From the matter-of-fact way my mom had reacted to recognizing the kid who got her pregnant with me, I believed that the sex had truly been no big deal to her. Knowing the kind of concentration my mother put into her single-leg lunges and her squats, I didn’t doubt that her having sex with Paul Goode must have been anticlimactic for her, if not for him. But, from the backseat of the dark car, I couldn’t see my mom’s face—only the back of her head and her hunched shoulders, as she repeatedly hit her forehead with the heel of her hand.

“What’s wrong, Ray—what’s the matter?” Nora and Em and I heard Molly ask her.

“He stole what I said—he took what I told him, and just gave it to the kindergarten teacher!” my mother said. She was really angry, almost in tears about it. “He was very insecure about being younger than me, and smaller than me—the kid kept asking me if he was big enough!” my mom cried. “I told him he wasn’t too small for me, I said he was just small enough, because I’d been hoping he had a small penis!” my mother cried. “Of course, he would never have understood that I chose him because I hoped he would be small.”

“It seems as if he understood you eventually, Ray,” Molly said softly.

“But that was my line, those were my words—what I told him,” my mother protested, her voice breaking. “Is that what you writers do, sweetie—you steal stuff that real people say?” my mom asked me. I could feel Em nodding her head against my shoulder; she was squeezing my hand harder.

“That’s definitely what Em does, Ray,” Nora told her.

“I do it sometimes,” I said to my mother.

“Well, if you ask me, I think that’s immoral,” my mom said. I didn’t know what to say. Em couldn’t squeeze my hand harder. “And what about those little urinals?” my mother asked. “I don’t think they had pint-size urinals for boys in kindergarten—the little urinals didn’t show up till elementary school.” Now no one knew what to say. Em’s hand was limp in mine. “In kindergarten—if you ask me, sweetie—you little boys just peed in the toilet,” my mom said.

If you ask me, we don’t know what’s anticlimactic, and what isn’t, until we get to the end of it.

34. OUR MARINE

In her first letter to me, only one thing Em wrote wasn’t exactly true—when she said, “I just don’t dare to make up everything, like you do.” I don’t make up everything, but when I use things that actually happened, I always change something; I try to make what happens not exactly true. Maybe that’s what Em meant.