In One Person by John Irving

Miss Frost said meaningfully.
    “But aren’t they women’s crushes?” Richard asked the librarian. “Bill might have a young man’s crush, or crushes, more in mind.”
    “Crushes are crushes,” Miss Frost said, without hesitation. “It’s the writing that matters; you’re not suggesting that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are novels ‘for women only,’ are you?”
    “Certainly not! Of course it’s the writing that matters!” Richard Abbott exclaimed. “I just meant that a more masculine adventure—”
    “More masculine !” Miss Frost repeated. “Well, I suppose there’s Fielding,” she added.
    “Oh, yes!” Richard cried. “Do you mean Tom Jones ?”
    “I do,” Miss Frost replied, with a sigh. “If one can count sexual escapades as one result of crushes —”
    “Why not?” Richard Abbott quickly said.
    “You’re how old?” Miss Frost asked me. Once again, her long fingers touched my shoulder. I recalled how Aunt Muriel had fainted (twice), and briefly feared I would soon lose consciousness.
    “I’m thirteen,” I told her.
    “Three novels are enough of a beginning at thirteen,” she said to Richard. “It wouldn’t be wise to overload him with crushes at too young an age. Let’s just see where these three novels lead him, shall we?” Once more Miss Frost smiled at me. “Begin with the Fielding,” she advised me. “It’s arguably the most primitive. You’ll find that the Brontë sisters are more emotional—more psychological. They’re more grown-up novelists.”
    “Miss Frost?” Richard Abbott said. “Have you ever been onstage —have you ever acted ?”
    “Only in my mind,” she answered him, almost flirtatiously. “When I was younger—all the time.”
    Richard gave me a conspiratorial look; I knew perfectly well what the talented young newcomer to the First Sister Players was thinking.A tower of sexual strength stood before us; to Richard and me, Miss Frost was a woman with an untamable freedom—a certain lawlessness definitely accompanied her.
    To a younger man, Richard Abbott, and to me—I was a thirteen-year-old daydreamer who suddenly desired to write the story of my crushes on the wrong people and to have sex with a librarian in her thirties—Miss Frost was an unquestionable sexual presence .
    “There’s a part for you, Miss Frost,” Richard Abbott ventured, while we followed her through the stacks, where she was gathering my first three literary novels.
    “Actually, one of two possible parts,” I pointed out.
    “Yes, you have to choose,” Richard quickly added. “It’s either Hedda in Hedda Gabler, or Nora in A Doll’s House . Do you know Ibsen? These are often called problem plays—”
    “That’s some choice,” Miss Frost said, smiling at me. “Either I get to shoot myself in the temple, or I get to be the kind of woman who abandons her three young children.”
    “I think it’s a positive decision, in both cases,” Richard Abbott tried to reassure her.
    “Oh, how very positive !” Miss Frost said, laughing—with a wave of her long-fingered hand. (When she laughed, there was something hoarse and low in her voice, which almost immediately jumped to a higher, clearer register.)
    “Nils Borkman is the director,” I warned Miss Frost; I was feeling protective of her already, and we’d only just met.
    “My dear boy,” Miss Frost said to me, “as if there’s a soul in First Sister who doesn’t know that a neuroses-ridden Norwegian—no neophyte to ‘serious drama’—is our little theater’s director.”
    She said suddenly to Richard: “I would be interested to know—if A Doll’s House is the Ibsen that we choose, and I am to be the much-misunderstood Nora—how you will be cast, Mr. Richard Abbott.” Before Richard could answer her, Miss Frost went on: “My guess is that you would be Torvald Helmer, Nora’s dull and uncomprehending husband—he whose life Nora saves, but he can’t save hers.”
    “I would guess that is how I