"I did tell some girls that," I admitted.
"I told this Institute girl that I was the girlfriend you were trying to be faithful to, when you were in Vienna," Elaine said.
We both had a laugh about that, but Elaine then asked me--more seriously--"Do you know what that Institute girl said, Billy?"
"No. What?" I asked.
"She said, 'Poor you!' That's what she said--this is a true story, Billy," Elaine told me.
I didn't doubt it. Das Institut was awfully small; every student there knew when I was fucking a soprano understudy--and, later, when I was fucking a famous American poet.
"If you'd been my girlfriend, I would have been faithful to you, Elaine--or I would have sincerely tried," I told her. I let her cry for a while in the passenger seat.
"If you'd been my boyfriend, I would have sincerely tried, too, Billy," Elaine finally said.
We drove northeast, then headed west from Ezra Falls--the Favorite River running beside us, to the north side of the road. Even in February, as cold as it was, that river was never entirely frozen over. Of course I'd thought about having children with Elaine, but there was no point in bringing that up; Elaine wasn't kidding about the size of babies' heads--in her view, they were enormous.
When we drove down River Street, past the building that had once been the First Sister Public Library--it was now the town's historical society--Elaine said, "I ran lines with you on that brass bed, for The Tempest, about a century ago."
"Almost twenty years ago, yes," I said. I wasn't thinking about The Tempest, or running lines with Elaine on that brass bed. I had other memories of that bed, but as I drove past what used to be the public library, it occurred to me--a mere seventeen years after the much-maligned librarian had left town--that Miss Frost might have protected (or not) other young men in her basement bedroom.
But what other young men would Miss Frost have met in the library? I suddenly remembered that I'd never seen any children there. As for teenagers, there were only those occasional girls--the high school students condemned to Ezra Falls. I'd never seen any teenage boys in the First Sister Public Library--except for the night Tom Atkins came, looking for me.
Except for me, our town's young boys would not have been encouraged to visit that library. Surely, no responsible parents in First Sister would have wanted their young male children to be in the company of the transsexual wrestler who was in charge of the place!
I suddenly realized why I'd been so late in getting a library card; no one in my family would ever have introduced me to Miss Frost. It was only because Richard Abbott proposed taking me to the First Sister Public Library, and no one in my family could ever say no to Richard--nor was anyone in my family quick enough to overrule Richard's good-hearted and impromptu proposition. I'd managed to meet Miss Frost only because Richard recognized the absurdity of a small-town thirteen-year-old boy not having a library card.
"Almost twenty years ago feels like a century to me, Billy," Elaine was saying.
Not to me, I was trying to say, but the words wouldn't come. It feels like yesterday to me! I wanted to shout, but I couldn't speak.
Elaine, who saw I was crying, put her hand on my thigh. "Sorry I brought up that brass bed, Billy," Elaine said. (Elaine, who knew me so well, knew I wasn't crying for my mother.)
GIVEN THE SECRETS MY family watched over--those silent vigils we kept, in lieu of anything remotely resembling honest disclosure--it is a wonder I didn't also suffer a religious upbringing, but those Winthrop women were not religious. Grandpa Harry and I had been spared that falsehood. As for Uncle Bob and Richard Abbott, I know there were times when living with my aunt Muriel and my mother must have resembled a religious observance--the kind of demanding devotion that fasting requires, or perhaps a nocturnal trial (such as staying up all night, when going to sleep would be both customary and more natural).
"What is it that's so appealin' about a wake?" Grandpa Harry asked Elaine and me. We went first to his house on River Street; I'd half expected Harry to greet us as a woman, or at least dressed in Nana Victoria's clothes, but he was looking like a lumberman--jeans, a flannel shirt, unshaven. "I mean, why would anyone livin' find it suitable to watch over the bodies of the dead--that is, before you get to the buryin' part? Where are the dead bodies gonna go? Why do dead bodies need watchin'?" Grandpa Harry asked.
It was Vermont; it was February. Nobody was burying Muriel or my mother until April, after the ground had thawed. I could only guess that the funeral home had asked Grandpa Harry if he'd wanted to have a proper wake; that had probably started the tirade.
"Jeez--we'll be watchin' the bodies till spring!" Harry had shouted.
There was no religious service planned. Grandpa Harry had a big house; friends and family members would show up for cocktails and a catered bu
ffet. The memorial word was allowed, but not a "memorial service"; Elaine and I didn't hear the service word mentioned. Harry seemed distracted and forgetful. Elaine and I both thought he didn't behave like a man who'd just lost his only children, his two daughters; instead, Harry struck us as an eighty-four-year-old who had misplaced his reading glasses--Grandpa Harry was eerily disconnected from the moment. We left him to ready himself for the "party"; Elaine and I were not mistaken--Harry had used the party word.
"Uh-oh," Elaine had said, as we were leaving the River Street house.
It was the first time I had been "home" when school was in session--that is, to Richard Abbott's faculty apartment in Bancroft Hall--since I'd been a Favorite River student. But how young the students looked was more unnerving to Elaine.
"I don't see anyone I could even imagine having sex with," Elaine said.
At least Bancroft was still a boys' dorm; it was disconcerting enough to see all the girls on the campus. In a process that was familiar to most of the single-sex boarding schools in New England, Favorite River had become a coed institution in 1973. Uncle Bob was no longer working in Admissions. The Racquet Man had a new career in Alumni Affairs. I could easily see Uncle Bob as a glad-hander, a natural at soliciting goodwill (and money) from a sentimental Favorite River alum. Bob also had a gift for inserting his queries into the class notes in the academy's alumni magazine, The River Bulletin. It had become Bob's passion to track down those elusive Favorite River graduates who'd failed to keep in touch with their old school. (Uncle Bob called his queries "Cries for Help from the Where-Have-You-Gone? Dept.")
Cousin Gerry had forewarned me that Bob's drinking had been "unleashed" by all his traveling for Alumni Affairs, but I counted Gerry as the last surviving Winthrop woman--albeit a watered-down, lesbian version of that steadfastly disapproving gene. (You will recall that I'd always imagined Uncle Bob's reputation for drinking was exaggerated.)
On another subject: Upon our return to Bancroft Hall, Elaine and I discovered that Richard Abbott couldn't speak, and that Mr. and Mrs. Hadley weren't talking to each other. The lack of communication between Martha Hadley and her husband was not unknown to me; Elaine had long predicted that her parents were headed for a divorce. ("It won't be acrimonious, Billy--they're already indifferent to each other," Elaine had told me.) And Richard Abbott had confided to me--that is, before my mother died, when Richard could still speak--that he and my mom had stopped socializing with the Hadleys.
Elaine and I had speculated on the mysterious "stopped socializing" part. Naturally, this dovetailed with Elaine's twenty-year theory that her mother was in love with Richard Abbott. Since I'd had crushes on Mrs. Hadley and Richard, what could I possibly contribute to this conversation?