In One Person

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday?—and I went to Ezra Falls with my mom and Richard, and with Mr. and Mrs. Hadley.

Elaine didn’t want to come; she stayed home. “It’s not a sex film, Elaine,” my mother had assured her. “It’s French, but it’s a comedy—it’s very light.”

“I don’t feel like light—I don’t feel like a comedy,” Elaine had said. She was already throwing up at Twelfth Night rehearsals, but no one had figured out that she had morning sickness.

Maybe that’s when Elaine told Kittredge that he’d knocked her up—when her family and mine were watching a Jacques Tati film, with subtitles, in Ezra Falls.

When Elaine knew she was pregnant, she eventually told her mother; either Martha Hadley or Mr. Hadley must have told Richard and my mom. I was in bed—naturally, I was wearing Elaine’s bra—when my mother burst into my bedroom. “Don’t, Jewel—try to take it easy,” I heard Richard saying, but my mom had already snapped on my light.

I sat up in bed, holding Elaine’s bra as if I were hiding my nonexistent breasts.

“Just look at you!” my mother cried. “Elaine is pregnant!”

“It wasn’t me,” I told her; she slapped me.

“Of course it wasn’t you—I know it wasn’t you, Billy!” my mom said. “But why wasn’t it you—why wasn’t it?” she cried. She went out of my room, sobbing, and Richard came in.

“It must have been Kittredge,” I said to Richard.

“Well, Bill—of course it’s Kittredge,” Richard said. He sat on the side of my bed, trying his hardest not to notice the bra. “You’ll have to forgive your mom—she’s upset,” he said.

I didn’t reply. I was thinking about what Mrs. Hadley had said to me—that bit about “certain sexual matters” upsetting my mother. (“Billy, I know there are things she’s kept from you,” Martha Hadley had told me.)

“I think Elaine will have to go away for a while,” Richard Abbott was saying.

“Away where?” I asked him, but Richard either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell me; he just shook his head.

“I’m really sorry, Bill—I’m sorry about everything,” Richard said. I had just recently turned eighteen.

It was then I realized that I didn’t have a crush on Richard anymore—not even a slight one. I knew I loved Richard Abbott—I still do love him—but that night I’d found something I disliked about him. In a way, he was weak—he let my mother push him around. Whatever my mom had kept from me, I knew then that Richard was keeping it from me, too.

IT HAPPENS TO MANY teenagers—that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. It happens to some teenagers when they’re younger than I was, but I was a brand-new eighteen when I simply tuned out my mother and Richard. I trusted Grandpa Harry more, and I still loved Uncle Bob. But Richard Abbott and my mom had drifted into that discredited area occupied by Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria—in their case, an area of carping, undermining commentary to be ignored or avoided. In the case of Richard and my mother, it was their secrecy I shunned.

As for the Hadleys, they sent Elaine “away” in stages. I can only guess what passed between Mrs. Kittredge and the Hadleys—the deals adults make aren’t often explained to kids—but Mr. and Mrs. Hadley agreed to let Kittredge’s mother take Elaine to Europe. I have no doubt that Elaine wanted the abortion. Martha Hadley and Mr. Hadley must have agreed it was best. It was definitely what Mrs. Kittredge had wanted. I’m guessing that, being French, she knew where to go in Europe; being Kittredge’s mom, she may have had some previous experience with an unwanted pregnancy.

At the time, I imagined that a boy like Kittredge had gotten girls pregnant before—he easily could have. But I was also thinking that Mrs. Kittredge might have needed to get herself out of a jam—I mean, when she was younger. It’s hard to explain what gave me that idea. I had overheard a conversation at a Twelfth Night rehearsal; I’d wandered into the middle of something Kittredge and his teammate Delacorte were saying—Delacorte, the rinser and spitter. It sounded as if they’d been arguing; it seemed to me that Delacorte was frightened of Kittredge, but so was everyone.

“No, I didn’t mean that—I just said she was the most beautiful mother of the mothers I’ve met. Your mom is the best-looking—that’s all I said,” Delacorte was anxiously saying; then he rinsed and spat.

“If she’s anyone’s mother, you mean,” Kittredge said. “She doesn’t have a very motherly look, does she? She looks like someone who’s asking for trouble— that’s what she looks like.”

“I didn’t say what your mom looks like,” Delacorte insisted. “I just said she was the most beautiful. She’s the best-looking mom of all the moms!”

“Maybe she doesn’t look like a mom because she isn’t one,” Kittredge said. Delacorte looked too frightened to speak; he just kept rinsing and spitting, clutching the two paper cups.

My idea that Mrs. Kittredge might have needed to get herself out of a jam came from Kittredge; he was the one who said, “She looks like someone who’s asking for trouble.”

Quite possibly, Mrs. Kittredge had more in mind than helping Elaine out of a jam; the deal she made with the Hadleys probably kept Kittredge in school. “Moral turpitude” was among the stated grounds for dismissal at Favorite River Academy. For a senior at the school to impregnate a faculty child—remember, Elaine was not yet eighteen; she was under the age of legal maturity—certainly struck me as base or depraved or vile behavior, but Kittredge stayed.

“You’re traveling with Kittredge’s mother—just the two of you?” I’d asked Elaine.

“Of course it’s just the two of us, Billy—who else needs to come along?” Elaine responded.

“Where in Europe?” I asked.

Elaine shrugged; she was still throwing up, though less frequently. “What does it matter where it is, Billy? It’s somewhere Jacqueline knows.”

“You’re calling her Jacqueline?”

“She asked me to call her Jacqueline—not Mrs. Kittredge.”

“Oh.”

Richard had cast Laura Gordon as Viola; Laura was now a senior in the high school in Ezra Falls. According to my cousin Gerry, Laura “put out”—not that I saw, but Gerry seemed well informed about such matters. (Gerry was a university student now, at last liberated from Ezra Falls.)

If Laura Gordon’s breasts had been too developed for her to be cast as Hedvig in The Wild Duck, they should have disqualified her for Viola, who somehow has to disguise herself as a man. (Laura would need to be wrapped flat with Ace bandages, and, even so, there was no flattening her.) But Richard knew that Laura could learn her lines on short notice; that she looked nothing like my twin notwithstanding, she wouldn’t be a bad Viola. The show went on, though Elaine would miss our performances; she would linger in Europe—recuperating, I could only guess.

The Clown’s song concludes Twelfth Night. Feste is alone onstage. “‘For the rain it raineth every day,’” Kittredge sang four times.

“The poor kid,” Kittredge had said to me, about Elaine. “Such bad luck—her first time, and everything.” As had happened to me before, I was speechless.

I didn’t notice that Kittredge’s German homework was any worse, or any better. I didn’t even notice my mother’s expression when she saw her father onstage as a woman. I was so upset about Elaine that I forgot about my plan to observe the prompter.

When I say that the Hadleys sent Elaine away “in stages,” I mean that the trip to Europe—not to mention the obvious reason for that trip—was just the beginning.

The Hadleys had decided that their dormitory apartment in an all-boys’ school was the wrong place for Elaine to finish her high school years. They would send her away to an all-girls’ boarding school, but not until the fall. That spring of 1960 was a write-off for Elaine, and she would have to repeat her sophomore year.