by John Irving
There was one similarity. Richard was so very youthful-looking--he seemed to be almost as young as a Favorite River Academy student; he might have needed to shave only once or twice a week. And Miss Frost, despite the broad shoulders and her strong-looking upper arms, and (I only now noticed) the conspicuous breadth of her chest, had these small breasts. Miss Frost had young, barely emerging breasts--or so they seemed to me, though, at thirteen, I was a relatively recent noticer of breasts.
My cousin Gerry had bigger ones. Even fourteen-year-old Laura Gordon, who was too bosomy to play Hedvig in The Wild Duck, had more "highly visible breasts" (as my breast-conscious aunt Muriel had observed) than the otherwise imposing Miss Frost.
I was too smitten to utter a word--I couldn't answer her--but Miss Frost (very patiently) asked me her question again. "William? You're interested in reading, I presume, but could you tell me if you like fiction or nonfiction--and what subject in particular you prefer?" Miss Frost asked. "I've seen this boy at our little theater!" she said suddenly to Richard. "I've spotted you backstage, William--you seem very observant."
"Yes, I am," I scarcely managed to say. Indeed, I'd been so observant of Miss Frost that I could have masturbated on the spot, but instead I summoned the strength to say: "Do you know any novels about young people who have . . . dangerous crushes?"
Miss Frost stared at me unflinchingly. "Dangerous crushes," she repeated. "Explain what's dangerous about a crush."
"A crush on the wrong person," I told her.
"I said, in effect, there's no such thing," Richard Abbott interjected. "There are no 'wrong' people; we're free to have crushes on anyone we want."
"There are no 'wrong' people to have crushes on--are you kidding?" Miss Frost asked Richard. "On the contrary, William, there is some notable literature on the subject of crushes on the wrong people," she said to me.
"Well, that's what Bill is into," Richard told Miss Frost. "Crushes on the wrong people."
"That's quite a category," Miss Frost said; she was all the while smiling beautifully at me. "I'm going to start you out slowly--trust me on this one, William. You can't rush into crushes on the wrong people."
"Just what do you have in mind?" Richard Abbott asked her. "Are we talking Romeo and Juliet here?"
"The problems between the Montagues and the Capulets were not Romeo's and Juliet's problems," Miss Frost said. "Romeo and Juliet were the right people for each other; it was their families that were fucked up."
"I see," Richard said--the "fucked up" remark shocked him and me. (It seemed so unlike a librarian.)
"Two sisters come to mind," Miss Frost said, quickly moving on. Both Richard Abbott and I misunderstood her. We were thinking that she meant to say something clever about my mother and Aunt Muriel.
I'd once imagined that the town of First Sister had been named for Muriel; she exuded sufficient self-importance to have had a whole town (albeit a small one) named for her. But Grandpa Harry had set me straight about the origins of our town's name.
Favorite River was a tributary of the Connecticut River; when the first woodsmen were logging the Connecticut River Valley, they renamed some of the rivers from which they ran logs into and down the Connecticut--from both the New Hampshire and Vermont sides of the big river. (Maybe they hadn't liked all the Indian names.) Those early river drivers named Favorite River--what they called a straight shot into the Connecticut, with few bends that could cause log jams. As for naming our town First Sister, that was because of the millpond, which was created by the dam on the Favorite River. With our sawmill and the lumberyard, we became a "first sister" to those other, bigger mill towns on the Connecticut River.
I found Grandpa Harry's explanation of First Sister's origins to be less exciting than my earliest assumption that our small town had been named for my mother's older, bullying sister.
But both Richard Abbott and I were thinking about those two Marshall girls, when Miss Frost made her remark--"Two sisters come to mind." Miss Frost must have noticed that I appeared puzzled, and Richard had lost his leading-man aura; he seemed confused, even unsure of himself. Miss Frost then said, "I mean the Bronte sisters, obviously."
"Obviously!" Richard cried; he looked relieved.
"Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights," Miss Frost explained to me, "and Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre."
"Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic," Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious."
"Those are some crushes," Miss Frost said meaningfully.
