John Irving - In One Person

“Where’d you shoot this here buck?” Chuck would ask one woman after another.

The women would say something like, “On the mountain.” Or: “In the woods.” Or: “In a field.”

Grandpa Harry made Muriel and Mary do this—that is, claim that they had killed Harry’s first two deer of the season. (Nana Victoria refused.) Uncle Bob had made my cousin Gerry do it—until Gerry was old enough to say she wouldn’t. I had done it for Nils Borkman, on occasion—as had the elusive Mrs. Borkman.

Chuck Beebe had long accepted this perpetual fiction, but that Nils Borkman and Harry Marshall hunted deer on skis —well, that just struck the game warden as unfair .

Deer-hunting regulations were pretty primitive in Vermont—they still are. Shooting deer from a motorized vehicle is not permitted; almost anything else goes. There is a bow season, a rifle season, a black-powder season. “Why not a knife season?” Nils Borkman had asked, in an earlier, now-famous town meeting. “Why not a slingshot season? There are too many deers, right? We should kill more of them, yes?”

Nowadays, there are also too few hunters; their numbers decline each year. Over the years, deer-hunting regulations have attempted to address the deer-population problem, but the overpopulation has endured; nevertheless, there are townspeople in First Sister, Vermont, who remember Nils Borkman as a raving asshole for proposing a knife season and a slingshot season for “deers”—even though Nils was just kidding, of course.

I remember when you could shoot only buck, then buck and doe, then buck and just one doe—that is, if you had a special permit, and the buck couldn’t be a spike-horn.

“How about we shoot out-of-staters, no limit?” Nils Borkman had once asked. (Limitless shooting of out-of-staters might have been a pretty popular proposal in Vermont, but Borkman was just kidding about the out-of-staters, too.)

“Nils has a European sense of humor,” Grandpa Harry had said, in defense of his old friend.

“European!” Nana Victoria had exclaimed with scorn—no, with more than scorn. My grandmother spoke of Borkman being European in a similar manner to how she might have expressed her disgust at Nils having dog shit on his shoes. But the way Nana Victoria said the European word was mild in comparison to how derisively she spat out the she word, the spittle foaming on her lips, whenever she spoke of Miss Frost.

You might say that, as a result of her not having actual sex with me, Miss Frost was banished from First Sister, Vermont; she would, like Elaine, be sent away “in stages,” and the first stage of Miss Frost’s removal from First Sister began with her being fired from the library.

After she’d lost her job, Miss Frost could not long afford to maintain her ailing mother in what had been their family home; the house would be sold, but this took a little time, and Miss Frost made the necessary arrangements to move her mom to that assisted-living facility Harry Marshall and Nils Borkman had built for the town.

It seems likely that Grandpa Harry and Nils probably gave Miss Frost a special deal, but it would not have been a deal of the magnitude of the one that Favorite River Academy made with Mrs. Kittredge—the deal that permitted Kittredge to stay in school and graduate, even though he had knocked up a faculty daughter who was underage. No one would offer Miss Frost a deal of that kind.

WHEN I HAPPENED UPON Aunt Muriel, she greeted me in her usual insincere fashion: “Oh, hi, Billy—how’s everything? I hope all the normal pursuits of a young man your age are as gratifying to you as they should be!”

To which I would unfailingly respond, as follows: “There was no penetration—no what most people call sex, in other words. The way I look at it, Aunt Muriel, I’m still a virgin.”

This must have sent Muriel running to my mother to complain about my reprehensible behavior.

As for my mom, she was subjecting both Richard and me to the “silent treatment”—not realizing, in my case, that I liked it when she didn’t speak to me. In fact, I vastly preferred her not speaking to me to her constant and conventional disapproval; furthermore, that my mother now had nothing to say to me didn’t prevent me from speaking to her first.

“Oh, hi, Mom—how’s it going? I should tell you that, contrary to feeling violated, I feel that Miss Frost was protecting me—she truly prevented me from penetrating her, and I hope it goes without saying that she didn’t penetrate me!”

I usually didn’t get to say more than that before my mother would run into her bedroom and close the door. “Richard!” she would call, forgetting that she was giving Richard the “silent treatment” because he’d taken up Miss Frost’s lost cause.

“No what most people call sex, Mom—that’s what I’m telling you,” I would continue saying to her, on the other side of her closed bedroom door. “What Miss Frost truly did to me amounted to nothing more than a fancy kind of masturbation . There’s a special name for it and everything, but I’ll spare you the details !”

“Stop it, Billy—stop it, stop it, stop it!” my mom would cry. (I guess she forgot that she was giving me the “silent treatment,” too.)

“Take it easy, Bill,” Richard Abbott would caution me. “I think your mom is feeling pretty fragile these days.”

“Pretty fragile these days,” I repeated, looking straight at him—until Richard looked away.

“Trust me on this one, William,” Miss Frost had said to me, when we were holding each other’s penises. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”

But I didn’t want to break that habit; it had been her habit, and I decided to embrace it.

“I’m not judging you, Billy,” Mrs. Hadley said. “I can see for myself, without you belaboring the details, that your experience with Miss Frost has affected you in certain positive ways.”

“Belaboring the details,” I repeated. “Positive ways.”

“However, Billy, I feel it is my duty to inform you that in a sexual situation of this awkward kind, there is an expectation, in the minds of many adults.” Here Martha Hadley paused; so did I. I was considering repeating that bit about “in a sexual situation of this awkward kind,” but Mrs. Hadley suddenly continued her arduous train of thought. “What many adults hope to hear you express, Billy, is something you have not, as yet, expressed.”

“There is an expectation that I will express what ?” I asked her.

“Remorse,” Martha Hadley said.

“Remorse,” I repeated, looking straight at her, until Mrs. Hadley looked away.

“The repetition thing is annoying, Billy,” Martha Hadley said.

“Yes, isn’t it?” I asked her.

“I’m sorry that they’re making you see Dr. Harlow,” she told me.

“Do you think Dr. Harlow is hoping to hear me express remorse ?” I asked Mrs. Hadley.

“That would be my guess, Billy,” she said.

“Thank you for telling me,” I told her.

Atkins was on the music-building stairs again. “It’s so very tragic,” he started. “Last night, when I was thinking about it, I threw up.”

“You were thinking about what ?” I asked him.

“ Giovanni’s Room !” he cried; we’d already discussed the novel, but I gathered that poor Tom wasn’t done. “That part about the smell of love—”

“The stink of love,” I corrected him.

“The reek of it,” Atkins said, gagging.