In One Person

We’d always joked about Mrs. Borkman being an Ibsen woman, but, sure enough, she shot herself that same day. “Like Hedda—with a handgun, in the temple!” Grandpa Harry had said admiringly—in a not that much later phone call.
    I have no doubt that losing his partner and old friend, Nils, precipitated Grandpa Harry’s decline. Of course Harry had lost his wife and his only children, too. Thus Richard and I would soon venture down that assisted-living road of committing Grandpa Harry to the Facility, where Harry’s “surprise” appearances in drag would quickly wear out his welcome. And—still early in ’81, as I recall—Richard and I would move Grandpa Harry back into his River Street home, where Richard and I hired a live-in nurse to look after him. Elmira was the nurse’s name; not only did she have fond memories of seeing Harry onstage
as a woman
(when Elmira had been a little girl), but Elmira even participated in choosing Grandpa Harry’s dress-of-the-day from his long-hoarded stash of Nana Victoria’s clothes.
    It was also relatively early in that year (’81) when Mr. Hadley left Mrs. Hadley; as it turned out, he ran off with a brand-new Favorite River Academy graduate. The girl was in her freshman year of college—I can’t remember where. She would drop out of college in order to live with Mr. Hadley , who was sixty-one—Martha Hadley’s age, exactly. Mrs. Hadley was my mother’s age; she was a whopping ten years older than Richard Abbott, but Elaine must have been right in guessing that her mom had always loved Richard. (Elaine was usually right.)
    “What a
melodrama
,” Elaine said wearily, when—as early as the summer of ’81—Mrs. Hadley and Richard started living together. Old hippie that she was, Martha Hadley refused to get married again, and Richard (I’m sure) was happy just to be in Mrs. Hadley’s uncomplaining presence. What did Richard Abbott care about remarrying?
    Besides, they both understood that if they
didn’t
get married, they would be asked to move out of Bancroft Hall. It may have been the start of the eighties, but it was small-town Vermont, and Favorite River had its share of boarding-school rules. An unmarried couple, living together in a faculty apartment in a prep school—well, this wouldn’t quite do. Both Mrs. Hadley and Richard had
had
it with an all-boys’ dorm; Elaine and I didn’t doubt that. It’s entirely possible that Richard Abbott and Martha Hadley decided they would be crazy to get married; by choosing to live together in sin, they got out of living in a dorm!
    Mrs. Hadley and Richard had the summer to find a place to live in town, or at least near First Sister—a modest house, something a couple of secondary-school teachers could afford. The place they found was not more than a few doors down River Street from what had once been the First Sister Public Library—now the historical society. The house had gone through a succession of owners in recent years; it needed some repairs, Richard told me somewhat haltingly over the phone.
    I sensed his hesitation; if it was money he needed, I would have gladly given him what I could, but I was surprised Richard hadn’t asked Grandpa Harry first. Harry loved Richard, and I knew that Grandpa Harry had given his blessing to Richard’s living with Martha Hadley.
    “The house isn’t more than a ten-minute walk from Grandpa Harry’s house, Bill,” Richard said over the phone. I could tell he was stalling.
    “What is it, Richard?” I asked him.
    “It’s the former Frost home, Bill,” Richard said. Given the history of the many recent and unreliable owners, we both knew that no traces of Miss Frost could conceivably have remained. Miss Frost was gone—both Richard Abbott and I knew that. Yet the house being “the former Frost home” was a glimpse into the darkness—the
past
darkness, I thought at the time. I saw no foreshadow of a
future
darkness.
    A S FOR MY SECOND warning that a plague was coming, I just plain missed it. There’d been no Christmas card from the Atkins family in 1980; I hadn’t noticed. When a card came—it was long after the holiday, but the card still proclaimed “Season’s Greetings”—I remember being surprised that Tom hadn’t included a review of my fourth novel. (The book wasn’t yet published, but I’d sent Atkins a copy of the galleys; I thought that such a faithful fan of my writing deserved a sneak preview. After all, no one else was comparing me