I’d not liked living in a dormitory in Pittsburgh. The faculty apartment I shared with my mom and the snowshoer in Amen Hall was more private. When I went back home to Exeter and commuted to college, I became more of a writer. I also saw more movies with Elliot. It helped that I didn’t make many friends in Durham. As a commuter, how could I? I hadn’t yet met Sophie, the bleeder—the writer, I should say. But I latched on to the two fiction writers in the UNH English Department. I took every course they taught, following them around like their faithful dog. One of them told me to apply for a junior year abroad. It occurred to me that he may have wanted me to go away. “Americans need more melancholy,” he said. I didn’t realize, at first, that he meant as writers. He seemed to be saying there was something beneficial about melancholy—universally, for everyone. “Melancholy is good for the soul,” he told me.

Naturally, I told Mr. Barlow about this. He agreed there was more melancholy in Europe. “I can see how melancholy would be good for a writer’s soul,” the snowshoer said, somewhat cautiously.

When I asked Nora what she thought about my studying in Europe for a year, she said, “I told you there’s a foreignness inside you. That’s just who you are. What you’ll find in Europe is more of the melancholy that’s inside you.” I interpreted this to mean that Nora thought Europe would make me unhappier than I was.

Em spoke to me at greater length about Europe than she’d ever spoken to me before, and it was more than she would say to me again for years. Nora was with us, and Em didn’t look at me when she spoke—she was looking at Nora, who seemed surprised. “In Europe, you’ll meet some girl who’s as sad as you, or sadder,” Em said. “Then you’ll be twice as sad together, until the sadness drives you apart,” Em said. This sounded like a novel I would never finish—one I would keep beginning and stopping, again and again. I don’t think Em needed to go to Europe to become more melancholic—Em was melancholic enough—but she and Nora went to Europe a lot.

Of course the little Barlows would have an opinion: I should go to Austria. When it came to what I should do to deepen my darkness as a writer, the Barlows were a writing team—they didn’t hold back. But in this case, a rare one, Elliot reluctantly agreed with his parents. If I went to Vienna, the snowshoer said, I would certainly find sufficient melancholy there.