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"Oh."
Two other wrestlers were cast as sea captains. One of the captains isn't very important--he's the captain of the wrecked ship, the one who befriends Viola. I can't remember the name of the wrestler who played him. The second sea captain is Sebastian's friend Antonio. I'd earlier feared that Richard might cast Kittredge as Antonio, who is a brave and swashbuckling type. There is something so genuinely affectionate in Sebastian's friendship with Antonio, I was anxious how that affection would play out--I mean, in the case of Kittredge being Antonio.
But Richard either sensed my anxiety or knew that Kittredge would have been wasted as Antonio. In all likelihood, Richard, from the start, had a better part in mind for Kittredge.
The wrestler Richard chose for Antonio was a good-looking guy named Wheelock; whatever was swashbuckling about Antonio, Wheelock could convey.
"Wheelock can convey little else," Kittredge told me about his teammate. I was surprised that Kittredge seemed to feel superior to his wrestling teammates; I'd heretofore thought it was only the likes of Elaine and me he felt superior to. I saw that I'd underestimated Kittredge: He felt superior to everyone.
Richard cast Kittredge as the Clown, Feste--a very clever clown, and a somewhat cruel one. Like others of Shakespeare's fools, Feste is smart and superior. (It's no secret that Shakespeare's fools are often wiser than the ladies and gentlemen they share the stage with; the Clown in Twelfth Night is one of those smart fools.) In fact, in most productions I've seen of Twelfth Night, Feste steals the show--Kittredge certainly did. That late winter of 1960, Kittredge stole more than the show.
I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN as I crossed the quadrangle that night, following my conversation with Grandpa Harry, that the blue light in Elaine's fifth-floor bedroom window was--as Kittredge had called it--a "beacon." Kittredge had been right: That lamp with the blue shade was shining for him.
I'd once imagined that the blue light in Elaine's bedroom window was the last light old Grau saw--if only dimly, as he lay freezing. (A far-fetched idea, perhaps. Dr. Grau had hit his head; he'd passed out in the snow. Old Grau probably saw no lights at all, not even dimly.)
But what had Kittredge seen in that blue light--what about that beacon had encouraged him? "I encouraged him, Billy," Elaine would tell me later, but she didn't tell me at the time; I had no idea she was fucking him.
And all the while, my good stepfather, Richard Abbott, was bringing me condoms--"Just to be safe, Bill," Richard would say, as he bestowed another dozen rubbers on me. I had no use for them, but I kept them proudly; occasionally, I masturbated in one.
Of course, I should have given a dozen (or more) condoms to Elaine. I would have somehow summoned the courage to give them all to Kittredge, if I'd known!
Elaine didn't tell me when she knew she was pregnant. It was the spring term, and Twelfth Night was only a few weeks away from production; we'd been off-script for a while, and our rehearsals were improving. Uncle Bob (as Sir Toby Belch) was making us howl every time he said, " 'Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?' "
And Kittredge had a strong singing voice--he was quite a good singer. That song the Clown, Feste, sings to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew Aguecheek--the "O mistress mine, where are you roaming?" song--well, it's a sweet but melancholic kind of song. It's the one that ends, "Youth's a stuff will not endure." It was hard to hear Kittredge sing that song as beautifully as he did, though the slight mockery in his voice--in Feste's character, or in Kittredge's--was unmistakable. (When I knew about Elaine being pregnant, I would remember a line from one of the middle stanzas of that song: "Journeys end in lovers meeting.")
There's no question that Elaine and Kittredge did their "meeting" in her fifth-floor bedroom. The Hadleys were still in the habit of going to the movies in Ezra Falls with Richard and my mom. I remember there were a few foreign films with subtitles that did not qualify as sex films. There was a Jacques Tati film showing in Vermont that year--Mon Oncle, was it, or maybe the earlier one, Mr. Hulot's Holiday?--and I went to Ezra Falls with my mom and Richard, and with Mr. and Mrs. Hadley.
Elaine didn't want to come; she stayed home. "It's not a sex film, Elaine," my mother had assured her. "It's French, but it's a comedy--it's very light."
"I don't feel like light--I don't feel like a comedy," Elaine had said. She was already throwing up at Twelfth Night rehearsals, but no one had figured out that she had morning sickness.
Maybe that's when Elaine told Kittredge that he'd knocked her up--when her family and mine were watching a Jacques Tati film, with subtitles, in Ezra Falls.
When Elaine knew she was pregnant, she eventually told her mother; either Martha Hadley or Mr. Hadley must have told Richard and my mom. I was in bed--naturally, I was wearing Elaine's bra--when my mother burst into my bedroom. "Don't, Jewel--try to take it easy," I heard Richard saying, but my mom had already snapped on my light.
I sat up in bed, holding Elaine's bra as if I were hiding my nonexistent breasts.
"Just look at you!" my mother cried. "Elaine is pregnant!"
"It wasn't me," I told her; she slapped me.
"Of course it wasn't you--I know it wasn't you, Billy!" my mom said. "But why wasn't it you--why wasn't it?" she cried. She went out of my room, sobbing, and Richard came in.
"It must have been Kittredge," I said to Richard.
"Well, Bill--of course it's Kittredge," Richard said. He sat on the side of my bed, trying his hardest not to notice the bra. "You'll have to forgive your mom--she's upset," he said.
I didn't reply. I was thinking about what Mrs. Hadley had said to me--that bit about "certain sexual matters" upsetting my mother. ("Billy, I know there are things she's kept from you," Martha Hadley had told me.)
"I think Elaine will have to go away for a while," Richard Abbott was saying.
"Away where?" I asked him, but Richard either didn't know or didn't want to tell me; he just shook his head.
"I'm really sorry, Bill--I'm sorry about everything," Richard said. I had just recently turned eighteen.
It was then I realized that I didn't have a crush on Richard anymore--not even a slight one. I knew I loved Richard Abbott--I still do love him--but that night I'd found something I disliked about him. In a way, he was weak--he let my mother push him around. Whatever my mom had kept from me, I knew then that Richard was keeping it from me, too.
IT HAPPENS TO MANY teenagers--that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. It happens to some teenagers when they're younger than I was, but I was a brand-new eighteen when I simply tuned out my mother and Richard. I trusted Grandpa Harry more, and I still loved Uncle Bob. But Richard Abbott and my mom had drifted into that discredited area occupied by Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria--in their case, an area of carping, undermining commentary to be ignored or avoided. In the case of Richard and my mother, it was their secrecy I shunned.
