by John Irving
If Franny Dean had met the older Mary Marshall in '37, there was no record of it in the Owl of that year--nor was there any record of their meeting in the '38 and '39 Owls, wherein the wrestling-team manager grew only a little in stature but seemingly a lot in self-assurance.
Onstage, for the Drama Club, in those '38 and '39 yearbooks, Elaine and I could tell that the future Harvard-boy, who'd chosen "performer" as his career path, had developed into a most fetching femme fatale--he was a nymphlike presence.
"He was good-looking, wasn't he?" I asked Elaine.
"He looks like you, Billy--he's handsome but different," Elaine said.
"He already must have been dating my mother," I said, when we'd finished with the '39 Owl and were hurrying back to Bancroft Hall. (My dad was fifteen when my mom was nineteen!) "If 'dating' is the right word, Billy," Elaine said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You have to talk to your grandpa, Billy--if you can get him alone," Elaine told me.
"I could try talking to Uncle Bob first, if I can get Bob alone. Bob isn't as smart as Grandpa Harry," I said.
"I've got it!" Elaine suddenly said. "You talk to the admissions man first, but you tell him you've already talked to Grandpa Harry--and that Harry has told you everything he knows."
"Bob's not that dumb," I told Elaine.
"Yes, he is," Elaine said.
We had about an hour alone in Elaine's fifth-floor bedroom before Mr. and Mrs. Hadley came home from the movie in Ezra Falls. It being the Christmas holiday, we figured that the Hadleys and my mother and Richard--together with Aunt Muriel and Uncle Bob--would have stopped for a drink somewhere after the movie, and they had.
We'd had more than enough time to peruse the '40 Owl and look at all the photos of flaming Franny Dean--the prettiest boy in the class. William Francis Dean was a cross-dressing knockout in the photos from the Drama Club of that year, and there--at last, at the Senior Dance--was the missing picture Elaine and I had so fervently sought. There was little Franny holding my mom, Mary Marshall, in a slow-dancing embrace. Watching them, with evident disapproval, was big-sister Muriel. Oh, those Winthrop girls, "those Winthrop women," as Miss Frost had labeled my mother and my aunt Muriel--giving them Nana Victoria's maiden name of Winthrop. (When it came to who had the balls in the Marshall family, the Winthrop genes were definitely the ball-carriers.) I wouldn't wait long to trap Uncle Bob. The very next day, a prospective student and his parents were visiting Favorite River Academy; Uncle Bob gave me a call and asked if I felt like being a tour guide.
When I'd finished the tour, I found Uncle Bob alone in the Admissions Office; it being Christmas break, the secretaries weren't necessarily working.
"What's up, Billy?" Uncle Bob asked me.
"I guess you forgot that you actually did take the '40 Owl back to the library," I began.
"I did?" Uncle Bob asked. I could see he was wondering how he would ever explain this to Muriel.
"It didn't show up in the yearbook room by itself," I said. "Besides, Grandpa Harry has told me all about 'flaming Franny' Dean, and what a pretty boy he was. What I don't get is how it all began with my mom--I mean why and when. I mean, how did it start in the first place?"
"Franny wasn't a bad guy, Billy," Uncle Bob quickly said. "He was just a little light in his loafers, if you know what I mean."
I'd heard the expression--from Kittredge, of course--but all I said was, "Why did my mom ever fall for him in the first place? How did it start?"
"He was an awfully young boy when he met your mother--she was four years older, which is a big difference at that age, Billy," Uncle Bob said. "Your mom saw him in a play--as a girl, of course. Afterward, he complimented her clothes."
"Her clothes," I repeated.
"It seems he liked girls' clothes--he liked trying them on, Billy," Uncle Bob said.
"Oh."
"Your grandmother found them in your mom's bedroom--one day, after your mother had come home from the high school in Ezra Falls. Your mom and Franny Dean were trying on your mom's clothes. It was just a childish game, but your aunt Muriel told me Franny had tried on her clothes, too. The next thing we knew, Mary had a crush on him, but by then Franny must have known he liked boys better. He was genuinely fond of your mom, Billy, but he mainly liked her clothes."
"She still managed to get pregnant," I pointed out. "You don't get a girl pregnant by fucking her clothes!"
"Think about it, Billy--there was all this dressing and undressing going on," Uncle Bob said. "They must have been in their underwear a lot--you know."
