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.
“You see why I like the Miss,” she said, laughing.
“I love everything about you,” I told her.
“Slow down, William,” M
iss 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 slender novel. It was only about forty-five pages longer than King Lear, which happened to be the story I’d read most recently.
It was a novel by James Baldwin called Giovanni’s Room—the title of which I could barely read, because Miss Frost had extinguished all the lights in the main library. There was only the light from the dimly lit foyer—sca
rcely sufficient for Miss Frost and me to see our way to the basement stairs.
On the dark stairs, lit only by what scant light followed us from the foyer of the library—and a dull glowing ahead of us, which beckoned us to Miss Frost’s cubicle, partitioned off from the furnace room—I suddenly remembered that there was another novel I wanted the confident librarian’s advice about.
The name Al was on my lips, but I could not bring myself to say it. I said, instead: “Miss Frost, what can you tell me about Madame Bovary? Do you think I would like it?”
“When you’re older, William, I think you’ll love it.”
“That’s kind of what Richard said, and Uncle Bob,” I told her.
“Your uncle Bob has read Madame Bovary—you can’t mean Muriel’s Bob!” Miss Frost exclaimed.
“Bob hasn’t read it—he was just telling me what it was about,” I explained.
“Someone who hasn’t read a novel doesn’t really know what it’s about, William.”
“Oh.”
“You should wait, William,” Miss Frost said. “The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you believe that your future relationships will have disappointing—even devastating—consequences.”
“I’ll wait to read it until then,” I told her.
Her bedroom and bathroom—formerly, the coal bin—was lit only by a reading lamp, affixed to the headboard of rails on the old-fashioned brass bed. Miss Frost lit the cinnamon-scented candle on the night table, turning off the lamp. In the candlelight, she told me to undress. “That means everything, William—please don’t keep on your socks.”
I did as she told me, with my back turned to her, while she said she would appreciate “some privacy”; she briefly used the toilet with the wooden seat—I believe I heard her pee, and flush—and then, from the sound of running water, I think she had a quick wash-up and brushed her teeth in the small sink.
I lay naked on her brass bed; in the flickering candlelight, I read that Giovanni’s Room was published in 1956. From the attached library card, I saw that only one patron of the First Sister Public Library had checked out the novel—in four years—and I wondered if Mr. Baldwin’s solitary reader had in fact been Miss Frost. I did not finish the first two paragraphs before Miss Frost said, “Please don’t read that now, William. It’s very sad, and it will surely upset you.”
In One Person Page 22
