I’m guessing my mom and Molly and I couldn’t help thinking about where my writer gene came from. I can’t speak for my mother’s thoughts, or the trail groomer’s; they said nothing. As for me, I found it hard to discern the degree of imagination in the short snow shoveler with the long snow shovel. He looked younger than fourteen, and (frozen in black and white) even his smile was shyly enigmatic—as unreadable as his handsomeness was only slightly effeminate. The writer gene was not evident in the snowbank the young shoveler had created, although it was an artful snowbank—it was more than a haphazard pile of snow. It was not solely the effect of his ski hat with the pom-pom, but there definitely was—in his confident bearing, in his preoccupied demeanor—the air of an artist about the snow shoveler.

25. THE “POLICE REPORT”

I was having a heightened-imagination moment—indulging a worst-case scenario, provoked by my unidentified writer gene—when I urged the snowshoer to take a good look at himself in the mirror before he answered the door to our faculty apartment. When I was home, and Elliot was dolled up as a woman, of course I would answer the door. It was easy for me to tell the student that Mr. Barlow was on the phone or in the shower. The student could come back in twenty minutes, after the little English teacher had removed the makeup and was once more wearing men’s clothes. Furthermore, I persuaded Elliot to attach a small notebook and a pen to our door in the dormitory hall. Students could leave notes for him if he happened not to be at home or he wasn’t wearing the right clothes.

Unsurprisingly, there were smart-ass students who left funny notes for Mr. Barlow or (occasionally) for me. The important thing, or so I thought, was that we had a system in place—a way to keep the snowshoer safe when he was wearing my mother’s clothes. It didn’t occur to me that Elliot would ever dress as a woman when he went out, if only late at night or very early in the morning.