Well, okay—that one was more clear. But I didn’t see us getting that one past the revolving glass doors at 229 West Forty-third Street—that one was strictly a sidewalk sign. I went into the bedroom to put on my running shoes. I was feeling fatalistic about protesting. Either the writing mattered or it didn’t. You have to be truthful to time and place; you can’t leave out anything important. Lies of omission count as lies, I was thinking, when I heard Em tearing up the shirt cardboards in the kitchen. “Holy crap,” she was saying softly—just in resignation. “More damn déjà vu, kiddo,” she said sadly, when I found her at the kitchen table with her head on her arms. The pointlessness of our protesting The New York Times in Times Square was apparent. It’s not easy to hold lies of omission accountable.

That was when Em started singing in her sleep again—only humming, at first, just the tune. I didn’t recognize “O Canada”; I just knew it wasn’t “Goin’ Back to Great Falls.” The lyrics would come later. When Em was just humming in her sleep, I didn’t realize she was still learning the lyrics. I didn’t know the significance of the song.

52. THE LESBIANS’ CHILDREN

In 2004, when Ronald Reagan died at ninety-three, Molly would have been eighty-three or eighty-four. Working part-time, mostly as a ski instructor, had not served to broaden the old patroller’s interests. More than ever, with my mom gone, Molly’s whole world was Bromley Mountain. At Bromley, the Sun Mountain Express Quad had replaced the old Number One chairlift in 1997, but Molly still called the new lift “Number One.”

I tried to explain to the old patroller that this wasn’t the same as what Em and I meant by the damn déjà vu we found so depressing, politically speaking.

“It sounds the same to me, Kid,” Molly said. “The new lift takes you to the same old place. It’s the same trip, just a faster ride—it’s no more or less depressing than it ever was,” she added.

I was confused by Molly’s response to my telling her how the obituary in The New York Times let Reagan off the hook for AIDS. The old patroller just didn’t get it. Em said it could be challenging to talk about a political matter with Molly—not to mention a writing matter.

Since she’d learned the lyrics, it was clear Em was singing the Canadian national anthem in her sleep. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize the tune. About the only things I’d watched on TV in Toronto were hockey and baseball games, but I wasn’t familiar with “O Canada” when I was in bed—with Em’s arm, or her leg, thrown over me—as I heard her sing: