by John Irving
"Rachel is sucking up to you, and you don't see it," Elaine said. I didn't say anything, and Elaine added: "If you ask me, I think my tits are bigger."
"Bigger than--"
"Rachel's!"
"Oh."
Elaine was never sexually jealous of anyone I was sleeping with, but she didn't like it when I was hanging out with a writer who was younger than she was--man or woman.
"Rachel writes in the present tense--'I go, she says, he goes, I think.' That shit," Elaine declared.
"Yes, well--"
"And the 'thinking, wishing, hoping, wondering'--that shit!" Elaine cried.
"Yes, I know--" I started to say.
"I hope she doesn't verbalize her orgasms: 'Billy--I'm coming!' That shit," Elaine said.
"Well, no--not that I remember," I replied.
"I think she's one of those young-women writers who baby her students," Elaine said.
Elaine had taught more than I had; I never argued with her about teaching, or Mrs. Kittredge. Grandpa Harry was generous to me; he gave me a little money for Christmas every year. I'd had part-time college-teaching jobs, the occasional writer-in-residence stint--the latter never longer than a single semester. I didn't dislike teaching, but it hadn't invaded my writing time--as I knew it did invade the writing time of many writer friends, Elaine among them.
"Just so you know, Elaine--I find there's more to like about Rachel than her small breasts," I said.
"I would sincerely hope so, Billy," Elaine said.
"Are you seeing anyone?" I asked my old friend.
"You know that guy Rachel almost married?" Elaine asked me.
"Not personally," I told her.
"He hit on me," Elaine said.
"Oh."
"He told me that, one time, Rachel shit in the bed--that's what he told me, Billy," Elaine said.
"Nothing like that has happened, yet," I told Elaine. "But I'll be on the lookout for anything suspicious."
After that, we drove for a while in silence. When we left New York State and crossed into Vermont, a little west of Bennington, there were more dead things in the road; the bigger dead things had been dragged to the side of the road, but we could still see them. I remember a couple of deer, in the bigger category, and the usual raccoons and porcupines. There's a lot of roadkill in northern New England.
"Would you like me to drive?" I asked Elaine.
"Sure--yes, I would," Elaine answered quietly. She found a place to pull off the road, and I took over the driving. We turned north again, just before Bennington; there was more snow in the woods, and more dead things in the road and along the roadside.
We were a long way from New York City when Elaine said, "That guy didn't hit on me, Billy--I made up the story about Rachel shitting in bed, too."
"That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up."
"I did run into someone you went to school with--this is a true story," Elaine told me.
"Who? In school with where?" I asked her.
"At the Institute, in Vienna--she was one of those Institute girls," Elaine said. "When she met you, you told her you were trying to be faithful to a girlfriend back in the States."
"I did tell some girls that," I admitted.
"I told this Institute girl that I was the girlfriend you were trying to be faithful to, when you were in Vienna," Elaine said.
We both had a laugh about that, but Elaine then asked me--more seriously--"Do you know what that Institute girl said, Billy?"
"No. What?" I asked.
"She said, 'Poor you!' That's what she said--this is a true story, Billy," Elaine told me.
I didn't doubt it. Das Institut was awfully small; every student there knew when I was fucking a soprano understudy--and, later, when I was fucking a famous American poet.
"If you'd been my girlfriend, I would have been faithful to you, Elaine--or I would have sincerely tried," I told her. I let her cry for a while in the passenger seat.
"If you'd been my boyfriend, I would have sincerely tried, too, Billy," Elaine finally said.
We drove northeast, then headed west from Ezra Falls--the Favorite River running beside us, to the north side of the road. Even in February, as cold as it was, that river was never entirely frozen over. Of course I'd thought about having children with Elaine, but there was no point in bringing that up; Elaine wasn't kidding about the size of babies' heads--in her view, they were enormous.
When we drove down River Street, past the building that had once been the First Sister Public Library--it was now the town's historical society--Elaine said, "I ran lines with you on that brass bed, for The Tempest, about a century ago."
"Almost twenty years ago, yes," I said. I wasn't thinking about The Tempest, or running lines with Elaine on that brass bed. I had other memories of that bed, but as I drove past what used to be the public library, it occurred to me--a mere seventeen years after the much-maligned librarian had left town--that Miss Frost might have protected (or not) other young men in her basement bedroom.
