In One Person

not-a-ballroom faux pas put to rest—thus that ghost departed. Thus did my worst memory of Esmeralda (
that
terrifying angel) take flight.
    I T WAS THE THIRD week of November 2010—for as long as I live, I won’t forget this. I had my hands full with
Romeo and Juliet
; I had a terrific cast of kids, and (as you know) a Juliet with all the balls a director could ever ask for.
    The stage mice chiefly bothered the few females in that cast—namely, my Lady Montague and my Lady Capulet, and my Nurse. As for my Juliet, Gee didn’t shriek when the stage mice were scurrying around; Gee tried to stomp on the disruptive little rodents. Gee and my bloodthirsty Tybalt had killed some stage mice by stomping on them, but my Mercutio and my Romeo were the experts in my cast at setting the mousetraps. I was constantly reminding them that they had to disarm the mousetraps when our
Romeo and Juliet
was in performance. I didn’t want that grisly snapping sound—or the occasional death squeal of a stage mouse—to interrupt the show.
    My Romeo was a cow-eyed boy of strictly conventional handsomeness, but he had exceptionally good diction. He could say that act 1, scene 1 line (of utmost importance) so that the audience could really hear it. “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love”—that one.
    It was also important to Gee that—as she told me—my Romeo was not her type. “But I’m okay about kissing him,” she’d added.
    Fortunately, my Romeo was okay about kissing Gee—despite everyone in our school knowing that Gee had balls (and a penis). It would have taken a brave boy at Favorite River to have ventured to
date
Gee; it hadn’t happened. Gee had always lived in a girls’ dorm; even with balls and a penis, Gee would never bother the girls, and the girls knew it. The girls had not once bothered Gee, either.
    Putting Gee in a boys’ dorm might have been asking for trouble; Gee liked boys, but because Gee was a boy who was trying to become a girl, some of the boys
definitely
would have bothered her.
    No one had imagined—least of all, me—that Gee would turn out to be such a pretty young woman. No doubt, there were boys at Favorite River Academy who had a serious crush on her—straight boys, because Gee was completely passable, and those gay boys who were turned on by Gee
because
she had balls and a penis.
    Richard Abbott and I took turns driving Gee out to see Martha at the Facility. At ninety, Mrs. Hadley was a kind of wise grandmother to Gee; Martha told Gee not to date any boys at Favorite River.
    “Save the dating for when you get to college,” Mrs. Hadley had advised her.
    “That’s what I’m doing—I’m waiting on the dating,” Gee Montgomery had told me. “All the guys at Favorite River are too immature for me, anyway,” she said.
    There was one boy who seemed
very
mature to me—at least physically. He was, like Gee, a senior, but he was also a wrestler, which was why I had cast him as the fiery-tempered Tybalt—a kinsman to the Capulets , and the hothead who is most responsible for what happens in the play. Oh, I know, it is the long-standing discord between the Montagues and the Capulets that brings about the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, but Tybalt is the catalyst. (I hope Herm Hoyt and Miss Frost would have forgiven me for casting a wrestler as my catalyst.)
    My Tybalt was the most mature-looking boy at Favorite River—a four-year varsity wrestler from Germany. Manfred was a light-heavyweight; his English was correct, and very carefully enunciated, but he’d retained a slight accent. I’d told Manfred to let us hear the accent in
Romeo and Juliet
. How wicked of me—to have my Tybalt be a wrestler with a German accent. But, to tell you the truth, I was a little worried about how big a crush Manfred might have had on Gee. (And I know Gee liked him.) If there was a boy at Favorite River who was conceivably courageous enough to date Gee Montgomery—that is, even to
ask
her for a date—that boy, who very much looked like a man, was my hot-blooded Tybalt.
    By that Wednesday, we were off-script in
Romeo and Juliet
—we were in the fine-tuning phase. Our rehearsal was later in the evening than usual; we had an 8 P.M. start—due to Manfred being at a pre-season wrestling match somewhere in Massachusetts.
    I’d gone to the theater close to our usual rehearsal time, about 6:45 or 7:00 on that Wednesday, and—as I expected—most of my cast would show up early as well. Come 8:00, we