The Last Chairlift

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:

O Canada! Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all of us command.

I got the feeling Em wasn’t actually asleep when she was singing; the grinding of her hips against me was not meant in a patriotic way. I was the one who was asleep. Em was singing to me in my sleep.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

It’s strange how the subliminal effects of my hearing “O Canada” in my sleep were coincident with more meddling on Grace’s part—she’d decided Em and I should be married, for Matthew’s sake. Em and I were pretty sure it didn’t matter to Matthew whether we were married or not.

“It’s for your sake that we should be married, kiddo,” was all Em said about it, at first. This would become clear. The singing of the Canadian national anthem was intended to indoctrinate me. In her own way, Em was an old-fashioned fiction writer—a plot-driven storyteller. My becoming a Canadian citizen was part of the plot.

Em would shepherd me through the immigration process. She knew the steps I had to take, en route to my applying for Canadian citizenship. My first step was to marry her, Em said. Em was already a Canadian citizen; she had a Canadian passport. If we were married, Em could sponsor my immigrating to her country of birth. Like me, Em would have to go through the business of becoming a permanent resident of Canada.

I don’t remember the rules and regulations, because Em kept track of them for me. I would have what was called a “record of landing”; Em kept this and my “record of travel” for me. I think there was something about my living in Canada, and filing taxes in Canada—for three of the next five years—but Em would remember this for me. When you have someone to guide you in a foreign country, you’re not responsible for the details. I just knew my moving to Canada began with my marrying Em.

“We have to be married before you can start immigrating, kiddo,” was the way Em put it.

“Okay,” I said. We doubted the zither man was alive. Given how Em and I had met, and the surrounding events of my mother’s wedding, how could Em and I get married without an Austrian zither-meister? Em imagined the old Austrian with kids and grandkids, only because she remembered his name for me. Son of the Bride, the edelweiss man had called me. Em searched the phone books for Manhattan and Brooklyn. There were businesses beginning with Son of, and Daughter of, but no musicians—not a Son of Zither Man or a Daughter of Zither-Meister, as Em imagined. We searched together for “The Third Man Theme” or “The Harry Lime Theme,” and for just plain zither players. There was no one.

“You can find anyone you’re looking for in New York, Adam,” Uncle Martin once told me. Em had an idea.

“How do you say The Third Man in German?” Em asked me.

“Der dritte Mann, and Anything Else on a Zither.” This was what Em found in the Brooklyn phone book—this was what an unnamed zither player was promising. Even Elvis?

There was no trace of an Austrian accent in the recorded message Em and I listened to; the voice on the zither player’s answering machine was all Brooklyn. He sounded like an emotionally disturbed high school student, the kind of kid who eventually commits a violent crime—he shoots his teacher, or all the girls in his class.

“I do private parties, but nothin’ religious. I’ll do a weddin’—the more secula, the betta,” the zither kid began. “I gotta big repertoire, for a zitha—no band, just a zitha. If you don’t know what a zitha is, you betta call somebody else,” the zither kid concluded. In the background, we could hear “The Harry Lime Theme”—the familiar strings, plucking away. I will hear this song forever, whether that’s a good thing or not. Em and I couldn’t speak. The Brooklyn boy’s vernacular was unexpected, but the emotional wallop of “The Third Man Theme” surprised us more.

The boy in Brooklyn would turn out to be the grandson of the old Austrian zither-meister. When Em and I had recovered sufficiently to meet him, he told us his grandfather never stopped talking about a wedding in New Hampshire, where an old man in diapers was killed by lightning. “My grandfather—it was my mom’s wedding,” I told the zither kid. We met the boy in a coffeehouse of his choice on the Lower East Side; the walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge. The kid brought his zither, though we never said we were auditioning him.

“Son of the Bride,” the zither grandkid said, almost reverentially. “I hear there was orgasms goin’ on—long-lastin’ ones, all weekend,” the zither man’s grandson told us, in hushed tones. “My grandfather neva got ova the orgasm girl.”

That makes two of us, I thought of telling the kid, but not with Em there. Em and I hadn’t delved into the details of my overhearing her orgasms. Knowing Nora, she would have said something to Em—on the subject of Em’s orgasms having a life-changing effect on me—but Em and I had not discussed her orgasms in detail.

