In One Person

Carmen. I would have happily gone to Mexico with her, but she was having a boyfriend problem: Her boyfriend was a tight-assed turd who didn’t want Elaine to go anywhere with me.

“Didn’t you tell him we don’t do it?” I asked her.

“Yes, but I also told him that we used to do it—or that we tried to,” Elaine said, revising herself.

“Why did you tell him that?” I asked her.

“I’m trying out a new honesty policy,” Elaine answered. “I’m not making up so many stories, or I’m trying not to.”

“How is this policy working out with your fiction writing?” I asked her.

“I don’t think I can go to Mexico with you, Billy—not right now,” was all she’d said.

I’d had a recent boyfriend problem of my own, but when I dumped the boyfriend, I had rather soon developed a girlfriend problem. She was a first-year faculty member at Favorite River, a young English teacher. Mrs. Hadley and Richard had introduced us; they’d invited me to dinner, and there was Amanda. When I first saw her, I thought she was one of Richard’s students—she looked that young to me. But she was an anxious young woman in her late twenties.

“I’m almost thirty,” Amanda was always saying, as if she was anxious that she was too young-looking; therefore, saying she would soon be thirty made her seem older.

When we started sleeping together, Amanda was anxious about where we did it. She had a faculty apartment in one of the girls’ dorms at Favorite River; when I spent the night with her there, the girls in the dormitory knew about it. But, most nights, Amanda had dorm duty—she couldn’t stay with me in my house on River Street. The way it was working out, I wasn’t sleeping with Amanda nearly enough—that was the developing problem. And then, of course, there was the bi issue: She’d read all my novels, she said she loved my writing, but that I was a bi guy made her anxious, too.

“I just can’t believe you’re fifty-three!” Amanda kept saying, which confused me. I couldn’t tell if she meant I seemed so much younger than I was, or that she was appalled at herself for dating an old bi guy in his fifties.

Martha Hadley, who was seventy-five, had retired, but she still met with individual students who had “special needs”—pronunciation problems included. Mrs. Hadley had told me that Amanda suffered from pronunciation problems. “That wasn’t why you introduced us, was it?” I asked Martha.

“It wasn’t my idea, Billy,” Mrs. Hadley said. “It was Richard’s idea to introduce you to Amanda, because she is such a fan of your writing. I never thought it was a good idea—she’s way too young for you, and she’s anxious about everything. I can only imagine that, because you are bi—well, that’s got to keep Amanda awake at night. She can’t pronounce the word bisexual!”

“Oh.”

That’s what was going on in my life when Uncle Bob called me about Kittredge. That’s why I said, half seriously, I had “nothing but mud season to look forward to”—nothing except my writing. (Moving to Vermont had been good for my writing.)

The account of Kittredge’s death had been submitted to the Office of Alumni Affairs by Mrs. Kittredge.

“Do you mean he had a wife, or do you mean his mother?” I asked Uncle Bob.

“Kittredge had a wife, Billy, but we heard from the mother.”

“Jesus—how old would Mrs. Kittredge be?” I asked Bob.

“She’s only seventy-two,” my uncle answered; Uncle Bob was seventy-eight, and he sounded a little insulted by my question. Elaine had told me that Mrs. Kittredge had only been eighteen when Kittredge was born.

According to Bob—that is, according to Mrs. Kittredge—my former heartthrob and tormentor had died in Zurich, Switzerland, “of natural causes.”

“Bullshit, Bob,” I said. “Kittredge was only a year older than I am—he was fifty-four. What ‘natural causes’ can kill you when you’re fifty-fucking-four?”

“My thoughts exactly, Billy—but that’s what his mom said,” the Racquet Man replied.

“From what I’ve heard, I’ll bet Kittredge died of AIDS,” I said.

“What mother of Mrs. Kittredge’s generation would be likely to tell her son’s old school that?” Uncle Bob asked me. (Indeed, Sue Atkins had reported only that Tom Atkins had died “after a long illness.”)

“You said Kittredge had a wife,” I replied to my uncle.

“He is survived by his wife and his son—an only child—and by his mother, of course,” the Racquet Man told me. “The boy is named after his father—another Jacques. The wife has a German-sounding name. You studied German, didn’t you, Billy? What kind of name is Irmgard?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Definitely German-sounding,” I said.

If Kittredge had wasted away in Zurich—even if he’d died in Switzerland “of natural causes”—possibly his wife was Swiss, but Irmgard was a German name. Boy, was that ever a tough Christian name to carry around! It was terribly old-fashioned; one immediately felt the stiffness of the person wearing that heavy name. I thought it was a suitable name for an elderly schoolmistress, a strict disciplinarian.

I was guessing that the only child, the son named Jacques, would have been born sometime in the early seventies; that would have been right on schedule for the kind of career-oriented young man I imagined Kittredge was, in those early years—given the MFA from Yale, given his first few steps along a no doubt bright and shining career path in the world of drama. Only at the appropriate time would Kittredge have paused, and found a wife. And then what? How had things unraveled after that?

“That fucker—God damn him!” Elaine cried, when I told her Kittredge had died. She was furious—it was as if Kittredge had escaped, somehow. She couldn’t speak about the “of natural causes” bullshit, not to mention the wife. “He can’t get away with this!” Elaine cried.

“Elaine—he died. He didn’t get away with anything,” I said, but Elaine cried and cried.

Unfortunately, it was one of the few nights when Amanda didn’t have dorm duty; she was staying with me in the River Street house, and so I had to tell her about Kittredge, and Elaine, and all the rest.

No doubt, this history was more bi—and gay, and “transgender” (as Amanda would say)—in nature than anything Amanda had been forced to imagine, although she kept saying how much she loved my writing, where she’d no doubt encountered a world of sexual “differences” (as Richard would say).

I blame myself for not saying anything to Amanda about the frigging ghosts in that River Street house; only other people saw them—they never bothered me! But Amanda got up to go to the bathroom—it was the middle of the night—and her screaming woke me. It was a brand-new bathtub in that bathroom—it was not the same tub Grandpa Harry had pulled the trigger in, just the same bathroom—but, when Amanda finally calmed down enough to tell me what happened (when she was sitting on the toilet), it had no doubt been Harry she’d seen in that brand-new bathtub.

“He was curled up like a little boy in the bathtub—he smiled at me when I was peeing!” Amanda, who was still sobbing, explained.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“But he was no little boy!” Amanda moaned.

“No, he wasn’t—that was my grandfather,” I tried to tell her calmly. Oh, that Harry—he certainly loved a new audience, even as a ghost! (Even as a man!)

“At first, I didn’t see the rifle—but he wanted me to see it, Billy. He showed me the gun, and then he shot himself in the head—his head went all over the place!” Amanda wailed.

Naturally, I had some explaining to do; I had to tell her everything about Grandpa Harry. We were up all night. Amanda would not go to the bathroom by herself in the morning—she wouldn’t even be alone in one of the other bathrooms, which I’d suggested. I understood; I was very understanding. I’ve never seen a frigging ghost— I’m sure they’re frightening.

I guess the last straw, as I would later explain to Mrs. Hadley and Richard, was that Amanda was so rattled in the morning—after all, the anxious young woman hadn’t had a good night’s sleep—she opened the door to my bedroom closet, thinking she was opening the door to the upstairs hall. And there was Grandpa Harry’s .30-30