"I have trouble imagining it," I told him.
"Your grandpa thought the world of Franny Dean, Billy--I think Harry believed it could work," Uncle Bob said. "Don't forget, your mother was always a little immature--"
"A little simpleminded, do you mean?" I interrupted him.
"When Franny was a young boy, I think your mom sort of managed him--you know, Billy, she could kind of boss him around a little."
"But then Franny grew up," I said.
"There was also the guy--the one Franny met in the war, and they reconnected later," Uncle Bob began.
"It was you who told me that story--wasn't it, Uncle Bob?" I asked. "You know, the toilet-seat skipper, the man on the ship--he lost control of Madame Bovary; he went sliding over the toilet seats. Later, they met on the MTA. The guy got on at the Kendall Square station--he got off at Central Square--and he said to my dad, 'Hi. I'm Bovary. Remember me?' I mean that guy. You told me that story--didn't you, Uncle Bob?"
"No, I didn't, Billy," Uncle Bob said. "Your dad himself told you that story, and that guy didn't get off at the Central Square station--that guy stayed on the train, Billy. Your father and that guy were a couple. They may still be a couple, for all I know," Uncle Bob told me. "I thought your grandfather told you everything," he added suspiciously.
"It looks like there's more to ask Grandpa Harry about," I told Uncle Bob.
The admissions man was staring sadly at the floor of his office. "Did you have a good tour, Billy?" he asked me, a little absently. "Did that boy strike you as a promising candidate?"
Of course I had no memory of the prospective student or his parents.
"Thanks for everything, Uncle Bob," I said to him; I really did like him, and I felt sorry for him. "I think you're a good fella!" I called to him, as I ran out of the Admissions Office.
I knew where Grandpa Harry was; it was a workday, so he wouldn't be at home, under Nana Victoria's thumb. Harry Marshall didn't get a schoolteacher's Christmas break. I knew that Grandpa Harry was at the sawmill and the lumberyard, where I soon found him.
I told him I'd seen my father in the Favorite River Academy yearbooks; I said that Uncle Bob had confessed everything he knew about flaming Franny Dean, the effeminate cross-dressing boy who'd once tried on my mother's clothes--even, I'd heard, my aunt Muriel's clothes!
But what was this I'd heard about my dad actually visiting me--when I was sick with scarlet fever, wasn't it? And how was it possible that my father had actually told me that story of the soldier he met in the head of the Liberty ship during an Atlantic winter storm? The transport ship had just hit the open seas--the convoy was on its way to Italy from Hampton Roads, Virginia, Port of Embarkation--when my dad made the acquaintance of a toilet-seat skipper who was reading Madame Bovary.
"Who the hell was that fella?" I asked Grandpa Harry.
"That would be the someone else your mom saw Franny kissin', Bill," Grandpa Harry told me. "You had scarlet fever, Bill. Your dad heard you were sick, and he wanted to see you. I suspect, knowin' Franny, he wanted to get a look at Richard Abbott, too," Grandpa Harry said. "Franny just wanted to know you were in good hands, I guess. Franny wasn't a bad guy, Bill--he just wasn't really a guy!"
"And nobody told me," I said.
"Ah, well--I don't think any of us is proud of that, Bill!" Grandpa Harry exclaimed. "That's just how such things work out, I think. Your mom was hurt. Poor Mary just never u
nderstood the dressin'-up part--she thought it was somethin' Franny would outgrow, I guess."
"And what about the Madame Bovary guy?" I asked my grandfather.
"Ah, well--there's people you meet, Bill," Grandpa Harry said. "Some of 'em are merely encounters, nothin' more, but occasionally there's a love-of-your-life meetin', and that's different--you know?"
I had only two times left when I would see Miss Frost. I didn't know about the long-lasting effects of a "love-of-your-life meetin' "--not yet.
Chapter 10
ONE MOVE
The next-to-last time I saw Miss Frost was at a wrestling match--a dual meet at Favorite River Academy in January 1961. It was the first home meet of the season; Tom Atkins and I went together. The wrestling room--at one time, it was the only gym on the Favorite River campus--was an ancient brick building attached to the more modern, bigger gym by an enclosed but unheated cement catwalk.
The old gym was encircled by a wooden running track, which hung over the wrestling room; the track sloped downward at the four corners. The student spectators sat on the wooden track with their arms resting on the center bar of the iron railing. On this particular Saturday, Tom Atkins and I were among them, peering down at the wrestlers below.
