by John Irving
"I gotta go," was all Kittredge said. He said it to me--he didn't answer Atkins. Even Tom Atkins could tell that Kittredge's confidence was shaken.
Atkins and I watched Kittredge run along the catwalk; he clutched the towel around his waist as he ran. It was a small towel--as tight around his hips as a short skirt. The towel made Kittredge run like a girl.
"You don't think Kittredge could lose a match this season--do you, Bill?" Atkins asked me.
Like Kittredge, I didn't answer Atkins. How could Kittredge lose a wrestling match in New England? I would have loved to ask Miss Frost that question, among other questions.
THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU are tired of being treated like a child--tired of adolescence, too--that suddenly opening but quickly closing passage, when you irreversibly want to grow up, is a dangerous time. In a future novel (an early one), I would write: "Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult--in any way--something in your childhood dies." (I might have been thinking of that simultaneous desire to become a writer and to have sex with Miss Frost, not necessarily in that order.)
In a later novel, I would approach this idea a little differently--a little more carefully, maybe. "In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us--not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss." I suppose I could have written "betrayals" instead of "robberies"; in my own family's case, I might have used the deceptions word--citing lies of both omission and commission. But I'll stand by what I wrote; it suffices.
In another novel--very near the beginning of the book, in fact--I wrote: "Your memory is a monster; you forget--it doesn't. It simply files things away; it keeps things for you, or hides things from you. Your memory summons things to your recall with a will of its own. You imagine you have a memory, but your memory has you!" (I'll stand by that, too.)
It would have been late February or early March of '61 when the Favorite River Academy community learned that Kittredge had lost; in fact, he'd lost twice. The New England Interscholastic Wrestling Championships were in East Providence, Rhode Island, that year. Kittredge was beaten badly in the semifinals. "It wasn't even close," Delacorte told me in an almost-incomprehensible sentence. (I could detect the vowels but not the consonants, because Delacorte was speaking with six stitches in his tongue.)
Kittredge had lost again in the consolation round to determine third place--this time, to a kid he'd beaten before.
"That first loss kind of took it out of him--after that, Kittredge didn't seem to care if he finished third or fourth," was all Delacorte could manage to say. I saw blood in his spitting cup; he'd bitten through his tongue--hence the six stitches.
"Kittredge finished fourth," I told Tom Atkins.
For a two-time defending champion, this must have hurt. The New England Interscholastic Wrestling Championships had begun in '49, fourteen years after Al Frost finished his third undefeated season, but in the Favorite River school newspaper, nothing was said about Al Frost's record--or Kittredge's failure to tie it. In thirteen years, there'd been eighteen two-time New England champions--Kittredge among them. If he'd managed to win a third championship, that would have been a first. "A first and a last," Coach Hoyt was quoted as saying, in our school newspaper. As it would turn out, '61 was the final year there were all-inclusive New England schoolboy wrestling championships; starting in '62, the public high schools and the private schools would have separate tournaments.
I asked Herm Hoyt about it one early spring day, when our paths crossed in the quad. "Somethin' will be lost--havin' one tournament for everyone is tougher," the old coach told me.
I asked Coach Hoyt about Kittredge, too--if there was anything that could explain those two losses. "Kittredge didn't give a shit about that consolation match," Herm said. "If he couldn't win it all, he didn't give a good fuck about the difference between third and fourth place."
"What about the first loss?" I asked Coach Hoyt.
"I kept tellin' Kittredge, there's always someone who's better," the old coach said. "The only way you beat the better guy is by bein' tougher. The other guy was better, and Kittredge wasn't tougher."
That seemed to be all there was to it. Atkins and I found Kittredge's defeat anticlimactic. When I mentioned it to Richard Abbott, he said, "It's Shakespearean, Bill; lots of the important stuff in Shakespeare happens offstage--you just hear about it."
"It's Shakespearean," I repeated.
"It's still anticlimactic," Atkins said, when I told him what Richard had to say.
As for Kittredge, he seemed only a little subdued; he didn't strike me as much affected by those losses. Besides, it was that time in our senior year when we were hearing about what colleges or universities we'd been admitted to. The wrestling season was over.
