John Irving - In One Person

It was frankly more of a mystery—chiefly, to Tom Atkins and me—that Kittredge was going to Yale. Granted, Atkins and I had the kind of SAT scores that made Yale—or any of the Ivy League schools—unattainable. My grades had been better than Kittredge’s, however, and how could Yale have overlooked the fact that Kittredge had been forced to repeat his senior year? (Tom Atkins had erratic grades, but he had graduated on schedule.) Atkins and I knew that Kittredge had great SAT scores, but Yale must have been motivated to take him for other reasons; Atkins and I knew that, too.

Atkins mentioned Kittredge’s wrestling, but I think I know what Miss Frost would have said about that: It wasn’t the wrestling that got Kittredge into Yale. (As it turned out, he wouldn’t wrestle in college, anyway.) His SAT scores probably helped, but Kittredge’s father, from whom he was estranged, had gone to Yale.

“Trust me,” I told Tom. “Kittredge didn’t get into Yale for his German —that’s all I can tell you.”

“Why does it matter to you, Billy—where Kittredge is going to college?” Mrs. Hadley asked me. (I was having a pronunciation problem with the Yale word, which was why the subject came up.)

“I’m not envious,” I told her. “I assure you, I don’t want to go there—I can’t even say it!”

As it turned out, it meant nothing—where Kittredge went to college, or where I went—but, at the time, it was infuriating that Kittredge was accepted to Yale.

“Forget about fairness, ” I said to Martha Hadley, “but doesn’t merit matter?” It was an eighteen-year-old question to ask, though I had turned nineteen (in March 1961); in due time, of course, I would get over where Kittredge went to college. Even in that spring of ’61, Tom Atkins and I were more interested in planning our summer in Europe than we were obsessed by the obvious injustice of Kittredge getting into Yale.

I admit: It was easier to forget about Kittredge, now that I rarely saw him. Either he didn’t need my help with his German or he’d stopped asking for it. Since Yale had admitted him, Kittredge wasn’t worried about what grade he got in German—all he had to do was graduate.

“May I remind you?” Tom Atkins asked me sniffily. “ Graduating was all Kittredge had to do last year, too.”

But in ’61, Kittredge did graduate—so did we all. Frankly, graduation seemed anticlimactic, too. Nothing happened, but what were we expecting? Apparently, Mrs. Kittredge hadn’t been expecting anything; she didn’t attend. Elaine also stayed away, but that was understandable.

Why hadn’t Mrs. Kittredge come to see her only child graduate? (“Not very motherly, is she?” was all Kittredge had to say about it.) Kittredge seemed unsurprised; he was notably unimpressed with graduating. His aura was one of already having moved beyond the rest of us.

“It’s as if he’s started at Yale—it’s like he’s not here anymore,” Atkins observed.

I met Tom’s parents at graduation. His father took a despairing look at me and refused to shake my hand; he didn’t call me a fag, but I could feel him thinking it.

“My father is very . . . unsophisticated,” Atkins told me.

“He should meet my mom,” was all I said. “We’re going to Europe together, Tom—that’s all that matters.”

“That’s all that matters,” Atkins repeated. I didn’t envy him his days at home before we left; it was evident that his dad would give him endless shit about me while poor Tom was home. Atkins lived in New Jersey. Having seen only the New Jersey people who came to Vermont to ski, I didn’t envy Atkins that, either.

Delacorte introduced me to his mom. “This is the guy who was going to be Lear’s Fool,” Delacorte began.

When the pretty little woman in the sleeveless dress and the straw hat also declined to shake my hand, I realized that my being the original Lear’s Fool was probably connected to the story of my having had sex with the transsexual town librarian.

“I’m so sorry for your troubles, ” Mrs. Delacorte told me. I only then remembered that I didn’t know where Delacorte was going to college. Now that he’s dead, I’m sorry I never asked him. It may have mattered to Delacorte—where he went to college—maybe as much as where I went didn’t matter to me.

THE REHEARSALS FOR THE Tennessee Williams play weren’t time-consuming—not for my small part. I was only in the last scene, which is all about Alma, the repressed woman Nils Borkman believed Miss Frost would be perfect for. Alma was played by Aunt Muriel, as repressed a woman as I’ve ever known, but I managed to invigorate my role as “the young man” by imagining Miss Frost in the Alma part.

It seemed suitable to the young man’s infatuation with Alma that I stare at my aunt Muriel’s breasts, though they were gigantic (in my opinion, gross ) in comparison to Miss Frost’s.

“ Must you stare at my breasts, Billy?” Muriel asked me, in one memorable rehearsal.

“I’m supposed to be infatuated with you,” I replied.

“With all of me, I would imagine,” Aunt Muriel rejoined.

“I think it’s appropriate for the young man to stare at Alma’s bosoms,” our director, Nils Borkman, intoned. “After all, he’s a shoe salesman—he’s not very refinery .”

“It’s not healthy for my nephew to look at me like that!” Aunt Muriel said indignantly.

“Surely, Mrs. Fremont’s bosoms have attracted the stares of many young mens!” Nils said, in an ill-conceived effort to flatter Muriel. (I’ve momentarily forgotten why my aunt didn’t complain when I stared at her breasts in Twelfth Night . Oh, yes—I was a little shorter then, and Muriel’s breasts had blocked me from her view.)

My mother sighed. Grandpa Harry, who was cast as Alma’s mother—he was wearing a huge pair of falsies, accordingly—suggested that it was “only natural” for any young man to stare at the breasts of a woman who was “well endowed.”

“You’re calling me, your own daughter, ‘well endowed’—I can’t believe it!” Muriel cried.

My mom sighed again. “ Everyone stares at your breasts, Muriel,” my mother said. “There was a time when you wanted everyone to stare at them.”

“You don’t want to go down that road with me—there was a time when you wanted something, Mary,” Muriel warned her.

“Girls, girls,” said Grandpa Harry.

“Oh, shut up—you old cross-dresser!” my mother said to Grandpa Harry.

“Maybe I could just stare at one of the breasts,” I suggested.

“Not that you care about either of them, Billy!” my mom shouted.

I was getting a lot of shouts and sighs from my mother that spring; when I’d announced my plans to go to Europe with Tom Atkins for the summer, I got both the sigh and the shout. (First the sigh, of course, which was swiftly followed by: “Tom Atkins—that fairy !”)

“Ladies, ladies,” Nils Borkman was saying. “This is a forward young man, Mr. Archie Kramer—he asks Alma, ‘What’s there to do in this town after dark?’ That’s pretty forward, isn’t it?”

“Ah, yes,” Grandpa Harry jumped in, “and there’s a stage direction about Alma— ‘she gathers confidence before the awkwardness of his youth’ —and there’s another one, when Alma ‘leans back and looks at him under half-closed lids, perhaps a little suggestively.’ I think Alma is kind of encouragin’ this young fella to look at her breasts!”