In the five years since Clara Swift had jumped from the Loge Peak chairlift at Aspen Highlands, four Paul Goode movies would be released in theaters. Ocean Avenue was in postproduction and Every Other Weekend was in preproduction when Clara Swift jumped to her death. At the time, Paul Goode also had a deal to make Forgetting Nebraska; he’d already written it. Then there was Rim Shot, which had recently been released.

The closet and the chest of drawers in the guest bedroom I’d adopted weren’t big enough for my winter clothes—even though the clothes Em had brought from New York and the winter items she’d taken of my mother’s were in another guest bedroom. I kept going back to Grace’s and my bedroom to get more clothes; I tried to do this when Grace was away, or at least when she was awake. It was disconcerting to see her sound asleep with a Paul Goode movie going ahead on the TV screen. This was why I watched once more the small but disturbing scene from Ocean Avenue—the flashback near the end of the film, when the doomed couple reconcile their marriage, which leads to their killing each other. They were a couple careening out of control, a relationship like a runaway sled on a mountain.

There’s a long shot of the Santa Monica Pier, looking south along the beach, which is crowded in the late afternoon. We’re in Paul Goode’s point of view as we come closer to the former bombshell redhead, now a little the worse for wear; she’s sitting on the sand with her knees hugged to her chest, facing out to sea. Paul Goode comes into frame and sits behind her; he scuttles toward her on the sand, like a crab. The redhead knows he’s there; she reluctantly reaches for him, behind her. He moves closer to her, until they’re like two people on a sled—clinging to each other, as the imaginary sled picks up speed and the music rises. The scene gave me the chills; my father must have been sixty-five, old enough to be the wrecked redhead’s father.

“What do you want?” Grace suddenly said, either to me or to someone she was dreaming about; she was sound asleep. I went back to the guest bedroom, where I got into bed with Em. I told her what had happened. Em knew the flashback scene in Ocean Avenue.

“You’ll get another shot at a normal life—my life with the snowshoer was normal, compared to this,” Em said, hugging me.

“Every creature wants a normal life—even an octopus!” Little Ray had said.