Favorite River was not in the top tier of New England preparatory schools; understandably, the academy kids didn't apply to the top tier of colleges or universities. Most of us went to small liberal-arts colleges, but Tom Atkins saw himself as a state-university type; he'd seen what small was like, and what he wanted was bigger--"a place you could get lost in," Atkins wistfully said to me.
I cared less about the getting-lost factor than Tom Atkins did. I cared about the English Department--whether or not I could continue to read those writers Miss Frost had introduced me to. I cared about being in or near New York City.
"Where'd you go to college?" I had asked Miss Frost.
"Someplace in Pennsylvania," she'd told me. "It's no place you've ever heard of." (I liked the "no place you've ever heard of" part, but it was the New York City factor that mattered most to me.)
I applied to every college and university I could think of in the New York City area--ones you've heard of, ones you've never heard of. I made a point of speaking to someone in the German Department, too. In every case, I was assured that they would help me find a way to study abroad in a German-speaking country.
I already had the feeling that a summer in Europe with Tom Atkins would only serve to stimulate my desire to be far, far away from First Sister, Vermont. It seemed to me to be what a would-be writer should do--that is, live in a foreign country, where they spoke a foreign language, while (at the same time) I would be making my earliest serious attempts to write in my own language, as if I were the first and only person to ever do it.
Tom Atkins ended up at the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst; it was a big school, and Atkins would manage to get lost there--maybe more lost than he'd meant, or had wanted.
No doubt, my application to the University of New Hampshire provoked some suspicion at home. There'd been a rumor that Miss Frost was moving to New Hampshire. This had prompted Aunt Muriel to remark that she wished Miss Frost were moving farther away from Vermont than that--to which I responded by saying I hoped to move farther away from Vermont than that, too. (This must have mystified Muriel, who knew I'd applied to the University of New Hampshire.)
But that spring, there was no confirmation that Miss Frost's rumored move to New Hampshire was true--nor did anyone say where in New Hampshire she might be moving to. Truly, my reasons for applying to the University of New Hampshire had nothing to do with Miss Frost's future whereabouts. (I'd only applied there to worry my family--I had no intention of going there.)
It was frankly more of a mystery--chiefly, to Tom Atkins and me--that Kittredge was going to Yale. Granted, Atkins and I had the kind of SAT scores that made Yale--or any of the Ivy League schools--unattainable. My grades had been better than Kittredge's, however, and how could Yale have overlooked the fact that Kittredge had been forced to repeat his senior year? (Tom Atkins had erratic grades, but he had graduated on schedule.) Atkins and I knew that Kittredge had great SAT scores, but Yale must have been motivated to take him for other reasons; Atkins and I knew that, too.
Atkins mentioned Kittredge's wrestling, but I think I know what Miss Frost would have said about that: It wasn't the wrestling that got Kittredge into Yale.
(As it turned out, he wouldn't wrestle in college, anyway.) His SAT scores probably helped, but Kittredge's father, from whom he was estranged, had gone to Yale.
"Trust me," I told Tom. "Kittredge didn't get into Yale for his German--that's all I can tell you."
"Why does it matter to you, Billy--where Kittredge is going to college?" Mrs. Hadley asked me. (I was having a pronunciation problem with the Yale word, which was why the subject came up.)
"I'm not envious," I told her. "I assure you, I don't want to go there--I can't even say it!"
As it turned out, it meant nothing--where Kittredge went to college, or where I went--but, at the time, it was infuriating that Kittredge was accepted to Yale.
"Forget about fairness," I said to Martha Hadley, "but doesn't merit matter?" It was an eighteen-year-old question to ask, though I had turned nineteen (in March 1961); in due time, of course, I would get over where Kittredge went to college. Even in that spring of '61, Tom Atkins and I were more interested in planning our summer in Europe than we were obsessed by the obvious injustice of Kittredge getting into Yale.
I admit: It was easier to forget about Kittredge, now that I rarely saw him. Either he didn't need my help with his German or he'd stopped asking for it. Since Yale had admitted him, Kittredge wasn't worried about what grade he got in German--all he had to do was graduate.
"May I remind you?" Tom Atkins asked me sniffily. "Graduating was all Kittredge had to do last year, too."
