John Irving - In One Person

I was too embarrassed to speak, but Elaine didn’t hesitate. “Now that you mention it, Miss Frost, Billy has encountered only one difficulty in Ariel’s vocabulary, and we’re working on it,” Elaine said.

“What difficulty is that, William?” Miss Frost asked me, with her most penetrating look. (Thank God there were no penises in Ariel’s vocabulary!)

When Caliban calls Prospero a tyrant, Ariel (invisible) says, “Thou liest.” Since Ariel is invisible, Caliban thinks Trinculo has called him a liar. In the same scene, Ariel says “Thou liest” to Stephano, who thinks Trinculo has called him a liar—Stephano hits Trinculo.

“I have to say ‘Thou liest’ twice,” I told Miss Frost, being careful to say the liest word correctly—with two syllables.

“Sometimes he says ‘least’—one syllable, rhymes with yeast, ” Elaine told Miss Frost.

“Oh, my,” the librarian said, briefly closing her eyes at the horror of it. “Look at me, William,” Miss Frost said. I did as she told me; for once, I didn’t need to sneak a look at her. “Say ‘finest’ to me, William,” she said.

This was not hard to do. Miss Frost was the finest of my all-over-the-place infatuations. “Finest,” I said to her, still looking right at her.

“Well, William—just remember that liest rhymes with finest, ” Miss Frost said.

“Go on, say it,” Elaine told me.

“Thou liest,” I said, as the invisible Ariel is supposed to say. I made a perfect two-syllable match for the finest word.

“May all your difficulties be so easy to fix, William,” Miss Frost said. “I love running lines,” she told Elaine, as she closed the door.

I was impressed that Miss Frost even knew what “running lines” meant. When Richard had asked her if she’d ever acted, Miss Frost had quickly answered him: “Only in my mind. When I was younger—all the time.” Yet she’d certainly made a name for herself as a standout in the First Sister Players.

“Miss Frost is an Ibsen woman!” Nils had said to Richard, but she’d not had many roles—not beyond those of the severely tested women in Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, and The Wild (fucking) Duck .

It suffices to say: For someone who’d heretofore acted only in her mind, but who seemed a natural at portraying Ibsen’s women, Miss Frost was clearly familiar with all that “running lines” entailed—and she couldn’t have been more supportive of Elaine Hadley and me.

It was awkward, at first—how Elaine and I arranged ourselves on Miss Frost’s bed. It was only a queen-size mattress, but the brass bed frame was rather high; when Elaine and I sat (somewhat primly) side by side, our feet didn’t reach the floor. But when we stretched out on our stomachs, we had to contort ourselves to look at each other; it was only when we propped the pillows up against the headboard (those brass rails like prison bars) that we could lie on our sides, facing each other, and run our lines—our copies of the play held between us, for reference.

“We’re like an old married couple,” Elaine said; I was already thinking the same thing.

Our first evening in Miss Frost’s snowstorm room, Elaine fell asleep. I knew she had to get up earlier than I did; due to the bus ride to Ezra Falls, she was always tired. When Miss Frost knocked on the door, Elaine was startled; she threw her arms around my neck, and she was still holding tight when Miss Frost came inside the small room. Notwithstanding these amorous-looking circumstances, I don’t believe that Miss Frost assumed we’d been making out. Elaine and I certainly didn’t look as if we’d been necking, and Miss Frost merely said, “It’s almost time for me to close the library. Even Shakespeare has to go home and get some sleep.”

As everyone who’s ever been part of a theatrical production knows, after all the stressful rehearsals, and the interminable memorization—I mean when your lines are truly run —even Shakespeare comes to an end. We put on four shows of The Tempest . I managed to make liest rhyme with finest in every performance, though on opening night I almost said “finest breasts,” when I thought I saw Kittredge’s wonderfully dressed mother in the audience—only to learn from Kittredge, during the intermission, that I was mistaken. The woman wasn’t his mom.

“The woman you think is my mom is in Paris,” Kittredge dismissively said.

“Oh.”

“You must have seen some other middle-aged woman who spends too much money on her clothes,” Kittredge said.

“Your mother is very beautiful,” I told him. I genuinely meant this, in the nicest possible way.

“Your mom is hotter, ” Kittredge told me matter-of-factly. There was no hint of sarcasm, nor anything the slightest suggestive, in his remark; he spoke in the same empirical way in which he’d said his mother (or the woman who wasn’t his mother) was in Paris. Soon, the hot word, the way Kittredge meant it, would be the rage at Favorite River.

Later, Elaine would say to me, “What are you doing, Billy—trying to be his friend ?”

Elaine was an excellent Miranda, though opening night was not her best performance; she’d needed prompting. It was probably my fault.

“Good wombs have borne bad sons,” Miranda says to her father—in reference to Antonio, Prospero’s brother.

I’d talked to Elaine about the good-wombs idea, possibly too much. I’d told Elaine my own ideas about my biological father—how whatever seemed bad in me I had ascribed to the code-boy, to the sergeant’s genes (not my mom’s). At the time, I still counted my mother among the good wombs in the world. She may have been embarrassingly seducible —the very word I used to describe my mom to Elaine—but Mary Marshall Dean or Abbott was essentially innocent of any wrongdoing. Maybe my mother was gullible, occasionally backward —I said this to Elaine, in lieu of the retarded word—but never “bad.”

Admittedly, it was funny how I couldn’t pronounce the wombs word—not even the singular. Both Elaine and I had laughed about how hard I came down on the letter b .

“It’s a silent b, Billy!” Elaine had cried. “You don’t say the b !”

It was comical, even to me. What need did I have of the womb (or wombs ) word?

But I’m sure this was why Elaine had moms on her mind on opening night—“Good moms have borne bad sons,” Elaine (as Miranda) almost said. Elaine must have heard the moms word coming; she stopped herself short after “Good—” There was then what every actor fears: an incriminating silence.

“Wombs,” my mother whispered; she had a prompter’s perfect whisper—it was almost inaudible.

“Wombs!” Elaine Hadley had shouted. Richard (as Prospero) had jumped. “Good wombs have borne bad sons!” Miranda, back in character, too emphatically said. It didn’t happen again.

Naturally, Kittredge would say something to Elaine about it—after our opening-night performance.

“You need to work on the wombs word, Naples,” he told her. “It’s probably a word that causes you some nervous excitement. You should try saying to yourself, ‘Every woman has a womb—even I have a womb. Wombs are no big deal.’ We can work on saying this together—if it helps. You know, I say ‘womb,’ you say ‘wombs are no big deal,’ or I say ‘wombs,’ and you say ‘ I’ve got one!’—that kind of thing.”

“Thanks, Kittredge,” Elaine said. “How very thoughtful.” She was biting her lower lip, which I knew she did only when she was pining for him and hating herself for it. (I was accustomed to the feeling.)