In One Person (38 page)

She drew me a bath, like the first time, but she still wouldn’t completely undress, and when I suggested that she climb into the big bathtub with me, she laughed and said: “I’m still trying to
protect
you, William. I wouldn’t want to risk
drowning
you!”

I was happy enough that her breasts were bare, and that she’d let me hold her penis, which I still hadn’t seen. She’d gotten harder and bigger in my hand, but I had the feeling that even her penis was holding back—a little. I can’t explain this, but I felt certain that Miss Frost was simply not
allowing
her penis to get any harder or bigger; perhaps this was, in her mind, another way in which she was
protecting
me.

“Does it have a
name
—having sex the way we did it?” I asked.

“It
does,
William. Can you say the word
intercrural
?” she asked me.

“Intercrural,” I replied, without hesitating. “What does it mean?”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the prefix
inter,
in this sense meaning ‘between,’ William,” Miss Frost answered. “As for
crural,
it means ‘of or pertaining to the leg’—between the thighs, in other words.”

“I see,” I said.

“It was favored by homosexual men in ancient Greece, or so I’ve read,” Miss Frost explained. “Not a part of my library-science studies, but I did get to spend a lot of free time in a library!”

“What did the ancient Greeks like about it?” I asked her.

“I read this long ago—I may have forgotten all the reasons,” Miss Frost said. “The from-behind part, maybe.”

“But we don’t live in ancient Greece,” I reminded Miss Frost.

“Trust me, William: It’s possible to have sex intercrurally without
exactly
imitating the Greeks,” Miss Frost explained. “One doesn’t always have to do it from behind. Between the thighs will work sideways, or in other positions—even in the missionary position.”

“The
what
?” I asked her.

“We’ll try it next time, William,” she whispered. It might have been in the midst of her quiet whisper when I thought I heard the first creak on the basement stairs. Either Miss Frost heard it, too, or it was merely a coincidence that she took that moment to glance at her watch.

“You told Richard and me that you’d been
onstage
—that you had
acted
—only in your mind. But I saw you in those Drama Club photos. You’d been onstage—you
had
acted before,” I said to her.

“Poetic license, William,” Miss Frost replied, with one of her theatrical sighs. “Besides, that wasn’t
acting
. That was merely dressing up—that was
over
acting! Those boys were clowns—they were just fooling around! There was no Richard Abbott at Favorite River Academy in those days. There was no one in charge of the Drama Club who knew half as much as
Nils
knows, and Nils Borkman is a dramaturgical
pedant
!”

There was a second creak on the basement stairs, which both Miss Frost and I heard; there was no mistaking it this time. I was mainly surprised that Miss Frost seemed so unsurprised. “In our haste, William, did we forget to lock the library door?” she whispered to me. “Oh, dear—I think we did.”

We had so little time—as Miss Frost knew, from the beginning.

U
PON THE THIRD CREAK
on those basement stairs, on that most memorable night in the clearly unlocked First Sister Public Library, Miss Frost—who’d been kneeling beside her big bathtub while she thoughtfully attended to my penis and we talked about all sorts of interesting things—stood up and said in a clarion voice, which would have impressed my friend Elaine and her voice-teacher mother, Mrs. Hadley: “Is that you, Harry? I’ve been thinking that those cowards would send
you
. It
is
you, isn’t it?”

“Ah, well—yes, it’s me,” I heard Grandpa Harry say sheepishly, from
the basement stairs. I sat up straight in the bathtub. Miss Frost stood very erect, with her shoulders back and her small but pointy breasts aimed at her open bedroom door. Miss Frost’s nipples were rather long, and her unpronounceable areolae were the intimidating size of silver dollars.

When my grandfather stepped tentatively into Miss Frost’s basement room, he was not the confident character I’d so often seen onstage; he was not a woman with a commanding presence, but just a man—bald and small. Grandpa Harry had clearly not volunteered to be the one to come and rescue me.

“I’m disappointed that Richard didn’t have the balls to come,” Miss Frost said to my embarrassed grandfather.

“Richard asked to be the one, but Mary wouldn’t let him,” my grandfather said.

“Richard is pussy-whipped, like all of you men married to those Winthrop women,” Miss Frost told him. My grandfather couldn’t look at her, with her bare breasts showing, but she would not turn away from him—nor did she seek her clothes. She wore just the pearl-gray half-slip in front of him, as if it were a formal gown and she had overdressed for the occasion.

“I don’t imagine Muriel was willing to let Bob come,” Miss Frost continued. Grandpa Harry just shook his head.

“That Bobby is a sweetheart, but he was always a pussy—even before he was pussy-whipped,” Miss Frost went on. I’d never heard Uncle Bob called “Bobby,” but I now knew that Robert Fremont had been Albert Frost’s classmate at Favorite River Academy, and when you’re in a boarding school in those formative years, you call one another names you never hear or use again. (No one calls me Nymph anymore, for example.)

I was attempting to get out of the bathtub without showing all of myself to my grandpa, when Miss Frost handed me a towel. Even with the towel, it was awkward getting out of the tub, and drying myself, and trying to put on my clothes.

“Let me tell you something about your aunt Muriel, William,” Miss Frost said, standing as a barrier between my grandfather and me. “Muriel actually had a crush on
me
—before she started hanging out with her ‘first and only
beau,
’ your uncle Bob. Imagine if I had taken Muriel up—I mean on her
offering
herself to me!” Miss Frost cried, in her best Ibsen-woman fashion.

“Al, please don’t be crude,” Grandpa Harry said. “Muriel is my daughter, after all.”

“Muriel is a bossy bitch, Harry. It might have made her
nicer
if she’d ever gotten to know me,” Miss Frost said. “There’s no pussy-whipping
me,
William,” she said, looking at how I was managing to get myself dressed—badly.

