Her long, pretty face had not changed, though her thick hair was cut unfamiliarly short. I quickly flipped to the head shots of the graduating seniors. To my surprise, Albert Frost was from the town of First Sister, Vermont—a day student, not a boarder—and while the eighteen-year-old Albert’s choice of college or university was cited as “undecided,” the young man’s chosen career was revealing. Albert had designated “fiction”—most fitting for a future librarian and a handsome boy on his way to becoming a passable (albeit small-breasted) woman.
I guessed that Aunt Muriel must have remembered Albert Frost, the handsome wrestling-team captain—Class of ’35—and that it was as a boy that Muriel meant Miss Frost “used to be very good-looking.” (Albert certainly was.)
I was not surprised to see Albert Frost’s nickname at Favorite River Academy. It was “Big Al.”
Miss Frost hadn’t been kidding when she’d told me that “everyone used to” call her Al—including, very probably, my aunt Muriel.
I was surprised that I recognized another face among the head shots of the graduating seniors in the Class of 1935. Robert Fremont—my uncle Bob—had graduated in Miss Frost’s class. Bob, whose nickname was “Racquet Man,” must have known Miss Frost when she was Big Al. (It was one of life’s little coincidences that, in the ’35 Owl, Robert Fremont was on the page opposite Albert Frost.)
I realized, on that short walk from the yearbook room to the First Sister Public Library, that everyone in my family, which for a few years now included Richard Abbott, had to have known that Miss Frost had been born—and, in all likelihood, still was—a man. Naturally, no one had told me that Miss Frost was a man; after all, a lack of candor was endemic in my family.
It occurred to me, as I stood looking at my frightened face in that mirror in the dimly lit foyer of the town library, where Tom Atkins had so recently startled himself, that almost anyone of a certain age in First Sister, Vermont, would have known that Miss Frost was a man; this surely included everyone over the age of forty who had seen Miss Frost onstage as an Ibsen woman in those amateur productions of the First Sister Players.
I had subsequently found Miss Frost in the wrestling-team photos in the ’33 and ’34 yearbooks, where A. Frost was not quite so big and broad-shouldered; in fact, she’d stood so unsure of herself in the back row of those team photos that I had overlooked her.
I’d overlooked her, too, in the Drama Club photographs. A. Frost was always cast as a woman; she’d been onstage in a variety of female roles, but wearing such absurd wigs, and with breasts so unsuitably big, that I had failed to recognize her. What a lark that must have been for the boys—to see their wrestling-team captain, Big Al, flouncing around onstage, pretending to be a girl! Yet, when Richard had asked Miss Frost if she’d ever been onstage—if she’d ever acted—she’d answered, “Only in my mind.”
What a lot of lies! I was thinking, as I saw myself shaking in the mirror.
“Is someone here?” I heard Miss Frost call. “Is that you, William?” she called, loudly enough that I knew we were alone in the library.
“Yes, it’s me, Big Al,” I answered.
“Oh, dear,” I heard Miss Frost say, with an exaggerated sigh. “I told you we didn’t have much time.”
“There’s quite a lot you didn’t tell me!” I called to her.
I saw that, in anticipation of my arrival, Miss Frost had already killed the lights in the main library. The light that glowed upward, from the bottom of the basement stairs—the basement door was open—bathed Miss Frost in a soft, flattering light. She sat at the checkout desk with her big hands folded in her lap. (I say the light was “flattering” because it made her look younger; of course that also might have been the influence of my seeing her in those old yearbooks.)
“Come kiss me, William,” Miss Frost said. “There’s no reason for you not to kiss me, is there?”
“You’re a man, aren’t you?” I asked her.
“Goodness me, what makes a man?” she asked. “Isn’t Kittredge a man? You want to kiss him. Don’t you still want to kiss me, William?”
I did want to kiss her; I wanted to do everything with her, but I was angry and upset, and I knew by the way I was shaking that I was very close to crying, which I didn’t want to do.
“You’re a transsexual!” I told her.
“My dear boy,” Miss Frost said sharply. “My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!”
When she stood up from her desk, she seemed to tower over me; when she opened her arms to me, I didn’t hesitate—I ran to her strong embrace, and kissed her. Miss Frost kissed me back, very hard. I couldn’t cry, because she took my breath away.
“My, my—what a busy boy you’ve been, William,” she said, leading me to the basement stairs. “You’ve read Giovanni’s Room, haven’t you?”
“Twice!” I managed to say.
“Twice, already! And you’ve found the time to read those old yearbooks, haven’t you, William? I knew it wouldn’t take you long to get from 1931 to 1935. Was it that wrestling-team photo in ’35—was that the one that caught your eye, William?”
“Yes!” I scarcely managed to tell her. Miss Frost was lighting the cinnamon-scented candle in her bedroom; then she turned off the reading lamp that was fastened to the headboard of her brass bed, where the covers were already turned down.
“I couldn’t very well have kept you from seeing those old yearbooks—could I, William?” she went on saying. “I’m not welcome in the academy library. And if you hadn’t seen that picture of me in my wrestling days, surely somebody would have told you about me—eventually. I’m frankly astonished that someone didn’t tell you,” Miss Frost said.
“My family doesn’t tell me much,” I told her. I was undressing as quickly as I could, and Miss Frost had already unbuttoned her blouse and taken off her skirt. This time, when she used the toilet, she didn’t mention the matter of her privacy.
“Yes, I know about that family of yours!” she said, laughing. She hiked up her half-slip, and—first lifting the wooden toilet seat—she peed standing up, rather loudly, but with her back to me. I didn’t see her penis, but there was no doubt, from the forceful way she was pissing, that she had one.
I lay naked on the brass bed and watched her washing her hands and face, and brushing her teeth, in that little sink. I saw her wink at me in the mirror. “I guess you must have been a pretty good wrestler,” I said to her, “if they made you captain of the team.”
“I didn’t ask to be captain,” she told me. “I just kept beating everybody—I beat everyone, so they made me captain. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could refuse.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, the wrestling kept them all from questioning me,” Miss Frost said. She was hanging up her skirt and blouse in the wardrobe closet; this time, she took her bra off, too. “They don’t question you—I mean sexually—if you’re a wrestler. It kind of keeps them off the track—if you know what I mean, William.”