John Irving - In One Person

“Don’t worry, Bill,” Nils Borkman suddenly said to me. “I am unloading the rifles! I am keeping a secret of the bullets!”

“España,” Elaine repeated. “Is it a gay thing, Billy?” she whispered to me.

“No,” I told her.

“You’ll show me, right?” Elaine asked. I knew that the trick would be keeping her awake until we were back in Bancroft Hall.

“I love you!” I said to Grandpa Harry, hugging him.

“I love you, Bill!” Harry told me, hugging me back. (His falsies had to have been modeled on someone with breasts as big as my aunt Muriel’s, but I didn’t tell my grandfather that.)

“You don’t owe me anything, Elaine,” I was saying, as we left that River Street house.

“Don’t say good night to my mom and dad, Billy—don’t get anywhere near my dad,” Elaine told me. “Not unless you want to hear about more casualties—not unless you have the stomach to listen to more fucking body-counting.”

After hearing about Trowbridge, I truly didn’t have the stomach for more casualties. I didn’t even say good night to Mrs. Hadley, because I could see that Mr. Hadley was loitering around.

“España,” I said quietly to myself, as I was helping Elaine up those three flights of stairs in Bancroft Hall; it’s a good thing I didn’t have to get her as far as her bedroom, which was on the frigging fifth floor.

As we were navigating the third-floor dormitory hall, I must have softly said “España” again—not so softly, I guess, because Elaine heard me.

“I’m a little worried about what kind of blow job an España is, exactly. It’s not rough stuff, is it, Billy?” Elaine asked me.

There was a boy in his pajamas in the hall—such a little boy, and he had his toothbrush in his hand. From his frightened expression, he obviously didn’t know who Elaine and I were; he’d also clearly heard what Elaine had asked about the España blow job.

“We’re just fooling around,” I told the small boy. “There’s not going to be any rough stuff. There’s not going to be a blow job!” I said to Elaine and the boy in pajamas. (With his toothbrush, he’d reminded me of Trowbridge, of course.)

“Trowbridge is dead. Did you know Trowbridge? He was killed in Vietnam,” I told Elaine.

“I didn’t know any Trowbridge,” Elaine said; like me, Elaine couldn’t stop staring at the young boy in pajamas. “You’re crying, Billy—please stop crying,” Elaine said. We were leaning on each other when I managed to open the door to silent Richard’s apartment. “Don’t worry about him crying—his mom just died. He’ll be all right,” Elaine said to the boy holding his toothbrush. But I had seen Trowbridge standing there, and perhaps I foresaw that there were more casualties coming; maybe I’d imagined all the body-counting in the not-too-distant future.

“Billy, Billy—please stop crying,” Elaine was saying. “What did you mean? ‘There’s not going to be a blow job!’ Do you think I’m bluffing ? You know me, Billy—I’ve stopped bluffing. I don’t bluff anymore, Billy,” she babbled on.

“My father is alive. He’s living in Spain, and he’s happy. That’s all I know, Elaine,” I told her. “My dad, Franny Dean, is living in Spain—España.” But that was as far as I got.

Elaine had slipped off her coat as we’d stumbled through Richard and my mother’s living room; she’d kicked off her shoes and her skirt, upon entering my bedroom, and she was struggling to unbutton the buttons on her blouse when—on another level of half-consciousness—Elaine saw the bed of my adolescent years and dove for it, or she somehow managed to throw herself on it.

By the time I knelt next to her on the bed, I could see that Elaine had completely passed out; she was limp and unmoving as I took off her blouse and unclasped her rather uncomfortable-looking necklace. I put her to bed in her bra and panties, and went about the usual business of getting into the small bed beside her.

“España,” I whispered in the dark.

“You’ll show me, right?” Elaine said in her sleep.

I fell asleep thinking about why I had never tried to find my father. A part of me had rationalized this: If he’s curious about me, let him find me, I’d thought. But in truth I had a fabulous father; my stepfather, Richard Abbott, was the best thing that ever happened to me. (My mom had never been happy, but Richard was the best thing that ever happened to her, too; my mother must have been happy with Richard.) Maybe I’d never tried to find Franny Dean because finding him would have made me feel I was betraying Richard.

“What’s up with you, Jacques Kittredge?” the Racquet Man had written; of course I fell asleep thinking about that, too.

Do epidemics herald their own arrivals, or do they generally arrive unannounced? I had two warnings; at the time, they seemed merely coincidental—I didn’t heed them.

It was a few weeks after my mother’s death before Richard Abbott began to speak again. He continued to teach his classes at the academy—albeit by rote, Richard had even managed to direct a play—but he had nothing personal to say to those of us who loved him.

It was April of that same year (’78) when Elaine told me that Richard had spoken to her mother. I called Mrs. Hadley immediately after I got off the phone with Elaine.

“I know Richard’s going to call you, Billy,” Martha Hadley told me. “Just don’t expect him to be quite his old self.”

“How is he?” I asked her.

“I’m trying to say this carefully,” Mrs. Hadley said. “I don’t want to blame Shakespeare, but there’s such a thing as too much graveyard humor—if you ask me.”

I didn’t know what Martha Hadley meant; I just waited for Richard to call. I think it was May before I finally heard from him, and Richard just started right in—as if we’d never been out of touch.

Given his grief, I would have guessed that Richard hadn’t had the time or inclination to read my third novel, but he’d read it. “The same old themes, but better done—the pleas for tolerance never grow tiresome, Bill. Of course, everyone is intolerant of something or someone. Do you know what you’re intolerant of, Bill?” Richard asked me.

“What would that be, Richard?”

“You’re intolerant of intolerance—aren’t you, Bill?”

“Isn’t that a good thing to be intolerant of?” I asked him.

“And you are proud of your intolerance, too, Bill!” Richard cried. “You have a most justifiable anger at intolerance—at intolerance of sexual differences, especially. God knows, I would never say you’re not entitled to your anger, Bill.”

“God knows,” I said cautiously. I couldn’t quite see where Richard was going.

“As forgiving as you are of sexual differences—and rightly so, Bill!—you’re not always so forgiving, are you?” Richard asked.

“Ah, well . . .” I started to say, and then stopped. So that was where he was going; I’d heard it before. Richard had told me that I’d not been standing in my mother’s shoes in 1942, when I was born; he’d said I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, judge her. It was my not forgiving her that irked him—it was my intolerance of her intolerance that bugged him.

“As Portia says: ‘The quality of mercy is not strained.’ Act four, scene one—but I know it’s not your favorite Shakespeare, Bill,” Richard Abbott said.

Yes, we’d fought about The Merchant of Venice in the classroom—eighteen years ago. It was one of the few Shakespeare plays we’d read in class that Richard had not directed onstage. “It’s a comedy—a romantic comedy—but with an unfunny part,” Richard had said. He meant Shylock—Shakespeare’s incontrovertible prejudice against Jews.