In One Person

“You see why I like the Miss,” she said, laughing.

“I love everything about you,” I told her.

“Slow down, William,” Miss Frost said. “You can’t rush into crushes on the wrong people.”

Of course, I didn’t understand why she thought of herself as “wrong” for me—and how could she possibly imagine that my crush on Kittredge was safer? I believed that Miss Frost must have meant merely to warn me about the difference in our ages; maybe an eighteen-year-old boy with a woman in her forties was a taboo to her. I was thinking that I was legally an adult, albeit barely, and if it were true that Miss Frost was about my aunt Muriel’s age, I was guessing that she would have been forty-two or forty-three.

“Girls my own age don’t interest me,” I said to Miss Frost. “I seem to be attracted to older women.”

“My dear boy,” she said again. “It doesn’t matter how old I am—it’s what I am. William, you don’t know what I am, do you?”

As if that existential-sounding question wasn’t confusing enough, Atkins chose this moment to enter the dimly lit foyer of the library, where he appeared to be startled. (He told me later he’d been frightened by the reflection of himself he had seen in the mirror, which hung silently in the foyer like a nonspeaking security guard.)

“Oh, it’s you, Tom,” Miss Frost said, unsurprised.

“Do you see? What did I tell you?” I asked Miss Frost, while Atkins went on fearfully regarding himself in the mirror.

“You’re so very wrong,” Miss Frost told me, smiling.

“Kittredge is looking for you, Bill,” Atkins said. “I went to the yearbook room, but someone said you’d just left.”

“The yearbook room,” Miss Frost repeated; she sounded surprised. I looked at her; there was an unfamiliar anxiety in her expression.

“Bill is conducting a study of Favorite River yearbooks from past to present,” Atkins said to Miss Frost. “Elaine told me,” Atkins explained to me.

“For Christ’s sake, Atkins—it sounds like you’re conducting a study of me,” I told him.

“It’s Kittredge who wants to talk to you,” Atkins said sullenly.

“Since when are you Kittredge’s messenger boy?” I asked him.

“I’ve had enough abuse for one night!” Atkins cried dramatically, throwing up his slender hands. “It’s one thing to have Kittredge insulting me—he insults everyone. But having you insult me, Bill—well, that’s just too much!”

In an effort to leave the First Sister Public Library in a flamboyant pique, Atkins once again encountered that menacing mirror in the foyer, where he paused to deliver a parting shot. “I’m not your shadow, Bill—Kittredge is,” Atkins said.

He was gone before he could hear me say, “Fuck Kittredge.”

“Watch your language, William,” Miss Frost said, putting her long fingers to my lips. “After all, we’re in a fucking library.”

The fucking word was not one that came to mind when I thought of her—in the same way that Miss Frost seemed an implausible Alberta—but when I looked at her, she was smiling. She was just teasing me; her long fingers now brushed my cheek.

“A curious reference to the shadow word, William,” she said. “Would it be the unpronounceable word that caused your unplanned exit from King Lear?”

“It would,” I told her. “I guess you heard. In a town this small, I think everyone hears everything!”

“Maybe not quite everyone—possibly not quite everything, William,” Miss Frost said. “It appears to me, for example, that you haven’t heard everything—about me, I mean.”

I knew that Nana Victoria didn’t like Miss Frost, but I didn’t know why. I knew that Aunt Muriel had issues with Miss Frost’s choice in bras, but how could I have brought up the training-bra subject when I had just expressed my love for everything about Miss Frost?

“My grandmother,” I started to say, “and my aunt Muriel—”

But Miss Frost lightly touched my lips with her long fingers again. “Shhh, William,” she whispered. “I don’t need to hear what those ladies think of me. I’m much more interested in hearing about that project of yours in the old yearbook room.”

“Oh, it’s not really a project,” I told her. “I just look at the wrestling-team photos, mostly—and at the pictures of the plays that the Drama Club performed.”

“Do you?” Miss Frost somewhat absently asked. Why was it I got the feeling that she was acting—in a kind of on-again, off-again way? What was it she’d said, when Richard Abbott had asked her if she’d ever been onstage—if she’d ever acted?

“Only in my mind,” she’d answered him, almost flirtatiously. “When I was younger—all the time.”

“And what year are you up to in those old yearbooks, William—which graduating class?” Miss Frost then asked.

“Nineteen thirty-one,” I answered. Her fingers had strayed from my lips; she was touching the collar of my shirt, almost as if there were something about a boy’s button-down dress shirt that had affected her—a sentimental attachment, maybe.

“You’re so close,” Miss Frost said.

“Close to what?” I asked her.

“Just close,” she said. “We haven’t much time.”

“Is it time to close the library?” I asked her, but Miss Frost only smiled; then, as if giving the matter more thought, she glanced at her watch.

“Well, what harm is there in closing a little early tonight?” she said suddenly.

“Sure—why not?” I said. “There’s no one here but us. I don’t think Atkins is coming back.”

“Poor Tom,” Miss Frost said. “He doesn’t have a crush on me, William—Tom Atkins has a crush on you!”

The second she said so, I knew it was true. “Poor Tom,” which would become how I thought of Atkins, probably sensed I had a crush on Miss Frost; he must have been jealous of her.

“Poor Tom is just spying on me, and you,” Miss Frost told me. “And what does Kittredge want to talk to you about?” she suddenly asked me.

“Oh, that’s nothing—that’s just a German thing. I help Kittredge with his German,” I explained.

“Tom Atkins would be a safer choice for you than Jacques Kittredge, William,” Miss Frost said. I knew this was true, too, though I didn’t find Atkins attractive—except in the way that someone who adores you can become a little attractive to you, over time. (But that almost never works out, does it?)

Yet, when I began to tell Miss Frost that I wasn’t really attracted to Atkins—that not all boys were attractive to me, just a very few boys, actually—well, this time she put her lips to mine. She simply kissed me. It was a fairly firm kiss, moderately aggressive; there was only one assertive thrust, a single dart of her warm tongue. Believe me: I’ll soon be seventy; I’ve had a long lifetime of kisses, and this one was more confident than any man’s handshake.

“I know, I know,” she murmured against my lips. “We have so little time—let’s not talk about poor Tom.”

“Oh.”

I followed her into the foyer, where I was still thinking that her concern with “time” had only to do with the closing time of the library, but Miss Frost said: “I presume that check-in time for seniors is still ten o’clock, William—except on a Saturday night, when I’m guessing it’s still eleven. Nothing ever changes at that awful school, does it?”

I was impressed that Miss Frost even knew about check-in time at Favorite River Academy—not to mention that she was exactly right about it.

I watched her lock the door to the library and turn off the outdoor light; she left the dim light in the foyer on, while she went about the main library, killing the other lights. I had completely forgotten that I’d asked her advice —on the subject of a book about my having a crush on Kittredge, and “trying not to”—when Miss Frost handed me a