John Irving - In One Person

“That creature, ” my mother said again, meaning Miss Frost, but just then Muriel exited the stage. There was thunderous applause; Muriel’s massive chest was heaving. Who knew whether the wonder or the finality had taken it out of her? “That creature is here—in the audience!” my mom cried to Muriel.

“I know, Mary. Do you think I didn’t see him?” Muriel said.

“See her, ” I corrected my aunt Muriel.

“Her!” Muriel said scornfully.

“Don’t you call her a creature, ” I said to my mother.

“She was doin’ her best to look after Bill, Mary,” Grandpa Harry (as Mrs. Winemiller) said. “She really was lookin’ after him.”

“Ladies, ladies . . .” Nils Borkman was saying. He was trying to ready Muriel and Grandpa Harry to go back onstage for their bows. Nils was a tyrant, but I appreciated how he allowed me to miss the all-cast curtain call; Nils knew I had a more important role to play backstage.

“Please don’t speak to that . . . woman, Billy,” my mom was pleading. Richard was with us, preparing to take his bows, and my mother threw herself into his arms. “Did you see who’s here? She came here ! Billy wants to speak to her! I can’t bear it!”

“Let Bill speak to her, Jewel,” Richard said, before running onstage.

The audience was treating the cast to more rousing applause when Miss Frost appeared backstage, just seconds after Richard had left.

“Kittredge lost,” I said to Miss Frost. For months I had imagined speaking to her; now this was all I could say to her.

“Twice,” Miss Frost said. “Herm told me.”

“I thought you’d gone to New Hampshire,” my mom said to her. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I never should have been here, Mary—I shouldn’t have been born here,” Miss Frost told her.

Richard and the rest of the cast had come offstage. “We should go, Jewel—we should leave these two alone for a minute,” Richard Abbott was saying to my mother. Miss Frost and I would never be “alone” together again—that much was obvious.

To everyone’s surprise, it was Muriel Miss Frost spoke to. “Good job,” Miss Frost told my haughty aunt. “Is Bob here? I need a word with the Racquet Man.”

“I’m right here, Al,” Uncle Bob said uncomfortably.

“You have the keys to everything, Bob,” Miss Frost told him. “There’s something I would like to show William, before I leave First Sister,” Miss Frost said; there was no theatricality in her delivery. “I need to show him something in the wrestling room,” Miss Frost said. “I could have asked Herm to let us in, but I didn’t want to get Herm in any trouble.”

“In the wrestling room!” Muriel exclaimed.

“You and Billy, in the wrestling room,” Uncle Bob said slowly to Miss Frost, as if he had trouble picturing it.

“You can stay with us, Bob,” Miss Frost said, but she was looking at my mom. “You and Muriel can come, too, Mary—if you think William and I need more than one chaperone.”

I thought my whole fucking family might die on the spot—merely to hear the chaperone word—but Grandpa Harry once more distinguished himself. “Just give me the keys, Bob— I’ll be the chaperone.”

“You?” Nana Victoria cried. (No one had noticed her arrival backstage.) “Just look at you, Harold! You’re a sexual clown ! You’re in no condition to be anyone’s chaperone!”

“Ah, well . . .” Grandpa Harry started to say, but he couldn’t continue. He was scratching under one of his falsies; he was fanning his bald head with his wig. It was hot backstage.

This was exactly how it unfolded—the last time I would see Miss Frost. Bob went to the Admissions Office to get his keys to the gym; he would have to come with us, my uncle explained, because only he and Herm Hoyt knew where the lights were in the new gym. (You had to enter the new gym, and cross to the old gym on the cement catwalk; there was no getting into the wrestling room any other way.)

“There was no new gym in my day, William,” Miss Frost was saying, as we traipsed across the dark Favorite River campus with Uncle Bob and Grandpa Harry— not with Mrs. Winemiller, alas, because Harry was once more wearing his lumberman’s regalia. Nils Borkman had decided to come along, too.

“I’m interested in seeing gives-what with the wrestling!” the eager Norwegian said.

“In seein’ what gives with the wrestlin’,” Grandpa Harry repeated.

“You’re going out in the world, William,” Miss Frost said matter-of-factly. “There are homo-hating assholes everywhere.”

“Homo-assholes?” Nils asked her.

“Homo-hating assholes,” Grandpa Harry corrected his old friend.

“I’ve never let anyone into the gym at night,” Uncle Bob was telling us, apropos of nothing. Someone was running to catch up to us in the darkness. It was Richard Abbott.

“Increasin’ popular interest in seein’ what gives with the wrestlin’, Bill,” Grandpa Harry said to me.

“I wasn’t planning on a coaching clinic, William—please try to pay attention. We don’t have much time,” Miss Frost added—just as Uncle Bob found the light switch, and I could see that Miss Frost was smiling at me. It was our story—not to have much time together.

Having Uncle Bob, Grandpa Harry, Richard Abbott, and Nils Borkman for an audience didn’t necessarily make what Miss Frost had to show me a spectator sport. The lighting in the old gym was spotty, and no one had cleaned the wrestling mats since the end of the ’61 season; there was dust and grit on the mats, and some dirty towels on the gym floor in the area of the team benches. Bob, Harry, Richard, and Nils sat on the home-team bench; it was where Miss Frost had told them to sit, and the men did as they were directed. (In their own ways, and for their own reasons, these four men were genuine fans of Miss Frost.)

“Take your shoes off, William,” Miss Frost began; I could see that she’d taken off hers. Miss Frost had painted her toenails a turquoise color—or maybe it was an aqua color, a kind of greenish blue.

It being a warm June night, Miss Frost was wearing a white tank top and Capri pants; the latter, in a blue-green color that matched her toenail polish, were a little tight for wrestling. I was wearing some baggy Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt.

“Hi,” Elaine suddenly said. I hadn’t noticed her in the theater. She’d followed us to the old gym—at a discreet distance behind us, no doubt—and now sat watching us from the wooden running track above the wrestling room.

“More wrestling,” was all I said to Elaine, but I was happy my dear friend was there.

“You will one day be bullied, William,” Miss Frost said. She clamped what Delacorte had called a collar-tie on the back of my neck. “You’re going to get pushed around, sooner or later.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“The bigger and more aggressive he is, the more you want to crowd him—the closer you want to get to him,” Miss Frost told me. I could smell her; I could feel her breath on the side of my face. “You want to make him lean on you—you want him cheek-to-cheek, like this. Then you jam one of his arms into his throat. Like this, ” she said; the inside of my own elbow was constricting my breathing. “You want to make him push back—you want to make him lift that arm,” Miss Frost said.

When I pushed back against her—when I lifted my arm, to take my elbow away from my throat—Miss Frost slipped under my armpit. In a split second, she was at once behind me and to one side of me. Her hand, on the back of my neck, pulled my head down; with all her weight, she drove me shoulder-first into the warm, soft mat. I felt a tweak in my neck. I landed at an awkward angle; how I fell put a lot of strain on that shoulder, and in the area of my collarbone.