I was remembering how the zither man had taken his time, getting up the nerve to tackle Elvis, when Em just started singing in the coffeehouse on the Lower East Side. Well, out came the zither; the grandkid hadn’t hesitated. The old edelweiss man, in his lederhosen and the Tyrolean hat with a feather, had to work up the courage to give us the zither version of “Heartbreak Hotel” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” but the zither-meister’s grandson knew his Elvis cold, the way the kid knew his Harry Lime. They must have known the zither boy in the coffeehouse. Everyone in the place was happy to hear him play; our waiter looked like he’d been waiting for the zither.

There would be no mention of Em as the orgasm girl, as the zither kid referred to the legendary character. Em didn’t identify herself, and I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on her. The zither kid had idolized the orgasm girl; she was the most desirable girlfriend imaginable, in the kid’s estimation. “She neva speaks, and she neva stops comin’—there’s no beatin’ that,” the talented grandchild assured us. We didn’t want to disillusion him, now that Em was speaking. And the zither boy’s segue from “Heartbreak Hotel” to “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” was seamless. Em and I wanted his music at our wedding. Em’s way of demonstrating that she couldn’t possibly have been the orgasm girl was to keep singing.

The kid knew the zither-meister’s liveliest and most lugubrious numbers. He serenaded us, and the other patrons of the coffeehouse, with “The Café Mozart Waltz” and “Farewell to Vienna.” I let Em do the talking for us; she wanted to keep speaking as soon as she stopped singing. I thought of the old Austrian musician, taking Em’s orgasms to his grave—as I would take them to mine. Em just kept talking.

Em told the zither man’s grandchild we were having a civil marriage—“the most secular wedding you can imagine,” was how Em put it. Molly’s Manchester house was small, and there would be no guests to speak of—only Molly and Matthew were invited. Em explained that Matthew was my kid, and Molly had been the maid of honor at my mom’s wedding. The zither grandkid remained calm; the old Austrian must not have talked about my mother and Molly.

I remembered telling the zither-meister about the complications of my mom’s wedding dress—how the maid of honor had to wrestle the dress on and off her. “That’s not for us to think about, Son of the Bride,” the old Austrian had cautioned me. Em and I tried to be discreet with the talented grandson. We did not get into details about the justice of the peace. Elsie was a local Vermont magistrate, and a ski instructor at Bromley—a somewhat younger friend of Molly’s and my mother’s.

“Elsie is not a clergywoman—I doubt she ever goes to church,” was all Em told the zither boy about the justice of the peace.

“Cool,” the grandkid said. I can’t remember his last name, but his first name was Ernst. “Ernie sounds betta in Brooklyn,” he said, so we called him Ernie.

“It may turn out to be an oversight not to tell Ernie more about Elsie—if the kid tries to hit on her, or something,” Em said.

It was a warm summer day. Em and I said our marriage vows in Molly’s driveway, where the opportunity to shoot Zim—to spare him from the Vietnam War—had long ago been lost. I was careful not to say the word around Em, but it was anticlimactic that the old patroller’s driveway was once the site of more memorable drama than what would happen at our wedding. No one would come close to choking to death, or otherwise need saving with a lacrosse stick. No one would be struck and killed by lightning. Manchester, Vermont, would not reverberate with prolonged orgasms. In the kitchen, where Em was helping Molly prepare dinner, the old patroller said she doubted Manchester generally experienced orgasms of an unforgettable kind.

I’d been in the driveway with Matthew and the zither boy. I came into the kitchen without hearing how the enviable orgasm conversation had started. Em may have been joking about her orgasms at my mom’s wedding. Em later confirmed she told Elsie and Molly how the zither-meister’s grandson had heard about the orgasms that went on and on. Elsie and Molly were relieved to learn we’d kept the zither kid in the dark. They agreed it was best if the boy didn’t know Em was the perpetrator of the enviable orgasms—“back in the nonspeaking days,” as the old patroller put it.

My coming into the kitchen caused Elsie to change the subject—only slightly, as it would turn out. Elsie wanted Em and me to know we were the first straight couple she’d married in several months. For the last few years, she’d been busier doing civil unions. Vermont was the first state to introduce civil unions, in the summer of 2000—too late for Em and Nora to do it. “Not that Nora would have wanted to do it,” Em always said.

