I remember the row between Nora and Em concerning what Nora had written for Em to pantomime about The Silent Scream. Em knew there was no way for her to pantomime a threatened fetus and be funny. Nora was incensed that Nathanson had called himself a “Jewish atheist.” In Nora’s opinion, Nathanson gave Jews and atheists a bad name—he was bad-mouthing both groups. But Em knew there was no way for her to pantomime a Jewish atheist and not look like she was anti-Semitic. Their differences of opinion didn’t matter; their Bonkers Nathanson skit never made it to the stage. The Gallows management wouldn’t allow Nora and Em to make Dr. Nathanson a target of their political comedy. Bonkers was Nora’s name for Nathanson, naturally.

“We shouldn’t mock a doctor who repents his killing unborn babies,” one of the cowards managing the Gallows had whined. But I was only beginning to understand why Nora’s box was a Pandora’s box for Em to have opened. There might be more in that box than Em’s writing, and Nora’s—that’s what I was worrying about.

I asked Em if it seemed contradictory of the snowshoer to save Nora’s box for her, but to keep her from seeing it. “No!” Em cried. “It makes perfect sense.” Grace couldn’t restrain herself from editing every reference to Bonkers Nathanson out of Em’s novel, Em now told me. I only knew that Grace and the snowshoer had been seeing Em’s novel in piecemeal fashion, as Em wrote it—whereas Em had wanted to finish her novel before showing it to me.

“It’s okay that Bonkers Nathanson changed his mind about abortion—that’s his choice,” Nora had always said. “What’s not okay is that Nathanson won’t let other people make that choice for themselves.”

As for the sea change in Nathanson’s abortion politics, what got to Em was the part about his becoming a Catholic. Nathanson’s newfound belief in God would have riled up Nora, Em said. But what would get to Nora, Em knew, was not just Nathanson’s finding God. “Bonkers Nathanson is a former abortionist groveling for forgiveness from the Catholic Church,” Em said.

I knew how this was relevant to the epigraph Em had chosen for her novel, long ago—the quote from Nora, the one with such a moderate or reasonable tone that it didn’t sound like Nora. “There’s no stopping the Catholic Church,” Nora had said. “You shouldn’t try to stop them; all you can do is try to control the damage they do.”