In One Person

pillow. It was a game; when I found the balls, I gave them back. “Oh, I’ve been
looking
for that squash ball all over, Billy!” Bob would say. “I’m so glad you found it.”
    “What’s
Madame Bovary
about?” I asked Uncle Bob. He’d come to see how I was recuperating from the scarlet fever, and I’d given him the squash ball I had found in the glass for my toothbrush—in the bathroom I shared with Grandpa Harry.
    Nana Victoria “would rather die” than share a bathroom with him, Harry had told me, but I liked sharing a bathroom with my grandfather.
    “Truth be told, I haven’t actually read
Madame Bovary
, Billy,” Uncle Bob told me; he peered into the hallway, outside my bedroom, checking to be sure that my mom (or my grandmother, or Aunt Muriel) wasn’t within listening distance. Even though the coast was clear, Bob lowered his voice: “I believe it’s about adultery, Billy—an unfaithful wife.” I must have looked baffled, utterly uncomprehending, because Uncle Bob quickly said, “You should ask Richard what
Madame Bovary
is about—literature, you know, is Richard’s department.”
    “It’s a novel?” I asked.
    “I don’t think it’s a true story,” Uncle Bob answered. “But Richard would know.”
    “Or I could ask Miss Frost,” I suggested.
    “Uh-huh, you could—just don’t say it was my idea,” Uncle Bob said.
    “I know a story,” I started to say. “Maybe you told me.”
    “You mean the one about the guy reading
Madame Bovary
on a hundred toilets at the same time?” Bob cried. “I absolutely love that story!”
    “Me, too,” I said. “It’s very funny!”
    “Hilarious!” Uncle Bob declared. “No, I never told you that story, Billy—at least I don’t
remember
telling you that story,” he said quickly.
    “Oh.”
    “Maybe your
mom
told you?” Uncle Bob asked. I must have given him an incredulous look, because Bob suddenly said, “Probably not.”
    “It’s a dream I keep having, but someone must have told me first,” I said.
    “Dinner-party conversation, perhaps—one of those stories children overhear, when the adults think they’ve gone to bed or they can’t possibly be listening,” Uncle Bob said. While this was more credible than my mother being the source of the toilet-seat story, neither Bob nor I looked very convinced. “Not all mysteries are meant to be solved, Billy,” he said to me, with more conviction.
    It was shortly after he’d left when I discovered another squash ball, or the same squash ball, under my covers.
    I knew perfectly well that my mother hadn’t told me the
Madame Bovary
, multiple-toilet-seats story, but of course I asked her. “I never thought that story was the least bit funny,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had anything to do with telling you that story, Billy.”
    “Oh.”
    “Maybe Daddy told you—I asked him
not
to!” my mother said.
    “No, Grandpa
definitely
didn’t tell me,” I said.
    “I’ll bet Uncle Bob did,” my mom said.
    “Uncle Bob says he doesn’t
remember
telling me,” I replied.
    “Bob drinks—he doesn’t remember everything,” my mother told me. “And you’ve had a fever recently,” she reminded me. “You know the dreams a fever can give you, Billy.”
    “I thought it was a funny story, anyway—how the man’s ass made a slapping sound as he was skipping over the toilet seats!” I said.
    “It’s not the least bit funny to
me
, Billy.”
    “Oh.”
    It was after I’d completely recovered from the scarlet fever that I asked Richard Abbott his opinion of
Madame Bovary
. “I think you would appreciate it more when you’re older, Bill,” Richard told me.
    “How much older?” I asked him. (I would have been fourteen—I’m guessing. I’d not yet read and reread
Great Expectations
, but Miss Frost had already started me on my life as a reader—I know that.)
    “I could ask Miss Frost how old she thinks I should be,” I suggested.
    “I would wait a while before you ask her, Bill,” Richard said.
    “How long a while?” I asked him.
    Richard Abbott, who I thought knew everything, answered: “I don’t know, exactly.”
    I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY when my mom became the prompter for Richard Abbott’s theatrical productions in the Drama Club at Favorite River Academy, but I was very much aware of her being the prompter for
The Tempest
. There were the occasional scheduling conflicts, because my mother was still prompting for the First Sister Players, but prompters could