It made Em sad when Nora put down marriage and monogamy—“heterosexual hang-ups,” Nora called them. It was my impression there were more gay men who said this, though some gay women felt the same way. Not Em—she definitely didn’t feel this way.

“If we’re together, kiddo, no fucking around,” Em told me.

“Got it,” I said.

In Molly’s kitchen, immediately after Em and I were married, I didn’t see where Elsie was going with the civil unions. There’d been a backlash to the legislation; opponents of civil unions put up signs and covered their cars with bumper stickers saying, TAKE BACK VERMONT. The Roman Catholic bishop of Burlington, who’d testified against the civil-unions bill, also sent out mailings. “How Would Jesus Vote?” one of the bishop’s mailings asked.

“Thank God Nora is dead—it would kill her to see this shit going on,” Em had said. She didn’t mean it, but I understood her point. By the end of 2004, more than seven thousand couples had entered into civil unions in Vermont. Civil unions would be a boost to Vermont’s economy; many same-sex couples came to Vermont to get them. In 2009, the success of civil unions encouraged the Vermont State Senate to approve same-sex marriage. Governor Douglas, a Republican, vetoed the legislation, but the Senate and the House overrode the veto.

Em and I knew what Nora would have said, because my cousin never tired of saying it: “You can count on the Catholic Church and the Republicans to be the assholes they were born to be.”

Over the years, Em shortened this. “The assholes they were born to be,” was all Em would say.

As Nora had also said, “Nothing will change.” She meant the Catholic Church and the Republicans, but—according to Em—the Republicans would get worse.

Even on our wedding day, civil unions were Elsie’s chosen conversation. I would not have called Elsie a Nora look-alike, but she was definitely a Nora type—masculine-looking, big and strong. A gay woman in her late forties or early fifties, she’d known Nora and Em for as long as they’d all been around Manchester together. Em was right to assume she didn’t have to tell Ernie more about Elsie. Ernie was a savvy Brooklyn boy; he knew better than to hit on a lesbian who was twice his age and double his size.

Molly’s chicken chili was Matthew’s favorite—hence our wedding dinner. We could hear him singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” in the driveway, for the umpteenth time. The zither kid had won us all over. In the car, en route to Vermont, the Brooklyn boy had entertained Matthew on the zither. They sat in the backseat; Ernie had a wooden lap desk for his instrument. The zither kid knew Matthew’s favorite songs. Matthew loved “Puff, the Magic Dragon”; Em had taught him the words. I’d listened to the two of them, all the way from New York—Em and Matthew singing “Puff,” with Ernie on the zither. Ernie and Matthew were still at it in the driveway.

Three or four hours of “Puff” had depressed me, but not Matthew. At thirteen, he was on the threshold of growing up; Matthew was moving on from make-believe. His time for dragons was running out; Matthew would soon be into more worldly things. Yet I could hear how happy he was, singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” in the driveway—a song about the end of childhood. “Doesn’t Matthew know it’s a sad song?” I asked Em.

“Don’t cry, kiddo. Matthew will still love us—we’ll have fun in other ways,” Em said, hugging me. We could hear Matthew singing:

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys

Painted wings and giants’ rings make way for other toys

“It’ll be okay—you two are going to be fine together,” Elsie said, squeezing my hand. She must have noticed I was crying. I’d been wishing Elsie would stop talking about civil unions, not realizing she was working her way back to the orgasm subject.“Same-sex couples have better orgasms, and more of them—I’m just telling you what I hear,” Elsie said, giving my hand a harder squeeze. “But it’ll be okay—you two are going to be fine together,” the justice of the peace repeated.

“Adam is crying because of the song, Elsie—he’s crying because Matthew is growing up,” Em said, holding my other hand.

“Fuck—I thought we were having an orgasm anxiety moment, or something,” Elsie said, letting go of my hand.

“As for same-sex orgasms, kiddo, we’re the exception that proves the rule,” Em told me.

“Enough of Puff—no more dragon!” we heard Molly yelling in the driveway. Matthew stopped singing; Ernie didn’t touch the zither’s strings. “The chili’s ready,” the old patroller told them.

