In One Person

Grandpa Harry wasn't a fighting man; I'm guessing that Nils Borkman stuck up for his beloved business partner, and for my mother.

"He can't work for six weeks--not with a busted collarbone, Nils," I'd heard Grandpa Harry say. "Every time you 'straighten out' someone, as you put it, we're stuck payin' the workers' compensation!"

"We can afford the workers' compensation, Harry--he'll watch what he says the time next, won't he?" Nils would say.

"The 'next time,' Nils," Grandpa Harry would gently correct his old friend.

In my eyes, my mom was not only a couple of years younger than her mean sister, Muriel; my mother was by far the prettier of the two Marshall girls. It didn't matter that my mom lacked Muriel's operatic bosom and booming voice. Mary Marshall Dean was altogether better-proportioned. She was almost Asian-looking to me--not only because she was petite, but because of her almond-shaped face and how strikingly wide open (and far apart) her eyes were, not to mention the acute smallness of her mouth.

"A jewel," Richard Abbott had dubbed her, when they were first dating. It became what Richard called her--not "Mary," just "Jewel." The name stuck.

And how long was it, after they were dating, before Richard Abbott discovered that I didn't have my own library card? (Not long; it was still early in the fall, because the leaves had just begun to change color.)

My mom had revealed to Richard that I wasn't much of a reader, and this led to Richard's discovery that my mother and grandmother were bringing books home from our town library for me to read--or not to read, which was usually the case.

The other books that were brought into my life were hand-me-downs from my meddlesome aunt Muriel; these were mostly romance novels, the ones my crude elder cousin had read and rejected. Occasionally, Cousin Geraldine had expressed her contempt for these romances (or for the main characters) in the margins of the books.

Gerry--only Aunt Muriel and my grandmother ever called her Geraldine--was three years older than I was. In that same fall when Richard Abbott was dating my mom, I was thirteen and Gerry sixteen. Since Gerry was a girl, she wasn't allowed to attend Favorite River Academy. She was vehemently angry about the "all-boys' factor" at the private school, because she was bused every school day to Ezra Falls--the nearest public high school to First Sister.

Some of Gerry's hatred of boys found its way into the marginalia she contributed to the hand-me-down romance novels; some of her disdain for boy-crazy girls was also vented in the margins of those pages. Whenever I was given a hand-me-down romance novel courtesy of Aunt Muriel, I read Gerry's comments in the margins immediately. The novels themselves were stultifyingly boring. But to the tiresome description of the heroine's first kiss, Gerry wrote in the margin: "Kiss me! I'll make your gums bleed! I'll make you piss yourself!"

The heroine was a self-congratulatory prig, who would never let her boyfriend touch her breasts--Gerry responded in the margin with: "I would rub your tits raw! Just try to stop me!"

As for the books my mother and grandmother brought home from the First Sister Public Library, they were (at best) adventure novels: seafaring stories, usually with pirates, or Zane Gre

y Westerns; worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales.

Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth? I had no need of stimulation from distant galaxies and unknown planets. And the present gripped me with sufficient incomprehension, not to mention the daily terror of being misunderstood; even to contemplate the future was nightmarishly unwelcome.

"But why doesn't Bill choose what books he likes for himself?" Richard Abbott asked my mother. "Bill, you're thirteen, right? What are you interested in?"

Except for Grandpa Harry and my ever-friendly uncle Bob (the accused drinker), no one had asked me this question before. All I liked to read were the plays that were in rehearsal at the First Sister Players; I imagined that I could learn these scripts as word-for-word as my mother always learned them. One day, if my mom were sick, or in an automobile accident--there were car crashes galore in Vermont--I imagined I might be able to replace her as the prompter.

"Billy!" my mother said, laughing in that seemingly innocent way she had. "Tell Richard what you're interested in."

"I'm interested in me," I said. "What books are there about someone like me?" I asked Richard Abbott.

"Oh, you would be surprised, Bill," Richard told me. "The subject of childhood giving way to early adolescence--well, there are many marvelous novels that have explored this pivotal coming-of-age territory! Come on--let's go have a look."

"At this hour? Have a look where?" my grandmother said with alarm. This was after an early school-night supper--it was not quite dark outside, but it soon would be. We were still sitting at the dining-room table.

"Surely Richard can take Bill to our town's little library, Vicky," Grandpa Harry said. Nana looked as if she'd been slapped; she was so very much a Victoria (if only in her own mind) that no one but my grandpa ever called her "Vicky," and when he did, she reacted with resentment every time. "I'm bettin' that Miss Frost keeps the library open till nine most nights," Harry added.

"Miss Frost!" my grandmother declared, with evident distaste.

"Now, now--tolerance, Vicky, tolerance," my grandfather said.

"Come on," Richard Abbott said again to me. "Let's go get you your own library card--that's a start. The books will come later; if I had to guess, the books will soon flow."

"Flow!" my mom cried happily, but with no small measure of disbelief. "You don't know Billy, Richard--he's just not much of a reader."

"We'll see, Jewel," Richard said to her, but he winked at me. I had a growingly incurable crush on him; if my mother was already falling in love with Richard Abbott, she wasn't alone.

I remember that captivating night--even such a commonplace thing as walking on the River Street sidewalk with the enthralling Richard Abbott seemed romantic. It was muggy, like a summer night, with a far-off thunderstorm brewing. All the neighborhood children and dogs were at play in the River Street backyards, and the bell in the clock tower of Favorite River Academy tolled the hour. (It was only seven on a September school night, and my childhood, as Richard had said, was giving way to early adolescence.)

"Exactly what about you are you interested in, Bill?" Richard Abbott asked me.

"I wonder why I have sudden, unexplainable . . . crushes," I said to him.