But what other young men would Miss Frost have met in the library? I suddenly remembered that I'd never seen any children there. As for teenagers, there were only those occasional girls--the high school students condemned to Ezra Falls. I'd never seen any teenage boys in the First Sister Public Library--except for the night Tom Atkins came, looking for me.
Except for me, our town's young boys would not have been encouraged to visit that library. Surely, no responsible parents in First Sister would have wanted their young male children to be in the company of the transsexual wrestler who was in charge of the place!
I suddenly realized why I'd been so late in getting a library card; no one in my family would ever have introduced me to Miss Frost. It was only because Richard Abbott proposed taking me to the First Sister Public Library, and no one in my family could ever say no to Richard--nor was anyone in my family quick enough to overrule Richard's good-hearted and impromptu proposition. I'd managed to meet Miss Frost only because Richard recognized the absurdity of a small-town thirteen-year-old boy not having a library card.
"Almost twenty years ago feels like a century to me, Billy," Elaine was saying.
Not to me, I was trying to say, but the words wouldn't come. It feels like yesterday to me! I wanted to shout, but I couldn't speak.
Elaine, who saw I was crying, put her hand on my thigh. "Sorry I brought up that brass bed, Billy," Elaine said. (Elaine, who knew me so well, knew I wasn't crying for my mother.)
GIVEN THE SECRETS MY family watched over--those silent vigils we kept, in lieu of anything remotely resembling honest disclosure--it is a wonder I didn't also suffer a religious upbringing, but those Winthrop women were not religious. Grandpa Harry and I had been spared that falsehood. As for Uncle Bob and Richard Abbott, I know there were times when living with my aunt Muriel and my mother must have resembled a religious observance--the kind of demanding devotion that fasting requires, or perhaps a nocturnal trial (such as staying up all night, when going to sleep would be both customary and more natural).
"What is it that's so appealin' about a wake?" Grandpa Harry asked Elaine and me. We went first to his house on River Street; I'd half expected Harry to greet us as a woman, or at least dressed in Nana Victoria's clothes, but he was looking like a lumberman--jeans, a flannel shirt, unshaven. "I mean, why would anyone livin' find it suitable to watch over the bodies of the dead--that is, before you get to the buryin' part? Where are the dead bodies gonna go? Why do dead bodies need watchin'?" Grandpa Harry asked.
It was Vermont; it was February. Nobody was burying Muriel or my mother until April, after the ground had thawed. I could only guess that the funeral home had asked Grandpa Harry if he'd wanted to have a proper wake; that had probably started the tirade.
"Jeez--we'll be watchin' the bodies till spring!" Harry had shouted.
There was no religious service planned. Grandpa Harry had a big house; friends and family members would show up for cocktails and a catered bu
ffet. The memorial word was allowed, but not a "memorial service"; Elaine and I didn't hear the service word mentioned. Harry seemed distracted and forgetful. Elaine and I both thought he didn't behave like a man who'd just lost his only children, his two daughters; instead, Harry struck us as an eighty-four-year-old who had misplaced his reading glasses--Grandpa Harry was eerily disconnected from the moment. We left him to ready himself for the "party"; Elaine and I were not mistaken--Harry had used the party word.
"Uh-oh," Elaine had said, as we were leaving the River Street house.
It was the first time I had been "home" when school was in session--that is, to Richard Abbott's faculty apartment in Bancroft Hall--since I'd been a Favorite River student. But how young the students looked was more unnerving to Elaine.
"I don't see anyone I could even imagine having sex with," Elaine said.
At least Bancroft was still a boys' dorm; it was disconcerting enough to see all the girls on the campus. In a process that was familiar to most of the single-sex boarding schools in New England, Favorite River had become a coed institution in 1973. Uncle Bob was no longer working in Admissions. The Racquet Man had a new career in Alumni Affairs. I could easily see Uncle Bob as a glad-hander, a natural at soliciting goodwill (and money) from a sentimental Favorite River alum. Bob also had a gift for inserting his queries into the class notes in the academy's alumni magazine, The River Bulletin. It had become Bob's passion to track down those elusive Favorite River graduates who'd failed to keep in touch with their old school. (Uncle Bob called his queries "Cries for Help from the Where-Have-You-Gone? Dept.")
