“Who was he?” I asked her.

“He was just some kid, sweetie—he was younger than you; he wasn’t shaving. He was just a boy who couldn’t take his eyes off me. You know boys like that, don’t you?” my mom asked me. “He was small,” she whispered, kissing me. “He would have been a pretty girl. What he meant to me, Adam, was that you would be all mine. That’s what ‘no strings attached’ means, sweetie,” my mother said.

I was no longer writing in those clunky notebooks with the popping rings—they reminded me of meeting Rose. Mr. Barlow had found better notebooks for me in Harvard Square. They had hardcover bindings—like real books, but with blank pages—and the ones I liked best were the size of paperback novels. The pages were unlined.

This happened after my conversation with my mom in my attic bedroom, where she told me my father would have been a pretty girl. I’d been writing in one of my notebooks at the kitchen table of the Amen Hall apartment I shared with the snowshoer. I don’t remember why I got up from the table—probably to get a glass of water, or to make myself a cup of tea. I do remember leaving the pages of my writing notebook open.

In the 1960s, I never saw those notebooks that had a hymnal ribbon. I love those notebooks—you never lose your place. At Mr. Barlow’s kitchen table, I used the salt and pepper shakers to hold my notebook open. The little English teacher wasn’t snooping; he just happened to see what I’d been writing.

It isn’t surprising that I’d written down the two most indelible things my mother had said in her most recent, and most candid, conversation with me. The first was about Elliot Barlow as a woman; the second was about my very young father.

Nor is it surprising that the snowshoer thought I was contemplating two titles. I don’t know why, but I’d written down the two things my mom said as if they were titles:

“Almost Perfect”

“No Strings Attached”

“I see you’re having a title dilemma,” the little English teacher told me, when I came back to the kitchen table. I saw what he was looking at. I’d not told him these stories. “I’m aware I don’t know the context—I have no idea what you’re thinking,” Elliot said. “Both phrases are trite, but ‘No Strings Attached’ is more clichéd than ‘Almost Perfect’—I think it’s a worse cliché,” the snowshoer said.

“I wasn’t really thinking of them as titles—they’re just a couple of things my mom said,” I told him.

“Oh, of course, they sound just like your mom—they work fine as dialogue,” the little English teacher assured me.

24. MELANCHOLIC ENOUGH

That boy, the one who wasn’t shaving, the boy who couldn’t take his eyes off Little Ray—my mother told Molly he looked thirteen or fourteen. “The kid told Ray he was almost fifteen,” Molly told me. Beginning with his age, Molly and I sensed there were likely some strings attached.