In One Person

like a nymph o’ th’ sea, be subject / To no sight but thine and mine—invisible / To every eyeball else.”
    Alas, I would not be invisible to the audience. The
Enter Ariel as a water nymph
always got a big laugh—even before I was in costume with makeup. That stage direction was what led Kittredge to start calling me “Nymph.”
    I remember exactly how Richard had put it: “Keeping the character of Ariel in the male gender is simpler than tricking out one more choirboy in women’s garb.” (But women’s garb—well, at least the
wig
—was how I would be tricked out!)
    Nor was it lost on Kittredge when Richard said, “It’s possible that Shakespeare saw a continuum from Caliban through Prospero to Ariel—a kind of spiritual evolution. Caliban is all earth and water, brute force and guile. Prospero is human control and insight—he’s the ultimate alchemist. And Ariel,” Richard said, smiling at me—no smile was ever lost on Kittredge—“Ariel is a spirit of air and fire, freed from mortal concerns. Perhaps Shakespeare felt that presenting Ariel as explicitly female might detract from this notion of a continuum. I believe that Ariel’s gender is
mutable
.”
    “Director’s choice, in other words?” Kittredge asked Richard.
    Our director and teacher regarded Kittredge cautiously before answering him. “The sex of angels is also mutable,” Richard said. “Yes, Kittredge—director’s choice.”
    “But what will the so-called water nymph
look
like?” Kittredge asked. “Like a
girl
, right?”
    “Probably,” Richard said, more cautiously.
    I was trying to imagine how I would be costumed and made up as an invisible water nymph; I could never have foreseen the algae-green wig I wore, nor the crimson wrestling tights. (Crimson and silver-gray—“death-gray,” Grandpa Harry had called it—were the Favorite River Academy colors.)
    “So Billy’s gender is …
mutable
,” Kittredge said, smiling.
    “Not Billy’s—
Ariel’s
,” Richard said.
    But Kittredge had made his point; the cast of
The Tempest
would not forget the
mutable
word. “Nymph,” Kittredge’s nickname for me, would stick. I had two years to go at Favorite River Academy; a Nymph I would be.
    “It doesn’t matter what costume and makeup do to you, Nymph,” Kittredge said to me privately. “You’ll never be as hot as your mother.”
    I was aware that my mom was pretty, and—at seventeen—I was increasingly conscious of how the other students at an all-boys’ academy like Favorite River regarded her. But no other boy had told me that my mom was “hot”; as I often found myself with Kittredge, I was at a loss for words. I’m sure that the
hot
word was not yet in use—not the way Kittredge had used it. But Kittredge definitely meant “hot” in that way.
    When Kittredge spoke of his own mother, which he rarely did, he usually raised the issue of there being a possible mix-up. “Maybe my real mom died in childbirth,” Kittredge said. “My father found some unwed mother in the same hospital—an unfortunate woman (her child was stillborn, but the woman never knew), a woman who
looked like
my mother. There was a switch. My dad would be capable of such a deception. I’m not saying the woman knows she’s my stepmother. She may even believe my dad is my stepfather! At the time, she might have been taking a lot of drugs—she must have been depressed, maybe suicidal. I have no doubt that she
believes
she’s my mom—she just doesn’t always
act
like a mother. She’s done some contradictory things—contradictory to motherhood. All I’m saying is that my dad has never been answerable for his behavior with women—with
any
woman. My dad just makes deals. This woman may look like me, but she’s not my mom—she’s not
anyone’s
mother.”
    “Kittredge is in denial—big time,” Elaine had told me. “That woman looks like his mother
and
his father!”
    When I told Elaine Hadley what Kittredge had said about my mom, Elaine suggested that I tell Kittredge our opinion of his mother—based on our shameless staring at her, at one of his wrestling matches. “Tell him his mom looks like him, with
tits
,” Elaine said.
    “
You
tell him,” I told her; we both knew I wouldn’t. Elaine wouldn’t talk to Kittredge about his mom, either.
    Initially, Elaine was almost as afraid of Kittredge as I was—nor would she ever have used the
tits
word in his company. She was very conscious of having inherited her mom’s