In One Person

about the usual business of getting into the small bed beside her.
    “España,” I whispered in the dark.
    “You’ll show me, right?” Elaine said in her sleep.
    I fell asleep thinking about why I had never tried to find my father. A part of me had rationalized this: If he’s curious about me, let him find me, I’d thought. But in truth I had a fabulous father; my stepfather, Richard Abbott, was the best thing that ever happened to me. (My mom had never been happy, but Richard was the best thing that ever happened to her, too; my mother must have been happy with Richard.) Maybe I’d never tried to find Franny Dean because finding him would have made me feel I was betraying Richard.
    “What’s up with you, Jacques Kittredge?” the Racquet Man had written; of course I fell asleep thinking about that, too.

Chapter
12
    A W ORLD OF E PILOGUES
    Do epidemics herald their own arrivals, or do they generally arrive unannounced? I had two warnings; at the time, they seemed merely coincidental—I didn’t heed them.
    It was a few weeks after my mother’s death before Richard Abbott began to speak again. He continued to teach his classes at the academy—albeit by rote, Richard had even managed to direct a play—but he had nothing personal to say to those of us who loved him.
    It was April of that same year (’78) when Elaine told me that Richard had spoken to her mother. I called Mrs. Hadley immediately after I got off the phone with Elaine.
    “I know Richard’s going to call you, Billy,” Martha Hadley told me. “Just don’t expect him to be quite his old self.”
    “How is he?” I asked her.
    “I’m trying to say this carefully,” Mrs. Hadley said. “I don’t want to blame Shakespeare, but there’s such a thing as too much graveyard humor—if you ask me.”
    I didn’t know what Martha Hadley meant; I just waited for Richard to call. I think it was May before I finally heard from him, and Richard just started right in—as if we’d never been out of touch.
    Given his grief, I would have guessed that Richard hadn’t had the time or inclination to read my third novel, but he’d read it. “The same old themes, but better done—the pleas for tolerance never grow tiresome, Bill . Of course, everyone is intolerant of something or someone. Do you know what
you’re
intolerant of, Bill?” Richard asked me.
    “What would that be, Richard?”
    “You’re intolerant of intolerance—aren’t you, Bill?”
    “Isn’t that a
good
thing to be intolerant of?” I asked him.
    “And you are
proud
of your intolerance, too, Bill!” Richard cried. “You have a most
justifiable
anger at intolerance—at intolerance of sexual differences, especially. God knows, I would never say you’re not
entitled
to your anger, Bill.”
    “God knows,” I said cautiously. I couldn’t quite see where Richard was going.
    “As forgiving as you are of sexual differences—and rightly so, Bill!—you’re not
always
so forgiving, are you?” Richard asked.
    “Ah, well …” I started to say, and then stopped. So
that
was where he was going; I’d heard it before. Richard had told me that I’d not been standing in my mother’s shoes in 1942, when I was born; he’d said I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, judge her. It was my not forgiving her that irked him—it was my intolerance of
her
intolerance that bugged him.
    “As Portia says: ‘The quality of mercy is not strained.’ Act four, scene one—but I know it’s not your favorite Shakespeare, Bill,” Richard Abbott said.
    Yes, we’d fought about
The Merchant of Venice
in the classroom—eighteen years ago. It was one of the few Shakespeare plays we’d read in class that Richard had
not
directed onstage. “It’s a comedy—a romantic comedy—but with an unfunny part,” Richard had said. He meant Shylock—Shakespeare’s incontrovertible prejudice against Jews.
    I took Shylock’s side. Portia’s speech about “mercy” was vapid, Christian hypocrisy; it was Christianity at its most superior-sounding and most saccharine. Whereas Shylock has a point: The hatred of him has taught him to hate. Rightly so!
    “I am a Jew,” Shylock says—act 3, scene 1. “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?” I love that speech! But Richard didn’t want to be reminded that I’d
always
been on Shylock’s side.
    “Your mom is dead, Bill. Have you no feelings for your mother?” Richard asked me.
    “No feelings,” I