"But aren't they women's crushes?" Richard asked the librarian. "Bill might have a young man's crush, or crushes, more in mind."
"Crushes are crushes," Miss Frost said, without hesitation. "It's the writing that matters; you're not suggesting that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are novels 'for women only,' are you?"
"Certainly not! Of course it's the writing that matters!" Richard Abbott exclaimed. "I just meant that a more masculine adventure--"
"More masculine!" Miss Frost repeated. "Well, I suppose there's Fielding," she added.
"Oh, yes!" Richard cried. "Do you mean Tom Jones?"
"I do," Miss Frost replied, with a sigh. "If one can count sexual escapades as one result of crushes--"
"Why not?" Richard Abbott quickly said.
"You're how old?" Miss Frost asked me. Once again, her long fingers touched my shoulder. I recalled how Aunt Muriel had fainted (twice), and briefly feared I would soon lose consciousness.
"I'm thirteen," I told her.
"Three novels are enough of a beginning at thirteen," she said to Richard. "It wouldn't be wise to overload him with crushes at too young an age. Let's just see where these three novels lead him, shall we?" Once more Miss Frost smiled at me. "Begin with the Fielding," she advised me. "It's arguably the most primitive. You'll find that the Bronte sisters are more emotional--more psychological. They're more grown-up novelists."
"Miss Frost?" Richard Abbott said. "Have you ever been onstage--have you ever acted?"
"Only in my mind," she answered him, almost flirtatiously. "When I was younger--all the time."
Richard gave me a conspiratorial look; I knew perfectly well what the talented young newcomer to the First Sister Players was thinking. A tower of sexual strength stood before us; to Richard and me, Miss Frost was a woman with an untamable freedom--a certain lawlessness definitely accompanied her.
To a younger man, Richard Abbott, and to me--I was a thirteen-year-old daydreamer who suddenly desired to write the story of my crushes on the wrong people and to have sex with a librarian in her thirties--Miss Frost was an unquestionable sexual presence.
"There's a part for you, Miss Frost," Richard Abbott ventured, while we followed her through the stacks, where she was gathering my first three literary novels.
"Actually, one of two possible parts," I pointed out.
"Yes, you have to choose," Richard quickly added. "It's either Hedda in Hedda Gabler, or Nora in A Doll's House. Do you know Ibsen? These are often called problem plays--"
"That's some choice," Miss Frost said, smiling at me. "Either I get to shoot myself in the temple, or I get to be the kind of woman who abandons her three young children."
"I think it's a positive decision, in both cases," Richard Abbott tried to reassure her.
"Oh, how very positive!" Miss Frost said, laughing--with a wave of her long-fingered hand. (When she laughed, there was something hoarse and low in her voice, which almost immediately jumped to a higher, clearer register.)
"Nils Borkman is the director," I warned Miss Frost; I was feeling protective of her already, and we'd only just met.
"My dear boy," Miss Frost said to me, "as if there's a soul in First Sister who doesn't know that a neuroses-ridden Norwegian--no neophyte to 'serious drama'--is our little theater's director."
She said suddenly to Richard: "I would be interested to know--if A Doll's House is the Ibsen that we choose, and I am to be the much-misunderstood Nora--how you w
ill be cast, Mr. Richard Abbott." Before Richard could answer her, Miss Frost went on: "My guess is that you would be Torvald Helmer, Nora's dull and uncomprehending husband--he whose life Nora saves, but he can't save hers."
"I would guess that is how I will be cast," Richard ventured cautiously. "Of course I'm not the director."
"You must tell me, Richard Abbott, if you intend to flirt with me--I don't mean in our onstage roles," Miss Frost said.
"No--not at all!" Richard cried. "I'm seriously flirting with Bill's mom."
"Very well, then--that's the right answer," she told him--once more ruffling my hair, but she kept talking to Richard. "And if it's Hedda Gabler that we do, and I'm Hedda--well, the decision regarding your role is a more complicated one, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," Richard said thoughtfully. "I hope, in the case of Hedda Gabler, I am not the dull, uncomprehending husband--I would hate to be George," Richard said.
"Who wouldn't hate to be George?" Miss Frost asked him.
