In One Person

matters!” Richard Abbott exclaimed. “I just meant that a more
masculine
adventure—”
    “More
masculine
!” Miss Frost repeated. “Well, I suppose there’s Fielding,” she added.
    “Oh, yes!” Richard cried. “Do you mean
Tom Jones
?”
    “I do,” Miss Frost replied, with a sigh. “If one can count sexual escapades as one result of
crushes
—”
    “Why not?” Richard Abbott quickly said.
    “You’re
how
old?” Miss Frost asked me. Once again, her long fingers touched my shoulder. I recalled how Aunt Muriel had fainted (twice), and briefly feared I would soon lose consciousness.
    “I’m thirteen,” I told her.
    “Three novels are enough of a beginning at thirteen,” she said to Richard. “It wouldn’t be wise to overload him with crushes at too young an age. Let’s just see where these three novels lead him, shall we?” Once more Miss Frost smiled at me. “Begin with the Fielding,” she advised me. “It’s arguably the most primitive. You’ll find that the Brontë sisters are more emotional—more psychological. They’re more grown-up novelists.”
    “Miss Frost?” Richard Abbott said. “Have you ever been
onstage
—have you ever
acted
?”
    “Only in my mind,” she answered him, almost flirtatiously. “When I was younger—all the time.”
    Richard gave me a conspiratorial look; I knew perfectly well what the talented young newcomer to the First Sister Players was thinking. A tower of
sexual strength
stood before us; to Richard and me, Miss Frost was a woman with an
untamable
freedom—a certain
lawlessness
definitely accompanied her.
    To a younger man, Richard Abbott, and to me—I was a thirteen-year-old daydreamer who suddenly desired to write the story of my crushes on the wrong people
and
to have sex with a librarian in her thirties—Miss Frost was an unquestionable sexual
presence
.
    “There’s a part for you, Miss Frost,” Richard Abbott ventured, while we followed her through the stacks, where she was gathering my first three
literary
novels.
    “Actually, one of two possible parts,” I pointed out.
    “Yes, you have to choose,” Richard quickly added. “It’s either Hedda in
Hedda Gabler
, or Nora in A
Doll’s House
. Do you know Ibsen? These are often called
problem
plays—”
    “That’s some choice,” Miss Frost said, smiling at me. “Either I get to shoot myself in the temple, or I get to be the kind of woman who abandons her three young children.”
    “I think it’s a
positive
decision, in both cases,” Richard Abbott tried to reassure her.
    “Oh, how very
positive
!” Miss Frost said, laughing—with a wave of her long-fingered hand. (When she laughed, there was something hoarse and low in her voice, which almost immediately jumped to a higher, clearer register.)
    “Nils Borkman is the director,” I warned Miss Frost; I was feeling protective of her already, and we’d only just met.
    “My dear boy,” Miss Frost said to me, “as if there’s a soul in First Sister who doesn’t know that a neuroses-ridden Norwegian—no neophyte to ‘serious drama’—is our little theater’s director.”
    She said suddenly to Richard: “I would be interested to know—if A
Doll’s House
is the Ibsen that we choose, and I am to be the much-misunderstood Nora—how
you
will be cast, Mr. Richard Abbott.” Before Richard could answer her, Miss Frost went on: “My guess is that you would be Torvald Helmer, Nora’s dull and uncomprehending husband—he whose life Nora saves, but he can’t save hers.”
    “I would guess that is how I will be cast,” Richard ventured cautiously. “Of course I’m not the director.”
    “You must tell me, Richard Abbott, if you intend to
flirt
with me—I don’t mean in our onstage roles,” Miss Frost said.
    “No—not at all!” Richard cried. “I’m seriously flirting with Bill’s mom.”
    “Very well, then—that’s the right answer,” she told him—once more ruffling my hair, but she kept talking to Richard. “And if it’s
Hedda Gabler
that we do, and I’m Hedda—well, the decision regarding
your
role is a more complicated one, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, I suppose it is,” Richard said thoughtfully. “I hope, in the case of
Hedda Gabler
, I am not the dull, uncomprehending husband—I would
hate
to be George,” Richard said.
    “Who
wouldn’t
hate to be George?” Miss Frost asked him.
    “There’s the writer Hedda destroys,” Richard speculated. “I don’t put it past Nils to cast me as