In One Person

House
. No children at all in the former, and the children are of no importance as actors in the latter. Of course, there is the need for a very strong and complicated
woman
—in either play—and for the usual weak or unlikable men, or
both
.”
    “Weak or unlikable, or
both
?” Nils Borkman asked, in disbelief.
    “Hedda’s husband, George, is ineffectual and conventional—an awful combination of weaknesses, but an utterly common condition in men,” Richard Abbott continued. “Eilert Løvborg is an insecure weakling, whereas Judge Brack—like his name—is despicable. Doesn’t Hedda shoot herself because of her foreseeable future with both her ineffectual husband
and
the despicable Brack?”
    “Are Norwegians always shooting themselves, Nils?” my grandfather asked in a mischievous way. Harry knew how to push Borkman’s buttons; this time, however, Nils resisted a fjord-jumping story—he ignored his old friend and cross-dressing business partner. (Grandpa Harry had played Hedda many times; he’d been Nora in A
Doll’s House
, too—but, at his age, he was no longer suitable for either of these female leads.)
    “And what …
weaknesses
and other unlikable traits do the male characters in A
Doll’s House
present us with—if I may ask the young Mr. Abbott?” Borkman sputtered, wringing his hands.
    “Husbands are not Ibsen’s favorite people,” Richard Abbott began; there was no pausing to think now—he had all the confidence of youth and a brand-new education. “Torvald Helmer, Nora’s husband—well, he’s not unlike Hedda’s husband. He’s both boring and conventional— the marriage is stifling. Krogstad is a wounded man, and a corrupted one; he’s not without some redeeming decency, but the
weakness
word also comes to mind in Krogstad’s case.”
    “And Dr. Rank?” Borkman asked.
    “Dr. Rank is of no real importance. We need a Nora or a Hedda,” Richard Abbott said. “In Hedda’s case, a woman who prizes her freedom enough to kill herself in order not to lose it; her suicide is not a weakness but a demonstration of her
sexual strength
.”
    Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your point of view—Richard took this moment to glance at Aunt Muriel. Her good looks and opera singer’s swaggering bosom notwithstanding, Muriel was not a tower of
sexual strength
; she fainted.
    “Muriel—no histrionics, please!” Grandpa Harry cried, but Muriel (consciously or unconsciously) had foreseen that she did not match up well with the confident young newcomer, the sudden shining star of leading-man material. Muriel had physically taken herself out of the running for Hedda.
    “And in the case of
Nora
…” Nils said to Richard Abbott, barely pausing to survey my mother’s ministrations to her older, domineering (but now fainted) sister.
    Muriel suddenly sat up with a dazed expression, her bosom dramatically heaving.
    “Breathe in through your nose, Muriel, and out through your mouth,” my mother prompted her sister.
    “I know, Mary—I
know
!” Muriel said with exasperation.
    “But you’re doing it the other way—you know, in through your mouth and out through your nose,” my mother said.
    “Well …” Richard Abbott started to say; then he stopped. Even I saw how he looked at my mom.
    Richard, who’d lost the toes of his left foot to a lawn-mower accident, which disqualified him from military service, had come to teach at Favorite River Academy directly upon receiving a master’s degree in the history of theater and drama. Richard had been born and grew up in western Massachusetts. He had fond memories of family ski vacations in Vermont, when he’d been a child; a job (for which he was overqualified) in First Sister, Vermont, had attracted him for sentimental reasons.
    Richard Abbott was only four years older than my code-boy father had been in that photograph—when the sergeant was en route to Trinidad in ’45. Richard was twenty-five—my mom was thirty-five. Richard was a whopping ten years younger than my mother. Mom must have liked younger men; she’d certainly liked me better when I was younger.
    “And do
you
act, Miss—” Richard began again, but my mom knew he was speaking to her, and she cut him off.
    “No, I’m just the prompter,” she told him. “I don’t act.”
    “Ah, but, Mary—” Grandpa Harry began.
    “I
don’t
, Daddy,” my mother said. “You and Muriel are the
actresses
,” she said, with no uncertain emphasis on