When my grandfather stepped tentatively into Miss Frost’s basement room, he was not the confident character I’d so often seen onstage; he was not a woman with a commanding presence, but just a man—bald and small. Grandpa Harry had clearly not volunteered to be the one to come and rescue me.
“I’m disappointed that Richard didn’t have the balls to come,” Miss Frost said to my embarrassed grandfather.
“Richard asked to be the one, but Mary wouldn’t let him,” my grandfather said.
“Richard is pussy-whipped, like all of you men married to those Winthrop women,” Miss Frost told him. My grandfather couldn’t look at her, with her bare breasts showing, but she would not turn away from him—nor did she seek her clothes. She wore just the pearl-gray half-slip in front of him, as if it were a formal gown and she had overdressed for the occasion.
“I don’t imagine Muriel was willing to let Bob come,” Miss Frost continued. Grandpa Harry just shook his head.
“That Bobby is a sweetheart, but he was always a pussy—even before he was pussy-whipped,” Miss Frost went on. I’d never heard Uncle Bob called “Bobby,” but I now knew that Robert Fremont had been Albert Frost’s classmate at Favorite River Academy, and when you’re in a boarding school in those formative years, you call one another names you never hear or use again. (No one calls me Nymph anymore, for example.)
I was attempting to get out of the bathtub without showing all of myself to my grandpa, when Miss Frost handed me a towel. Even with the towel, it was awkward getting out of the tub, and drying myself, and trying to put on my clothes.
“Let me tell you something about your aunt Muriel, William,” Miss Frost said, standing as a barrier between my grandfather and me. “Muriel actually had a crush on me—before she started hanging out with her ‘first and only beau,’ your uncle Bob. Imagine if I had taken Muriel up—I mean on her offering herself to me!” Miss Frost cried, in her best Ibsen-woman fashion.
“Al, please don’t be crude,” Grandpa Harry said. “Muriel is my daughter, after all.”
“Muriel is a bossy bitch, Harry. It might have made her nicer if she’d ever gotten to know me,” Miss Frost said. “There’s no pussy-whipping me, William,” she said, looking at how I was managing to get myself dressed—badly.
“No, there isn’t, Al—I daresay!” Grandpa Harry exclaimed. “There’s no pussy-whippin’ you!”
“Your grandpa is a good guy, William,” Miss Frost told me. “He built this room for me. When I first moved back to town, my mother thought I was still a man. I needed a place to change before I went to work as a woman—and before I went home every night, to my mother, as a man. You might say it’s a blessing—at least it’s easier for me—that my poor mom doesn’t appear to notice what gender I am, or should be, anymore.”
“I wish you had let me finish this place properly, Al,” Grandpa Harry was saying. “Jeez—there should have been a wall around that toilet, anyway!” he observed.
“It’s too small a room to have more walls,” Miss Frost said. This time, when she stood at the toilet and flipped up the wooden seat, Miss Frost didn’t turn her back on me, or on Grandpa Harry. Her penis was not even a little hard, but she had a pretty big one—like the rest of her, except for her breasts.
“Come on, Al—you’re a decent fella. I’ve always stood up for you,” Grandpa Harry said. “But this isn’t right—you and Bill, I mean.”
“She was protecting me!” I blurted out. “We never had sex. No penetration,” I added.
“Jeez, Bill—I don’t want to hear about you doin’ it!” Grandpa Harry cried; he cupped his hands over his ears.
“But we didn’t do it!” I told him.
“That night when Richard first brought you here, William—when you got your library card, and Richard offered me those roles in the Ibsen plays—do you remember?” Miss Frost asked me.
“Yes, of course I remember!” I whispered.
“Richard thought he was offering the part of Nora, and the part of Hedda, to a woman. It was when he took you home, and he must have talked to your mom—who talked to Muriel, I’m sure—well, that was when they all told him about me. But Richard still wanted to cast me! Those Winthrop women had to accept me, at least onstage—as they’ve had to accept you, Harry, when you were just acting. Isn’t that the way it happened?” she asked my grandfather.
“Ah, well—onstage is one thing, isn’t it, Al?” Grandpa Harry asked Miss Frost.
“You’re pussy-whipped, too, Harry,” Miss Frost told him. “Aren’t you sick of it?”
“Come on, Bill,” my grandfather said to me. “We should be goin’.”
“I always respected you, Harry,” Miss Frost told him.
“I always respected you, Al!” my grandfather declared.
“I know you did—that’s why the craven fuckers sent you,” Miss Frost said to him. “Come here, William,” she suddenly commanded me. I went to her, and she pulled my head to her bare breasts and held me there; I knew she could feel me shaking. “If you want to cry, do it in your room—but don’t let them hear you,” she told me. “If you want to cry, close your door and pull your pillow over your head. Cry with your good friend Elaine, if you want to, William—just don’t cry in front of them. Promise me!”
“I promise you!” I told her.
“So long, Harry—I did protect him, you know,” Miss Frost said.
“I believe you did, Big Al. I’ve always protected you, you know!” Grandpa Harry exclaimed.
“I know you have, Harry,” she told him. “It might not be possible for you to protect me now. Don’t kill yourself trying,” she added.
“I’ll do the best I can, Al.”
“I know you will, Harry. Good-bye, William—or, ‘till we meet again,’ as they say,” Miss Frost said.
I was shaking more, but I didn’t cry; Grandpa Harry took my hand, and we went up those dark basement stairs together.
“I’m guessin’ that must have been some book Miss Frost gave you, Bill—on that subject we were discussin’,” Grandpa Harry said, as we walked along River Street in the direction of Bancroft Hall.
“Yes, it is an awfully good novel,” I told him.
“I’m thinkin’ I might like to read it myself—if Al will let me,” Grandpa Harry said.
“I promised to lend it to a friend,” I told him. “Then I could give it to you.”
“I’m thinkin’ I better get it from Miss Frost, Bill—I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for givin’ it to me! I believe you’re in enough trouble, for the time bein’,” Grandpa Harry whispered.
“I see,” I said, still holding his hand. But I didn’t see; I was merely scratching the surface of all of them. I was just getting started with the seeing part.
When we got to Bancroft, the idolatrous boys in the butt room seemed disappointed to see us. I suppose they now expected the occasional sighting of the idolized Kittredge in my company, and here I was with my grandfather—bald and small, and dressed in the working clothes of a lumberman. Grandpa Harry was clearly not a faculty type, and he’d not attended Favorite River Academy; he’d gone to the high school in Ezra Falls, and had not gone to college. The butt-room boys paid no attention to my grandfather and me; I’m sure Grandpa Harry didn’t care. How would those boys have recognized Harry, anyway? Those who’d ever seen him before had seen Harry Marshall onstage, when he’d been a woman.