In One Person

by John Irving

  "Moral responsibility," I repeated.

  "Yes, he does--Billy takes moral responsibility. I think so," Elaine said. "I don't mean only in your writing, Billy," Elaine added.

  "I don't have to stay--I've heard this before," Sue Atkins suddenly said. "You don't have to stay, either, Elaine. We can go try to talk to Emily. She's a challenge to talk to, but she's better with women than she is with men--as a rule. Emily really hates men," Mrs. Atkins said.

  "Emily screams almost every time she sees a man," Peter explained; he had stopped crying.

  "Okay, I'll come with you," Elaine said to Sue Atkins. "I'm not all that crazy about most men, either--I just don't like women at all, usually."

  "That's interesting," Mrs. Atkins said.

  "I'll come back when it's time to say good-bye," Elaine called to Tom, as she was leaving, but Atkins seemed to ignore the good-bye reference.

  "It's amazing how easy time becomes--when there's no more of it, Bill," Tom began.

  "Where is Charles--he should be here, shouldn't he?" Peter Atkins asked his dad. "Just look at this room! Why is that old oxygen tank still here? The oxygen doesn't help him anymore," the boy explained to me. "Your lungs need to work in order to have any benefit from oxygen. If you can't breathe in, how are you going to get the oxygen? That's what Charles says."

  "Peter, please stop," Tom Atkins said to his son. "I asked Charles for a little privacy--Charles will be back soon."

  "You're talking too much, Daddy," the boy said. "You know what happens when you try to talk too much."

  "I want to talk to Bill about you, Peter," his father said.

  "This part is crazy--this part makes no sense," Peter said.

  Tom Atkins seemed to be hoarding his remaining breath before he spoke to me: "I want you to keep an eye on my boy when I'm gone, Bill--especially if Peter is 'like us,' but even if he isn't."

  "Why me, Tom?" I asked him.

  "You don't have any children, do you?" Atkins asked me. "All I'm asking you is to keep one eye on one kid. I don't know what to do about Emily--you might not be the best choice for someone to look after Emily."

  "No, no, no," the boy suddenly said. "Emily stays with me--she goes where I go."

  "You'll have to talk her into it, Peter, and you know how stubborn she is," Atkins said; it was harder and harder for poor Tom to get enough breath. "When I die--when your mom is dead, too--it's this man here I want you talking to, Peter. Not your grandfather."

  I'd met Tom's parents at our graduation from Favorite River. His father had taken a despairing look at me; he'd refused to shake my hand. That was Peter's grandfather; he hadn't called me a fag, but I'd felt him thinking it.

  "My father is very . . . unsophisticated," Atkins had told me at the time.

  "He should meet my mom," was all I'd said.

  Now Tom was asking me to be his son's advice-giver. (Tom Atkins had never been much of a realist.) "Not your grandfather," Atkins said a second time to Peter.

  "No, no, no," the boy repeated; he'd started to cry again.

  "Tom, I don't know how to be a father--I've had no experience," I said. "And I might get sick, too."

  "Yes!" Peter Atkins cried. "What if Bill or Billy, or whatever his name is, gets sick?"

  "I think I better have a little oxygen, Bill--Peter knows how to do it, don't you, Peter?" Tom asked his son.

  "Yes--of course I know how to do it," the boy said; he immediately stopped crying. "Charles is the one who should be giving you oxygen, Daddy--and it won't work, anyway!" the fifteen-year-old cried. "You just think the oxygen is getting to your lungs; it really isn't." I saw the oxygen mask then--Peter knew where it was--and while the boy attended to the oxygen tank, Tom Atkins smiled proudly at me.

  "Peter is a wonderful boy," Atkins said; I saw that Tom couldn't look at his son when he said this, or he would have lost his composure. Atkins was managing to hold himself together by looking at me.

  Similarly, when Atkins spoke, I could manage to hold myself together only by looking at his fifteen-year-old son. Besides, as I would say later to Elaine, Peter looked more like Tom Atkins to me than Atkins even remotely looked like himself.

  "You weren't this assertive when I knew you, Tom," I said, but I kept my eyes on Peter; the boy was very gently fitting the oxygen mask to his father's unrecognizable face.

  "What does 'assertive' mean?" Peter asked me; his father laughed. The laugh made Atkins gasp and cough, but he'd definitely laughed.

