All happy families are not the same; nor are all happy lives the same. The day my mother died, I thought of saying something about Helen, but by then it was too late. I did not want my mother in the world Helen and I took for our own, but I suppose also that in those final months, I wanted to have the joy of my mother unmarked by the drama of my own changes. I wanted to keep separate things separate. There were a thousand empty reasons for not stirring things with my mother any further, but in the end, she must have known this as she knew so many other things. “Would you love me more if I were a boy?” Helen had asked me; a week later, she said, “Would you love me more or less if your mother weren’t ill?”

“It’s not about my mother,” I said. “It’s about you. About you only.”

“Even I,” said Helen, “am smart enough to know that that’s not true.”

It was humiliating to have her say that. “If my mother weren’t ill,” I said, “I’d have more time and energy for you, and I’d be able to love you as much as you deserve.” This sounded like the right answer.

“But I might have to be a boy,” said Helen.

“I like your being a girl,” I said. It seemed not to matter anymore, and I was tired of talking about it, tired of thinking about it, even.

“Well, we’ve both agreed on that, then,” said Helen. “I like being a girl. A woman. Not a boy. I like being with you as a woman. It’s something private, something of our own, something you haven’t been squandering all over town for years and years.” She paused. “Pirate,” she said, with a smile. “I adore your mother in her way, but I wish we could sail away and not worry about her for a swashbuckling month or two.”