There was no screened-in porch, no backyard, but there was a breezeway between the house and garage with a picnic table and benches. It was a pleasant place to eat on a summer night, if the mosquitoes weren’t too bad and there were no bats. Matthew loved it when there was a bat; what he loved best was to hear the women shrieking. It was an enjoyable but uneventful wedding among warm-hearted people—provided you were able to overlook the eternal sadness of the dragon in the song. And during our dessert—after Matthew had mangled our wedding cake when he was feeding it to us—a bat swooped into the breezeway. It was wonderful to hear how Matthew laughed; he was so happy, and he was only thirteen. Molly and Em, and even Elsie, shrieked—all for Matthew’s benefit, not really because of the bat. These three women were not inclined to shrieking—not counting Em’s earlier orgasms.

Matthew was spending the night at Molly’s; he was already asleep by the time Ernie and Em and I walked back to the Equinox, the hotel where we were staying in Manchester. It wasn’t very late at night when we left the old patroller’s; Molly and Elsie were just starting to do the dishes. Em and I understood it was too early for the Brooklyn boy to go to bed; we led Ernie to the hotel tavern, leaving him there with his zither. The Equinox was a resort hotel; in the summer, it was popular with golfers. It seemed cruel to abandon the zither kid among men in lime-green pants and pink polo shirts; the women were wearing culottes, or something worse. But Em reminded me that it wasn’t Ernie’s wedding night—the Brooklyn boy could deal with the golfers. We had no doubt the zither kid would be taking requests and playing for the fashion mavens.

“Sinatra songs, or something worse,” Em said, when we were alone in the bridal suite. I took some comfort from the certainty those golfers weren’t a “Puff, the Magic Dragon” crowd. Besides, the tavern was too far away for us to hear the sing-along.

“Don’t take it personally if I tone down the orgasm, kiddo—I don’t want to give myself away to Ernie, who’s in the same hotel,” Em told me later, when we were lying in bed in the dark.

“Got it,” I said. I was happy she was happy.

I was almost asleep when Em rolled closer and took hold of my penis. “Seriously, I stopped having the projectile orgasms when I was with Nora—it’ll kill you to keep having the orgasms you’re supposed to have and get over when you’re a kid,” Em said. I appreciated her sincerity, though I would wonder how Em—in the nonspeaking years—might have pantomimed the projectile part of her early orgasms. (Not to mention the part about the lethality of the orgasms you’re supposed to have and get over when you’re a kid.)

“Got it,” I said. Em and I had been the kind of kids who couldn’t wait to grow up. Our childhood felt like an eternity to us. But why? What was so great about being adults? Loving a child, especially living with one—even if you live with a child only part-time—makes you realize how fleeting childhood is. There’s not enough eternity to childhood. And now that Em and I were older, we were aware how little eternity was left to us. It wasn’t only how fleeting Matthew’s childhood would be. Em’s time and mine would also slip away.

“Carpe diem, kiddo—fuck the future,” Em said, holding me in a seize-the-day kind of way. I hugged her back—the bridal suite silent, no Sinatra, no zither.

On our wedding night, one of us would be singing in our sleep. I was sure it was Em. “It was you, kiddo—I kicked you twice, but you just kept singing,” Em told me in the morning. We could only agree on which couplet we’d heard someone singing—the one about poor Puff, despairing in a cave.

“It was you, kiddo—you’re the one who identifies with the dragon,” Em said; she had a point.

In the car on the way back to New York, I was thinking there would be no honeymoon on the cliff for Em and me. Em and I would have no honeymoon at all. In the car, Em asked Ernie and Matthew not to play or sing “Puff.” She said what happened to Puff made me sad; Em said the song compelled me to sing it, and to cry, in my sleep. I hadn’t heard about the crying till we were in the car.

“It’s a bummer about Puff—Matt and I will think of somethin’ betta than endin’ up alone in a cave,” the Brooklyn boy said. No doubt the zither-meister would have been proud of his grandson.

I could see Matthew’s serious expression in the rearview mirror. He hated it when kids at school called him Matt, but he was having so much fun with Ernie, the zither grandkid could have called him anything. “Don’t be sad, Dad. Puff isn’t real—he’s just a made-up dragon,” Matthew assured me.

