In One Person

had told me. She had caught them at it, shortly after she’d returned from her trip to Europe with Mrs. Kittredge. Elaine suspected them of trying to discover if she was having sex with anyone else.
    After that, Elaine put condoms everywhere in her room. Naturally, Mrs. Kittredge had given her the condoms. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Hadley took the condoms as a sign that Elaine was being sexually active with an
army
of boys; more likely, I knew, Mrs. Hadley was smarter than that. Martha Hadley probably knew what the plethora of condoms meant: Stay the fuck out of my room! (After that one time, Mr. and Mrs. Hadley did.)
    The ’40
Owl
was safe in Elaine Hadley’s bedroom, if not in mine. Elaine and I could look at all the photos of flaming Franny Dean in that yearbook, but we both wanted to see the pictures of the
younger
William Francis Dean first. We would have the rest of our Christmas vacation to learn everything we could about the Favorite River Class of 1940.
    O VER THAT SAME C HRISTMAS dinner of 1960, when I’d asked Gerry to get me the ’40
Owl
, Nils Borkman had managed a moment—when we were briefly alone—to confide in me.
    “Your librarian friend—they are
roadrailing
her, Bill!” Borkman whispered harshly to me.
    “
Railroading
her—yes,” I said.
    “They are stereo sex-types!” Borkman exclaimed.
    “Sexual stereotypes?” I asked.
    “Yes—that’s what I said!” the Norwegian dramaturge declared. “It’s a pity—I had the perfect parts for you two,” the director whispered. “But of course I cannot put Miss Frost onstage—the Puritan sex-types would
stone
her, or something!”
    “The perfect parts in
what
?” I asked.
    “He is the
American
Ibsen!” Nils Borkman cried. “He is the
new
Ibsen, from your backward American South!”
    “
Who
is?” I asked.
    “Tennessee Williams—the most important playwright since Ibsen,” Borkman reverentially intoned.
    “What play is it?” I asked.
    “
Summer and Smoke
,” Nils answered, trembling. “The repressed female character has another woman smoldering inside her.”
    “I see,” I said. “That would be the Miss Frost character?”
    “Miss Frost would have been a
perfect
Alma!” Nils cried.
    “But now—” I started to say; Borkman wouldn’t let me finish.
    “Now I have no choice—it’s Mrs. Fremont as Alma, or nobody,” Nils muttered darkly. I knew “Mrs. Fremont” as Aunt Muriel.
    “I think Muriel can do
repressed
,” I told Nils encouragingly.
    “But Muriel doesn’t
smolder
, Bill,” Nils whispered.
    “No, she doesn’t,” I agreed. “What was my part going to be?” I asked him.
    “It’s still yours, if you want it,” Nils told me. “It’s a small role—it won’t interfere with your work-home.”
    “My homework,” I corrected him.
    “
Yes
—that’s what I said!” the Norwegian dramaturge declared again. “You play a traveling salesman, a young one. You make a pass at the Alma character in the last scene of the play.”
    “I make a pass at my aunt Muriel, you mean,” I said to the ardent director.
    “But not onstage—don’t worry!” Borkman cried. “The hanky-panky is all imagined; the repetitious sexual activity happens later, offstage.”
    I was pretty sure that Nils Borkman didn’t mean the sexual activity was “repetitious”—not even offstage.
    “
Surreptitious
sexual activity?” I asked the director.
    “Yes, but there’s no hanky-panky with your auntie onstage!” Borkman assured me, excitedly. “It just would have been so
symbolic
if Alma could have been Miss Frost.”
    “So
suggestive
, you mean?” I asked him.
    “Suggestive
and
symbolic!” Borkman exclaimed. “But with Muriel, we stick to the suggestive—if you know what I mean.”
    “Maybe I could read the play first—I don’t even know my character’s name,” I said to Nils.
    “I have a copy for you,” Borkman whispered. The paperback was badly beaten up—the pages had come unglued from the binding, as if the excitable director had read the little book to death. “Your name is Archie Kramer, Bill,” Borkman informed me. “The young salesman is supposed to wear a derby hat, but in your case we can
piss-dense
with the derby!”
    “
Dispense
with the derby,” I repeated. “As a salesman, what do I sell?”
    “Shoes,” Nils told me. “In the end, you’re taking Alma on a date to a casino—you have the last line in the play, Bill!”
    “Which is?” I asked the director.
    “‘Taxi!’” Borkman