In One Person

Borkman as a raving asshole for proposing a
knife
season and a
slingshot
season for “deers”—even though Nils was just kidding, of course.
    I remember when you could shoot only buck, then buck and doe, then buck and just
one
doe—that is,
if
you had a special permit, and the buck couldn’t be a spike-horn.
    “How about we shoot out-of-staters, no limit?” Nils Borkman had once asked. (Limitless shooting of out-of-staters might have been a pretty popular proposal in Vermont, but Borkman was just kidding about the out-of-staters, too.)
    “Nils has a
European
sense of humor,” Grandpa Harry had said, in defense of his old friend.
    “
European
!” Nana Victoria had exclaimed with scorn—no, with more than scorn. My grandmother spoke of Borkman being
European
in a similar manner to how she might have expressed her disgust at Nils having dog shit on his shoes. But the way Nana Victoria said the
European
word was mild in comparison to how derisively she spat out the
she
word, the spittle foaming on her lips, whenever she spoke of
Miss
Frost.
    You might say that, as a result of her not having actual sex with me, Miss Frost was banished from First Sister, Vermont; she would, like Elaine, be sent away “in stages,” and the first stage of Miss Frost’s removal from First Sister began with her being fired from the library.
    After she’d lost her job, Miss Frost could not long afford to maintain her ailing mother in what had been their family home; the house would be sold, but this took a little time, and Miss Frost made the necessary arrangements to move her mom to that assisted-living facility Harry Marshall and Nils Borkman had built for the town.
    It seems likely that Grandpa Harry and Nils probably gave Miss Frost a special deal, but it would not have been a deal of the magnitude of the one that Favorite River Academy made with Mrs. Kittredge—the deal that permitted Kittredge to stay in school and graduate, even though he had knocked up a faculty daughter who was underage. No one would offer Miss Frost a deal of that kind.
    W HEN I HAPPENED UPON Aunt Muriel, she greeted me in her usual insincere fashion: “Oh, hi, Billy—how’s everything? I hope all the
normal
pursuits of a young man your age are as gratifying to you as they
should
be!”
    To which I would unfailingly respond, as follows: “There was no penetration—no what most people call sex, in other words. The way I look at it, Aunt Muriel, I’m still a virgin.”
    This must have sent Muriel running to my mother to complain about my reprehensible behavior.
    As for my mom, she was subjecting both Richard and me to the “silent treatment”—not realizing, in my case, that I
liked
it when she didn’t speak to me. In fact, I vastly preferred her not speaking to me to her constant and conventional disapproval; furthermore, that my mother now had nothing to say to me didn’t prevent me from speaking to her first.
    “Oh, hi, Mom—how’s it going? I should tell you that, contrary to feeling
violated
, I feel that Miss Frost was protecting me—she truly
prevented
me from penetrating her, and I hope it goes without saying that she didn’t penetrate me!”
    I usually didn’t get to say more than that before my mother would run into her bedroom and close the door. “Richard!” she would call, forgetting that she was giving Richard the “silent treatment” because he’d taken up Miss Frost’s lost cause.
    “No what most people call sex, Mom—that’s what I’m telling you,” I would continue saying to her, on the other side of her closed bedroom door. “What Miss Frost truly did to me amounted to nothing more than a fancy kind of
masturbation
. There’s a special name for it and everything, but I’ll spare you the
details
!”
    “Stop it, Billy—stop it, stop it, stop it!” my mom would cry. (I guess she forgot that she was giving me the “silent treatment,” too.)
    “Take it easy, Bill,” Richard Abbott would caution me. “I think your mom is feeling pretty fragile these days.”
    “Pretty fragile these days,” I repeated, looking straight at him—until Richard looked away.
    “Trust me on this one, William,” Miss Frost had said to me, when we were holding each other’s penises. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”
    But I didn’t want to break that habit; it had been
her
habit, and I decided to embrace it.
    “I’m not judging you, Billy,” Mrs. Hadley said. “I can