  "What I mean by 'assertive' is that your dad is someone who takes charge of a situation--he's someone who has confidence in a situation that many people lack confidence in," I said to the boy. (I couldn't believe I was saying this about the Tom Atkins I'd known, but at this moment it was true.)

  "Is that any better?" Peter asked his father, who was struggling to breathe the oxygen; Tom was working awfully hard for very little relief, or so it seemed to me, but Atkins managed to nod at his son's question--all the while never taking his eyes off me.

  "I don't think the oxygen makes a difference," Peter Atkins said; the boy was examining me more closely than before. I saw Atkins inch his forearm across the bed; he nudged his son with that arm. "So . . ." the boy began, as if this were his idea, as if his dad hadn't already said to him, When my old friend Bill is here, you be sure to ask him about the summer we spent in Europe together, or words to that effect. "So . . ." the boy started again. "I understand that you and my dad traveled all over Europe together. So--what was that like?"

  I knew I would burst into tears if I so much as glanced at Tom Atkins--who laughed again, and coughed, and gasped--so I just kept looking at Tom's carrot-haired likeness, his darling fifteen-year-old son, and I said, as if I were also following a script, "First of all, I was trying to read this book, but your dad wouldn't let me--not unless I read the whole book out loud to him."

  "You read a whole book out loud to him!" Peter exclaimed in disbelief.

  "We were both nineteen, but he made me read the entire novel--out loud. And your father hated the book--he was actually jealous of one of the characters; he simply didn't want me to spend a single minute alone with her," I explained to Peter. The boy was thoroughly delighted now. (I knew what I was doing--I was auditioning.)

  I guess that the oxygen was working a little--or it was working in Tom's mind--because Atkins had closed his eyes, and he was smiling. It was almost the same goofy smile I remembered, if you could ignore the Candida.

  "How can you be jealous of a woman in a novel?" Peter Atkins asked me. "This was only make-believe--a made-up story, right?"

  "Right," I told Peter, "and she's a miserable woman. She's unhappy all the time, and she eventually poisons herself and dies. Your dad even detested this woman's feet!"

  "Her feet!" the boy exclaimed, laughing more.

  "Peter!" we heard his mother calling. "Come here--let your father rest!"

  But my audition was doomed from the start.

  "It was entirely orchestrated--the whole thing was rehearsed. You know that, don't you, Billy?" Elaine would ask me later, when we were on the train.

  "I know that now," I would tell her. (I didn't know it then.)

  Peter left the room just as I was getting started! I'd had much more to say about that summer Tom Atkins and I spent in Europe, but suddenly young Peter was gone. I thought poor Tom was asleep, but he'd moved the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose, and--with his eyes still closed--he found my wrist with his cold hand. (At first touch, I'd thought his hand was the old dog's nose.) Tom Atkins wasn't smiling now; he must have known we were alone. I believe Atkins also knew that the oxygen wasn't working; I think he knew that it would never work again. His face was wet with tears.

  "Is there eternal darkness, Bill?" Atkins asked me. "Is there a monster's face, waiting there?"

  "No, no, Tom," I tried to assure him. "It's either just darkness--no monster, no anything--or it's very bright, truly the most amazing light, and there are lots of wonderful things to see."
<
br />   "No monsters, either way--right, Bill?" poor Tom asked me.

  "That's right, Tom--no monsters, either way."

  I was aware of someone behind me, in the doorway of the room. It was Peter; he'd come back--I didn't know how long he'd been there, or what he'd overheard.

  "Is the monster's face in the darkness in that same book?" the boy asked me. "Is the face also make-believe?"

  "Ha!" Atkins cried. "That's a good question, Peter! What do you say to that, Bill?" There was a convulsion of coughing then, and more violent gasping; the boy ran to his dad and helped him put the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth, but the oxygen was ineffective. Atkins's lungs weren't functioning properly--he couldn't draw enough air to help himself.

  "Is this a test, Tom?" I asked my old friend. "What do you want from me?"

  Peter Atkins just stood there, watching us. He helped his father pull the oxygen mask away from his mouth. "When you're dying, everything is a test, Bill. You'll see," Tom said; with his son's help, Atkins was putting the oxygen mask back in place, but he suddenly stopped the seemingly pointless process.

  "It's a made-up story, Peter," I told the boy. "The unhappy woman who poisons herself--even her feet are made up. It's make-believe--the monster's face in the darkness, too. It's all imagined," I said.

