John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack was learning that adults were better at concealing things than kids were, and he was increasingly aware that his mom knew a lot she wasn’t telling him. Mrs. Wicksteed’s health, for example: Jack knew she had arthritis because he could see it for himself, and because Mrs. Wicksteed had told him. But no one told him she had cancer, not until the day she didn’t get up in time to do his tie—and then Lottie told him, not his mother. (Maybe his mom had been too busy; it might have been the same week she’d been tattooing Mrs. Oastler.)

Suddenly there was no one in the house who knew how to do a necktie, except Mrs. Wicksteed, who was dying! “Is she dying of arthritis ?” Jack asked Lottie.

“No, dear. She has cancer.”

“Oh.” So that was why Lottie prayed every night for the Lord to keep Mrs. Wicksteed alive a little longer.

Peewee did Jack’s tie that morning. He was a limo driver; he did his own tie every morning. He tied Jack’s in a very matter-of-fact fashion, not making half the fuss that Mrs. Wicksteed had—even before her arthritis. “Mrs. Wicksteed is dying, Peewee.”

“That’s too bad, mon. What’s the lady with the limp going to do then?” So that was why Lottie prayed to be permitted to die in Toronto. Everyone, including Peewee, knew that Lottie didn’t want to go back to Prince Edward Island.

Maybe everyone had a Rose of Jericho hidden somewhere, Jack thought. Perhaps it wasn’t always the kind of tattoo you could see, but another kind—like a free tattoo. No less a mark for life, just one not visible on the skin.

Out of concern for Mrs. Wicksteed, Jack asked Miss Wurtz if he could be excused from Jane Eyre rehearsals the rest of that week; after all, he’d played Rochester before. (He could do the part blind, so to speak.) But Connie-Turnbull-as-Jane had been replaced with Caroline French. Jack had never embraced a girl his own height. Caroline’s hair got in his mouth, which he found disagreeable. In the throes of that passionate moment when Jack-as-Rochester tells Caroline-as-Jane that she must think him an “irreligious dog,” Caroline nervously thumped her heels. Backstage, Jack could imagine her dim-witted twin, Gordon, thumping his heels, too. And when Caroline-as-Jane first took Jack-as-Rochester’s hand and mashed it to her lips, Jack was overcome with revulsion—both Caroline’s hand and her mouth were sticky.

It wasn’t only because Mrs. Wicksteed was dying that he wanted to miss a week of rehearsals; Miss Wurtz was reduced to tears all that week. Jack’s mom told him that Mrs. Wicksteed had helped Miss Wurtz out of a “tight spot” before. Whether the so-called tight spot had been the source of The Wurtz’s tastefully expensive clothes—the boyfriend Emma no longer believed in—Jack never learned. He was permitted to miss rehearsals. Caroline French was forced to imagine him in her sticky embrace.

His availability was of little use to Mrs. Wicksteed, who was hospitalized and enduring a battery of tests. Lottie assured Jack that he didn’t want to see the old lady that way. Jack’s mother, though she told him almost nothing of what she was feeling, was noticeably distraught. If, upon Mrs. Wicksteed’s death, Lottie would soon be on a boat back to Prince Edward Island, Alice confided to Jack in the semidarkness of her bedroom that they would be out on the street. Jack inquired if, in lieu of the street, there might be room for them in the Chinaman’s tattoo parlor. “We’re not sleeping in the needles again,” was all his mother would say.

Was their enemy Mrs. Wicksteed’s divorced daughter? She had never cared for their status as her mother’s rent-free boarders. But wasn’t she alleged to be Mrs. Oastler’s friend? Hadn’t she and Leslie Oastler attended St. Hilda’s together? Now that Leslie and Alice were friends, Jack suggested that maybe Mrs. Oastler would speak to Mrs. Wicksteed’s daughter on their behalf. All Alice said was that Mrs. Wicksteed’s daughter and Leslie Oastler weren’t the best of friends anymore.

It was only natural that Jack turned to The Gray Ghost for guidance in this troubling time, but Mrs. McQuat knew something she wasn’t telling him. Her strongest recommendation was that they pray together in the chapel, which meant only that they prayed together more. And when he asked The Gray Ghost if she’d been successful in persuading his mother that he would be “eaten alive” by those boys at Upper Canada College, Mrs. McQuat’s answer was out of character. It was not like a former combat nurse to be evasive. “Maybe UCC … wouldn’t have been … so bad, Jack.”

What did the “wouldn’t have been” mean? “Excuse me, Mrs. McQuat—” Jack started to say.

“You’re a bit … young to be a boarder … Jack … but there are schools—mostly in the States—where boarding is … the norm.”

“The what?”

They were in the second pew, to the left of the center aisle—the altar bathed in a golden light, the stained-glass saints administering to Jesus. What a lucky guy, to have four women fussing over him! Mrs. McQuat put her cold hand on Jack’s far shoulder and pulled him against her. She put her dry lips to his temple and gave him the faintest trace of a kiss. (“She gives him a paper kiss,” Jack would read in a screenplay, years later, and remember this moment in the chapel.)

“For a boy in your … situation, Jack … maybe a little … independence is the best thing.”

“A little what?”

“Talk to your mother, Jack.”

But having tried to open that door without success, he talked to Emma Oastler instead. Emma was giving him a tour of her mother’s mansion in Forest Hill. They were checking out the guest bedrooms—the guest “wing,” as Mrs. Oastler called it. There were three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom; it was a wing, all right. “Honestly,” Emma was saying, “I can’t understand why you and your mom don’t just move in here. I think it’s stupid to send you away.”

“Away where?”

“Talk to your mom. It’s her idea. She thinks you and I are a bad combination. She doesn’t want you going through puberty in the same house with me.”

“Going through what?”

“It’s not like we’d have to sleep in the same bedroom,” Emma said, pushing him down on the biggest of the guest-room beds. “Your mom and mine have the prevailing St. Hilda’s mentality. Girls get to see boys until the boys are nine-year-olds— then the boys disappear!”

“Disappear where ?”

Emma was engaged in one of her periodic checks on the progress of his penis, which seemed to render her melancholic. She’d pulled down his pants and underwear and was lying with her heavy head on his bare thigh. “I have a new theory,” Emma said, as if she were speaking exclusively to the little guy. “Maybe you are old enough. Maybe it’s me who’s not old enough—I mean I’m not old enough for you. ”

“Disappear where ?” Jack asked her again. “Where am I being sent away?”

“It’s an all-boys’ school in Maine, baby cakes. I hear it’s kind of remote. ”

“Kind of what?”

“Possibly the little guy likes even older women than I first supposed,” Emma was saying. His penis lay still and small in the palm of her hand. Jack was being sent to Maine, but the little guy didn’t care. “I’ve talked to a couple of girls in grade thirteen, and one in grade twelve. They know everything about penises,” Emma went on. “Maybe they can help.”

“Help what?”

“The problem is that they’re boarders. We can’t get you into their residence unless you’re a girl, honey pie.”