John Irving - Until I Find You

When Jack played Hester Prynne in The Wurtz’s adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, he couldn’t persuade his mom to come see him as an eight-year-old adulteress with the letter A on his-as-her chest. “I hate that story,” Alice whispered to her son in the semidarkness of her bedroom. “It’s so unfair. I’ll ask Caroline to take some pictures. I’ll look at photographs, Jack, but I don’t want to see that story dramatized. ”

Miss Wurtz shrewdly recognized in Wendy Holton’s preternaturally thin, cruel body—in her unyielding knees, her fists-of-stone hardness—a perfect likeness to the obsessed and vengeful Roger Chillingworth. Once again, in casting, The Wurtz robbed the middle school of one of Jack’s former tormentors.

The Reverend Dimmesdale was lamentably miscast, although in choosing Lucinda Fleming, who was a head taller than Jack was in grade three, Miss Wurtz might have been hoping that Lucinda’s silent rage would select a pivotal moment of Dimmesdale’s guilt in which to erupt onstage and frighten the bejesus out of them all. Perhaps when Dimmesdale cries to Hester: “May God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest!” That might have worked, had Lucinda Fleming simply lost it at that moment—had she begun to bash her head against the footlights or made some woeful, demented effort to strangle herself in the stage curtains.

But Lucinda kept her rage to herself. She may have been as tortured as the Reverend Dimmesdale, but she seemed to be saving her long-anticipated explosion for an offstage moment. Jack was convinced it was something she was saving just for him. But being onstage with Lucinda-as-Dimmesdale was better than being backstage with Wendy-as-Chillingworth, because—once she was out of Miss Wurtz’s sight—Wendy held Jack personally responsible for her being cast as Chillingworth in the first place. (Admittedly, it was a thankless part.) Therefore, The Scarlet Letter was a bruising production for Jack. Wendy punched him or kneed him in the ribs whenever she could get away with it.

“My goodness,” Alice whispered to her son in the semidarkness. (She could tell he was sore just by touching him.) When she turned on the light, she said: “What are those Puritans doing to you, Jack? Are you wearing the letter A, or are they hitting you with it?”

His mother wouldn’t come see him throw himself under a train in Miss Wurtz’s rendition of Anna Karenina, either. (“I’ll ask Caroline to take more pictures, Jack.”) There was no end to the wronged women in Caroline Wurtz’s instructive repertoire. And how brilliant was The Wurtz’s choice of Emma Oastler for the role of Count Vronsky? Emma even had the requisite mustache for the part!

After school—in Jack’s room, or just hanging out in the backseat of the Town Car while Peewee stole a look at Emma’s legs—Emma controlled their topics of conversation, as before. Jack could not take command of that stage, where he and Emma were engaged in an improvisational performance of the kind he needed to learn vastly more about.

“This is perfect, Jack—we’re having a love affair!”

“We are ?”

“Onstage, I mean.”

“But what are we having here ?” he asked—meaning the backseat of the Town Car, where he lay pinned, with one of Emma’s heavy legs thrown over him, much in the impulsive, half-asleep manner that his mom occasionally threw a leg over him; or on the bed in his room, where Emma told Lottie she was helping Jack with his homework and not to bother them.

“He’s fallen behind, Lottie. I can help him catch up, if I can just get him to listen to me.”

How could he not listen to her? In the first place, she simply overpowered him on the backseat or on his bed. And she knew he couldn’t resist her mustache; she would brush her silky upper lip against him. She ran her mustache over the back of his hand while she imitated Connie Turnbull’s French kiss, which she did a better job of than Connie; or against his cheek, or even (after she’d untucked his shirt) over his bare belly, pausing to give special consideration to his navel. “Do you ever wash this thing, Jack? It’s got lint in it, you know.”

It was all prelude—whether she was pretending she was Count Vronsky and Jack was Anna, or whether she was herself, Emma Oastler, who would never be a minor character, not in Jack’s life. Everything led up to the “end line,” as Miss Wurtz was fond of saying. “Hit your end line so that your audience of one remembers it, Jack. Say your end line so that no one can forget it, okay?”

“How’s the little guy doing? What’s he up to, Jack?” Emma always got around to asking.

It was a crucial time—they were in rehearsals for Anna Karenina but had not yet been subjected to Miss Wurtz’s plans for Sense and Sensibility. Emma and Jack were doing “homework” on his bed. Lottie could be heard banging around below them in the kitchen. To Emma’s question regarding what his penis was up to, Jack answered as he often did: “Not much.”

“Let’s have a look, baby cakes.” He showed her. He heard such sorrow in Emma’s sigh, or maybe he’d been thinking too much about Anna and the train. He didn’t want to go on disappointing Emma forever.

“Sometimes it dreams,” Jack began.

“Dreams what? Who’s in the dreams, Jack?”

“ You are,” he answered. (This seemed safer to admit than the Miss Wurtz part.)

“What am I doing in the dreams, Jack?”

“It’s mainly your mustache,” he admitted.

“You little pervert, you squirrel dink, Jack—”

“And Miss Wurtz is wearing just her underwear,” he blurted out.

“I’m with The Wurtz? Jesus, Jack!”

“It’s more like Miss Wurtz is alone, with your mustache,” Jack confessed. “And the underwear.”

“ Whose underwear?” Emma asked.

He sneaked along the upstairs hall to Lottie’s room and brought Emma the latest edition of Lottie’s mail-order catalog. “You dork, Jack—I wouldn’t be caught dead in this stuff. I’ll show you some underwear!”

He had seen her previous training bra—her present bra was only a little bigger. But when Emma removed the bra, there was a more noticeable shape and substance to her breasts than before; and when she took her panties off and held them against the pleats of her skirt, the lace that rimmed the waistband was a new experience for Jack and the little guy.

“It moved,” Emma said.

“ What moved?”

“You know what, Jack.” They both looked at the little guy, who was not as little as before. Emma leaned over his penis. “Miss Wurtz,” she said. “Shut your eyes, Jack.” Of course he did as he was told. “Caroline Wurtz,” Emma whispered to his penis. “I’m gonna bring you some real underwear, little guy.” Even with his eyes closed, Jack knew that the little guy liked this idea.

“I think we’re finally getting somewhere, Jack.”

“Can I undo your braid, Emma?”

“Now?”

“Yes.” She allowed him to do this, never taking her eyes from his penis. Her hair fell all around his hips; he felt it touch his thighs. “It’s working, baby cakes,” Emma reported. “You had the right idea.”

“Kettle’s boiling!” Lottie called from the kitchen.

“Let me be sure I understand you,” Emma said, ignoring Lottie. “It’s basically The Wurtz with my mustache and Lottie’s underwear.”

“Not Lottie’s—it’s the underwear from her catalog.” (The thought of Miss Wurtz in Lottie’s underwear was unappealing.)