But in '61, Kittredge did graduate--so did we all. Frankly, graduation seemed anticlimactic, too. Nothing happened, but what were we expecting? Apparently, Mrs. Kittredge hadn't been expecting anything; she didn't attend. Elaine also stayed away, but that was understandable.
Why hadn't Mrs. Kittredge come to see her only child graduate? ("Not very motherly, is she?" was all Kittredge had to say about it.) Kittredge seemed unsurprised; he was notably unimpressed with graduating. His aura was one of already having moved beyond the rest of us.
"It's as if he's started at Yale--it's like he's not here anymore," Atkins observed.
I met Tom's parents at graduation. His father took a despairing look at me and refused to shake my hand; he didn't call me a fag, but I could feel him thinking it.
"My father is very . . . unsophisticated," Atkins told me.
"He should meet my mom," was all I said. "We're going to Europe together, Tom--that's all that matters."
"That's all that matters," Atkins repeated. I didn't envy him his days at home before we left; it was evident that his dad would give him endless shit about me while poor Tom was home. Atkins lived in New Jersey. Having seen only the New Jersey people who came to Vermont to ski, I didn't envy Atkins that, either.
Delacorte introduced me to his mom. "This is the guy who was going to be Lear's Fool," Delacorte began.
When the pretty little woman in the sleeveless dress and the straw hat also declined to shake my hand, I realized that my being the original Lear's Fool was probably connected to the story of my having had sex with the transsexual town librarian.
"I'm so sorry for your troubles," Mrs. Delacorte told me. I only then remembered that I didn't know where Delacorte was going to college. Now that he's dead, I'm sorry I never asked him. It may have mattered to Delacorte--where he went to college--maybe as much as where I went didn't matter to me.
THE REHEARSALS FOR THE Tennessee Williams play weren't time-consuming--not for my small part. I was only in the last scene, which is all about Alma, the repressed woman Nils Borkman believed Miss Frost would be perfect for. Alma was played by Aunt Muriel, as repressed a woman as I've ever known, but I managed to invigorate my role as "the young man" by imagining Miss Frost in the Alma part.
It seemed suitable to the young man's infatuation with Alma that I stare at my aunt Muriel's breasts, though they were gigantic (in my opinion, gross) in comparison to Miss Frost's.
"Must you stare at my breasts, Billy?" Muriel asked me, in one memorable rehearsal.
"I'm supposed to be infatuated with you," I replied.
"With all of me, I would imagine," Aunt Muriel rejoined.
"I think it's appropriate for the young man to stare at Alma's bosoms," our director, Nils Borkman, intoned. "After all, he's a shoe salesman--he's not very refinery."
"It's not healthy for my nephew to look at me like that!" Aunt Muriel said indignantly.
"Surely, Mrs. Fremont's bosoms have attracted the stares of many young mens!" Nils said, in an ill-conceived effort to flatter Muriel. (I've momentarily forgotten why my aunt didn't complain when I stared at her breasts in Twelfth Night. Oh, yes--I was a little shorter then, and Muriel's breasts had blocked me from her view.)
My mother sighed. Grandpa Harry, who was cast as Alma's mother--he was wearing a huge pair of falsies, accordingly--suggested that it was "only natural" for any young man to stare at the breasts of a woman who was "well endowed."
"You're calling me, your own daughter, 'well endowed'--I can't believe it!" Muriel cried.
My mom sighed again. "Everyone stares at your breasts, Muriel," my mother said. "There was a time when you wanted everyone to stare at them."
"You don't want to go down that road with me--there was a time when you wanted something, Mary," Muriel warned her.
"Girls, girls," said Grandpa Harry.
"Oh, shut up--you old cross-dresser!" my mother said to Grandpa Harry.
"Maybe I could just stare at one of the breasts," I suggested.
"Not that you care about either of them, Billy!" my mom shouted.
I was getting a lot of shouts and sighs from my mother that spring; when I'd announced my plans to go to Europe with Tom Atkins for the summer, I got both the sigh and the shout. (First the sigh, of course, which was swiftly followed by: "Tom Atkins--that fairy!")
"Ladies, ladies," Nils Borkman was saying. "This is a forward young man, Mr. Archie Kramer--he asks Alma, 'What's there to do in this town after dark?' That's pretty forward, isn't it?"