Em was watching me closely in the front seat; she saw how I’d gripped the steering wheel harder. I knew Matthew was trying to make me feel better, but it was such a grown-up thing to say. Imagining the years ahead, I saw how swiftly the time would fly.

“You want me to drive?” Em asked me.

“Got it,” I said.

It bears repeating. Like the Western, there is no mystery about what’s noir—what happens is what was always going to happen; it’s what always happens. I’ve said it seemed suitable that my father’s bodyguards and I would share a van from the Hotel Jerome to the Aspen airport. The three of us had lost someone important. Paul Goode would be irreplaceable. Yet I’d underestimated the importance of my half brother, Toby Goode—not only to me, but to Otto and Billy.

I spied on my half brother, reading everything about him and looking at all the photos in Variety and Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Reporter and the footage of him on TV. His career as an emerging writer-director was of more enduring interest than the women he dated. In interviews, I liked how my half brother answered the least imaginative but most repeated question. Given Toby Goode’s movie-star parents and his good looks, why wasn’t he an actor? “I’m first of all a writer, then a director—I’m behind the scene, not in it, by choice,” he answered. I didn’t doubt he owned the writer gene. Toby would have made our father a believer in the writer gene. I hoped for the best for Toby Goode.

I don’t presume to speak for Toby, regarding his seeming reluctance to get married and have children. I don’t speculate on his reasons; I won’t add to the Hollywood gossip on this subject. Usually, the paparazzi don’t bother screenwriters or directors, but they hounded Toby because of the actresses he went out with. Whatever his reasons were for not getting married and having children, I was glad I got to see more of him than I might have, had he been a family man.

I was glad I got glimpses of Otto and Billy, too. I should have known those bodyguards wouldn’t be left out of the picture; their loyalty to Toby was recognized and rewarded. The two bodyguards became Toby Goode’s guardians. From the outset, Otto and Billy felt more than legally responsible for looking after him.

I wasn’t surprised to hear my half brother had no tolerance for what he called “the bodyguard misnomer,” in reference to Otto and Billy. “They’re not my bodyguards; they’re my backup fathers—I love them,” Toby had told the Hollywood press. “Otto and Billy have always loved me and looked after me—when they get old, I’m going to look after them,” my half brother said. Nor was I surprised to hear how much Toby Goode liked going back to Aspen and the Hotel Jerome. “The Jerome is my home away from home,” he said. Our grandmother, Paulina Juárez, had to be happy to see him, and how it must have pleased Clara Swift to see her son again—whether Toby could see her or not, and notwithstanding that she only saw him at the Hotel Jerome. I see my mother and the snowshoer only on a subway, or in the vicinity of Summerhill Station. I’m not complaining—I’m just happy to see them. And when I think of my father, I imagine Paul Goode as reunited with his family.

As Otto and Billy got older, you could have mistaken the former bodyguards for Hollywood royalty. Toby Goode’s backup fathers were chauffeured around L.A. in the backseat of the car; Toby took them everywhere. “I’m just returning the favor,” my half brother had said.

Em and I were on a book tour in 2012 when we heard about Otto. That November morning in Munich was part of Em’s translation trip for The Lesbians’ Children, her novel about a lesbian couple who are very particular about the way they have children. Each woman chooses a different sperm donor. It is a first-person novel, and the daughter (also a lesbian) is telling the story—about her straight brother and their two gay moms. Wir Lesbenkinder was the German title—literally, We Lesbian Children. Given the time difference in Munich, Em and I had gone to bed the night before—not knowing the Obama-Romney election results in the U.S.

Em and I woke up early to the sound of singing. We got out of bed and looked out the window. There were young men and women singing in the street; they looked like German university students. I turned on the TV.

“Don’t worry, kiddo—those students aren’t singing for Romney,” Em said. She was always ahead of me—not just politically, not only because she was older. I was a hindsight man; I only got what was going on after it happened. Em was prescient about Romney twice. Em would say later, “The two guys Obama beat, McCain and Romney, might be the last honorable Republicans who’ll be nominated for president for a while.” Em’s low opinion of Republicans was prescient, too. Once again, it was only with hindsight that I would get it.

