In One Person

have been anyone—he could look the part in any role. But Kittredge was never sincere; he was forever concealed—he was always just playing a part.
    A T THAT T HANKSGIVING DINNER , there was both awkwardness and comedy. In the latter category, the two Korean girls managed to give the Japanese boy the idea that we were eating a peacock. (I don’t know how the girls conveyed the peacock idea to the lonely-looking boy, or why Fumi—the boy—was so stricken at the thought of eating a peacock.)
    “No, no—it’s a
turkey
,” Mrs. Hadley said to Fumi, as if he were having a pronunciation problem.
    Since I’d grown up in that River Street house, I found the encyclopedia and showed Fumi what a turkey looked like. “
Not
a peacock,” I said. The Korean girls, Su Min and Dong Hee, were whispering in Korean; they were also giggling.
    Later, after a lot of wine, it was the vivacious, chatty mother of two —now Gerry’s girlfriend—who gave a toast to our extended family for welcoming her to such an “intimate” holiday occasion. It was doubtless the wine, in combination with the
intimate
word, that compelled Helena to deliver an impromptu address on the subject of her vagina—or perhaps she’d meant for her remarks to praise
all
vaginas. “I want to thank you for having me,” Helena had begun. Then she got sidetracked. “I used to be someone who
hated
my vagina, but now I love it,” she said. She seemed, almost immediately, to think better of her comments, because she quickly said, “Of course, I love Gerry’s vagina—that goes without saying, I guess!—but it’s because of Gerry that I also love my vagina, and I used to just hate it”; she was standing, a bit unsteadily, with her glass raised. “Thank you for having me,” she repeated, sitting down.
    I’m guessing that Uncle Bob had probably heard more toasts than anyone else at the dinner table—given all the glad-handing he did for Alumni Affairs, those back-slapping dinner parties with drunken Favorite River alums—but even Uncle Bob was rendered speechless by Helena’s toast to at least two vaginas.
    I looked at Larry, who I know was bursting with something to say; in an entirely different way from Tom Atkins—who had routinely overreacted to the
vagina
word, or to even the passing thought of a vagina—Larry could be counted on for a vagina reaction. “Don’t,” I said quietly to him, across the dinner table, because I could always tell when Larry was struggling to restrain himself; his eyes opened very wide and his nostrils flared.
    But now it was the Korean girls who’d failed to understand. “A
what
?” Dong Hee had said.
    “She hates, now loves, her
what
?” Su Min asked.
    It was Fumi’s turn to snicker; the Japanese boy had put the peacock-turkey misunderstanding behind him—the lonely-looking young man obviously knew what a vagina was.
    “You know, a vagina,” Elaine said softly to the Korean girls, but Su Min and Dong Hee had never heard the word—and no one at the dinner table knew the Korean for it.
    “My goodness—it’s where
babies
come from,” Mrs. Hadley tried to explain, but she looked suddenly stricken (perhaps recalling Elaine’s abortions).
    “It’s where everything happens—you know, down there,” Elaine said to the Korean girls, but Elaine didn’t
do
anything when she said “down there”; she didn’t point or gesture, or indicate anything specifically.
    “Well, it’s not where
everything
happens—I beg to differ,” Larry said, smiling; I knew he was just getting started.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry—I’ve had too much to drink, and I forgot there were young people here!” Helena blurted out.
    “Don’t you worry, dear,” Uncle Bob told Gerry’s new girlfriend; I could tell Bob liked Helena, who was not at all similar to a long list of Gerry’s previous girlfriends. “These kids are from another country, another
culture
; the things we talk about in this country are not necessarily topics for conversation in
Korea
,” the Racquet Man painfully explained.
    “Oh, crap!” Gerry cried. “Just try another fucking
word
!” Gerry turned to Su Min and Dong Hee, who were still very much in the dark as far as the
vagina
word was concerned. “It’s a twat, a snatch, a quim, a pussy, a muff, a honeypot—it’s a
cunt
, for Christ’s sake!” Gerry cried, the
cunt
word making Elaine (and even Larry) flinch.
    “They get it, Gerry—please,” Uncle Bob said.
    Indeed, the Korean girls had