“No, there isn’t, Al—I daresay!” Grandpa Harry exclaimed. “There’s no pussy-whippin’ you!”

“Your grandpa is a good guy, William,” Miss Frost told me. “He
built
this room for me. When I first moved back to town, my mother thought I was still a man. I needed a place to change before I went to work as a woman—and before I went home every night, to my mother, as a man. You might say it’s a blessing—at least it’s easier for me—that my poor mom doesn’t appear to notice what gender I am, or should be, anymore.”

“I wish you had let me finish this place properly, Al,” Grandpa Harry was saying. “Jeez—there should have been a wall around that toilet, anyway!” he observed.

“It’s too small a room to have more walls,” Miss Frost said. This time, when she stood at the toilet and flipped up the wooden seat, Miss Frost didn’t turn her back on me, or on Grandpa Harry. Her penis was not even a little hard, but she had a pretty big one—like the rest of her, except for her breasts.

“Come on, Al—you’re a decent fella. I’ve always stood up for you,” Grandpa Harry said. “But this isn’t right—you and Bill, I mean.”

“She was
protecting
me!” I blurted out. “We never had sex. No penetration,” I added.

“Jeez, Bill—I don’t want to hear about you
doin’
it!” Grandpa Harry cried; he cupped his hands over his ears.

“But we
didn’t
do it!” I told him.

“That night when Richard first brought you here, William—when you got your library card, and Richard offered me those roles in the Ibsen plays—do you remember?” Miss Frost asked me.

“Yes, of course I
remember
!” I whispered.

“Richard thought he was offering the part of Nora, and the part of Hedda, to a woman. It was when he took you home, and he must have talked to your mom—who talked to Muriel, I’m sure—well, that was when they all told him about me. But Richard still wanted to cast me! Those Winthrop women had to accept me, at least
onstage
—as they’ve had to accept you, Harry, when you were just
acting
. Isn’t that the way it happened?” she asked my grandfather.

“Ah, well—
onstage
is one thing, isn’t it, Al?” Grandpa Harry asked Miss Frost.

“You’re pussy-whipped, too, Harry,” Miss Frost told him. “Aren’t you sick of it?”

“Come on, Bill,” my grandfather said to me. “We should be goin’.”

“I always respected you, Harry,” Miss Frost told him.

“I always respected
you,
Al!” my grandfather declared.

“I know you did—that’s why the craven fuckers sent you,” Miss Frost said to him. “Come here, William,” she suddenly commanded me. I went to her, and she pulled my head to her bare breasts and held me there; I knew she could feel me shaking. “If you want to cry, do it in your room—but don’t let them hear you,” she told me. “If you want to cry, close your door and pull your pillow over your head. Cry with your good friend Elaine, if you want to, William—just don’t cry in front of
them
. Promise me!”

“I promise you!” I told her.

“So long, Harry—I
did
protect him, you know,” Miss Frost said.

“I believe you did, Big Al. I’ve always protected
you,
you know!” Grandpa Harry exclaimed.

“I know you have, Harry,” she told him. “It might not be possible for you to protect me
now.
Don’t kill yourself trying,” she added.

“I’ll do the best I can, Al.”

“I know you will, Harry. Good-bye, William—or, ‘till we meet again,’ as they say,” Miss Frost said.

I was shaking more, but I didn’t cry; Grandpa Harry took my hand, and we went up those dark basement stairs together.

“I’m guessin’ that must have been some book Miss Frost gave you, Bill—on that subject we were discussin’,” Grandpa Harry said, as we walked along River Street in the direction of Bancroft Hall.

“Yes, it is an awfully good novel,” I told him.

“I’m thinkin’ I might like to read it myself—if Al will let me,” Grandpa Harry said.

“I promised to lend it to a friend,” I told him. “Then
I
could give it to you.”

“I’m thinkin’ I better get it from Miss Frost, Bill—I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for givin’ it to me! I believe you’re in enough trouble, for the time bein’,” Grandpa Harry whispered.

“I see,” I said, still holding his hand. But I
didn’t
see; I was merely
scratching the surface of all of them. I was just getting started with the
seeing
part.

When we got to Bancroft, the idolatrous boys in the butt room seemed disappointed to see us. I suppose they now expected the occasional sighting of the idolized Kittredge in my company, and here I was with my grandfather—bald and small, and dressed in the working clothes of a lumberman. Grandpa Harry was clearly not a faculty type, and he’d not attended Favorite River Academy; he’d gone to the high school in Ezra Falls, and had not gone to college. The butt-room boys paid no attention to my grandfather and me; I’m sure Grandpa Harry didn’t care. How would those boys have recognized Harry, anyway? Those who’d ever seen him before had seen Harry Marshall onstage, when he’d been a woman.

“You don’t have to come up to the third floor with me,” I told my grandpa.

“If I
don’t
come up with you, Bill, you’ll be doin’ the explainin’,” Grandpa Harry said. “You’ve had quite a night already—why don’t you leave the explainin’ to me?”

“I love you—” I began, but Harry wouldn’t let me continue.

“Of course you do, and I love you, too,” he told me. “You trust me to say all the right things, don’t you, Bill?”

“Of course I do,” I told him. I
did
trust him, and I was tired; I just wanted to go to bed. I needed to hold Elaine’s bra to my face, and cry in such a way that none of them would hear me.

But when Grandpa Harry and I entered that third-floor apartment, the assembled family gathering—which
had
included Mrs. Hadley, I only later learned—had dispersed. My mother was in her bedroom, with the door meaningfully closed; maybe there would be no further
prompting
from my mom tonight. Only Richard Abbott was there to greet us, and he looked about as comfortable as a dog with fleas.