In One Person

aren’t, I should say—in the same weight-class,” Miss Frost said to Kittredge.

“Big Al was my one-seventy-seven-pounder,” Herm Hoyt was telling Kittredge. “You were a little light to wrestle heavyweight, Al, but I started you at heavyweight a couple of times—you kept askin’ me to let you wrestle the big guys.”

“I was pretty good—just pretty good,” Miss Frost told Kittredge. “At least they didn’t think I was very good—not when I got to Pennsylvania.”

Both Atkins and I saw that Kittredge couldn’t speak. The handshaking part was over, but either Kittredge couldn’t let go of Miss Frost’s hand or she didn’t let him let go.

Miss Frost had lost a lot of muscle mass since her wrestling days; yet, with the hormones she’d been taking, I’m sure her hips were bigger than when she used to weigh in at 177 pounds. In her forties, I’m guessing Miss Frost weighed 185 or 190 pounds, but she was six feet two—in heels, she’d told me, she was about six-four—and she carried the weight well. She didn’t look like a 190-pounder.

Jacques Kittredge was a 147-pounder. I’m estimating that Kittredge’s “natural” weight—when it wasn’t wrestling season—was around 160 pounds. He was five-eleven (and a bit); Kittredge had once told Elaine that he’d just missed being a six-footer.

Coach Hoyt must have seen how unnerved Kittredge was—this was so uncharacteristic—not to mention the prolonged hand-holding between Kittredge and Miss Frost, which was making Atkins breathe irregularly.

Herm Hoyt began to ramble; his impromptu dissertation on wrestling history filled the void (our suddenly halted conversation) with an odd combination of nervousness and nostalgia.

“In your day, Al, I was just thinkin’, you wore nothin’ but tights—everyone was bare-chested, don’tcha remember?” the old coach asked his former 177-pounder.

“I most certainly do, Herm,” Miss Frost replied. She released Kittredge’s hand; with her long fingers, Miss Frost straightened her cardigan, which was open over her fitted blouse—the bare-chested word having drawn Kittredge’s attention to her girlish breasts.

Tom Atkins was wheezing; I’d not been told that Atkins suffered from asthma, in addition to his pronunciation problems. Perhaps poor Tom was merely hyperventilating, in lieu of bursting into tears.

“We started wearin’ the singlets and the tights in ’58—if you remember, Jacques,” Herm Hoyt said, but Kittredge had not recovered the ability to speak; he managed only a disheartened nod.

“The singlets and the tights are redundant,” Miss Frost said; she was examining her nail polish disapprovingly, as if someone else had chosen the color. “It should either be just a singlet, and no tights, or you wear only tights and you’re bare-chested,” Miss Frost said. “Personally,” she added, in a staged aside to the silent Kittredge, “I prefer to be bare-chested.”

“One day, it will be just a singlet—no tights, I’ll bet ya,” the old coach predicted. “No bare chests allowed.”

“Pity,” Miss Frost said, with a theatrical sigh.

Atkins emitted a choking sound; he’d spotted the scowling Dr. Harlow, maybe a half-second before I saw the bald-headed owl-fucker. I had my doubts that Dr. Harlow was a wrestling fan—at least Elaine and I had never noticed him when we’d watched Kittredge wrestle before. (But why would we have paid any attention to Dr. Harlow then?)

“This is strictly forbidden, Bill—there’s to be no contact between you two,” Dr. Harlow said; he didn’t look at Miss Frost. The “you two” was as close as Dr. Harlow could come to saying her name.

“Miss Frost and I haven’t said a word to each other,” I told the bald-headed owl-fucker.

“There’s to be no contact, Bill,” Dr. Harlow sputtered; he still wouldn’t look at Miss Frost.

