In One Person

told us, in yet another lamentable morning meeting, that excessive crying in boys was a homosexual tendency we should guard ourselves against. (Naturally, the moron never told us
how
we should guard ourselves against something we couldn’t control!) And I’d overheard my mother say to Muriel: “Honestly, I don’t know what to do when Billy cries like a
girl
!”
    So there I was, in the First Sister Public Library, crying like a girl in Miss Frost’s strong arms—having just told her that I had a stronger crush on her than the one I had on Jacques Kittredge. I must have seemed to her like such a sissy!
    “My dear boy, you don’t really know me,” Miss Frost was saying. “You don’t know who I am—you don’t know the first thing about me, do you? William? You
don’t
, do you?”
    “I don’t
what
?” I blubbered. “I don’t know your first name,” I admitted; I was still sobbing. I was hugging her back, but not as hard as she hugged me. I could feel how strong she was, and—once again—the smallness of her breasts seemed to stand in surprising contrast to her strength. I could also feel how soft her breasts were; her small, soft breasts struck me as such a contradiction to her broad shoulders, her muscular arms.
    “I didn’t mean my
name
, William—my first name isn’t important,” Miss Frost said. “I mean you don’t know me.”
    “But what
is
your first name?” I asked her.
    There was a theatricality in the way Miss Frost sighed—a staged exaggeration in the way she released me from her hug, almost pushing me away from her.
    “I have a lot at stake in being
Miss
Frost, William,” she said. “I did not acquire the
Miss
word accidentally.”
    I knew something about not liking the name you were given, for I hadn’t liked being William Francis Dean, Jr. “You don’t
like
your first name?” I asked her.
    “We could begin with that,” she answered, amused. “Would you ever name a girl Alberta?”
    “Like the province in Canada?” I asked. I could not imagine Miss Frost as an Alberta!
    “It’s a better name for a province,” Miss Frost said. “Everyone used to call me Al.”
    “Al,” I repeated.
    “You see why I like the
Miss
,” she said, laughing.
    “I love everything about you,” I told her.
    “Slow down, William,” Miss Frost said. “You can’t rush into crushes on the wrong people.”
    Of course, I didn’t understand why she thought of herself as “wrong” for me—and how could she possibly imagine that my crush on Kittredge was
safer
? I believed that Miss Frost must have meant merely to warn me about the difference in our ages; maybe an eighteen-year-old boy with a woman in her forties was a taboo to her. I was thinking that I was
legally
an adult, albeit barely, and if it were true that Miss Frost was about my aunt Muriel’s age, I was guessing that she would have been forty-two or forty-three.
    “Girls my own age don’t interest me,” I said to Miss Frost. “I seem to be attracted to older women.”
    “My dear boy,” she said again. “It doesn’t matter how old I am—it’s
what
I am. William, you don’t know what I
am
, do you?”
    As if that existential-sounding question wasn’t confusing enough, Atkins chose this moment to enter the dimly lit foyer of the library, where he appeared to be startled. (He told me later he’d been frightened by the reflection of himself he had seen in the mirror, which hung silently in the foyer like a nonspeaking security guard.)
    “Oh, it’s
you
, Tom,” Miss Frost said, unsurprised.
    “Do you see? What did I tell you?” I asked Miss Frost, while Atkins went on fearfully regarding himself in the mirror.
    “You’re so very
wrong
,” Miss Frost told me, smiling.
    “Kittredge is looking for you, Bill,” Atkins said. “I went to the yearbook room, but someone said you’d just left.”
    “The yearbook room,” Miss Frost repeated; she sounded surprised. I looked at her; there was an unfamiliar anxiety in her expression.
    “Bill is conducting a study of Favorite River yearbooks from past to present,” Atkins said to Miss Frost. “Elaine told me,” Atkins explained to me.
    “For Christ’s sake, Atkins—it sounds like you’re conducting a study of me,” I told him.
    “It’s Kittredge who wants to talk to you,” Atkins said sullenly.
    “Since when are you Kittredge’s messenger boy?” I asked him.
    “I’ve had enough
abuse
for one night!” Atkins cried dramatically, throwing up his