In One Person

grandmother; that’s where the
Irmgard
came from. Kittredge and Irmgard had homes in the ski town and in Zurich, where they’d both worked at the Schauspielhaus. (It was quite a famous theater.) I imagined that Kittredge had liked living in Europe; no doubt, he was used to Europe, because of his mother. And maybe a sex-change surgery was more easily arranged in Europe—I had no idea, really.
    Mrs. Kittredge—the mom, I mean,
not
the wife—had killed herself soon after Kittredge’s death. (There was no doubt she’d been his real mother.) “Pills,” was all the grandson would say about it; he clearly wasn’t interested in talking to me about anything except the fact that his father became a woman. I began to get the feeling that young Kittredge believed I had something to do with what he saw as a despicable alteration.
    “How was his German?” I asked Kittredge’s son, but that was of no concern to the angry young man.
    “His German was passable—not
as
passable as he was as a woman. He didn’t make any effort to improve his German,” Kittredge’s son told me. “My father never worked as hard at
anything
as he worked at becoming a woman.”
    “Oh.”
    “When he was dying, he told me that something happened here—when you knew him,” Kittredge’s son said to me. “Something
started
here. He admired you—he said you had balls. You did something ‘inspiring,’ or so he told me. There was a transsexual involved—someone older, I think. Maybe you both knew her. Maybe my father admired her, too—maybe
she
inspired him.”
    “I saw a photo of your father when he was younger—before he came here,” I told young Kittredge. “He was dressed and made up as a very pretty girl. I think something
started
, as you say, before he met me—and all the rest of it. I could show you that photo, if you—”
    “I’ve seen those photographs—I don’t need to see another one!” Kittredge’s son said angrily. “What about the transsexual? How did you two
inspire
my father?”
    “I’m surprised to hear he ‘admired’ me—I can’t imagine that I did anything he would have found ‘inspiring.’ I never thought he even
liked
me. In fact, your father was always rather cruel to me,” I told Kittredge’s son.
    “What about the transsexual?” young Kittredge asked me again.
    “I knew the transsexual—your father met her only once. I was
in love with
the transsexual. What happened with the transsexual happened to
me
!” I cried. “I don’t know what happened to your father.”
    “
Something
happened here—that’s all I know,” the son said bitterly. “My father read all your books, obsessively. What was he looking for in your novels? I’ve read them—I never found my father there, not that I would necessarily have recognized him in your pages.”
    I thought of
my
father, then, and I said—as gently as I could manage—to Kittredge’s angry son, “We already are who we are, aren’t we? I can’t make your father comprehensible to you, but surely you can have some
sympathy
for him, can’t you?” (I’d never imagined myself asking anyone to have
sympathy
for Kittredge!)
    I had once believed that if Kittredge was gay, he sure looked like a top to me. Now I wasn’t so sure. When Kittredge had met Miss Frost, I’d seen him change from dominant to submissive—in about ten seconds.
    Just then Gee was there, in the row of seats beside us. My cast for
Romeo and Juliet
had surely heard the raised voices; they must have been worried about me. No doubt, they could hear how angry young Kittredge was. To me, he seemed just a callow, disappointing reflection of his father.
    “Hi, Gee,” I said. “Is Manfred here? Are we ready?”
    “No—we still don’t have our Tybalt,” Gee told me. “But I have a question. It’s about act one, scene five—it’s the very first thing I say, when the Nurse tells me Romeo is a Montague. You know, when I learn I’m in love with the son of my enemy—it’s that couplet.”
    “What about it?” I asked her; she was stalling for us both, I could see. We wanted Manfred to arrive. Where was my easily outraged Tybalt when I needed him?
    “I don’t think I should sound sorry for myself,” Gee continued. “I don’t think of Juliet as self-pitying.”
    “No, she’s not,” I said. “Juliet may sound fatalistic—at times—but she shouldn’t sound self-pitying.”
    “Okay—let me say it,” Gee said. “I think I’ve got it—I’m just saying it