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Chapter 1

AN UNSUCCESSFUL CASTING CALL

I' 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 forer than that when I firstsex with her, and thisalso ination We are formed by e desire In less than a , I desired to become a writer and to have sex with Miss Frost--not necessarily in that order

I h 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 s 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 elerade 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)

I don't even try to say the etiology word, but I can h a comprehensible mispronunciation of library or libraries--the botched word e as an unknown fruit ("Liberry," or "liberries," I say--the way children do)

It's all the uished This was the public library in the small town of First Sister, Ver on the sarandparents lived I lived in their house on River Street--until I was fifteen, when my mom remarried My mother met my stepfather in a play

The town's amateur theatrical society was called the First Sister Players; for as far back as I can remember, I saw all the plays in our town's little theater My ot your lines, she told you what to say (It being an aotten lines) For years, I thought the proe, and not in costuue

My stepfather was a new actor in the First Sister Players when my mother met him He had come to town to teach at Favorite River Acadeious private school, which was then all boys Forlife (most certainly, by the time I was ten or eleven), I h," I would go to the academy There was a more modern and better-lit library at the prep school, but the public library in the town of First Sister was my first library, and the librarian there was my first librarian (Incidentally, I've never had any trouble saying the librarian word)

Needless to say, Miss Frost was a more me afterher that I learned her first name Everyone called her Miss Frost, and she seeer--when I belatedly got my first library card and met her My aunt, a most imperious person, had told ," but it was iine that Miss Frost could ever have been better-looking than she hen Ithat, even as a kid, all I did was is My aunt claimed that the available men in the town used to fall all over theot up the nerve to introduce himself--to actually tell Miss Frost his name--the then-beautiful librarian would look at him coldly and icily say, "My name is Miss Frost Never been married, never want to be"

With that attitude, Miss Frost was still unmarried when I met her; inconceivably, tostopped introducing themselves to her

THE CRUCIAL DICKENS NOVEL--the one that --was Great Expectations I'm sure I was fifteen, both when I first read it and when I first reread it I know this was before I began to attend the acadeot the book froet the day I showed up at the library to take that book out a second time; I'd never wanted to reread an entire novel before

Miss Frost gavelook At the time, I doubt I was as tall as her shoulders "Miss Frost was once what they call 'statuesque,' " ht and shape existed only in the past (She was forever statuesque to me)

Miss Frost was a woh it was chiefly her s contrast to her th, Miss Frost's breasts had a newly developed appearance--the iirl's I couldn't understand hoas possible for an older woman to have achieved this look, but surely her breasts had seized the ie boy who'd encountered her, or so I believed when I met her--as it?--in 1955 Furtherestively, at least not in the imposed silence of the forlorn First Sister Public Library; day or night, no matter the hour, there was scarcely anyone there

I had overheard my ie where training bras suffice" At thirteen, I'd taken this tofor her breasts, or vice versa I thought not! And the entire ti over my and my aunt's different fixations with Miss Frost's breasts, the daunting librarian went on givinglook

I'diven the invasiveness of Miss Frost's long, lingering stare, it felt like a two-year penetrating look toto read Great Expectations again, "You've already read this one, William"

"Yes, I loved it," I told her--this in lieu of blurting out, as I almost did, that I loved her She was austerely forly address me as William I was always called Bill, or Billy, by my family and friends

I wanted to see Miss Frost wearing only her bra, which (inaunt's view) offered insufficient restraint Yet, in lieu of blurting out such an indiscretion as that, I said: "I want to reread Great Expectations" (Not a word about my premonition that Miss Frost hadthan the one that Estella makes on poor Pip)

"So soon?" Miss Frost asked "You read Great Expectations only a o!"

"I can't wait to reread it," I said

"There are a lot of books by Charles Dickens," Miss Frost told me "You should try a different one, William"