In One Person (77 page)

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say to him; as Gee had said, he was upset. As I could see for myself, he was angry. I tried to make small talk. I asked him what his dad had done for a living, and how Kittredge had met Irmgard, the wife—this angry young man’s mother.

They’d met skiing—Davos, or maybe Klosters. Kittredge’s wife was Swiss, but she’d had a German grandmother; that’s where the
Irmgard
came from. Kittredge and Irmgard had homes in the ski town and in Zurich, where they’d both worked at the Schauspielhaus. (It was quite a famous theater.) I imagined that Kittredge had liked living in Europe; no doubt, he was used to Europe, because of his mother. And maybe a sex-change surgery was more easily arranged in Europe—I had no idea, really.

Mrs. Kittredge—the mom, I mean,
not
the wife—had killed herself soon after Kittredge’s death. (There was no doubt she’d been his real mother.) “Pills,” was all the grandson would say about it; he clearly wasn’t interested in talking to me about anything except the fact that his father became a woman. I began to get the feeling that young Kittredge believed I had something to do with what he saw as a despicable alteration.

“How was his German?” I asked Kittredge’s son, but that was of no concern to the angry young man.

“His German was passable—not
as
passable as he was as a woman. He didn’t make any effort to improve his German,” Kittredge’s son told me. “My father never worked as hard at
anything
as he worked at becoming a woman.”

“Oh.”

“When he was dying, he told me that something happened here—when you knew him,” Kittredge’s son said to me. “Something
started
here. He admired you—he said you had balls. You did something ‘inspiring,’ or so he told me. There was a transsexual involved—someone older, I think. Maybe you both knew her. Maybe my father admired her, too—maybe
she
inspired him.”

“I saw a photo of your father when he was younger—before he came here,” I told young Kittredge. “He was dressed and made up as a very pretty girl. I think something
started,
as you say, before he met me—and all the rest of it. I could show you that photo, if you—”

“I’ve seen those photographs—I don’t need to see another one!” Kittredge’s son said angrily. “What about the transsexual? How did you two
inspire
my father?”

“I’m surprised to hear he ‘admired’ me—I can’t imagine that I did anything he would have found ‘inspiring.’ I never thought he even
liked
me. In fact, your father was always rather cruel to me,” I told Kittredge’s son.

“What about the transsexual?” young Kittredge asked me again.

“I knew the transsexual—your father met her only once. I was
in love with
the transsexual. What happened with the transsexual happened to
me
!” I cried. “I don’t know what happened to your father.”

“
Something
happened here—that’s all I know,” the son said bitterly. “My father read all your books, obsessively. What was he looking for in your novels? I’ve read them—I never found my father there, not that I would necessarily have recognized him in your pages.”

I thought of
my
father, then, and I said—as gently as I could manage—to Kittredge’s angry son, “We already are who we are, aren’t we? I can’t make your father comprehensible to you, but surely you can have some
sympathy
for him, can’t you?” (I’d never imagined myself asking anyone to have
sympathy
for Kittredge!)

I had once believed that if Kittredge was gay, he sure looked like a top to me. Now I wasn’t so sure. When Kittredge had met Miss Frost, I’d seen him change from dominant to submissive—in about ten seconds.

Just then Gee was there, in the row of seats beside us. My cast for
Romeo and Juliet
had surely heard the raised voices; they must have been worried about me. No doubt, they could hear how angry young Kittredge was. To me, he seemed just a callow, disappointing reflection of his father.

“Hi, Gee,” I said. “Is Manfred here? Are we ready?”

“No—we still don’t have our Tybalt,” Gee told me. “But I have a question. It’s about act one, scene five—it’s the very first thing I say, when the Nurse tells me Romeo is a Montague. You know, when I learn I’m in love with the son of my enemy—it’s that couplet.”

“What about it?” I asked her; she was stalling for us both, I could see. We wanted Manfred to arrive. Where was my easily outraged Tybalt when I needed him?

“I don’t think I should sound sorry for myself,” Gee continued. “I don’t think of Juliet as self-pitying.”

“No, she’s not,” I said. “Juliet may sound fatalistic—at times—but she shouldn’t sound self-pitying.”

“Okay—let me say it,” Gee said. “I think I’ve got it—I’m just saying it as it
is,
but I’m not complaining about it.”

“This is my Juliet,” I told young Kittredge. “My best girl, Gee. Okay,” I said to Gee, “let’s hear it.”

“ ‘My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!’ ” my Juliet said.

“That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her, but young Kittredge was just staring at her; I couldn’t tell if he admired her or suspected her.

“What kind of name is
Gee
?” Kittredge’s son asked her. I could see that my best girl’s confidence was a little shaken; here was a handsome, rather worldly-looking man—someone
not
from our Favorite River community, where Gee had earned our respect and had developed much confidence in herself
as a woman
. I could see that Gee was doubting herself. I knew what she was thinking—in young Kittredge’s presence, and under his intimidating scrutiny. Do I look
passable
? Gee was wondering.

“Gee is just a made-up name,” the young girl evasively told him.

“What’s your
real
name?” Kittredge’s son asked her.

