Not to quarrel with Mr. Barlow’s assessment, but I didn’t think the Freshman Easterns was that tough a tournament. Back in Pittsburgh, I knew, there was an ineligible freshman who could have kicked the ass of every wrestler in the 130-pound weight class without breaking a sweat. But, to be fair, my jealousy—if that’s what it was—had distracted me from the wrestling at West Point. I don’t even know if our Pitt 177-pounder, who pinned his way into the finals, won or lost his weight class against a kid from Navy or Maryland.

My teammates and I would take a bus from West Point to the Port Authority in New York, and from there we were on a longer bus ride—back to Pittsburgh, where I had nothing but hand and finger surgeries to look forward to. Unlike Matthew Zimmermann, I was not done with wrestling, but I sensed I was done with the competition part. On our two bus rides, the Pitt 147-pounder never spoke; he remained lost in his own thoughts. As for our 177-pounder, whether he was a champion or not, he was as silent as a runner-up. Either he’d lost in the finals or he’d seen me spend the second day of our season-ending wrestling tournament with my head in my mom’s lap. I’ll bet our 177-pounder won his weight class, but I know he’d observed that I had a thing for my own mother. There’s no question that my two teammates saw me hanging out with my mom in a kind of unnatural way.

In the locker room at West Point, after I’d lost my last match of the tournament, Elliot Barlow had kept on coaching me. “Don’t get down on yourself for losing, Adam—you’re not in New England anymore. And don’t be embarrassed if your mom makes you feel jealous—she doesn’t mean to, but sometimes she makes me feel jealous, too,” the snowshoer said.

28. STILL GROWING

I was still a college student at UNH, and still going out with Sophie. I took a break from the bleeder, the writer, by agreeing to meet Matthew Zimmermann in Vermont—“a ski weekend,” Zim had called it, with my mother and Molly. I’d let Molly know I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but the trail groomer assured me that my mom would be on her best behavior. After the weekend in West Point, Molly said, my mother knew better than to encourage Zim.

It wouldn’t have worked if I’d brought Sophie to Vermont—not on the same weekend when Zimmer was coming. I couldn’t imagine the bleeder sleeping between Zim and me, on that futon in the TV room. I hated the explaining of the bleeding. I was having a hard enough time just imagining Matthew Zimmermann and me on that futon.