  "But this isn't 'imagined,' is it?" the boy asked me. "My mom and my dad are dying--that isn't imagined, is it?"

  "No," I told him. "You can always find me, Peter," I suddenly said to the boy. "I'll be available to you--I promise."

  "There!" Peter cried--not to me, to his dad. "I got him to say it! Does that make you happy? It doesn't make me happy!" the boy cried.

  "Peter!" his mom was calling. "Let your father rest! Peter?"

  "I'm coming!" the boy called; he ran out of the room.

  Tom Atkins had closed his eyes again. "Let me know when we're alone, Bill," he gasped; he held the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose, but I could tell that--as little as the oxygen helped--he wanted it.

  "We're alone," I told Atkins.

  "I've seen him," Tom whispered hoarsely. "He's not at all who we thought he was--he's more like us than we ever imagined. He's beautiful, Bill!"

  "Who's beautiful--who's more like us than we ever imagined, Tom?" I asked, but I knew that the subject had changed; there'd been only one person Tom and I had always spoken of with fear and secrecy, with love and hatred.

  "You know who, Bill--I've seen him," Atkins whispered.

  "Kittredge?" I whispered back.

  Atkins covered his mouth and nose with the oxygen mask; he was nodding yes, but it hurt him to move his head and he was making a torturous endeavor just to breathe.

  "Kittredge is gay?" I asked Tom Atkins, but this stimulated a prolonged coughing fit, which was followed by a self-contradictory nodding and shaking of his head. With my help, Atkins lifted the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose--albeit briefly.

  "Kittredge looks exactly like his mother!" Atkins gasped; then he was back on the mask, making the most horrible sucking sounds. I didn't want to agitate him more than my presence already had. Atkins had closed his eyes again, though his face was frozen in more of a grimace than a smile, when I heard Elaine calling me.

  I found Elaine with Mrs. Atkins and the children in the kitchen. "He shouldn't be on the oxygen if no one's watching him--not for long, anyway," Sue Atkins said when she saw me.

  "No, Mom--that's not quite what Charles says," Peter corrected her. "We just have to keep checking the tank."

  "For God's sake, Peter--please stop criticizing me!" Mrs. Atkins cried; this made her breathless. "That old tank is probably empty! Oxygen doesn't really help him!" She coughed and coughed.

  "Charles shouldn't allow the oxygen tank to be empty!" the boy said indignantly. "Daddy doesn't know the oxygen doesn't help him--sometimes he thinks it helps."

  "I hate Charles," the girl, Emily, said.

  "Don't hate Charles, Emily--we need Charles," Sue Atkins said, trying to catch her breath.

  I looked at Elaine; I felt truly lost. It surprised me that Emily was sitting next to Elaine on a couch facing the kitchen TV, which was off; the girl was curled up beside Elaine, who had her arm around the thirteen-year-old's shoulders.

  "Tom believes in your character, Bill," Mrs. Atkins said to me (as if my character had been under discussion for hours). "Tom hasn't known you for twenty years, yet he believes he can judge your character by the novels you write."

  "Which are made up, which are make-believe--right?" Peter asked me.

  "Please don't, Peter," Sue Atkins said tiredly, still struggling to suppress that not-so-innocent cough.

  "That's right, Peter," I said.

  "All this time, I thought Tom was seeing him," Sue Atkins said to Elaine, pointing at me. "But Tom must have been seeing that other guy--the one you were all so crazy about."

  "I don't think so," I said to Mrs. Atkins. "Tom told me he had 'seen' him--not that he 'was seeing' him. There's a difference."

  "Well, what do I know? I'm just the wife," Sue Atkins said.

  "Do you mean Kittredge, Billy--is that who she means?" Elaine asked me.

  "Yes, that's his name--Kittredge. I think Tom was in love with him--I guess you all were," Mrs. Atkins said. She was a little feverish, or maybe it was the drugs she was taking--I couldn't tell. I knew the Bactrim had given poor Tom a rash; I didn't know where. I had only a vague idea of what other side effects were possible with Bactrim. I just knew that Sue Atkins had Pneumocystis pneumonia, so she was probably taking Bactrim and she definitely had a fever.

  Mrs. Atkins seemed numb, as if she were barely aware that her children, Emily and Peter, were right there with us--in the kitchen.