When the station had exhausted its election coverage, I saw the news about Otto on the TV. Toby Goode had his arm around the gray-haired Billy, who was sobbing—Billy’s head had fallen on Toby’s shoulder. Notwithstanding the simultaneous translation—the German anchorwoman was speaking—I could hear my half brother’s voice. “I saw Otto in the rearview mirror—how he’d slumped in the seat, the way Billy had to hold him upright, but I saw Otto’s eyes,” Toby tried to say. Then he stopped speaking; he couldn’t say the rest.

The German anchorwoman said everything else. Toby Goode and his backup dads had been at a party; they’d left early. Otto had the heart attack in the backseat—“der Herzanfall,” I heard the German anchorwoman say. The video wasn’t clear. It looked like the paramedics were moving Otto from Toby’s car to the ambulance—“zu spät,” the German anchorwoman said. That was clear—the ambulance was too late.

I went back to the window, where Em was watching the German students. Em could see I was crying; she knew I wasn’t crying for Romney. It was good news that Obama won, but that wasn’t the only news. We just went on watching the happy German students—they were still singing.

That November in Munich, I was almost seventy-one; Em was already seventy-seven. Maybe we went on watching those German students because the inexorable march of time had caught up to Otto; maybe Otto’s mortality made Em and me imagine our own. That November in Munich, when we heard Otto had died in L.A., Toby Goode was thirty-five. Matthew was twenty-one.

There was no time difference in Toronto, where Em and I watched the 2016 U.S. election results on TV. In immigration terms, I’d become a permanent resident of Canada in 2015. I would be eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship in 2018. Em was already a dual citizen of Canada and the United States and I would become one in December 2019. Em and I had voted in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, via absentee ballot, for Hillary Clinton. Matthew was with us in Toronto for that election night; he’d voted for Clinton in New York.

A former girlfriend of Matthew’s watched the election results with us. Matthew had met Carol on the subway when she was a Bishop Strachan student; Em and I agreed that Carol looked cute in her BSS uniform, in that short skirt with her knees showing. “Nice knees—I saw her knees first,” I remembered Em saying to me. I used to wonder, when Matthew and Carol were no longer dating each other, if Matthew missed seeing her in the BSS uniform. “You miss seeing Carol in the BSS uniform, kiddo—I know I do,” Em told me.

Carol was Matthew’s age, twenty-five, when we watched Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump; we’d not seen Carol in a BSS uniform for six or seven years. I was almost seventy-five and Em eighty-one. On that election night, I might have wished that Em was still not speaking, but Em was making up for lost time.

“Trump is a pussy-grabber,” Carol repeated, for the fourth or fifth time. In her BSS uniform, or not, Carol was angry about a self-described pussy-grabber going to the White House.

Em was angry at our fellow Democrats and about Trump’s pussy-grabbing. In 2012, Obama got more votes than Hillary. Who were those Democrats who didn’t show up for Mrs. Clinton? “All of them weren’t crybabies for Bernie,” Em was saying. I was a registered voter in Vermont; I’d always voted for Bernie. We’d all wanted Bernie, but Bernie hadn’t been nominated. The Democrats who wouldn’t vote for Hillary were like the ones who didn’t vote for Humphrey in 1968, Em was saying. “Those Democrats gave us Nixon, these Democrats gave us Trump!” Em was raving.

At two in the morning, in the Trump headquarters in New York, there were yahoos in coats and ties and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN baseball caps. They were chanting for Hillary to be locked up. Em essentially said Trump didn’t win the election. “Our fucking fellow Democrats lost it—we gave it to him!” Em was screaming.

“It’s a good thing you two moved to Canada, so you can get away from shit like this,” Matthew said, giving Em a hug.

“We can’t get away from shit like this, Matthew—there’s no getting away from this shit,” she said, not letting him go.

“I know,” he told her.

“Pussy-grabbers!” Carol was calling the yahoos in baseball caps on TV, where the chanting to lock up Hillary just went on.

I remembered what the snowshoer had written in a notebook. Mr. Barlow was quoting Alexander Hamilton, who called the voting public a “great beast.” The great beast had spoken, I was thinking, while Em and Matthew went on hugging each other, and Carol kept watching the celebration at the pussy-grabber’s headquarters in New York. The way Matthew had to bend over Em when he hugged her made it appear he was whispering in her ear, but he spoke loudly enough for me to hear him, and Matthew was looking at me when he said what Em and I were only thinking to ourselves—we couldn’t have said it.