Cousin Gerry had forewarned me that Bob's drinking had been "unleashed" by all his traveling for Alumni Affairs, but I counted Gerry as the last surviving Winthrop woman--albeit a watered-down, lesbian version of that steadfastly disapproving gene. (You will recall that I'd always imagined Uncle Bob's reputation for drinking was exaggerated.)
On another subject: Upon our return to Bancroft Hall, Elaine and I discovered that Richard Abbott couldn't speak, and that Mr. and Mrs. Hadley weren't talking to each other. The lack of communication between Martha Hadley and her husband was not unknown to me; Elaine had long predicted that her parents were headed for a divorce. ("It won't be acrimonious, Billy--they're already indifferent to each other," Elaine had told me.) And Richard Abbott had confided to me--that is, before my mother died, when Richard could still speak--that he and my mom had stopped socializing with the Hadleys.
Elaine and I had speculated on the mysterious "stopped socializing" part. Naturally, this dovetailed with Elaine's twenty-year theory that her mother was in love with Richard Abbott. Since I'd had crushes on Mrs. Hadley and Richard, what could I possibly contribute to this conversation?
I'd always believed that Richard Abbott was a vastly better man than my mother deserved, and that Martha Hadley was entirely too good for Mr. Hadley. Not only could I never remember that man's first name, if he ever had one; something about Mr. Hadley's fleeting brush with fame--the fame was due to his emergence as a political historian, and a voice of protest, during the Vietnam War--had served to dislocate him. If he'd once appeared aloof from his family--not only remote-seeming to his wife, Mrs. Hadley, but even distant from his only child, Elaine--Mr. Hadley's identification with a cause (his anti-Vietnam crusades with the Favorite River students) completely severed him from Elaine and Martha Hadley, and further led him to have little (if anything) to do with adults.
It happens in boarding schools: There's occasionally a male faculty member who is unhappy with his life as a grown-up. He tries to become one of the students. In Mr. Hadley's case--according to Elaine--his unfortunate regression to become one of the students when he himself was already in his fifties coincided with Favorite River Academy's decision to admit girls. This was just two years before the end of the Vietnam War.
"Uh-oh," as I'd heard Elaine say, so many times, but this time she'd added something. "When the war is over, what crusade will my father be leading? How's he going to engage all those girls?"
Elaine and I didn't see my uncle Bob until the "party." I had just read the Racquet Man's query in the most recent issue of The River Bulletin; attached to the class notes for the Class of '61, which was my class, there was this plaintive entry in the "Cries for Help from the Where-Have-You-Gone? Dept."
"What's up with you, Jacques Kittredge?" Uncle Bob had written. Following his undergraduate degree from Yale ('65), Kittredge had completed a three-year residence at the Yale School of Drama; he'd earned an MFA in '67. Thereafter, we'd heard nothing.
"An MFA in fucking what?" Elaine had asked more than ten years ago--when The River Bulletin had last heard a word from (or about) Kittredge. Elaine meant that it could have been a degree in acting, design, sound design, directing, playwriting, stage management, technical design and production, theater management--even dramaturgy and dramatic criticism. "I'll bet he's a fucking critic," Elaine said. I told her I didn't care what Kittredge was; I said I didn't want to know.
"Yes, you do want to know. You can't bullshit me, Billy," Elaine had said.
Now here was the Racquet Man, slumped on a couch--actually sunken into a couch in Grandpa Harry's living room, as if it would take a wrestling team to get Bob back on his feet.
"I'm sorry about Aunt Muriel," I told him. Uncle Bob reached up from the couch to give me a hug, spilling his beer.
"Shit, Billy," Bob said, "it's the people you would least expect who are disappearing."
"Disappearing," I repeated warily.
"Take your classmate, Billy. Who would have picked Kittredge as a likely disappearance?" Uncle Bob asked.
"You don't think he's dead, do you?" I asked the Racquet Man.
