John Irving - In One Person

“I was asking Billy, Elaine,” Mrs. Hadley said.

“I think Elaine knows, better than I do, which words give me the most trouble,” I said.

“Billy makes a mess of the last two syllables in ominousness every time,” Elaine went on.

“I say penith, ” I ventured.

“I see,” Martha Hadley said.

“Don’t ask him to say the plural,” Elaine told her mother.

If Favorite River Academy had admitted girls in those days, Elaine Hadley and I would probably have become best friends sooner than we did, but I didn’t get to go to school with Elaine. I managed to see as much of her as I did only because the Hadleys so frequently socialized with my mom and Richard—they were becoming such good friends.

Thus, occasionally, it was the homely and flat-chested Mrs. Hadley I imagined in those training bras—I thought of Martha Hadley’s small breasts when I perused the young-girl models in my mom’s mail-order catalogs.

In the academy library, where I was becoming a writer—or, more accurately, dreaming of becoming one—I especially liked the room with the vast collection of Favorite River yearbooks. Other students seemed to take no interest in that reading room; the occasional faculty member could be found there, either reading or grading papers and blue books.

Favorite River Academy was old; it had been founded in the nineteenth century. I liked looking at the old yearbooks. (Perhaps all the past held secrets; I knew my past did.) If I kept at it, I imagined, I might eventually catch up to the yearbook of my own graduating class—but not before the spring of my senior year. In the fall of my junior year, I was still looking through yearbooks from 1914 and 1915. World War I was going on; those Favorite River boys must have been frightened. I looked closely at the faces of the graduating seniors, and at their college choices and career ambitions; many of the seniors were “undecided” about both. Almost all the seniors had nicknames, even back then.

I looked very closely at the wrestling-team photographs, and somewhat less closely at the Drama Club photos; in the latter case, there were many boys in makeup and dressed as girls. It seemed that there’d always been a wrestling team and a Drama Club at Favorite River. (You must remember that this particular 1914–1915 yearbook searching was in the fall of 1959; the much-admired traditions in single-sex boarding schools were vigorously upheld through the fifties, and into the sixties.)

I suppose I liked that reading room with all the yearbooks, and with the occasional faculty member, because there were never any other students there—no bullies, in other words, and no distracting crushes. How lucky was I to have had my own room in my mom and Richard’s faculty apartment? All the boarders at the academy had roommates. I cannot imagine what abuse, or what more subtle form of cruelty, I might have suffered from a roommate. And what would I have done with my mother’s mail-order clothing catalogs? (The very thought of not being able to masturbate was abusive enough—I mean, just imagining it!)

At seventeen, which I was in the fall of 1959, I had no reason to go back to the First Sister Public Library—that is, no reason I would have dared to express. I’d found a haven to get my homework done; the yearbook room in the academy library was a place to write, or just to imagine. But I must have missed Miss Frost. She was not onstage enough to satisfy me, and now that I skipped the rehearsals at the First Sister Players, I saw her only when she was in an actual performance; these were “too few and far between,” as my cliché-spouting grandmother might have said.

I could have talked to Grandpa Harry about it; he would have understood. I could have told him about missing Miss Frost, about my crush on her and on those older boys—even about my earliest, inappropriate crush on my stepfather, Richard Abbott. But I didn’t talk to Grandpa Harry about any of it—not then.

Was Harry Marshall an actual transvestite? Was Grandpa Harry more than the occasional cross-dresser? Today, would we call my grandpa a closeted gay man who only acted as a woman under the most permissible circumstances of his time? I honestly don’t know. If my generation was repressed, and we certainly were, I can only imagine that my grandfather’s generation—whether or not Grandpa Harry truly was a homosexual—flew well under the existing radar.

Thus it seemed to me, at the time, that there was no remedy for missing Miss Frost—except making up a reason to see her. (If I was going to be a writer, after all, I should be able to make up a believable reason for my frequenting the First Sister Public Library again.) And so I settled upon a story—namely, that the only place I could work on my writing was the public library, where my academy friends wouldn’t keep interrupting me. Maybe Miss Frost wouldn’t know that I didn’t have many friends, and what few friends I had at Favorite River kept their heads down and were as timid as I was; they wouldn’t have dared to interrupt anyone.

Since I’d told Miss Frost that I wanted to become a writer, she might accept that the First Sister town library was where I wanted to try my hand at it. In the evening, I knew, there were mostly elderly people there, and few of them; there might also be scant representation of those sullen high school girls, condemned to further their education in Ezra Falls. There was no one who would interrupt me in our town’s forlorn library. (No children, especially.)

I was afraid that Miss Frost wouldn’t recognize me. I had started to shave, and I thought I was somehow altered—I was so much more grown up, in my estimation. I knew that Miss Frost knew my name had changed, and that she must have seen me—albeit only occasionally, in the last two years, either backstage or in the audience at the First Sister Players’ little theater. She certainly knew I was the prompter’s son—I was that boy .

On the night I presented myself at the public library—not to take out a book, or even read one, but to actually work on my own writing—Miss Frost stared at me for the longest time. I assumed she was having trouble remembering me, and my heart was breaking, but she remembered far more than I’d imagined.

“Don’t tell me—it’s William Abbott,” Miss Frost suddenly said. “I suppose you want to read Great Expectations a record-breaking third time.”

I confessed to her that I hadn’t come to the library to read. I told Miss Frost that I was trying to get away from my friends—so that I could write .

“You’ve come here, to the library, to write, ” she repeated. I remembered that Miss Frost had a habit of repeating what you said. Nana Victoria said that Miss Frost must have enjoyed the repetition, because by repeating what you said to her, she could keep the conversation going a little longer. (Aunt Muriel had claimed that no one liked to talk to Miss Frost.)

“Yes, I do,” I told Miss Frost. “I want to write.”

“But why here ? Why this place?” Miss Frost demanded.

I couldn’t think of what to say. A word (and then another word) just popped into my head, and Miss Frost made me so nervous that I spontaneously said the first word, which was quickly followed by the second. “Nostalgia,” I said. “Maybe I’m nostalgic .”

“Nostalgia!” Miss Frost cried. “You’re nostalgic !” she repeated. “Just how old are you, William?” she asked.

“Seventeen,” I told her.

“Seventeen!” Miss Frost cried, as if she’d been stabbed. “Well, William Dean—forgive me, I mean William Abbott —if you’re nostalgic at seventeen, maybe you are going to be a writer!”