Of course, what I should have told him was that my desire never to do anything to hurt Elaine prevented me from telling the likes of Kittredge whether she slept naked or not, but in truth I didn’t know if Elaine slept naked. I thought it would be perfectly mysterious to say to Kittredge, which I did, “When Elaine’s with me, she’s not asleep.”
To which Kittredge simply said: “You’re a mystery, aren’t you, Nymph? I just don’t know about you, but I’ll figure you out one day—I really will.”
“You’re going to be late for check-in,” I told him.
“I’m going to the infirmary—I’m going to get this mat burn checked out,” he said, pointing to his cheek. It wasn’t much of a mat burn, in my opinion, but Kittredge said, “I like the weekend nurse at the infirmary—the mat burn’s just an excuse to see her. Saturday night is a good night to stay in the infirmary,” he told me.
On that provocative note, he left me—that was Kittredge. If he was still figuring me out, I hadn’t yet figured him out. Was there really a “weekend nurse” at the Favorite River infirmary? Did Kittredge have an older-woman thing going? Or was he acting, as Elaine and I had been? Was he just faking it?
I HADN’T BEEN BACK in our dormitory apartment for very long, not more than a couple of minutes, before my mom and Richard came home from the movie. I’d barely had time to take Elaine’s padded bra from my Jockey briefs. (I’d no sooner put the bra under my pillow when Elaine phoned me.)
“You have my bra, don’t you?” she asked me.
“What happens to the duck?” I asked her, but she wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Do you have my bra, Billy?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I want you to have it.” I didn’t tell her that Kittredge had asked me if she slept naked.
Then Richard and my mom came home, and I asked them about the foreign film. “It was disgusting!” my mother said.
“I didn’t know you were such a prude,” I said to her.
“Take it easy, Bill,” Richard said.
“I’m not a prude!” my mom told me. She seemed unreasonably upset. I had been kidding. It was just something I’d heard Elaine say to Kittredge.
“I didn’t know what the movie was about, Jewel,” Richard said to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Look at you!” my mom said to me. “You look more wrinkled than an unmade bed. I think you should have that conversation with Billy, Richard.”
My mom went into their bedroom and closed the door. “What conversation?” I asked Richard.
“It’s about being careful with Elaine, Bill,” Richard said. “She’s younger than you are—it’s about being sure you’re protecting her,” Richard told me.
“Are you talking to me about rubbers?” I asked him. “Because you can only get them in Ezra Falls, and that asshole pharmacist won’t give condoms to kids.”
“Don’t say ‘asshole,’ Bill,” Richard said, “at least not around your mom. You want rubbers? I’ll get you rubbers.”
“There’s no danger with Elaine,” I told him.
“Did I see Kittredge leaving Bancroft as we were coming home?” Richard asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Did you?”
“You’re at a . . . pivotal age, Bill,” Richard told me. “We just want you to be careful with Elaine.”
“I am careful with her,” I told him.
“You’d better keep Kittredge away from her,” Richard said.
“Just how do I do that?” I asked him.
“Well, Bill . . .” Richard had started to say, when my mother came out of their bedroom. I remember thinking that Kittredge would have been disappointed by what she was wearing—flannel pajamas, not at all sexy.
“You’re still talking about sex, aren’t you?” my mom asked Richard and me. She was angry. “I know that’s what you were talking about. Well, it’s not funny.”
“We weren’t laughing, Jewel,” Richard tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t let him continue.
“You keep your pecker in your pants, Billy!” my mom told me. “You go slowly with Elaine, and you tell her to watch out for Jacques Kittredge—she better watch out for him! That Kittredge is a boy who doesn’t just want to seduce women—he wants women to submit to him!” my mother said.
“Jewel, Jewel—let it rest,” Richard Abbott was saying.
“You don’t know everything, Richard,” my mother told him.
“No, I don’t,” Richard admitted.
“I know boys like Kittredge,” my mom said; she said it to me, not to Richard—even so, she blushed.
It occurred to me that, when my mother was angry at me, it was because she saw something of my womanizing father in me—perhaps, increasingly, I looked like him. (As if I could help that!)
I thought of Elaine’s bra, which was waiting for me under my pillow—“more a matter of habiliment than anything organic,” as Richard had said about Ariel’s gender. (If that small padded bra didn’t fit the habiliment word, what did?)
“What was the foreign film about?” I asked Richard.
“It’s not an appropriate subject for you,” my mother told me. “Don’t you tell him about it, Richard,” my mother said.
“Sorry, Bill,” Richard said sheepishly.
“Nothing Shakespeare would have shied away from, I’ll bet,” I said to Richard, but I kept looking at my mom. She wouldn’t look at me; she went back inside her bedroom and closed the door.
If I was less than forthcoming to my one true friend, Elaine Hadley, I needed only to think of my mother; if I couldn’t tell Richard about my crush on Kittredge, or admit to Miss Frost that I loved her, I had no doubt concerning where my lack of candor came from. (From my mother, unquestionably, but possibly from my womanizing father, too. Maybe from both of them, it only now occurred to me.)
“Good night, Richard—I love you,” I said to my stepfather. He quickly kissed me on my forehead.
“Good night, Bill—I love you, too,” Richard said. He gave me a please-forgive-me kind of smile. I really did love him, but I was fighting against my disappointment in him at the same time.
Also, I was mortally tired; it is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are, and Elaine’s bra was summoning me to my bed.
Chapter 5
LEAVING ESMERALDA
Perhaps you need to have your world change, your entire world, to understand why anyone would write an epilogue—not to mention why there is an act 5 to The Tempest, and why the epilogue to that play (spoken by Prospero) is absolutely fitting. When I made that juvenile criticism of The Tempest, my world hadn’t changed.
“Now my charms are all o’erthrown,” Prospero begins the epilogue—not unlike the way Kittredge might have started a conversation, offhand and innocent-seeming.
That winter of 1960, when Elaine and I were continuing our masquerade, which even extended to our holding hands while we watched Kittredge wrestle, was marked by Martha Hadley’s first official efforts to address the probable cause (or causes) of my pronunciation problems. I use the official word because I made appointments to see Mrs. Hadley, and I met with her in her office—it was in the academy music building.
At seventeen, I’d not yet seen a psychiatrist; had I ever been tempted to talk to Herr Doktor Grau, I’m certain that my beloved stepfather, Richard Abbott, would have persuaded me not to. Besides, that same winter when I was faithfully keeping my appointments with Mrs. Hadley, old Grau died. Favorite River Academy would eventually replace him with a younger (if no less modern) school psychiatrist, but not before the fall term of the next academic year.