of me remember the fella's name!"
"Oh."
"More fucking secrets," Elaine said, when I told her the story. "Ask Gerry to find the yearbook and give it to you. Gerry hates her parents--she'll do it for you."
"I think Gerry hates me, too," I told Elaine.
"Gerry hates her parents more," Elaine said.
We'd located the door to Kittredge's room in Tilley, and I let us in with the master key Uncle Bob had given me. At first, the only "not typical" thing about the dorm room was how neat it was, but neither Elaine nor I was surprised to see that Kittredge was tidy.
The one bookshelf had very few books on it; there was a lot of room for more books. The one desk had very little on it; the one chair had no clothes draped over it. There were just a couple of framed photographs on top of the lone chest of drawers, and the wardrobe closet, which typically had no door--not even a curtain--revealed Kittredge's familiar (and expensive-looking) clothes. Not even the solitary single bed had any stray clothes on it, and the bed was perfectly made--the sheets and blanket uncreased, the pillowcase unwrinkled.
"Jesus," Elaine suddenly said. "How did the bastard swing a single?"
It was a single room; Kittredge had no roommate--that's what was "not typical" about it. Elaine and I speculated that the single room might have been part of the deal Mrs. Kittredge made with the academy when she'd told them--and Mr. and Mrs. Hadley--that she would take Elaine to Europe and get the unfortunate girl a safe abortion. It was also possible that Kittredge had been an overpowering and abusive roommate; perhaps no one had wanted to be Kittredge's roommate, but this struck both Elaine and me as unlikely. At Favorite River Academy, it would have been prestigious to be Kittredge's roommate; even if he abused you, you wouldn't want to give up the honor. The single room, in combination with Kittredge's evidently compulsive neatness, smacked of privilege. Kittredge exuded privilege, as if he'd managed (even in utero) to create his own sense of entitlement.
What was most upsetting to Elaine about Kittredge's room was that there was absolutely no evidence in it that he'd ever known her; maybe she'd expected to see a photograph of herself. (She admitted to me that she'd given him several.) I didn't ask her if she'd given Kittredge one of her bras, but that was because I was hoping to ask her if she would give me another one.
There were some school-newspaper photographs, and yearbook photos, of Kittredge wrestling. Ther
e were no pictures of girlfriends (or ex-girlfriends). There were no photographs of Kittredge as a child; if he'd ever had a dog, there were no pictures of the dog. There were no photos of anyone who could have been his father. The only picture of Mrs. Kittredge had been taken the one time she'd come to Favorite River to see her son wrestle. The photo must have been taken after the match; Elaine and I had been at that match--it was the only time I saw Mrs. Kittredge. Elaine and I didn't remember seeing anyone take a picture of Kittredge and his mom at the match, but someone had.
What Elaine and I noticed, simultaneously, was that an unseen hand--it must have been Kittredge's--had cut off Mrs. Kittredge's face and glued it to Kittredge's body. There was Kittredge's mother in Kittredge's wrestling tights and singlet. And there was Kittredge's handsome face glued to his mother's beautiful and exquisitely tailored body. It was a funny photograph, but Elaine and I didn't laugh about it.
The truth is, Kittredge's face worked on a woman's body, with a woman's clothes, and Mrs. Kittredge's face went very well with Kittredge's wrestler's body (in tights and a singlet).
"I suppose it's possible," I said to Elaine, "that Mrs. Kittredge could have switched the faces in the photograph." (I didn't really think so, but I said it.) "No," Elaine flatly said. "Only Kittredge could have done it. That woman has no imagination and no sense of humor."
"If you say so," I told my dear friend. (As I've already told you, I wouldn't question Elaine's authority on the subject of Mrs. Kittredge. How could I?) "YOU'D BETTER GO TO work on Gerry and find that 1940 yearbook, Billy," Elaine told me.
I did this at our family dinner on Christmas Day--when Aunt Muriel and Uncle Bob and Gerry joined my mom and me, and Richard Abbott, at Grandpa Harry's house on River Street. Nana Victoria always made a big to-do about the essential and necessary "old-fashionedness" of Christmas dinner.
It was also a tradition in our family that the Borkmans joined us for Christmas dinner. In my memory, Christmas was one of the few days of the year I saw Mrs. Borkman. At Nana Victoria's insistence, we all called her "Mrs." Borkman; I never knew her first name. When I say "all," I don't mean only the children. Surprisingly, that is how Aunt Muriel and my mother addressed Mrs. Borkman--and Uncle Bob and Richard Abbott, when they spoke to the presumed "Ibsen woman" Nils had married. (She had not left Nils, nor had she shot herself in the temple, but we assumed that Nils Borkman would never have married a woman who wasn't an Ibsen woman, and we therefore wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Mrs. Borkman had done something dire.) The Borkmans did not have children, which indicated to my aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria that there was something amiss (or indeed dire) in their relationship.