I could see what I was letting myself in for. I would be renting the spec house in Manchester, I would be buying the uphill land with a view of Bromley Mountain—not to mention I would be meeting Grace. I was considering that I would be crazy to put myself in my mother’s hands. Going skiing with her would be just the beginning.

Out on Park Avenue, my mom wouldn’t let up with her single-leg lunges. It was what happened when she didn’t get enough exercise, but she was also excited; she’d just kissed the doorman, as we were leaving the lobby. It was not a snowshoer kiss, but my mother gave Milos a pretty good one. I could see that Milos liked it.

“First time I kissed a guy in a uniform—first and last time, sweetie!” my mom kept singing, over and over. Whatever happened, I would always love her, I knew.

Thus, with my secondhand knowledge of sexual politics, I moved to Vermont—to what Em feared was an arranged marriage to a much younger woman, who would soon be pregnant. And what would such a life be like? I was wondering. It would be like learning to ski for the first time, I was imagining; it would be a fresh start. It would be my chance to have a normal life, I thought.

43. A BOHEMIAN LIFESTYLE

There is no explaining certain things, not only the ghosts. It’s a mystery to me why I missed the ghosts—except for the diaper man. When I moved to Vermont, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a ghost. I would have welcomed that woman with the baby carriage—the one who made me think she could have shot me, if she wanted to. If she’d ever had her shotgun with her, when she appeared. But even she didn’t show up anymore. She’d never been credible as a ghost. Even my verifiable ghosts had gone away; with their departure, the story of my life was diminished. Without the ghosts, my life had lost its plot. I missed them.

Speaking of plot, now that I knew who my father was, there wasn’t much to keep his story going forward—the momentum was gone. What had been the main event of my life, so far, turned out to be an underage boy. “He was just some kid, sweetie—he wasn’t shaving. He was just a boy who couldn’t take his eyes off me,” my mom had told me. “He was small,” she’d whispered, kissing me. “He would have been a pretty girl.”

Finding out that Paul Goode was my father felt like an anticlimax to me. And I wasn’t supposed to talk about him? I couldn’t tell anyone who my father was, because he’d been underage. “That sucks,” as Nora was known to say.