Em and I were on the same page regarding the pretty snowshoer’s speculations. Elliot Barlow wasn’t joking about what went on at the Whale Ship. The little English teacher used to worry that she just wasn’t big enough. Bigness really mattered to Mr. Barlow, when he’d been a man. “Something still matters to the snowshoer,” Em wrote me. I knew what Em meant, and she’d said it as exactly as I could have. Even as a woman, the pretty snowshoer believed she just wasn’t something enough. Passing a something test at the Whale Ship was not what our marine might have imagined; an imaginary test was Elliot Barlow’s obsession, which Em and I knew was no joke.

35. AT THE WHALE SHIP

At that interminable cocktail party at the Exeter Inn, both the compassionate Mr. Barlow and our constrained marine were spared further tests of their tolerance or their toughness. The exuberant singing of Uncle Johan heralded his and Uncle Martin’s arrival. “Bier, Bier—das Bier ist hier!” Johan sang. Each of my uncles’ big hands held two freshly opened beer bottles. The four of us—Molly and my mom, and the snowshoer and I—took a bottle each, which left my uncles with two beers apiece. The retired Norwegians, who’d made the trip to Exeter from up north, did their best to force a beer on our retreating marine, but I’d already noticed that the natural 190-pounder didn’t drink. Besides, in accepting their beers, Mr. Barlow had relinquished her highly esteemed hand control and my mother had given up her strong grip on the bear hug. The tall, lean heavyweight had seized the moment to slip away.

I was glad to see him go; both his hatred and his effort to contain it had been hard to bear. And what if the conversation had turned to military matters—to the long-armed guy’s life in the Marine Corps, to my uncles’ being recruited by the National Ski Patrol to train the troops in the Tenth Mountain Division? What if that conversation had led my uncles to remember Paulino, the little mountaineer? I’ll never know if my uncles knew Paul Goode was my father. Not just Molly, but also Nora and Em, had cautioned me about that. “Your dad was definitely underage, kiddo—my dad and Uncle Johan would just say your dad was lucky,” Nora told me, with Em nodding her head off.

I regret I didn’t spend more time with Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan at that cocktail party at the Exeter Inn. I didn’t know it was the next-to-last time I would see them. They were so much fun, especially after my aunts were gone, and my uncles loved Little Ray. Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan had much affection for Molly, and for the snowshoer—not only when Mr. Barlow had been a man, but also when she was a woman.