"An unwillingness to communicate is more likely," Uncle Bob said. His speech was so slowed down that the communicate word sounded as if it had seven or eight syllables; I realized that Bob was quietly but spectacularly drunk, although the gathering in memory of my aunt Muriel and my mother was just getting started.
There were some empty beer bottles at Bob's feet; when he dropped the now-empty bottle he'd been drinking (and spilling), he deftly kicked all but one of the bottles under the couch--somehow, without even looking at the bottles.
I'd once wondered if Kittredge had gone to Vietnam; he'd had that hero-looking aspect about him. I knew two other Favorite River wrestlers had died in the war. (Remember Wheelock? I barely remember him--an adequately "swashbuckling" Antonio, Sebastian's friend, in Twelfth Night. And how about Madden, the self-pitying heavyweight who played Malvolio in that same production? Madden always saw himself as a "perpetual victim"; that's all I remember about him.)
But, drunk as he was, Uncle Bob must have read my mind, because he suddenly said, "Knowing Kittredge, I'll bet he ducked Vietnam--somehow."
"I'll bet he did," was all I said to Bob.
"No offense, Billy," the Racquet Man added, accepting another beer from one of the passing caterers--a woman about my mom's age, or Muriel's, with dyed-red hair. She looked vaguely familiar; maybe she worked with Uncle Bob in Alumni Affairs, or she might have worked with him (years ago) in the Admissions Office.
"My dad was sloshed before he got here," Gerry told Elaine and me, when we were standing together in the line for the buffet. I knew Gerry's girlfriend; she was an occasional stand-up comic at a club I went to in the Village. She had a deadpan delivery and always wore a man's black suit, or a tuxedo, with a loose-fitting white dress shirt.
"No bra," Elaine had observed, "but the shirt's too big for her, and it's not see-through material. The point is, she doesn't want you to know she has breasts--or what they look like."
"Oh."
"I'm sorry about your mom, Billy," Gerry said. "I know she was completely dysfunctional, but she was your mother."
"I'm sorry about yours," I told Gerry. The stand-up comic made a horsey snorting sound.
"Not as deadpan as usual," Elaine would say later.
"Someone's gotta get the car keys from my f
ucking father," Gerry said.
I was keeping an eye on Grandpa Harry. I was afraid he would sneak away from the party, only to reappear as a surprise reincarnation of Nana Victoria. Nils Borkman was keeping an eye on his old partner, too. (If Mrs. Borkman was there, I either didn't see her or didn't recognize her.)
"I'm back-watching your grandfather, Bill," Nils told me. "If the funny stuff gets out of hand, I am emergency-calling you!"
"What funny stuff?" I asked him.
But just then, Grandpa Harry suddenly spoke up. "They're always late, those girls. I don't know where they are, but they'll show up. Everyone just go ahead and eat. There's plenty of food. Those girls can find somethin' to eat when they get here."
That quieted the crowd down. "I already told him that his girls aren't coming to the party, Bill. I mean, he knows they're dead--he's just forgetfulness exemplified," Nils told me.
"Forgetfulness personified," I said to the old Norwegian; he was two years older than Grandpa Harry, but Nils seemed a little more reliable in the remembering department, and in some other departments.
I asked Martha Hadley if Richard had spoken yet. Not since the news of the accident, Mrs. Hadley informed me. Richard had hugged me a lot, and I'd hugged him back, but there'd been no words.
Mr. Hadley appeared lost in thought--as he often did. I couldn't remember the last time he'd talked about anything but the war in Vietnam. Mr. Hadley had made himself a droll obituarist of every Favorite River boy who'd bitten the dust in Vietnam. I saw that he was waiting for me at the end of the buffet table.
"Get ready," Elaine warned me, in a whisper. "Here comes another death you didn't know about."
There was no prologue--there never was, with Mr. Hadley. He was a history teacher; he just announced things. "Do you remember Merryweather?" Mr. Hadley asked me.
Not Merryweather! I thought. Yes, I remembered him; he was still an underclassman when I graduated. He'd been the wrestling-team manager--he handed out oranges, cut in quarters; he picked up the bloody and discarded towels.
"Not Merryweather--not in Vietnam!" I automatically said.
"Yes, I'm afraid so, Billy," Mr. Hadley said gravely. "And Trowbridge--did you know Trowbridge, Billy?"