Of course I called Em from Denver, too. Paul Goode’s shooting was big news in New York, but other news was in the mail. Em called the letter, from someone at the archdiocese, “kind and compassionate—not at all perfunctory, beyond pro forma.” It was only the hierarchy of the Catholic Church she hated, Em told me. “I have nothing against all the rest of the Catholics,” she said; she sounded worn out. Em had been busy boxing up Mr. Barlow’s things; not that long ago, I knew, she’d been boxing up Nora’s. It was upsetting enough for Em to be putting away the snowshoer’s stuff, but Em was angry and crying because she came across a box of Nora’s writing. Knowing Elliot Barlow had been her rescuer, Em understood that Mr. Barlow was both saving the box for Em and protecting her from seeing it. “Nora’s box,” Em called it, pun intended.

To say it was a box of Nora’s writing doesn’t cover it. Em wrote what Nora said onstage at the Gallows. Em put in writing what she knew how to pantomime and had rehearsed, but Nora was known to ad-lib her lines onstage—a subject of much disagreement between the two of them. Nora was also known to rewrite, in her own words, what Em had scripted for her to say. Dear Mr. Barlow would have known that Nora’s box contained a ton of contention between Nora and Em. Bernard (“Bonkers”) Nathanson had been a sore subject at the Gallows, where the cowardly management wouldn’t permit Nora and Em to ridicule Nathanson for his being a turncoat to abortion rights and the pro-choice cause.

A former pro-choice activist, Dr. Nathanson was a licensed obstetrician and gynecologist in New York. One of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Nathanson had worked with Betty Friedan for the legalization of abortion in the U.S. He was also the former director of New York City’s Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, but Bonkers Nathanson became a right-to-lifer. In 1984, Nathanson was the narrator of The Silent Scream—an anti-abortion film that included an ultrasound video of a fetus sensing it was about to be aborted.