In One Person

Atkins and I were more interested in planning our summer in Europe than we were obsessed by the obvious injustice of Kittredge getting into Yale.
    I admit: It was easier to forget about Kittredge, now that I rarely saw him. Either he didn’t need my help with his German or he’d stopped asking for it. Since Yale had admitted him, Kittredge wasn’t worried about what grade he got in German—all he had to do was graduate.
    “May I remind you?” Tom Atkins asked me sniffily. “
Graduating
was all Kittredge had to do last year, too.”
    But in ’61, Kittredge did graduate—so did we all. Frankly, graduation seemed anticlimactic, too. Nothing happened, but what were we expecting? Apparently, Mrs. Kittredge hadn’t been expecting anything; she didn’t attend. Elaine also stayed away, but that was understandable.
    Why
hadn’t Mrs. Kittredge come to see her only child graduate? (“Not very
motherly
, is she?” was all Kittredge had to say about it.) Kittredge seemed unsurprised; he was notably unimpressed with graduating. His aura was one of already having moved beyond the rest of us.
    “It’s as if he’s started at Yale—it’s like he’s not here anymore,” Atkins observed.
    I met Tom’s parents at graduation. His father took a despairing look at me and refused to shake my hand; he didn’t
call
me a fag, but I could feel him thinking it.
    “My father is very … unsophisticated,” Atkins told me.
    “He should meet my mom,” was all I said. “We’re going to Europe together, Tom—that’s all that matters.”
    “That’s all that matters,” Atkins repeated. I didn’t envy him his days at home before we left; it was evident that his dad would give him endless shit about me while poor Tom was home. Atkins lived in New Jersey. Having seen only the New Jersey people who came to Vermont to ski, I didn’t envy Atkins that, either.
    Delacorte introduced me to his mom. “This is the guy who was
going to be
Lear’s Fool,” Delacorte began.
    When the pretty little woman in the sleeveless dress and the straw hat also declined to shake my hand, I realized that my being the original Lear’s Fool was probably connected to the story of my having had sex with the transsexual town librarian.
    “I’m so sorry for your
troubles
,” Mrs. Delacorte told me. I only then remembered that I didn’t know where Delacorte was going to college. Now that he’s dead, I’m sorry I never asked him. It may have mattered to Delacorte—where he went to college—maybe as much as where I went
didn’t
matter to me.
    T HE REHEARSALS FOR THE Tennessee Williams play weren’t time-consuming—not for my small part. I was only in the last scene, which is all about Alma, the repressed woman Nils Borkman believed Miss Frost would be perfect for. Alma was played by Aunt Muriel, as
repressed
a woman as I’ve ever known, but I managed to invigorate my role as “the young man” by imagining Miss Frost in the Alma part.
    It seemed suitable to the young man’s infatuation with Alma that I stare at my aunt Muriel’s breasts, though they were gigantic (in my opinion,
gross)
in comparison to Miss Frost’s.
    “
Must
you stare at my breasts, Billy?” Muriel asked me, in one memorable rehearsal.
    “I’m supposed to be infatuated with you,” I replied.
    “With
all
of me, I would imagine,” Aunt Muriel rejoined.
    “I think it’s
appropriate
for the young man to stare at Alma’s bosoms,” our director, Nils Borkman, intoned. “After all, he’s a shoe salesman—he’s not very
refinery
.”
    “It’s not healthy for my
nephew
to look at me like that!” Aunt Muriel said indignantly.
    “Surely, Mrs. Fremont’s bosoms have attracted the stares of
many
young mens!” Nils said, in an ill-conceived effort to flatter Muriel. (I’ve momentarily forgotten why my aunt didn’t complain when I stared at her breasts in
Twelfth Night
. Oh, yes—I was a little shorter then, and Muriel’s breasts had blocked me from her view.)
    My mother sighed. Grandpa Harry, who was cast as Alma’s mother—he was wearing a huge pair of falsies, accordingly—suggested that it was “only natural” for
any
young man to stare at the breasts of a woman who was “well endowed.”
    “You’re calling me, your own daughter, ‘well endowed’—I can’t believe it!” Muriel cried.
    My mom sighed again. “
Everyone
stares at your breasts, Muriel,” my mother said. “There was a time when you
wanted
everyone to stare at them.”
    “You