John Irving - In One Person

“I’m coming!” the boy called; he ran out of the room.

Tom Atkins had closed his eyes again. “Let me know when we’re alone, Bill,” he gasped; he held the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose, but I could tell that—as little as the oxygen helped—he wanted it.

“We’re alone,” I told Atkins.

“I’ve seen him,” Tom whispered hoarsely. “He’s not at all who we thought he was—he’s more like us than we ever imagined. He’s beautiful, Bill!”

“ Who’s beautiful—who’s more like us than we ever imagined, Tom?” I asked, but I knew that the subject had changed; there’d been only one person Tom and I had always spoken of with fear and secrecy, with love and hatred.

“You know who, Bill—I’ve seen him,” Atkins whispered.

“Kittredge?” I whispered back.

Atkins covered his mouth and nose with the oxygen mask; he was nodding yes, but it hurt him to move his head and he was making a torturous endeavor just to breathe.

“Kittredge is gay ?” I asked Tom Atkins, but this stimulated a prolonged coughing fit, which was followed by a self-contradictory nodding and shaking of his head. With my help, Atkins lifted the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose—albeit briefly.

“Kittredge looks exactly like his mother!” Atkins gasped; then he was back on the mask, making the most horrible sucking sounds. I didn’t want to agitate him more than my presence already had. Atkins had closed his eyes again, though his face was frozen in more of a grimace than a smile, when I heard Elaine calling me.

I found Elaine with Mrs. Atkins and the children in the kitchen. “He shouldn’t be on the oxygen if no one’s watching him—not for long, anyway,” Sue Atkins said when she saw me.

“No, Mom—that’s not quite what Charles says,” Peter corrected her. “We just have to keep checking the tank.”

“For God’s sake, Peter—please stop criticizing me!” Mrs. Atkins cried; this made her breathless. “That old tank is probably empty ! Oxygen doesn’t really help him!” She coughed and coughed.

“Charles shouldn’t allow the oxygen tank to be empty !” the boy said indignantly. “Daddy doesn’t know the oxygen doesn’t help him—sometimes he thinks it helps.”

“I hate Charles,” the girl, Emily, said.

“Don’t hate Charles, Emily—we need Charles,” Sue Atkins said, trying to catch her breath.

I looked at Elaine; I felt truly lost. It surprised me that Emily was sitting next to Elaine on a couch facing the kitchen TV, which was off; the girl was curled up beside Elaine, who had her arm around the thirteen-year-old’s shoulders.

“Tom believes in your character, Bill,” Mrs. Atkins said to me (as if my character had been under discussion for hours). “Tom hasn’t known you for twenty years, yet he believes he can judge your character by the novels you write.”

“Which are made up, which are make-believe—right?” Peter asked me.

“Please don’t, Peter,” Sue Atkins said tiredly, still struggling to suppress that not-so-innocent cough.

“That’s right, Peter,” I said.

“All this time, I thought Tom was seeing him, ” Sue Atkins said to Elaine, pointing at me. “But Tom must have been seeing that other guy—the one you were all so crazy about.”

“I don’t think so,” I said to Mrs. Atkins. “Tom told me he had ‘seen’ him—not that he ‘ was seeing’ him. There’s a difference.”

“Well, what do I know? I’m just the wife,” Sue Atkins said.

“Do you mean Kittredge, Billy—is that who she means?” Elaine asked me.

“Yes, that’s his name—Kittredge. I think Tom was in love with him—I guess you all were,” Mrs. Atkins said. She was a little feverish, or maybe it was the drugs she was taking—I couldn’t tell. I knew the Bactrim had given poor Tom a rash; I didn’t know where. I had only a vague idea of what other side effects were possible with Bactrim. I just knew that Sue Atkins had Pneumocystis pneumonia, so she was probably taking Bactrim and she definitely had a fever.

Mrs. Atkins seemed numb, as if she were barely aware that her children, Emily and Peter, were right there with us—in the kitchen.

“Hey—it’s just me!” a man’s voice called from the vestibule. The girl, Emily, screamed—but she didn’t detach herself from Elaine’s encompassing arm.

“It’s just Charles, Emily,” her brother, Peter, said.

“I know it’s Charles—I hate him,” Emily said.

“Stop it, both of you,” their mother said.

“Who’s Kittredge?” Peter Atkins asked.

“I would like to know who he is, too,” Sue Atkins said. “God’s gift to men and women, I guess.”

“What did Tom say about Kittredge, Billy?” Elaine asked me. I’d been hoping to have this conversation on the train, where we would be alone—or not to have it, ever.

“Tom said he had seen Kittredge—that’s all,” I told Elaine. But I knew that wasn’t all. I didn’t know what Atkins had meant—that Kittredge was not at all who we thought he was; that Kittredge was more like us than we ever imagined.

That poor Tom thought Kittredge was beautiful —well, that I had no trouble imagining. But Atkins had seemed to indicate that Kittredge was and wasn’t gay; according to Tom, Kittredge looked exactly like his mother! (I wasn’t about to tell Elaine that !) How could Kittredge look exactly like Mrs. Kittredge? I was wondering.

Emily screamed. It must be Charles, the nurse, I thought, but no—it was Jacques, the dog. The old Lab was standing there, in the kitchen.

“It’s just Jacques, Emily—he’s a dog, not a man, ” Peter said disdainfully to his sister, but the girl wouldn’t stop screaming.

“Leave her alone, Peter. Jacques is a male dog—maybe that did it,” Mrs. Atkins said. But when Emily didn’t or couldn’t stop screaming, Sue Atkins said to Elaine and me: “Well, it is unusual to see Jacques anywhere but at Tom’s bedside. Since Tom got sick, that dog won’t leave him. We have to drag Jacques outside to pee !”

“We have to offer Jacques a treat just to get him to come to the kitchen and eat, ” Peter Atkins was explaining, while his sister went on screaming.

“Imagine a Lab you have to force to eat !” Sue Atkins said; she suddenly looked again at the old dog and started screaming. Now Emily and Mrs. Atkins were both screaming.

“It must be Tom, Billy—something’s happened,” Elaine said, over the screaming. Either Peter Atkins heard her, or he’d figured it out by himself—he was clearly a smart boy.

“Daddy!” the boy called, but his mother grabbed him and clutched him to her.

“Wait for Charles, Peter—Charles is with him,” Mrs. Atkins managed to say, though her shortness of breath had worsened. Jacques (the Labrador) sat there, just breathing.

Elaine and I chose not to “wait for Charles.” We left the kitchen and ran along the downstairs hall to the now-open door to Tom’s onetime study. (Jacques, who—for a hesitant second—seemed of a mind to follow us, stayed behind on the kitchen floor. The old dog must have known that his master had departed.) Elaine and I entered the transformed room, where we saw Charles bent over the body on the hospital bed, which the nurse had elevated to ease his task. Charles kept his head down; he did not look up at Elaine and me, though it was clear to us both that the nurse knew we were there.

I was horribly reminded of a man I’d seen a few times at the Mineshaft, that S&M club on Washington Street—at Little West Twelfth, in the Meatpacking District. (Larry would tell me the club was closed by the city’s Department of Health, but that wouldn’t be till ’85—four years after AIDS first appeared—which was when Elaine and I were conducting our experiment in living together in San Francisco.) The Mineshaft had a lot of disquieting action going on: There was a sling, for fist-fucking, suspended from the ceiling; there was a whole wall of glory holes; there was a room with a bathtub, where men were pissed on.