John Irving - In One Person

Because Kittredge was so witheringly smart, I was surprised he was such a weak German student; I was less surprised to discover he was lazy. He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted. Foreign languages demand a willingness to memorize and a tolerance for repetition; that Kittredge could learn his lines for a play showed he had the capacity for this kind of self-polishing—onstage, he was a poised performer. But he lacked the necessary discipline for studying a foreign language—German, especially. The articles—“The frigging der, die, das, den, dem shit!” as Kittredge angrily stated—were beyond his patience.

That year, when Kittredge should have graduated, I didn’t help his final grade by agreeing to assist him with his homework; that Kittredge virtually copied my translations of our daily assignments would be of no help to him in the in-class exams, which he had to write by himself. I most certainly didn’t want Kittredge to fail German III; I foresaw the repercussions of him repeating his senior year, when I would also be a senior. But it was hard to say no to him when he asked for help.

“It’s hard to say no to him, period,” Elaine would later say. I blame myself that I didn’t know they were involved.

That winter term, there were auditions for what Richard Abbott called “the spring Shakespeare”—to distinguish it from the Shakespeare play he had directed in the fall term. At Favorite River, Richard sometimes made us boys do Shakespeare in the winter term, too.

I hate to say this, but I believe that Kittredge’s participation in the Drama Club was responsible for a surge in the popularity of our school plays—notwithstanding all the Shakespeare. There was more than usual interest when Richard read aloud the cast list for Twelfth Night at morning meeting; the list was later posted in the academy dining hall, where students actually stood in line for their opportunity to stare at the dramatis personae.

Orsino, Duke of Illyria, was our teacher and director, Richard Abbott. Richard, as the Duke, begins Twelfth Night with those familiar and rhapsodic lines “‘If music be the food of love, play on,’” not ever needing any prompting from my mother on that subject.

Orsino first professes his love for Olivia, a countess played by my complaining aunt Muriel. Olivia rejects the Duke, who (wasting no time) quickly falls in love with Viola, thus making Orsino an overproclaiming figure—“maybe more in love with love than with either lady,” as Richard Abbott put it.

I always thought that, because Olivia turns down Orsino as her lover, Muriel must have felt comfortable in accepting the role of the countess. Richard was still a little too much leading-man material for Muriel; she never entirely relaxed in her handsome brother-in-law’s company.

Elaine was cast as Viola, later disguised as Cesario. Elaine’s immediate response was that Richard had anticipated Viola’s necessary cross-dressing of herself as Cesario—“Viola has to be flat-chested, because for much of the play she’s a guy,” was how Elaine put it to me.

I actually found it a little creepy that Orsino and Viola end up in love—given that Richard was noticeably older than Elaine—but Elaine didn’t seem to care. “I think girls got married younger back then,” was all she said about it. (With half a brain, I might have realized that Elaine already had a real-life lover who was older than she was!)

I was cast as Sebastian—Viola’s twin brother. “That’s perfect for you two,” Kittredge said condescendingly to Elaine and me. “You’ve already got a brother-sister thing going, as anyone can see.” (At the time, I didn’t pick up on that; Elaine must have told Kittredge that she and I weren’t interested in each other in that way.)

I’ll admit I was distracted; that Muriel, as Olivia, is first smitten with Elaine (disguised as Cesario) and later falls for me, Sebastian—well, that was a test of the previously mentioned disbelief business. For my part, I found it impossible to imagine falling in love with Muriel—hence I stared fixedly at my aunt’s operatic bosom. Not once did this Sebastian look in that Olivia’s eyes—not even when Sebastian exclaims, “If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!”

Or when Olivia, whose bossiness was right up Muriel’s alley, demands to know, “Would thou’dst be rul’d by me!”

I, as Sebastian, staring straight ahead at my aunt Muriel’s breasts, which were laughably at eye level to me, answer her in a lovestruck fashion: “‘Madam, I will.’”

“Well, you best remember, Bill,” Grandpa Harry said to me, “ Twelfth Night is sure-as-shit a comedy.”

When I grew just a little taller, and a little older, Muriel would object to my staring at her breasts. But that later play wasn’t a comedy, and it only now occurs to me that when we were cast as Olivia and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, Muriel probably couldn’t see that I was staring at her breasts, because her breasts were in the way! (Given my height at the time, Muriel’s breasts blocked her line of vision.)

Aunt Muriel’s husband, my dear uncle Bob, well understood the comic factor in Twelfth Night . That Bob’s drinking was such a burden for Muriel to bear seemed a subject of mockery when Richard cast Uncle Bob as Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s kinsman and—in his most memorable moments in the play—a misbehaving drunk. But Bob was as much loved by the Favorite River students as he was by me—after all, he was the school’s overly permissive admissions man. Bob thought it was no big deal that the students liked him. (“Of course they like me, Billy. They met me when I interviewed them, and I let them in!”)

Bob also coached the racquet sports, tennis and squash—ergo the squash balls. The squash courts were on the basement level of the gym, underground and dank. When one of the squash courts stank of beer, the boys said that Coach Bob must have been playing there—sweating out the poisons of the night before.

Both Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria complained to Grandpa Harry that casting Bob as Sir Toby Belch “encouraged” Bob’s drinking. Richard Abbott would be blamed for “making light” of the deplorable pain caused to poor Muriel whenever Bob drank. But while Muriel and my grandmother would bitch to Grandpa Harry about Richard, they would never have breathed a word of discontent to Richard himself.

After all, Richard Abbott had come along “in the nick of time” (to use Nana Victoria’s cliché) to save my damaged mother; they spoke of this rescue as if no one else might have managed the job. My mother was seen as no longer Nana Victoria’s or Aunt Muriel’s responsibility, because Richard had shown up and taken her off their hands.

At least this was very much the impression that my aunt and my grandmother gave to me—Richard could do no wrong, or what wrong-doing Nana Victoria and Aunt Muriel thought that Richard had done would be spelled out for Grandpa Harry, as if he could ever be expected to speak to Richard about it. My cousin Gerry and I overheard it all, because when Richard and my mother weren’t around, my disapproving grandmother and my meddlesome aunt talked ceaselessly about them. I got the feeling they would still be calling them “the newlyweds,” however facetiously, after my mom and Richard had been married for twenty years! As I grew older, I was realizing that all of them—not only Nana Victoria and Aunt Muriel, but also Grandpa Harry and Richard Abbott—treated my mother like a temperamental child. (They pussyfooted around her, the way they would have done with a child who was in danger of doing some unwitting damage to herself.)