"There's the writer Hedda destroys," Richard speculated. "I don't put it past Nils to cast me as Eilert Lovborg."
"You would be wrong for the part!" Miss Frost declared.
"That leaves Judge Brack," Richard Abbott surmised.
"That might be fun," Miss Frost told him. "I shoot myself to escape your clutches."
"I could well imagine being destroyed by that," Richard Abbott said, most graciously. They were acting, even now--I could tell--and they were not amateurs. My mother wouldn't need to be doing much prompting in their cases; I didn't imagine that Richard Abbott or Miss Frost would ever forget a line or misspeak a single word.
"I shall think about it and get back to you," Miss Frost told Richard. There was a tall, narrow, dimly lit mirror in the foyer of the library, where a long row of coat hooks revealed a solitary raincoat--probably Miss Frost's. She glanced at her hair in the mirror. "I've been considering longer hair," she said, as if to her double.
"I imagine Hedda with somewhat longer hair," Richard said.
"Do you?" Miss Frost asked, but she was smiling at me again. "Just look at you, William," she said suddenly. "Talk about 'coming of age'--just look at this boy!" I must have blushed, or looked away--clutching those three coming-of-age novels to my heart.
MISS FROST CHOSE WELL. I would read Tom Jones, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre--in that order--thus becoming, to my mom's surprise, a reader. And what those novels taught me was that adventure was not confined to seafaring, with or without pirates. One could find considerable excitement by not escaping to science fiction or futuristic fantasies; it wasn't necessary to read a Western or a romance novel in order to transport oneself. In reading, as in writing, all one needed--that is, in order to have an utterly absorbing journey--was a believable but formidable relationship. What else, after all, did crushes--especially crushes on the wrong people--lead to?
"Well, Bill, let's get you home so you can start reading," Richard Abbott said that warm September evening, and--turning to Miss Frost, in the foyer of the library--he said (in a voice not his own) the last thing Judge Brack says to Hedda in act 4, " 'We shall get on capitally together, we two!' "
There would be two months of rehearsals for Hedda Gabler that fall, so I would become most familiar with that line--not to mention the last lines Hedda says, in response. She has already exited the stage, but--speaking offstage, loud and clear, as the stage directions say--Miss Frost (as Hedda) responds, " 'Yes, don't you flatter yourself we will, Judge Brack? Now that you are the one cock in the basket--' " A shot is heard within, the stage directions then say.
Do I sincerely love that play, or did I adore it because Richard Abbott and Miss Frost brought it to life for me? Grandpa Harry was outstanding in a small role--that of George's aunt Juliana, Miss Tesman--and my aunt Muriel was the needy comrade of Eilert Lovborg, Mrs. Elvsted.
"Well, that was some performance," Richard Abbott said to me, as we strolled along the River Street sidewalk on that warm September evening. It was dark now, and a distant thunder was in the air, but the neighborhood backyards were quiet; children and dogs had been brought indoors, and Richard was walking me home.
"What performance?" I asked him.
"I mean Miss Frost!" Richard exclaimed. "I mean her performance! The books you should read, all that stuff about crushes, and her elaborate dance about whether she would play Nora or Hedda--"
"You mean she was always acting?" I asked him. (Once again, I felt protective of her, without knowing why.)
"I take it that you liked her," Richard said.
"I loved her!" I blurted out.
"Understandable," he said, nodding his head.
"Didn't you like her?" I asked him.
"Oh, yes, I did--I do like her--and I think she'll be a perfect Hedda," Richard said.
"If she'll do it," I cautioned him.
"Oh, she'll do it--of course she's going to do it!" Richard declared. "She was just toying with me."
"Toying," I repeated, not sure if he was criticizing Miss Frost. I was not at all certain that Richard had liked her sufficiently.
"Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays--well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life."