The mat, the scorers' table, and the two team benches took up most of the gym floor. At one end of the wrestling room was a slanted rectangle of bleachers, with not more than a dozen rows of seats. The students considered the bleachers to be appropriate seating for the "older types." Faculty spectators sat there, and visiting parents. There were some townspeople who regularly attended the wrestling matches, and they sat in the bleachers. The day Elaine and I had seen Mrs. Kittredge watch her son wrestle, Mrs. Kittredge had sat in the bleachers--while Elaine and I had closely observed her from the sloped wooden running track above her.
I was remembering my one and only sighting of Mrs. Kittredge, when Tom Atkins and I noticed Miss Frost. She was sitting in the first row of the bleacher seats, as close to the wrestling mat as she could get. (Mrs. Kittredge had sat in the back row of the bleachers, as if to signify her immortal-seeming aloofness from the grunting and grimacing of human combat.)
"Look who's here, Bill--in the first row. Do you see her?" Atkins asked me.
"I know, Tom--I see her," I said. I instantly wondered if Miss Frost often, or always, attended the wrestling matches. If she'd been a frequent spectator at the home meets, how had Elaine and I missed seeing her? Miss Frost was not only tall and broad-shouldered; as a woman, it wasn't just her size that was imposing. If she'd frequently had a front-row seat at the wrestling matches, how could anyone have missed seeing her?
Miss Frost seemed very much at home where she was--at the edge of the wrestling mat, watching the wrestlers warm up. I doubted that she'd spotted Tom Atkins and me, because she didn't glance up at the surrounding running track--even during the warm-ups. And once the competition started, didn't everyone watch the wrestlers on the mat?
Because Delacorte was a lightweight, he wrestled in one of the first matches. If Delacorte had played Lear's Fool as a death-in-progress, that was certainly the way he wrestled; it was agonizing to watch him. Delacorte managed to make a wrestling match resemble a death-in-progress. The weight-cutting took a toll on him. He was so sucked down--he was all loose skin and super-prominent bones. Delacorte looked as if he were starving to death.
He was noticeably taller than most of his opponents; he often outscored them in the first period, and he was usually leading at the end of the second period, when he began to tire. The third period was Delacorte's time to pay for the weight-cutting.
Delacorte finished every wrestling match desperately trying to protect an ever-diminishing lead. He stalled, he fled the mat; his opponent's hands appeared to grow heavy on him. Delacorte's head hung down, and his tongue lolled out a corner of his open mouth. According to Kittredge, Delacorte ran out of gas every third period; a wrestling match was always a couple of minutes too long for him.
"Hang on, Delacorte!" one of the student spectators inevitably cried; soon all of us would echo this plea.
"Hang on! Hang on! Hang on!"
At this point in Delacorte's matches, Elaine and I had learned to look at Favorite River's wrestling coach--a tough-looking old geezer with cauliflower ears and a crooked nose. Almost everyone called Coach Hoyt by his first name, which was Herm.
When Delacorte was dying in the third period, Herm Hoyt predictably took a towel from a stack at the end of the wrestling-team bench nearest the scorers' table. Coach Hoyt unfailingly sat next to the towels, as near as he could get to the scorers' table.
As Delacorte tried to "hang on" a little longer, Herm unfolded the towel; he was bowlegged, in that way a lot of old wrestlers are, and when he stood up from the team bench, he (for just a moment) looked like he wanted to strangle the dying Delacorte with the towel, which Herm instead put over his own head. Coach Hoyt wore the towel as if it were a hood; he peered out from under the towel at Delacorte's final, expiring moments--at the clock on the scorers' table, at the ref (who, in the waning seconds of the third period, usually first warned Delacorte, and then penalized him, for stalling).
While Delacorte died, which I found unbearable to watch, I looked instead at Herm Hoyt, who seemed to be dying of both anger and empathy under the towel. Naturally, I advised Tom Atkins to keep his eyes on the old coach instead of enduring Delacorte's agonies, because Herm Hoyt knew before anyone else (including Delacorte) whether Delacorte would hang on and win or finish dying and lose.