“I don’t really mean this, you know, but it’s a good thing Molly isn’t around—the pussy-grabbing would piss her off,” Matthew said, bursting into tears. All I could do was hug him and Em; I would have lost it if I’d tried to say anything. The three of us knew Molly had loved Bernie, but the old patroller wouldn’t have been a crybaby about it. Poor Carol. She knew what wrecks we were whenever one of us mentioned Molly. Carol had heard about my mother and the old patroller—“my two grandmas,” Matthew called my mom and Molly. Carol muted the volume on the Trump headquarters in New York, where the yahoos in coats and ties were still chanting for Hillary to be locked up. We could only imagine what Molly might have thought of Trump and his pussy-grabbing supporters.

In the summer of 2019, Em would be back in Barolo, where she’d last been at the Disastri Festival with Nora. We were both invited to the Collisioni Festival—the Collisions Festival was for writers and rock bands, but the damn déjà vu was in the air for Em. One night, for old times’ sake, it was expected we would attend a special showing of the Disastri documentary. “If old age doesn’t kill me, kiddo, the nostalgia could do it,” Em said. That July in Barolo, Em was almost eighty-four; I was seventy-seven. Some of Em’s pantomime fans were at the Disastri screening, where Em had to see and hear Nora as Anthony Quinn, talking about the dead-pudenda dance in Italian.

Matthew, who by then was twenty-eight, had flown with us to Milan; he had his own room where we were staying, at the Albergo dell’Agenzia in Pollenzo. He liked writers and rock music. The writers’ onstage interviews and the book signings were daytime events, the rock concerts at night—all in Barolo. The parties and dinners were in the surrounding area; everywhere we went, we were driven from and back to the Albergo. Our driver, Bella, was a beautiful young woman; she was a good driver. “I saw her first,” I whispered in Em’s ear, just to tease her—Em was usually quicker to say it than I was.

“Matthew saw her first, kiddo,” Em whispered back. We were in the backseat of Bella’s car. Matthew sat up front, in the passenger seat—riding shotgun next to the beautiful Bella.

“What are you two whispering about?” Matthew asked us. “It’s embarrassing—they still behave like newlyweds,” he said to Bella. The three of us loved to hear her laugh; for such a pretty girl, Bella had a hee-haw like a donkey.

“Matthew says he’s too old for Bella,” Em told me later. I couldn’t imagine Matthew as too old for anyone. Had Bella said she was too young for him? I was wondering.

At our book signing after the Disastri screening, a tall and gloomy guy, a pantomime fan, told Em he’d liked her better before she started speaking. “It’s a compliment, kiddo,” Em said, because she saw the way I was looking at the guy. The women wearing the hangman’s nooses—not to mention the Nora look-alikes—were older now. The hangman’s noose was not a welcoming look for an older woman. For the Disastri audience, Em was mostly signing Italian translations of Come Hang Yourself—in Italian, Vieni ad impiccarti—although some of the Nora look-alikes, and just normal-looking readers, were asking Em to sign Noi figli di lesbiche. The literal translation, We Offspring of Lesbians, made Em cringe. The beautiful Bella had translated the title in the car. I’d thought Em was going to barf in the backseat, but the way Matthew laughed made Bella start hee-hawing. Our pretty driver’s hee-haw had won us over.

At our daytime events in Barolo, in Em’s onstage interview and in mine, we were asked if The Lesbians’ Children was autobiographical. “It’s a mixed bag,” Em said.

“The autobiography part isn’t what matters,” I began, before I got bogged down in all the amalgams. The fictional lesbian couple was based on an amalgam of my mom and Molly, but also of Em and Nora. The first-person narrator, the gay daughter, was what Em meant by a mixed bag. The gay daughter was definitely an amalgam of Em and Nora. “I suppose I’m the model for the straight younger brother—his tendency to be the last to get what’s going on sounds like me,” I told the interviewers. This usually got a laugh, at least from Em; even the Nora look-alikes were warming up to me, but not the older women with the nooses. Those women would never like me.

