In One Person

were no
penises
in Ariel’s vocabulary!)
    When Caliban calls Prospero a tyrant, Ariel (invisible) says, “Thou liest.” Since Ariel is invisible, Caliban thinks
Trinculo
has called him a liar. In the same scene, Ariel says “Thou liest” to Stephano, who thinks Trinculo has called
him
a liar—Stephano hits Trinculo.
    “I have to say ‘Thou liest’ twice,” I told Miss Frost, being careful to say the
liest
word correctly—with two syllables.
    “Sometimes he says ‘least’—one syllable, rhymes with
yeast
,” Elaine told Miss Frost.
    “Oh, my,” the librarian said, briefly closing her eyes at the horror of it. “Look at me, William,” Miss Frost said. I did as she told me; for once, I didn’t need to sneak a look at her. “Say ‘finest’ to me, William,” she said.
    This was not hard to do. Miss Frost was the
finest
of my all-over-the-place infatuations. “Finest,” I said to her, still looking right at her.
    “Well, William—just remember that
liest
rhymes with
finest
,” Miss Frost said.
    “Go on, say it,” Elaine told me.
    “Thou liest,” I said, as the invisible Ariel is supposed to say. I made a perfect two-syllable match for the
finest
word.
    “May all your difficulties be so easy to fix, William,” Miss Frost said. “I love running lines,” she told Elaine, as she closed the door.
    I was impressed that Miss Frost even knew what “running lines” meant. When Richard had asked her if she’d ever
acted
, Miss Frost had quickly answered him: “Only in my mind. When I was younger—all the time.” Yet she’d certainly made a name for herself as a standout in the First Sister Players.
    “Miss Frost
is
an Ibsen woman!” Nils had said to Richard, but she’d not had many roles—not beyond those of the severely tested women in
Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House
, and
The Wild
(fucking)
Duck
.
    It suffices to say: For someone who’d heretofore acted only in her mind, but who seemed a natural at portraying Ibsen’s women, Miss Frost was clearly familiar with all that “running lines” entailed—and she couldn’t have been more supportive of Elaine Hadley and me.
    It was awkward, at first—how Elaine and I arranged ourselves on Miss Frost’s bed. It was only a queen-size mattress, but the brass bed frame was rather high; when Elaine and I sat (somewhat primly) side by side, our feet didn’t reach the floor. But when we stretched out on our stomachs, we had to contort ourselves to look at each other; it was only when we propped the pillows up against the headboard (those brass rails like prison bars) that we could lie on our sides, facing each other, and run our lines—our copies of the play held between us, for reference.
    “We’re like an old married couple,” Elaine said; I was already thinking the same thing.
    Our first evening in Miss Frost’s snowstorm room, Elaine fell asleep. I knew she had to get up earlier than I did; due to the bus ride to Ezra Falls, she was always tired. When Miss Frost knocked on the door, Elaine was startled; she threw her arms around my neck, and she was still holding tight when Miss Frost came inside the small room. Notwithstanding these amorous-looking circumstances, I don’t believe that Miss Frost assumed we’d been making out. Elaine and I certainly didn’t look as if we’d been necking, and Miss Frost merely said, “It’s almost time for me to close the library. Even Shakespeare has to go home and get some sleep.”
    As everyone who’s ever been part of a theatrical production knows, after all the stressful rehearsals, and the interminable memorization—I mean when your lines are truly
run
—even Shakespeare comes to an end. We put on four shows of
The Tempest
. I managed to make
liest
rhyme with
finest
in every performance, though on opening night I almost said “finest breasts,” when I thought I saw Kittredge’s wonderfully dressed mother in the audience—only to learn from Kittredge, during the intermission, that I was mistaken. The woman wasn’t his mom.
    “The woman you think is my mom is in Paris,” Kittredge dismissively said.
    “Oh.”
    “You must have seen some other middle-aged woman who spends too much money on her clothes,” Kittredge said.
    “Your mother is very beautiful,” I told him. I genuinely meant this, in the nicest possible way.
    “Your mom is
hotter
,” Kittredge told me matter-of-factly. There was no hint of sarcasm, nor anything the slightest suggestive, in his remark; he spoke in