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.

The last time I saw those two Norwegians was when they came to New York to see Nora and Em onstage at the Gallows, the first and only time they saw Two Dykes, One Who Talks—when they also saw and heard the premier performance of Damaged Don’s “No Lucky Star,” the original lyrics, the uncensored version. Not then, at the Gallows in New York, or only shortly before then—that next-to-last time, when I saw Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan in Exeter—did I detect in my uncles their desire to call it quits, to drive off the road. Not even the people you love in your own family tell you everything, and there are always the things you miss.

“Those two men never misjudged a turn,” my mother said, when Uncle Johan drove off the Kancamagus.

“I thought that’s what you said about their skiing, Ray—I thought that’s what you meant,” Molly said.

“That’s what I’m saying about their driving, Molly—that’s what I mean,” my mom said.

As for Uncle Johan and her dad misjudging a turn on the Kanc, Nora saw it the way my mom saw it—“they knew when to call it quits,” Nora always said.