“I was George Montgomery, at birth. I’m going to be
Georgia
Montgomery later,” Gee told him. “Right now, I’m just Gee. I’m a boy who’s becoming a girl—I’m
in transition,
” my Juliet said to young Kittredge.

“That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her again. “I think you said that perfectly.”

One glance at Kittredge’s son told me: He’d had no idea that Gee was a work-in-progress; he hadn’t known she was a transgender kid, on her brave way to becoming a woman. One glance at Gee told me that she knew she’d been
passable;
I think that gave my Juliet a ton of confidence. I realize now that if Kittredge’s son had said anything disrespectful to Gee, I would have tried to kill him.

At that moment, Manfred arrived. “The wrestler is here!” someone shouted—my Mercutio, maybe, or it might have been my gay Benvolio.

“We have our Tybalt!” my strong Nurse called to Gee and me.

“Ah, at last,” I said. “We’re ready.”

Gee was running toward the stage—as if her next life depended on starting this delayed rehearsal. “Good luck—break a leg,” young Kittredge called after her. Just like his father—you couldn’t read his tone of voice. Was he being sincere or sarcastic?

I could see that my most assertive Nurse had pulled Manfred aside. No doubt, she was filling the hot-tempered Tybalt in—she wanted “the
wrestler” to know there was a potential problem, a creep (as she’d called young Kittredge) in the audience. I was ushering Kittredge’s son to an aisle between the horseshoe-shaped seats, just accompanying the young man to the nearest exit, when Manfred presented himself in the aisle—as ready for a fight as Tybalt ever was.

When Manfred wanted to speak privately to me, he always spoke in German; he knew I’d lived in Vienna and could still speak a little German, albeit badly. Manfred politely asked if there was anything he could do to help me—in German.

Fucking
wrestlers
! I saw that my Tybalt had lost half his mustache; they’d had to shave one side of his lip before they gave him the stitches! (Manfred would have to shave the other half of his lip before we were in performance; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Tybalt with only half a mustache.)

“Your German is pretty good,” young Kittredge, sounding surprised, said to Manfred.

“It ought to be—I’m German,” Manfred told him aggressively, in English.

“This is my Tybalt. He’s also a wrestler, like your father,” I said to Kittredge’s son. They shook hands a little tentatively. “I’ll be right there, Manfred—you can wait onstage for me. Nice lip,” I told him, as he was going down the aisle to the stage.

Young Kittredge reluctantly shook my hand at the exit door. He was still agitated; he’d had more to say, but—in at least one way—he was
not
like his father. Whatever one thinks of Kittredge, I can tell you this: He was a cruel fucker, but he was a fighter. The son, whether he had wrestled or not, needed just one look at Manfred; Kittredge’s son was no fighter.

“Look, here it is—I just have to say this,” young Kittredge said; he almost couldn’t look at me. “I don’t know you, I admit—I don’t have a clue who my father really was, either. But I’ve read all your books, and I know what you do—I mean, in your
writing
. You make all these sexual extremes seem normal—that’s what you do. Like Gee, that
girl,
or whatever she is—or what she’s
becoming
. You create these characters who are so sexually ‘different,’ as
you
might call them—or ‘fucked up,’ which is what
I
would call them—and then you expect us to
sympathize
with them, or feel sorry for them, or something.”

“Yes, that’s more or less what I do,” I told him.

“But so much of what you describe is not
natural
!” Kittredge’s son
cried. “I mean, I know what you
are
—not only from your writing. I’ve read what you say about yourself, in interviews. What you are isn’t
natural
—you aren’t
normal
!”

He’d held his voice down when he was talking about Gee—I’ll give him credit for that—but now Kittredge’s son had raised his voice again. I knew that my stage manager—not to mention the entire cast for
Romeo and Juliet
—could hear every word. It was suddenly so quiet in our little black-box theater; I swear you could have heard a stage mouse fart.

“You’re
bisexual,
aren’t you?” Kittredge’s son then asked me. “Do you think
that’s
normal, or natural—or
sympathetic
? You’re a
switch-hitter
!” he said, opening the exit door; thank goodness, everyone could see he was finally leaving.

“My dear boy,” I said sharply to young Kittredge, in what has become my lifelong imitation of the way Miss Frost so pointedly and thrillingly spoke to me.

“My dear boy, please don’t put a
label
on me—don’t make me a
category
before you get to know me!” Miss Frost had said to me; I’ve never forgotten it. Is it any wonder that this was what I said to young Kittredge, the cocksure son of my old nemesis and forbidden love?

Jamey Bradbury

Rob Buyea

David Calicchio

Dean Cooke

Emily Copeland

Peter Delacorte

David Ebershoff

Amy Edelman

Marie-Anne Esquivié

Paul Fedorko

Vicente Molina Foix

Rodrigo Fresán

Ruth Geiger

Ron Hansen

Sheila Heffernon

Alan Hergott

Everett Irving

Janet Turnbull Irving

Josée Kamoun

Jonathan Karp

Katie Kelley

Rick Kelley

Kate Medina

Jan Morris

Anna von Planta

David Rowland

Marty Schwartz

Nick Spengler

Helga Stephenson

Abraham Verghese

Edmund White

ABOUT JOHN IRVING

The World According to Garp
, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of
The Hotel New Hampshire
(1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is
A Prayer for Owen Meany
(1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.