John Irving - In One Person

If Franny Dean had met the older Mary Marshall in ’37, there was no record of it in the Owl of that year—nor was there any record of their meeting in the ’38 and ’39 Owls, wherein the wrestling-team manager grew only a little in stature but seemingly a lot in self-assurance.

Onstage, for the Drama Club, in those ’38 and ’39 yearbooks, Elaine and I could tell that the future Harvard-boy, who’d chosen “performer” as his career path, had developed into a most fetching femme fatale—he was a nymphlike presence.

“He was good-looking, wasn’t he?” I asked Elaine.

“He looks like you, Billy—he’s handsome but different,” Elaine said.

“He already must have been dating my mother,” I said, when we’d finished with the ’39 Owl and were hurrying back to Bancroft Hall. (My dad was fifteen when my mom was nineteen!)

“If ‘dating’ is the right word, Billy,” Elaine said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You have to talk to your grandpa, Billy—if you can get him alone,” Elaine told me.

“I could try talking to Uncle Bob first, if I can get Bob alone. Bob isn’t as smart as Grandpa Harry,” I said.

“I’ve got it!” Elaine suddenly said. “You talk to the admissions man first, but you tell him you’ve already talked to Grandpa Harry—and that Harry has told you everything he knows.”

“Bob’s not that dumb,” I told Elaine.

“Yes, he is,” Elaine said.

We had about an hour alone in Elaine’s fifth-floor bedroom before Mr. and Mrs. Hadley came home from the movie in Ezra Falls. It being the Christmas holiday, we figured that the Hadleys and my mother and Richard—together with Aunt Muriel and Uncle Bob—would have stopped for a drink somewhere after the movie, and they had.

We’d had more than enough time to peruse the ’40 Owl and look at all the photos of flaming Franny Dean—the prettiest boy in the class. William Francis Dean was a cross-dressing knockout in the photos from the Drama Club of that year, and there—at last, at the Senior Dance—was the missing picture Elaine and I had so fervently sought. There was little Franny holding my mom, Mary Marshall, in a slow-dancing embrace. Watching them, with evident disapproval, was big-sister Muriel. Oh, those Winthrop girls, “those Winthrop women,” as Miss Frost had labeled my mother and my aunt Muriel—giving them Nana Victoria’s maiden name of Winthrop. (When it came to who had the balls in the Marshall family, the Winthrop genes were definitely the ball-carriers.)

I wouldn’t wait long to trap Uncle Bob. The very next day, a prospective student and his parents were visiting Favorite River Academy; Uncle Bob gave me a call and asked if I felt like being a tour guide.

When I’d finished the tour, I found Uncle Bob alone in the Admissions Office; it being Christmas break, the secretaries weren’t necessarily working.

“What’s up, Billy?” Uncle Bob asked me.

“I guess you forgot that you actually did take the ’40 Owl back to the library,” I began.

“I did ?” Uncle Bob asked. I could see he was wondering how he would ever explain this to Muriel.

“It didn’t show up in the yearbook room by itself,” I said. “Besides, Grandpa Harry has told me all about ‘flaming Franny’ Dean, and what a pretty boy he was. What I don’t get is how it all began with my mom—I mean why and when. I mean, how did it start in the first place?”

“Franny wasn’t a bad guy, Billy,” Uncle Bob quickly said. “He was just a little light in his loafers, if you know what I mean.”

I’d heard the expression—from Kittredge, of course—but all I said was, “Why did my mom ever fall for him in the first place? How did it start ?”

“He was an awfully young boy when he met your mother—she was four years older, which is a big difference at that age, Billy,” Uncle Bob said. “Your mom saw him in a play—as a girl, of course. Afterward, he complimented her clothes.”

“Her clothes,” I repeated.

“It seems he liked girls’ clothes—he liked trying them on, Billy,” Uncle Bob said.

“Oh.”

“Your grandmother found them in your mom’s bedroom—one day, after your mother had come home from the high school in Ezra Falls. Your mom and Franny Dean were trying on your mom’s clothes. It was just a childish game, but your aunt Muriel told me Franny had tried on her clothes, too. The next thing we knew, Mary had a crush on him, but by then Franny must have known he liked boys better. He was genuinely fond of your mom, Billy, but he mainly liked her clothes.”

“She still managed to get pregnant, ” I pointed out. “You don’t get a girl pregnant by fucking her clothes!”

“Think about it, Billy—there was all this dressing and undressing going on,” Uncle Bob said. “They must have been in their underwear a lot—you know.”

“I have trouble imagining it,” I told him.

“Your grandpa thought the world of Franny Dean, Billy—I think Harry believed it could work,” Uncle Bob said. “Don’t forget, your mother was always a little immature —”

“A little simpleminded, do you mean?” I interrupted him.

“When Franny was a young boy, I think your mom sort of managed him—you know, Billy, she could kind of boss him around a little.”

“But then Franny grew up,” I said.

“There was also the guy—the one Franny met in the war, and they reconnected later,” Uncle Bob began.

“It was you who told me that story—wasn’t it, Uncle Bob?” I asked. “You know, the toilet-seat skipper, the man on the ship—he lost control of Madame Bovary; he went sliding over the toilet seats. Later, they met on the MTA. The guy got on at the Kendall Square station—he got off at Central Square—and he said to my dad, ‘Hi. I’m Bovary. Remember me?’ I mean that guy. You told me that story—didn’t you, Uncle Bob?”

“No, I didn’t, Billy,” Uncle Bob said. “Your dad himself told you that story, and that guy didn’t get off at the Central Square station—that guy stayed on the train, Billy. Your father and that guy were a couple . They may still be a couple, for all I know,” Uncle Bob told me. “I thought your grandfather told you everything, ” he added suspiciously.

“It looks like there’s more to ask Grandpa Harry about,” I told Uncle Bob.

The admissions man was staring sadly at the floor of his office. “Did you have a good tour, Billy?” he asked me, a little absently. “Did that boy strike you as a promising candidate?”

Of course I had no memory of the prospective student or his parents.

“Thanks for everything, Uncle Bob,” I said to him; I really did like him, and I felt sorry for him. “I think you’re a good fella!” I called to him, as I ran out of the Admissions Office.

I knew where Grandpa Harry was; it was a workday, so he wouldn’t be at home, under Nana Victoria’s thumb. Harry Marshall didn’t get a schoolteacher’s Christmas break. I knew that Grandpa Harry was at the sawmill and the lumberyard, where I soon found him.

I told him I’d seen my father in the Favorite River Academy yearbooks; I said that Uncle Bob had confessed everything he knew about flaming Franny Dean, the effeminate cross-dressing boy who’d once tried on my mother’s clothes—even, I’d heard, my aunt Muriel’s clothes!

But what was this I’d heard about my dad actually visiting me —when I was sick with scarlet fever, wasn’t it? And how was it possible that my father had actually told me that story of the soldier he met in the head of the Liberty ship during an Atlantic winter storm? The transport ship had just hit the open seas—the convoy was on its way to Italy from Hampton Roads, Virginia, Port of Embarkation—when my dad made the acquaintance of a toilet-seat skipper who was reading Madame Bovary .