student at Favorite River, I would no longer be a backstage regular at the rehearsals of the First Sister Players.
I had much more homework at the academy than I’d ever seen in middle or elementary school, and Richard Abbott was in charge of the Drama Club (as it was called) at the prep school. Richard’s Shakespearean ambitions would draw me more to the Drama Club, and away from all but the finished performances at the First Sister Players. The Drama Club’s stage, the academy’s theater, was both bigger and more sophisticated than our town’s quaint little playhouse. (The
quaint
word was a new one for me. I became a bit of a snob in my years at Favorite River, or so Miss Frost would one day inform me.)
And if my inappropriate crush on Richard Abbott had been “supplanted” (as I’ve said) by my lust and ardent longing for Miss Frost, so had two gifted amateurs (Grandpa Harry and Aunt Muriel) been replaced by two vastly more talented actors. Richard Abbott and Miss Frost were soon superstars on the stage of the First Sister Players. Not only was Miss Frost cast as the neurotic Hedda to Richard’s hideously controlling Judge Brack; in the fall of ’56, she played Nora in A
Doll’s House
. Richard, as he’d guessed, was cast as her dull, uncomprehending husband, Torvald Helmer. An uncharacteristically subdued Aunt Muriel did not speak to her own father for almost a month, because Grandpa Harry (not Muriel) was cast as Mrs. Linde. And Richard Abbott and Miss Frost managed to persuade Nils Borkman to play the unfortunate Krogstad, which the grim Norwegian brought off with a creepy combination of doom and righteousness.
More important than what this mixed bag of amateurs made of Ibsen, a new faculty family had arrived at Favorite River Academy at the start of the academic year of 1956 and ’57—a couple named Hadley. They had an only child—a gawky-looking daughter, Elaine. Mr. Hadley was a new history teacher. Mrs. Hadley, who played the piano, gave voice and singing lessons; she directed the school’s several choruses and conducted the academy choir. The Hadleys became friends with Richard and my mom, and so Elaine and I often found ourselves thrust together. I was a year older, which—at the time—made me feel a lot older than Elaine, who lagged far behind in the breast-development department. (Nor would Elaine
ever
have any breasts, I imagined, for I’d also noticed that Mrs. Hadley was virtually flat-chested—even when she sang.)
Elaine was extremely nearsighted; in those days, there was no remedy for this, save those super-thick lenses that magnified your eyes and made them appear as if they were exploding out of your head. But her mother had taught her to sing, and Elaine also had a vibrant, well-enunciated speaking voice. When she spoke, it was almost as if she were singing—you could hear every word.
“Elaine really knows how to
project
,” was how Mrs. Hadley put it. Her name was Martha; she was not pretty, but she was very nice, and she was the first person to notice with some accuracy that there were certain words I couldn’t pronounce properly. She told my mother that there were vocal exercises I could try, or that singing might be of some benefit to me, but that fall of ’56 I was still in middle school, and I was consumed by reading. I wanted nothing to do with “vocal exercises” or singing.
All these significant changes in my life came together and moved forward with an unexpected momentum: In the fall of ’57, I was a student at Favorite River Academy; I was still rereading
Great Expectations
, and (as you know) I’d let it slip to Miss Frost that I wanted to be a writer. I was fifteen, and Elaine Hadley was a nearsighted, flat-chested, clarion-voiced fourteen-year-old.
One night that September, there came a knocking on the door of Richard’s faculty apartment, but it was study hours in the dormitory—no boy came to our apartment door then, unless he was sick. I opened the
I had much more homework at the academy than I’d ever seen in middle or elementary school, and Richard Abbott was in charge of the Drama Club (as it was called) at the prep school. Richard’s Shakespearean ambitions would draw me more to the Drama Club, and away from all but the finished performances at the First Sister Players. The Drama Club’s stage, the academy’s theater, was both bigger and more sophisticated than our town’s quaint little playhouse. (The
quaint
word was a new one for me. I became a bit of a snob in my years at Favorite River, or so Miss Frost would one day inform me.)
And if my inappropriate crush on Richard Abbott had been “supplanted” (as I’ve said) by my lust and ardent longing for Miss Frost, so had two gifted amateurs (Grandpa Harry and Aunt Muriel) been replaced by two vastly more talented actors. Richard Abbott and Miss Frost were soon superstars on the stage of the First Sister Players. Not only was Miss Frost cast as the neurotic Hedda to Richard’s hideously controlling Judge Brack; in the fall of ’56, she played Nora in A
Doll’s House
. Richard, as he’d guessed, was cast as her dull, uncomprehending husband, Torvald Helmer. An uncharacteristically subdued Aunt Muriel did not speak to her own father for almost a month, because Grandpa Harry (not Muriel) was cast as Mrs. Linde. And Richard Abbott and Miss Frost managed to persuade Nils Borkman to play the unfortunate Krogstad, which the grim Norwegian brought off with a creepy combination of doom and righteousness.
More important than what this mixed bag of amateurs made of Ibsen, a new faculty family had arrived at Favorite River Academy at the start of the academic year of 1956 and ’57—a couple named Hadley. They had an only child—a gawky-looking daughter, Elaine. Mr. Hadley was a new history teacher. Mrs. Hadley, who played the piano, gave voice and singing lessons; she directed the school’s several choruses and conducted the academy choir. The Hadleys became friends with Richard and my mom, and so Elaine and I often found ourselves thrust together. I was a year older, which—at the time—made me feel a lot older than Elaine, who lagged far behind in the breast-development department. (Nor would Elaine
ever
have any breasts, I imagined, for I’d also noticed that Mrs. Hadley was virtually flat-chested—even when she sang.)
Elaine was extremely nearsighted; in those days, there was no remedy for this, save those super-thick lenses that magnified your eyes and made them appear as if they were exploding out of your head. But her mother had taught her to sing, and Elaine also had a vibrant, well-enunciated speaking voice. When she spoke, it was almost as if she were singing—you could hear every word.
“Elaine really knows how to
project
,” was how Mrs. Hadley put it. Her name was Martha; she was not pretty, but she was very nice, and she was the first person to notice with some accuracy that there were certain words I couldn’t pronounce properly. She told my mother that there were vocal exercises I could try, or that singing might be of some benefit to me, but that fall of ’56 I was still in middle school, and I was consumed by reading. I wanted nothing to do with “vocal exercises” or singing.
All these significant changes in my life came together and moved forward with an unexpected momentum: In the fall of ’57, I was a student at Favorite River Academy; I was still rereading
Great Expectations
, and (as you know) I’d let it slip to Miss Frost that I wanted to be a writer. I was fifteen, and Elaine Hadley was a nearsighted, flat-chested, clarion-voiced fourteen-year-old.
One night that September, there came a knocking on the door of Richard’s faculty apartment, but it was study hours in the dormitory—no boy came to our apartment door then, unless he was sick. I opened the
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