50. EM AS ISHMAEL

I heard about the snowstorm in the Northeast at the Aspen airport. My Chicago connection would be canceled. To Albany, or to Hartford—it doesn’t matter that I don’t remember. I wasn’t going to get back to Vermont from Chicago—that was clear. I decided to fly from Denver to New York. I knew Em was at the snowshoer’s pied-à-terre on East Sixty-fourth Street. It was her apartment now.

I called Molly from the Denver airport. I thought the old ski patroller would know everything about the snowstorm, but she didn’t care about it. “It’s just snow, Kid. By the way, we’re done hearing from Jasmine,” she told me.

A nurse at a home for assisted living in New York had called Molly. (The nurse was calling all the numbers Jasmine called most frequently.) Jasmine had passed away peacefully in her sleep, the nurse wanted Molly to know. “I told the nurse I was sorry about the peacefully part,” the old patroller said.

I called Grace from Denver, too. Given the good bookstore in Manchester, Grace had already bought a new copy of My Father’s Dragon. Grace said she would read Matthew the last two chapters while I was in New York, waiting out the snowstorm in New England. Em had delivered her novel—“based on her life with Nora,” as Grace put it. I thought her life with Nora was a vague way for Em’s publisher to describe the novel. This meant Em and Grace couldn’t agree on a title, I was thinking. “Em sent two copies, one for you,” was all Grace would say.

I asked Grace what Em was calling her novel. “You’re seeing Em tonight—she’ll tell you. Maybe you can talk her out of it—Em won’t listen to me,” Grace said. I could tell Grace was done talking about it. I knew she’d rejected Two Dykes, One Who Talks as a title. I’d already imagined Grace’s grievances against the Dykes word.

Em told me Grace had suggested The Gallows Lounge Shooting as a title, but Em was opposed to a title with the “Gallows Lounge” in it. Em didn’t want her novel to sound like nonfiction, but a title with “Two Dykes” in it was unacceptable to Grace. What I could sense—long-distance, in the Denver airport—didn’t bode well for peacefully resolving what to call the novel.