“What contact?” Miss Frost said sharply; her big hand gripped the doctor’s shoulder, causing Dr. Harlow to spring away from her. “The only contact I’ve had is with young Kittredge here,” Miss Frost told Dr. Harlow; she now put both her hands on Kittredge’s shoulders. “Look at me,” she commanded him; when Kittredge looked up at her, he seemed as suddenly impressionable as a submissive little boy. (If Elaine had been there, she at last would have seen the innocence she’d sought, unsuccessfully, in Kittredge’s younger photographs.) “I wish you luck—I hope you tie that record,” Miss Frost told him.

“Thank you,” Kittredge managed to mumble.

“See you around, Herm,” Miss Frost said to her old coach.

“Take care of yourself, Al,” Herm Hoyt told her.

“I’ll see you, Nymph,” Kittredge said to me, but he didn’t look at me—or at Miss Frost. Kittredge quickly jogged off the mat, catching up to one of his teammates.

“We were talkin’ about wrestlin’, Doc,” Herm Hoyt said to Dr. Harlow.

“What record?” Dr. Harlow asked the old coach.

“My record,” Miss Frost told the doctor. She was leaving when Tom Atkins made a gagging sound; Atkins couldn’t contain himself, and now that Kittredge was gone, poor Tom was no longer afraid to say it.

“Miss Frost!” Atkins blurted out. “Bill and I are going to Europe together this summer!”

Miss Frost smiled warmly at me, before turning her attention to Tom Atkins. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, Tom,” she told him. “I’m sure you’ll have a great time.” Miss Frost was walking away when she stopped and looked back at us, but it was clear, when Miss Frost spoke to us, that she was looking straight at Dr. Harlow. “I hope you two get to do everything together,” Miss Frost said.

Then they were gone—both Miss Frost and Dr. Harlow. (The latter didn’t look at me as he was leaving.) Tom Atkins and I were left alone with Herm Hoyt.

“Ya know, fellas—I gotta be goin’,” the old coach told us. “There’s a team meetin’—”

“Coach Hoyt,” I said, stopping him. “I’m curious to know who would win—if there were ever a match between Kittredge and Miss Frost. I mean, if they were the same age and in the same weight-class. You know what I mean—if everything were equal.”

Herm Hoyt looked around; maybe he was checking to be sure that none of his wrestlers was near enough to overhear him. Only Delacorte had lingered in the wrestling room, but he was standing far off by the exit door, as if he were waiting for someone. Delacorte was too far away to hear us.

“Listen, fellas,” the old coach growled, “don’t quote me on this, but Big Al would kill Kittredge. At any age, no matter what weight-class—Al could kick the shit out of Kittredge.”

I won’t pretend that it wasn’t gratifying to hear this, but I would rather have heard it privately; it wasn’t something I wanted to share with Tom Atkins.

“Can you imagine, Bill—” Atkins began, when Coach Hoyt had left us for the locker room.

I interrupted Atkins. “Yes, of course I can imagine, Tom,” I told him.

We were at the exit to the old gym when Delacorte stopped us. It was me he’d been waiting for.

“I saw her—she’s truly beautiful!” Delacorte told me. “She spoke to me as she was leaving—she said I was a ‘wonderful’ Lear’s Fool.” Here Delacorte paused to rinse and spit; he was holding two paper cups and no longer resembled a death-in-progress. “She also told me I should move up a weight-class, but she put it in a funny way. ‘You might lose more matches if you move up a weight, but you won’t suffer so much.’ She used to be Al Frost, you know,” Delacorte confided to me. “She used to wrestle!”

“We know, Delacorte!” Tom Atkins said irritably.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Atkins,” Delacorte said, rinsing and spitting. “Then Dr. Harlow interrupted us,” Delacorte told me. “He said something to your friend—some bullshit about it being ‘inappropriate’ for her even to be here! But she just kept talking to me, as if the bald-headed owl-fucker weren’t there. She said, ‘Oh, what is it Kent says to Lear—act one, scene one, when Lear has got things the wrong way around, concerning Cordelia? Oh, what is the line? I just saw it! You were just