“I’ve told you, sweetie—I don’t think about Paul Goode at all,” my mom suddenly blurted out.

I just looked at Molly, expecting the old ski patroller to say (as I’d heard her say before), “That’s a good place to leave it, Ray—right there.” But this time, Molly didn’t speak up.

We must have been waiting for my mother to say more of the same old Paul Goode business. How I wish she had—I wish she’d told Grace everything. Molly and I were just waiting for it all to come out, but it didn’t. My mom managed to stop herself from saying more; someone else had to say it.

“Well, I’m embarrassed about it now, but actually losing my virginity was not that big a deal—not compared to how I imagined losing it to Paul Goode,” Grace felt compelled to say, since the three of us looked so stricken. “You all look like you would rather go back to the castration conversation,” Grace told us. At least we laughed; an air of gloom had lifted.

“I don’t think about Paul Goode, but I generally don’t think about men,” Molly reminded us; I knew she was just being funny, so we would keep laughing.

“Smarty-pants, Molly,” my mother said. I looked at Grace; she was over her embarrassment. She’d forgotten we were going to share a beer; she was already drinking it, out of the bottle. I felt like having a whole beer myself. That was when I should have told her, when all of us were laughing. It would never get easier to tell Grace the story, I knew, but I got sidetracked by where to begin.

You’ve just met a woman you really like, but you need to tell her that the first man she imagined losing her virginity to is your father. She is now only a few years older than your father was when she first saw him; Paul Goode was thirty when he made The Wrong Car. He was forty-six when he made The Kindergarten Man—he was only two years younger than you are now. And, just to put the age thing into perspective, you have to tell her that your dad was only fourteen when he lost his virginity to your mom. I knew this detail might not be the best beginning. At fourteen, Paul Goode was a far cry from the getaway driver Grace had imagined losing her virginity to; that fourteen-year-old was too young to be driving. But, while I was wondering where to begin, Grace had moved on.

“Well, I’m glad my virginity story is over—I was beginning to feel like that woman with the baby carriage and the shotgun in The Wrong Car. You know what happened to her, don’t you?” Grace asked me.