Unless there was a mystery guest coming to dinner, we were all in agreement that my philandering father was the epitome of the problem with men—as my mom had put it. Paul Goode wasn’t ready to settle down and keep his pecker in his pants. Everyone sympathized with the wronged wife, Clara Swift, at home with her and Paul Goode’s son—while my dad had been dipping his wick with Juliette Leblanc in France. As for Paul Goode and Clara Swift’s kid, we took a guess at how old the boy would be—when the incriminating videotape was being shown, everywhere and all the time, when Argonne was playing or had already played in most movie theaters, though not yet playing in Manchester. We guessed the boy would be thirteen, old enough to know what was going on, young enough to be devastated by it. Our sympathies, surely, were with Clara Swift and the kid; none of us could remember the boy’s name. But did any of us truly care if Paul Goode could or couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants? Was that what this was about, or was my mom imagining I might have a genetic pecker problem?

“Are you thinking I may have inherited Paul Goode’s unreadiness to be married?” I point-blank asked my mother.

Em’s pantomime was immediately clear; I didn’t need Nora to know what Em was saying. Em didn’t nod or shake her head; she just pointed to herself and shrugged. Her expression was inquiring but nonjudgmental. This is what I can’t help wondering, Em was saying. She wasn’t speaking for my mom, only for herself.

“Don’t go there, Kid,” the night groomer told me.

“I don’t think of infidelity as an inheritable characteristic, Adam—I’ve not heard of anyone who had a genetic predisposition to it,” the little English teacher said.

“I’ve told you, sweetie—I don’t think about Paul Goode at all. He was a nice boy when I knew him, but he was just some kid—he didn’t know what he was doing,” my mother said.

“That’s a good place to leave it, Ray—right there,” Molly told her.