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They shared an apple. They heard the babies waking up in the house above them: brief cries, then a renewed silence on receiving their respective breasts. Colm and Bogus agreed on the dullness of babies.
'I saw Moby Dick last night,' Bogus decided to tell Colm, who looked a little suspicious. 'It may have been just the old island,' Trumper confessed, 'but I heard a great slap, like his tail hitting the water.'
'You're making that up,' Colm said. That's not real!'
'Not real?' said Trumper. He'd never heard Colm use the word before.
'Right,' said Colm, but the boy's attention was wandering - he was bored by his father - and Bogus wanted desperately for things to be lively between them.
'What kinds of book do you like best?' he asked Colm. As soon as he spoke, he thought, God, I am reduced to making small talk with my son.
'Well, I still like Moby Dick,' Colm said. Was he just being kind? ('Be kind to your father,' Bogus heard Couth telling Colm, shortly before they had all arrived.) 'I mean, I like the story,' Colm said. 'But it's just a story.'
On the dock beside his son, Trumper fought back sudden tears.
The great houseful of flesh above them would wake soon, almost like one giant person - perform its ablutions, feed itself, try to be helpful and kind. In this pleasant confusion a keen sense of things would be lost, but out on the dock, watching the sun slowly losing to the fog, Trumper felt bright and crisp. By now the fog covered the mouth of the bay and was bound to roll in on them; it was so thick that you couldn't tell what was behind it. But in his momentary piece of clear light, Trumper felt he could see through his brain.
Bogus and Colm heard a toilet flush, and then Ralph shouted from the house, 'Oh, that goddamn dog!'
Upstairs, a window opened; Biggie was framed in it, Anna in her arms. 'Good morning!' she called down to them.
'Happy Throgsgafen Day!' Bogus yelled, and Colm took up the cry.
Another window opened and Matje poked her head out like a parakeet from its cage. Downstairs, Tulpen opened the french doors of the pool room and held Merrill in the air above her head. Couth appeared in Biggie's window. Everyone was getting a last feel of the morning before the fog came in.
The kitchen door flew open, ejecting Gob, Loom and Ralph. He yelled, 'Those goddamn dogs threw up in the laundry room!'
'It was your dog, Ralph!' Couth called from his window. 'My dog never throws up!'
'It was Trumper!' Tulpen yelled from the pool room. 'He was up all night! He was up to something! Trumper puked in the laundry room!'
Bogus protested his innocence, but everyone chanted his guilt. Colm seemed delighted by this weird adult performance. The dogs began the day's cavorting, falling heavily on the ice. Bogus took his son's hand and they made their careful, slippery way up to the house.
Heavy traffic conditions ruled the kitchen. The dogs fought furiously outside the door while Colm, seeking to increase the chaos, blew a shrill whistle. Ralph announced that Matje's grape had grown. The women demanded that all but the children fast instead of having breakfast; they were already at work on the midday feast. Biggie and Tulpen each flaunted a breast which lolled free, a nipple-glued child riding on each busy hip. Matje fixed breakfast for Colm and scolded Ralph for not cleaning up after the dogs.
Ralph and Couth and Bogus hung around, with their slightly off-putting morning smells and a certain prickliness of appearance. Matje and Biggie and Tulpen were blowzy, wearing not quite clothes; bathrobes and soft slept-in stuff - a warm rumpled sensuousness about them.
Bogus wondered what he could have thought he wanted. But the kitchen was far too flurried for thinking; bodies were everywhere. So what if dog puke still lu
rked unseen in the laundry room! In good company we can be brave.
Mindful of his scars, his old harpoons and things, Bogus Trumper smiled cautiously at all the good flesh around him.
READ ON FOR AN EXTRACT OF
IN ONE PERSON
THE BREATHTAKING NEW NOVEL FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR JOHN IRVING
A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love - tormented, funny, and affecting - and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences.
Chapter 1
AN UNSUCCESSFUL CASTING CALL
I'm going to begin by telling you about Miss Frost. While I say to everyone that I became a writer because I read a certain novel by Charles Dickens at the formative age of fifteen, the truth is I was younger than that when I first met Miss Frost and imagined having sex with her, and this moment of my sexual awakening also marked the fitful birth of my imagination. We are formed by what we desire. In less than a minute of excited, secretive longing, I desired to become a writer and to have sex with Miss Frost--not necessarily in that order.
I met Miss Frost in a library. I like libraries, though I have difficulty pronouncing the word--both the plural and the singular. It seems there are certain words I have considerable trouble pronouncing: nouns, for the most part--people, places, and things that have caused me preternatural excitement, irresolvable conflict, or utter panic. Well, that is the opinion of various voice teachers and speech therapists and psychiatrists who've treated me--alas, without success. In elementary school, I was held back a grade due to "severe speech impairments"--an overstatement. I'm now in my late sixties, almost seventy; I've ceased to be interested in the cause of my mispronunciations. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but fuck the etiology.)
