I would wrestle at Exeter. The snowshoer was not wrong to recommend it. He regretted he hadn’t wrestled, but he’d grown up in ski towns in Austria and New Hampshire—not exactly hotbeds of wrestling. Elliot Barlow’s first opportunity to wrestle would have been at Harvard. He thought it was too late to start. Besides, he couldn’t have competed. The snowshoer didn’t weigh enough for the lightest weight class. If you asked him what he weighed, he sounded indifferent about it. “Right around a hundred pounds,” Elliot said—he always shrugged. But I knew he weighed himself obsessively. Only occasionally, when he weighed as much as 105, did the little English teacher say he was too big.

My mom was always weighing herself, too. When she weighed as much as 120, she said she was over her limit and going on a diet. Her normal weight was 110 or 115 pounds. In our faculty apartment in Amen, there was a scale in the bathroom with the tub—in their bathroom, as I thought of it. But for most of the night, when it wasn’t the ski season, my mother slept in my bed with me.

Was it only for the sake of appearances that my mom kept her clothes in a closet and chest of drawers in their bedroom? No, I don’t think so. I believe that Little Ray knew it was more appropriate for her to dress and undress in front of the snowshoer, regardless of what their real relationship was. Of course, she kept a toothbrush and some of her other toiletries in my bathroom, and sometimes she took a shower there, but she never dressed or undressed in front of me. Whatever was innately lawless about my mother, she had her own rules about dressing and undressing.

The first Christmas they were married—my first Christmas as a wrestler—Elliot Barlow gave me a scale for my bathroom as a Christmas present. The snowshoer knew I would soon be weighing myself obsessively, as wrestlers do. He was also being discreet. I’m sure he knew that Aunt Abigail had deemed him a little light in his loafers. My aunts were outraged that my mom would marry Mr. Barlow and then leave me alone with him in the ski season. But I would always be safe with the snowshoer. The little English teacher had his own rules about dressing and undressing, too.

I don’t think my mother could be in the bathroom, Elliot’s or mine, without weighing herself. It was another bond between us; weighing ourselves was something the three of us shared. There are worse obsessions. The way I kept thinking about Em was one. Molly was my other.