In One Person

Awaiting me, in the future, was seeing Delacorte die.

Delacorte, as Lear’s Fool, would wisely say: “‘Have more than thou showest, / Speak less than thou knowest, / Lend less than thou owest.’” Good advice, but it won’t save Lear’s Fool, and it didn’t save Delacorte.

Kittredge acted strangely in Delacorte’s company; he could behave affectionately and impatiently with Delacorte in the same moment. It was as if Delacorte had been a childhood friend, but one who’d disappointed Kittredge—one who’d not “turned out” as Kittredge had hoped or expected.

Kittredge was preternaturally fond of Delacorte’s rinsing-and-spitting routine; Kittredge had even suggested to Richard that there might be onstage benefits to Lear’s Fool repeatedly rinsing and spitting.

“Then it wouldn’t be Shakespeare,” Grandpa Harry said.

“I’m not prompting the rinsing and spitting, Richard,” my mom said.

“Delacorte, you will kindly do your rinsing and spitting backstage,” Richard told the compulsive lightweight.

“It was just an idea,” Kittredge had said with a dismissive shrug. “I guess it will suffice that we at least have a Fool who can say the shadow word.”

To me, Kittredge would be more philosophical. “Look at it this way, Nymph—there’s no such thing as a working actor with a restricted vocabulary. But it’s a positive discovery, to be made aware of your limitations at such a young age,” Kittredge assured me. “How fortuitous, really—now you know you can never be an actor.”

“You mean, it’s not a career choice,” I said, as Miss Frost had once declared to me—when I’d first told her that I wanted to be a writer.

“I should say not, Nymph—not if you want to give yourself a fighting chance.”

“Oh.”

“And you might be wise, Nymph, to clarify another choice—I mean, before you get to the career part,” Kittredge said. I said nothing; I just waited. I knew Kittredge well enough to know when he was setting me up. “There’s the matter of your sexual proclivities,” Kittredge continued.

“My sexual proclivities are crystal-clear,” I told him—a little surprised at myself, because I was acting and there wasn’t a hint of a pronunciation problem.

“I don’t know, Nymph,” Kittredge said, with that deliberate or involuntary flutter in the broad muscles of his wrestler’s neck. “In the area of sexual proclivities, you look like a work-in-progress to me.”

“OH, IT’S YOU!” Miss Frost said cheerfully, when she saw me; she sounded surprised. “I thought it was your friend. He was here—he just left. I thought it was him, coming back.”

“Who?” I asked her. (I had Kittredge on my mind, of course—not exactly a friend.)

“Tom,” Miss Frost said. “Tom was just here. I’m never sure why he comes. He’s always asking about a book he says he can’t find at the academy library, but I know perfectly well the school has it. Anyway, I never have what he’s looking for. Maybe he comes here looking for you.”

“Tom who?” I asked her. I didn’t think I knew a Tom.

“Atkins—isn’t that his name?” Miss Frost asked. “I know him as Tom.”

“I know him as Atkins,” I said.

“Oh, William, I wonder how long the last-name culture of that awful school will persist!” Miss Frost said.

“Shouldn’t we be whispering?” I whispered.

After all, we were in a library. I was puzzled by how loudly Miss Frost spoke, but I was also excited to hear her say that Favorite River Academy was an “awful school”; I secretly thought so, but out of loyalty to Richard Abbott and Uncle Bob, faculty brat that I was, I would never have said so.

“There’s no one else here, William,” Miss Frost whispered to me. “We can speak as loudly as we want.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve come to write, I suppose,” Miss Frost loudly said.

“No, I need your advice about what I should read,” I told her.

“Is the subject still crushes on the wrong people, William?”

“Very wrong,” I whispered.

She leaned over, to be closer to me; she was still so much taller than I was, she made me feel that I hadn’t grown. “We can whisper about this, if you want to,” she whispered.

“Do you know Jacques Kittredge?” I asked her.

“Everyone knows Kittredge,” Miss Frost said neutrally; I couldn’t tell what she thought about him.

“I have a crush on Kittredge, but I’m trying not to,” I told her. “Is there a novel about that?”

Miss Frost put both her hands on my shoulders. I knew she could feel me shaking. “Oh, William—there are worse things, you know,” she said. “Yes, I have the very novel you should read,” she whispered.

“I know why Atkins comes here,” I blurted out. “He’s not looking for me—he probably has a crush on you!”

“Why would he?” Miss Frost asked me.

“Why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t any boy have a crush on you?” I asked her.

“Well, no one’s had a crush on me for a while,” she said. “But it’s very flattering—it’s so sweet of you to say so, William.”

“I have a crush on you, too,” I told her. “I always have, and it’s stronger than the crush I have on Kittredge.”

“My dear boy, you are so very wrong!” Miss Frost declared. “Didn’t I tell you there were worse things than having a crush on Jacques Kittredge? Listen to me, William: Having a crush on Kittredge is safer!”

“How can Kittredge be safer than you?” I cried. I could feel that I was starting to shake again; this time, when she put her big hands on my shoulders, Miss Frost hugged me to her broad chest. I began to sob, uncontrollably.

I hated myself for crying, but I couldn’t stop. Dr. Harlow had told us, in yet another lamentable morning meeting, that excessive crying in boys was a homosexual tendency we should guard ourselves against. (Naturally, the moron never told us how we should guard ourselves against something we couldn’t control!) And I’d overheard my mother say to Muriel: “Honestly, I don’t know what to do when Billy cries like a girl!”

So there I was, in the First Sister Public Library, crying like a girl in Miss Frost’s strong arms—having just told her that I had a stronger crush on her than the one I had on Jacques Kittredge. I must have seemed to her like such a sissy!

“My dear boy, you don’t really know me,” Miss Frost was saying. “You don’t know who I am—you don’t know the first thing about me, do you? William? You don’t, do you?”

“I don’t what?” I blubbered. “I don’t know your first name,” I admitted; I was still sobbing. I was hugging her back, but not as hard as she hugged me. I could feel how strong she was, and—once again—the smallness of her breasts seemed to stand in surprising contrast to her strength. I could also feel how soft her breasts were; her small, soft breasts struck me as such a contradiction to her broad shoulders, her muscular arms.

“I didn’t mean my name, William—my first name isn’t important,” Miss Frost said. “I mean you don’t know me.”

“But what is your first name?” I asked her.

There was a theatricality in the way Miss Frost sighed—a staged exaggeration in the way she released me from her hug, almost pushing me away from her.

“I have a lot at stake in being Miss Frost, William,” she said. “I did not acquire the Miss word accidentally.”

I knew something about not liking the name you were given, for I hadn’t liked being William Francis Dean, Jr. “You don’t like your first name?” I asked her.

“We could begin with that,” she answered, amused. “Would you ever name a girl Alberta?”

“Like the province in Canada?” I asked. I could not imagine Miss Frost as an Alberta!

“It’s a better name for a province,” Miss Frost said. “Everyone used to call me Al.”

“Al,” I repeated.