This was all so overwhelming. It was staggering to imagine that there were novels about crushes--even, perhaps especially, crushes on the wrong people. Furthermore, our town's amateur theatrical society would be performing Ibsen's Hedda Gabler with a brand-new leading man, and with a tower of sexual strength (and untamable freedom) in the leading female role. And not only did my wounded mother have a "beau," as Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria referred to Richard Abbott, but my uncomfortable crush on Richard had been supplanted. I was now in love with a librarian who was old enough to be my mother. My seemingly unnatural attraction to Richard Abbott notwithstanding, I felt a new and unknown lust for Miss Frost--not to mention that I suddenly had all this serious reading to do.
No wonder that, when Richard and I came in the house from our excursion to the library, my grandmother felt my forehead--I must have looked flushed, as if I had a fever. "Too much excitement for a school night, Billy," Nana Victoria said.
"Nonsense," Grandpa Harry said. "Show me the books you have, Bill."
"Miss Frost chose them for me," I told him, handing him the novels.
"Miss Frost!" my grandmother again declared, her contempt rising.
"Vicky, Vicky," Grandpa Harry cautioned her, like little back-to-back slaps.
"Mommy, please don't," my mother said.
"They're great novels," my grandfather announced. "In fact, they're classics. I daresay Miss Frost knows what novels a young boy should read."
"I daresay!" Nana repeated haughtily.
There then followed some difficult-to-understand nastiness from my grandmother, concerning Miss Frost's actual age. "I don't mean her professed age!" Nana Victoria cried. I offered that I thought Miss Frost was my mom's age, or a little younger, but Grandpa Harry and my mother looked at each other. Next came what I was familiar with, from the theater--a pause.
"No, Miss Frost is closer to Muriel's age," my grandpa said.
"That woman is older than Muriel!" my grandmother snapped.
"Actually, they're about the same age," my mother very quietly said.
At the time, all this meant to me was that Miss Frost was younger-looking than Muriel. In truth, I gave the matter little thought. Nana Victoria evidently didn't like Miss Frost, and Muriel had issues with Miss Frost's breasts or her bras--or both.
It would be later--I don't remember when, exactly, but it was several months later, after I was regularly in the habit of getting novels from Miss Frost in our town's public library--when I overheard my mean aunt Muriel talking about Miss Frost (to my mother) in that same tone of voice my grandmother had used. "And I suppose that
she has not progressed from the ridiculous training bra?" (To which my mom merely shook her head.)
I would ask Richard Abbott about it, albeit indirectly. "What are training bras, Richard?" I asked him, seemingly out of the blue.
"Something you're reading about, Bill?" Richard asked.
"No, I just wondered," I told him.
"Well, Bill, training bras aren't something I know a great deal about," Richard began, "but I believe they are designed to be a young girl's first bra."
"Why training?" I asked.
"Well, Bill," Richard continued, "I guess the training part of the bra works like this. A girl whose breasts are newly forming wears a training bra so that her breasts begin to get the idea of what a bra is all about."
"Oh," I said. I was completely baffled; I couldn't imagine why Miss Frost's breasts needed to be trained at all, and the concept that breasts have ideas was also new and troubling to me. Yet my infatuation with Miss Frost had certainly shown me that my penis had ideas that seemed entirely separate from my own thoughts. And if penises could have ideas, it was not such a stretch (for a thirteen-year-old) to imagine that breasts could also think for themselves.
In the literature Miss Frost was presenting me with, at an ever increasing rate, I'd not yet encountered a novel from a penis's point of view, or one where the ideas that a woman's breasts have are somehow disturbing to the woman herself--or to her family and friends. Yet such novels seemed possible, if only in the way that my ever having sex with Miss Frost also seemed (albeit remotely) possible.
WAS IT PRESCIENT OF Miss Frost to make me wait for Dickens--to work up to him, as it were? And the first Dickens she allowed me was not what I've called the "crucial" one; she made me wait for Great Expectations, too. I began, as many a Dickens reader has, with Oliver Twist, that young and Gothic novel--the hangman's noose at Newgate casts its macabre shadow over several of the novel's most memorable characters. One thing Dickens and Hardy have in common is the fatalistic belief that, particularly in the case of the young and innocent, the character with a good heart and unbudging integrity is at the greatest risk in a menacing world. (Miss Frost had the good sense to make me wait for Hardy, too. Thomas Hardy is not thirteen-year-old material.)