"Ah, yes," Grandpa Harry jumped in, "and there's a stage direction about Alma--'she gathers confidence before the awkwardness of his youth'--and there's another one, when Alma 'leans back and looks at him under half-closed lids, perhaps a little suggestively.' I think Alma is kind of encouragin' this young fella to look at her breasts!"
"There can be only one director, Daddy," my mother told Grandpa Harry.
"I don't do 'suggestively'--I don't encourage anyone to look at my breasts," Muriel said to Nils Borkman.
"You're so full of shit, Muriel," my mom said.
There's a fountain in that final scene--so that Alma can give one of her sleeping pills to the young man, who washes the pill down by drinking from the fountain. There were originally benches in the scene, too, but Nils didn't like the benches. (Muriel had been too agitated to sit still, given that I was staring at her breasts.)
I foresaw a problem with losing the benches. When the young man hears that there's a casino, which offers "all kinds of after-dark entertainment" (as Alma puts it), he says to Alma, "Then what in hell are we sitting here for?" But there were no benches; Alma and the young man couldn't be sitting.
When I pointed this out to Nils, I said: "Shouldn't I say, 'Then what in hell are we doing here?' Because Alma and I aren't sitting--there's nothing to sit on."
"You're not writing this play, Billy--it's already written," my mother (ever the prompter) told me.
"So we bring the benches back," Nils said tiredly. "You'll have to sit still, Muriel. You've just absorbed a sleeping pill, remember?"
"Absorbed!" Muriel exclaimed. "I should have absorbed a whole bottle of sleeping pills! I can't possibly sit still with Billy staring at my breasts!"
"Billy isn't interested in breasts, Muriel!" my mother shouted. (This was not true, as I know you know--I simply wasn't interested in Muriel's breasts.)
"I'm just acting--remember?" I said to Aunt Muriel and my mom.
In the end, I leave the stage; I go off shouting for a taxi. Only Alma remains--"sh
e turns slowly about toward the audience with her hand still raised in a gesture of wonder and finality as . . . the curtain falls."
I hadn't a clue as to how Muriel might bring that off--"a gesture of wonder" seemed utterly beyond her capabilities. As for the "finality" aspect, I had little doubt that my aunt Muriel could deliver finality.
"Let's one more time try it," Nils Borkman implored us. (When our director was tired, his word order eluded him.)
"Let's try it one more time," Grandpa Harry said helpfully, although Mrs. Winemiller isn't in that final scene. (It is dusk in the park in Summer and Smoke; only Alma and the young traveling salesman are onstage.)
"Behave yourself, Billy," my mom said to me.
"For the last time," I told her, smiling as sweetly as I could--at both Muriel and my mother.
" 'The water--is--cool,' " Muriel began.
" 'Did you say something?' " I asked her breasts--as the stage direction says, eagerly.
THE FIRST SISTER PLAYERS opened Summer and Smoke in our small community theater about a week after my Favorite River graduation. The academy students never saw the productions of our local amateur theatrical society; it didn't matter that the boarders, Kittredge and Atkins among them, had left town.
I spent the whole play backstage, until the twelfth and final scene. I was past caring about observing my mother's disapproval of Grandpa Harry as a woman; I'd seen all I needed to know about that. In the stage directions, Mrs. Winemiller is described as a spoiled and selfish girl who evaded the responsibilities of later life by slipping into a state of perverse childishness. She is known as Mr. Winemiller's "Cross."
It was evident to my mom and me that Grandpa Harry was drawing on Nana Victoria--and what a "Cross" she was for him to bear--in his testy portrayal of Mrs. Winemiller. (This was evident to Nana Victoria, too; my disapproving grandmother sat in the front row of the audience looking as if she'd been poleaxed, while Harry brought the house down with his antics.)
My mother had to prompt the shit out of the two child actors who virtually ruined the prologue. But in scene 1--specifically, the third time Mrs. Winemiller shrieked, "Where is the ice cream man?"--the audience was roaring, and Mrs. Winemiller brought the curtain down at the end of scene 5 by taunting her pussy-whipped husband. " 'Insufferable cross yourself, you old--windbag . . .' " Grandpa Harry cackled, as the curtain fell.
