In One Person

a woman; I’d seen all I needed to know about that. In the stage directions, Mrs. Winemiller is described as
a spoiled and selfish girl who evaded the responsibilities of later life by slipping into a state of perverse childishness. She is known as
Mr.
Winemiller’s “Cross
.”
    It was evident to my mom and me that Grandpa Harry was drawing on Nana Victoria—and what a “
Cross
” she was for him to bear—in his testy portrayal of Mrs. Winemiller. (This was evident to Nana Victoria, too; my disapproving grandmother sat in the front row of the audience looking as if she’d been poleaxed, while Harry brought the house down with his antics.)
    My mother had to prompt the shit out of the two child actors who virtually ruined the prologue. But in scene 1—specifically, the third time Mrs. Winemiller shrieked, “Where is the ice cream man?”—the audience was roaring, and Mrs. Winemiller brought the curtain down at the end of scene 5 by taunting her pussy-whipped husband. “‘Insufferable cross yourself, you old—windbag …’” Grandpa Harry cackled, as the curtain fell.
    It was as good a production as Nils Borkman had ever directed for the First Sister Players. I have to admit that Aunt Muriel was excellent as Alma; it was hard for me to imagine that Miss Frost could have matched Muriel in the
repressed
area of my aunt’s agitated performance.
    Beyond prompting the child actors in the prologue, my mom had nothing to do; no one muffed a line. It is fortunate that my mother had no further need to prompt anyone, because it was fairly early in the play when we both spotted Miss Frost in the front row of the audience. (That Nana Victoria found herself sitting in the same row as Miss Frost perhaps contributed to my grandmother’s concussed appearance; in addition to suffering her husband’s scathing portrayal of a shrewish wife and mother, Nana Victoria had to sit not more than two seats away from the transsexual wrestler!)
    Upon seeing Miss Frost, my mom might have inadvertently prompted her mother to crap in a cat’s litter box. Of course, Miss Frost had chosen her front-row seat wisely. She knew where the prompter had positioned herself backstage; she knew I always hung out with the prompter. If we could see her, my mother and I knew, Miss Frost could see us. In fact, for entire scenes of
Summer and Smoke
, Miss Frost paid no attention to the actors onstage; Miss Frost just kept smiling at me, while my mother increasingly took on the brained-by-a-two-by-four expressionlessness of Nana Victoria.
    Whenever Muriel-as-Alma was onstage, Miss Frost removed a compact from her purse. While Alma repressed herself, Miss Frost admired her lipstick in the compact’s small mirror, or she applied some powder to her nose and forehead.
    At the closing curtain, when I’d run offstage, shouting for a taxi—leaving Muriel to find the gesture that implies (without words) both “
wonder and finality
”—I encountered my mother. She knew where I exited the stage, and she had left her prompter’s chair to intercept me.
    “You will not speak to that
creature
, Billy,” my mom said.
    I had anticipated such a showdown; I’d rehearsed so many things that I wanted to say to my mother, but I had
not
expected her to give me such a perfect opportunity to attack her. Richard Abbott, who’d played John, must have been in the men’s room; he wasn’t backstage to help her. Muriel was still onstage, for a few more seconds—to be followed by resounding and all-concealing applause.
    “I
will
speak to her, Mom,” I began, but Grandpa Harry wouldn’t let me continue. Mrs. Winemiller’s wig was askew, and her enormous falsies were crowded too closely together, but Mrs. Winemiller wasn’t asking for ice cream now. She was nobody’s cross to bear—not in
this
scene—and Grandpa Harry needed no prompting.
    “Just
stop
it, Mary,” Grandpa Harry told my mother. “Just forget about Franny. For once in your life, stop feelin’ so sorry for yourself. A good man finally married you, for Christ’s sake! What have you got to be so
angry
about?”
    “I am speaking to my
son
, Daddy,” my mom started to say, but her heart wasn’t in it.
    “Then
treat
him like your son,” my grandfather said. “Respect Bill for who he is, Mary. What are you gonna do—change his genes, or somethin’?”
    “That
creature
,” my mother said again, meaning Miss Frost, but just then Muriel exited the stage. There was thunderous applause;