In One Person

girls,” Elaine said. “When she met you, you told her you were trying to be faithful to a girlfriend back in the States.”
    “I did tell some girls that,” I admitted.
    “I told this Institute girl that
I
was the girlfriend you were trying to be faithful to, when you were in Vienna,” Elaine said.
    We both had a laugh about that, but Elaine then asked me—more seriously—“Do you know what that Institute girl said, Billy?”
    “No. What?” I asked.
    “She said, ‘Poor you!’ That’s what she said—this is a true story, Billy,” Elaine told me.
    I didn’t doubt it.
Das Institut
was awfully small; every student there knew when I was fucking a soprano understudy—and, later, when I was fucking a famous American poet.
    “If you’d been my girlfriend, I would have been faithful to
you
, Elaine—or I would have sincerely tried,” I told her. I let her cry for a while in the passenger seat.
    “If you’d been my boyfriend, I would have sincerely tried, too, Billy,” Elaine finally said.
    We drove northeast, then headed west from Ezra Falls—the Favorite River running beside us, to the north side of the road. Even in February, as cold as it was, that river was never entirely frozen over. Of course I’d thought about having children with Elaine, but there was no point in bringing that up; Elaine wasn’t kidding about the size of babies’ heads—in her view, they were
enormous
.
    When we drove down River Street, past the building that had once been the First Sister Public Library—it was now the town’s historical society—Elaine said, “I ran lines with you on that brass bed, for
The Tempest
, about a century ago.”
    “Almost twenty years ago, yes,” I said. I wasn’t thinking about
The Tempest
, or running lines with Elaine on that brass bed. I had other memories of that bed, but as I drove past what used to be the public library, it occurred to me—a mere seventeen years after the much-maligned librarian had left town—that Miss Frost might have
protected
(or not) other young men in her basement bedroom.
    But what other young men would Miss Frost have met in the library? I suddenly remembered that I’d never seen
any
children there. As for teenagers, there were only those occasional
girls
—the high school students condemned to Ezra Falls. I’d never seen any teenage
boys
in the First Sister Public Library—except for the night Tom Atkins came, looking for me.
    Except for
me
, our town’s young boys would not have been encouraged to visit that library. Surely, no responsible parents in First Sister would have wanted their young male children to be in the company of the transsexual wrestler who was in charge of the place!
    I suddenly realized why I’d been so late in getting a library card; no one in my family would
ever
have introduced me to Miss Frost. It was only because Richard Abbott proposed taking me to the First Sister Public Library, and no one in my family could ever say no to Richard—nor was anyone in my family quick enough to overrule Richard’s good-hearted and impromptu proposition. I’d managed to meet Miss Frost only because Richard recognized the absurdity of a small-town thirteen-year-old boy not having a library card.
    “Almost twenty years ago feels like a century to me, Billy,” Elaine was saying.
    Not to
me
, I was trying to say, but the words wouldn’t come. It feels like
yesterday
to me! I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t speak.
    Elaine, who saw I was crying, put her hand on my thigh. “Sorry I brought up that brass bed, Billy,” Elaine said. (Elaine, who knew me so well, knew I wasn’t crying for my mother.)
    G IVEN THE SECRETS MY family watched over—those silent vigils we kept, in lieu of anything remotely resembling honest disclosure—it is a wonder I didn’t also suffer a religious upbringing, but those Winthrop women were not religious. Grandpa Harry and I had been spared that falsehood. As for Uncle Bob and Richard Abbott, I know there were times when living with my aunt Muriel and my mother must have resembled a religious observance—the kind of demanding devotion that fasting requires, or perhaps a nocturnal trial (such as staying up all night, when going to sleep would be both customary and more natural).
    “What is it that’s so appealin’ about a
wake
?” Grandpa Harry asked Elaine and me. We went first to his house on River Street; I’d half expected Harry to greet us
as a woman
, or at least dressed in Nana Victoria’s