“Don’t be ridiculous,” Little Ray told them. “Elliot knows people in North Conway—Elliot and Adam and I don’t have to stay with you.”

“My parents know people who have an inn—the innkeepers are European, but the inn is very nice,” the snowshoer tried to reassure Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha. On the subject of my mom’s sleeping arrangements, it was clear there was no reassuring my aunts. “When I was at Harvard, I took the ski train from North Station almost every winter weekend. For the snowshoeing,” Elliot added; he kept trying. “I did my homework on the train—the same train that stops in Exeter,” he said. “I knew some Exeter boys at Harvard; they were boys who’d been teased when they were in school here. One of them had been tormented,” the snowshoer added. “When the ski train stopped in Exeter, it made me consider that I might teach here one day,” Elliot continued. “I knew I could help the boys who were teased—especially the tormented ones,” he told us.

My mother stood up from the table, a little unsteadily. She hugged Elliot Barlow, pressing his face to her breasts.

“You wonderful man—I hope you were never tormented!” Little Ray cried, smothering him.

Considering how tenaciously my mom hugged the little English teacher, and the obstacle to his speech and breathing presented by her breasts, he managed to allay her fears. “No, no—I was never tormented, just teased,” Elliot told her.

Not wanting to see more wanton displays of affection from my mother, Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha were busily clearing the table and breathing heavily; their tasks included the stabbing and brisk removal of the partial index finger with a fork.

“Noch ein Bier?” Uncle Johan ambiguously asked the snowshoer or my mom; Johan had already opened another bottle, which he offered to them. The four empties stood as silently judgmental as sentinels between their place mats. My aunts had already removed their beer glasses from the table.

“Yeah, why not?” my mother said, in her girl-jock way, releasing Elliot from her embrace. She was taking a long swig from the fresh bottle when my aunts marched into the dining room from the kitchen; they were carrying clean plates and the dessert, which was always a kind of fruit pie, strangely missing half the pie part. Nana didn’t overreach in the kitchen. My grandmother’s desserts were better than the rest of her meals, notwithstanding that there was no name for them. No name for it, I should say—there was only one.

It was a deep-dish fruit dessert with a thick bottom crust, and no crust on top. “You can’t call it a cobbler,” Aunt Abigail insisted, “because a cobbler has a thick top crust.”