  "Hey--it's just me!" a man's voice called from the vestibule. The girl, Emily, screamed--but she didn't detach herself from Elaine's encompassing arm.

  "It's just Charles, Emily," her brother, Peter, said.

  "I know it's Charles--I hate him," Emily said.

  "Stop it, both of you," their mother said.

  "Who's Kittredge?" Peter Atkins asked.

  "I would like to know who he is, too," Sue Atkins said. "God's gift to men and women, I guess."

  "What did Tom say about Kittredge, Billy?" Elaine asked me. I'd been hoping to have this conversation on the train, where we would be alone--or not to have it, ever.

  "Tom said he had seen Kittredge--that's all," I told Elaine. But I knew that wasn't all. I didn't know what Atkins had meant--that Kittredge was not at all who we thought he was; that Kittredge was more like us than we ever imagined.

  That poor Tom thought Kittredge was beautiful--well, that I had no trouble imagining. But Atkins had seemed to indicate that Kittredge was and wasn't gay; according to Tom, Kittredge looked exactly like his mother! (I wasn't about to tell Elaine that!) How could Kittredge look exactly like Mrs. Kittredge? I was wondering.

  Emily screamed. It must be Charles, the nurse, I thought, but no--it was Jacques, the dog. The old Lab was standing there, in the kitchen.

  "It's just Jacques, Emily--he's a dog, not a man," Peter said disdainfully to his sister, but the girl wouldn't stop screaming.

  "Leave her alone, Peter. Jacques is a male dog--maybe that did it," Mrs. Atkins said. But when Emily didn't or couldn't stop screaming, Sue Atkins said to Elaine and me: "Well, it is unusual to see Jacques anywhere but at Tom's bedside. Since Tom got sick, that dog won't leave him. We have to drag Jacques outside to pee!"

  "We have to offer Jacques a treat just to get him to come to the kitchen and eat," Peter Atkins was explaining, while his sister went on screaming.

  "Imagine a Lab you have to force to eat!" Sue Atkins said; she suddenly looked again at the old dog and started screaming. Now Emily and Mrs. Atkins were both screaming.

  "It must be Tom, Billy--something's happened," Elaine said, over the screaming. Either Peter Atkins heard her, or he'd figured it out by himself--he was clearly a smart boy.

  "Daddy!" the boy called,
but his mother grabbed him and clutched him to her.

  "Wait for Charles, Peter--Charles is with him," Mrs. Atkins managed to say, though her shortness of breath had worsened. Jacques (the Labrador) sat there, just breathing.

  Elaine and I chose not to "wait for Charles." We left the kitchen and ran along the downstairs hall to the now-open door to Tom's onetime study. (Jacques, who--for a hesitant second--seemed of a mind to follow us, stayed behind on the kitchen floor. The old dog must have known that his master had departed.) Elaine and I entered the transformed room, where we saw Charles bent over the body on the hospital bed, which the nurse had elevated to ease his task. Charles kept his head down; he did not look up at Elaine and me, though it was clear to us both that the nurse knew we were there.

  I was horribly reminded of a man I'd seen a few times at the Mineshaft, that S&M club on Washington Street--at Little West Twelfth, in the Meatpacking District. (Larry would tell me the club was closed by the city's Department of Health, but that wouldn't be till '85--four years after AIDS first appeared--which was when Elaine and I were conducting our experiment in living together in San Francisco.) The Mineshaft had a lot of disquieting action going on: There was a sling, for fist-fucking, suspended from the ceiling; there was a whole wall of glory holes; there was a room with a bathtub, where men were pissed on.

  The man Charles closely resembled was a tattooed muscleman with ivory-pale skin; he had a shaved-bald head, with a black patch of whiskers on the point of his chin, and two diamond-stud earrings. He wore a black leather vest and a jockstrap, and a well-shined pair of motorcycle boots, and his job at the Mineshaft was to dispatch people who needed dispatching. He was called Mephistopheles; on his nights "off" from the Mineshaft, he would hang out at a gay black bar called Keller's. I think Keller's was on West Street, on the corner of Barrow, near the Christopher Street pier, but I never went there--no white guys I knew did. (The story I'd heard at the Mineshaft was that Mephistopheles went to Keller's to fuck black guys, or to pick fights with them, and it didn't matter to Mephistopheles which he did; the fucking and the fighting were all the same to him, which was no doubt why he fit right in at an S&M joint like the Mineshaft.)