This Saturday, following his near-death experience, Delacorte actually hung on and won. He came off the mat and collapsed into Herm Hoyt's arms. The old coach did as he always did with Delacorte--win or lose. Herm covered Delacorte's head with the towel, and Delacorte staggered to the team bench, where he sat sobbing and gasping for breath under the all-concealing mantle.
"For once, Delacorte isn't rinsing or spitting," Atkins sarcastically observed, but I was watching Miss Frost, who suddenly looked at me and smiled.
It was an unselfconscious smile--accompanied by a spontaneous little wave, just the wiggling of her fingers on one hand. I instantly knew: Miss Frost had known all along that I was there, and she'd expected that I would be.
I was so completely undone by her smile, and the wave, that I feared I would faint and slip under the railing; I foresaw myself falling from the wooden track to the wrestling room below. In all likelihood, it wouldn't have been a life-threatening fall; the running track was not at a great height above the gym floor. It just would have been humiliating to fall in a heap on the wrestling mat, or to land on one or more of the wrestlers.
"I don't feel well, Tom," I said to Atkins. "I'm a little dizzy."
"I've got you, Bill," Atkins said, putting his arm around me. "Just don't look down for a minute."
I kept looking at the far end of the gym, where the bleachers were, but Miss Frost had returned her attention to the wrestling; another match had started, while Delacorte was still wracked by sobs and gasps--his head was bobbing up and down under the consoling towel.
Coach Herm Hoyt had sat back down on the team bench next to the stack of clean towels. I saw Kittredge, who was beginning to loosen up; he was standing behind the bench, just bouncing on the balls of his feet and turning his head from side to side. Kittredge was stretching his neck, but he never stopped looking at Miss Frost.
"I'm okay, Tom," I said, but the weight of his arm rested on the back of my neck for a few seconds more; I counted to five to myself before Atkins took his arm from around my shoulders.
"We should think about going to Europe together," I told Atkins, but I still watched Kittredge, who was skipping rope. Kittredge couldn't take his eyes off Miss Frost; he continued to stare at her, skipping rhythmically, the speed of the jump rope never changing.
"Look who's captivated by her now, Bill," Atkins said petulantly.
"I know, Tom--I see him," I said. (Was it my worst fear, or was it secretly thrilling--to
imagine Kittredge and Miss Frost together?)
"We would go to Europe this summer--is that what you mean, Bill?" Atkins asked me.
"Why not?" I replied, as casually as I could--I was still watching Kittredge.
"If your parents approve, and mine do--we could ask them, couldn't we?" Atkins said.
"It's in our hands, Tom--we have to make them understand it's a priority," I told him.
"She's looking at you, Bill!" Atkins said breathlessly.
When I glanced (as casually as I could) at Miss Frost, she was smiling at me again. She put her index and middle fingers to her lips and kissed them. Before I could blow her a kiss, she was once more watching the wrestling.
"Boy, did that get Kittredge's attention!" Tom Atkins said excitedly. I kept looking at Miss Frost, but only for a moment; I didn't need Atkins to tell me in order to know that Kittredge was looking at me.
"Bill, Kittredge is--" Atkins began.
"I know, Tom," I told him. I let my gaze linger on Miss Frost a little longer, before I glanced--as if accidentally--at Kittredge. He'd stopped jumping rope and was staring at me. I just smiled at him, as unmeaningfully as I'd ever managed to smile at him, and Kittredge began to skip rope again; he had picked up the pace, either consciously or unconsciously, but he was once again staring at Miss Frost. I couldn't help wonder if Kittredge was reconsidering the disgusting word. Perhaps the everything that Kittredge imagined I'd done with Miss Frost didn't disgust him anymore, or was this wishful thinking?
The atmosphere in the wrestling room changed abruptly when Kittredge's match began. Both team benches viewed the mauling with a clinical appreciation. Kittredge usually beat up his opponents before he pinned them. It was confusing for a nonwrestler like myself to differentiate among the displays of Kittredge's technical expertise, his athleticism, and the brute force of his physical superiority; Kittredge thoroughly dominated an opponent before pinning him. There was always a moment in the third and final period when Kittredge glanced at the clock on the scorers' table; at that moment, the home crowd began chanting, "Pin! Pin! Pin!" By then, the torturing had gone on for so long that I imagined Kittredge's opponent was hoping to be pinned; moments later, when the referee signaled the fall, the pin seemed both overdue and merciful. I'd never seen Kittredge lose; I hadn't once seen him challenged.
