When we were walking on Park Avenue, my mom stared at the uniforms of the doormen we walked past. “You can’t tell diddly-squat about men in uniform, sweetie—you don’t know what their politics are, you don’t know what they’re thinking!” my mother told me. I didn’t dare ask her how she knew what men who weren’t in uniform were thinking. I scarcely trusted her to know the doormen were not military men, though they weren’t wearing military uniforms. “Are we almost there, sweetie?” my mom asked me. We were close enough that I could point to the Zimmermanns’ apartment building; we could discern their doorman’s uniform. No doubt my mom had waited for the best time to tell me what she’d been thinking. “You were the wrong age to hear Em’s orgasms, but you should try to stop thinking about it—it’s just not realistic for you to think about Em in that way, sweetie,” my mother told me.

There were no secrets between my mom and the snowshoer. I could imagine how Molly and my mother would have worried about my infatuation with Em. It was tempting to think how Em might have pantomimed her thoughts about it. Maybe Molly would revise what she’d told me on my mom’s wedding night. There’s only one way to love Em, Kid—just forget about it, I could imagine Molly telling me. I knew it wasn’t realistic for me to think about Em in that way, but my mom had known we would run out of time to talk about it.

“How may I help you?” the Zimmermanns’ doorman was asking us, because we’d stopped in front of their apartment building. He was an older man—not quite my mother’s age, but close to it. I explained that I had two gifts—one for Mrs. Zimmermann, one for Elmira. I said I’d been in school with Matthew; I told him we were wrestling teammates. My mom had taken her ski backpack off; she showed the two books to the gentlemanly doorman. “I’m going to miss the colonel, but it’s just so sad—what happened to young Matthew,” the doorman said.