Our next-to-last morning at the Albergo, Em and I distinctly heard a hee-haw from Matthew’s bedroom; he had the room next to ours. Our next-to-last night in Barolo, we were invited to a party at the palace of the marchese of Barolo—the handsome twenty-three-year-old was the heir to the Barolo winery. We liked him.

“The marchese looks gorgeous but doomed,” Em told me.

“Are you thinking of someone else?” I asked her.

“A young JFK Jr.—before the plane crash, kiddo,” Em said.

From the terrace of the palace, we overlooked the town of Barolo—we could see the throng that had gathered at the biggest outdoor stage, and could hear the music from the rock band on the loudspeakers. Matthew was singing along with Thirty Seconds to Mars—the Leto brothers’ band was the one onstage. There was an older Italian woman who was coming on to Matthew, but he just kept singing.

“Those guys aren’t Pink Floyd,” the older Italian woman was saying about the band.

“No, they aren’t,” Matthew said. That was when the waiter with the tray—a huge tray with many bowls of olives—collided with one of the palm trees on the terrace.

It could have been “The Kill” or “This Is War”—I don’t remember which of their songs Thirty Seconds to Mars was playing—when the partygoers started stepping on the olives. When you step on olives with pits, they feel like live beetles. Matthew said later he was sure he was singing along with “A Beautiful Lie” when the older Italian woman started screaming about the beetles. We were walking on beetles, she wanted everyone to know—in English, and in Italian.

Em said later she was saved by the olives underfoot. In truth, the irrational dread of walking on beetles was what rescued Em from a conversation that had gotten her all riled up. Giuseppe, a pushy journalist, was pursuing the same question he’d asked us at our onstage interviews; he hadn’t liked our earlier answers. The politics in our novels could be considered anti-American, Giuseppe had told us. Why wouldn’t we admit we were “political refugees from the U.S.”—wasn’t that why we were living in Canada? Em had reminded Giuseppe that we’d moved to Toronto before Donald Trump was a Republican candidate; we’d begun the immigration process when Obama was president, and we loved Obama.

“It was a personal decision, to go back to where I was born—politics was only part of my decision,” Em had already told Giuseppe. “And he only thinks about politics after everything has happened,” Em had said, pointing at me.

“I would go anywhere she went—I would move to Italy if she moved here,” I’d told Giuseppe, pointing to Em.

“Republicans were bad and getting worse before Trump was their guy—Republicans will be bad after him,” Em pointed out to Giuseppe, but Giuseppe ignored what he didn’t want to hear. Our being dual citizens didn’t interest him. Em told Giuseppe that she and I intended to keep voting in future U.S. elections; we just liked living in Toronto, she said, but Giuseppe wouldn’t listen. Giuseppe wanted to make our story all about the pussy-grabber.

Pantomime originated in Roman mime, Em had told me; this was why she’d first come to Italy, to the Disastri Festival. On the terrace, while Thirty Seconds to Mars was playing, I heard Em saying to Giuseppe: “You are too focused on Trump—you should be more aware of his enablers.” Em put the blame where the blame belonged—on chinless Mitch McConnell and dickless Lindsey Graham, and the craven Senate Republicans—as I’d heard her do a hundred times.

“Marcus Aurelius was the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher—you’re familiar with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, aren’t you?” Em was asking Giuseppe. I knew this was going where it always went—it didn’t matter to Em that Marcus Aurelius had died in AD 180. Giuseppe said nothing. He didn’t know anything about Marcus Aurelius.

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it,” Marcus Aurelius had written, but this would be lost on Giuseppe.

“Chinless Mitch and dickless Lindsey will still have their jobs after Trump is gone,” Em was telling Giuseppe.

“Where is Trump going?” I heard Giuseppe ask. I knew where Em hoped Trump would end up; she had a Shakespearean ending in mind.

“Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion,” Em was saying to Giuseppe. “Trump is just another criminal—he’s going to end up in jail, where he’ll be killed by his fellow inmates,” Em told Giuseppe, who was writing this down. It sounded like what would happen in a novel—or what should happen, I was thinking. “Trump is just another tyrant, more despotic than presidential—think of Shakespeare’s wicked kings,” Em was saying. “Macbeth was born to feel sorry for himself—all he does is whine. ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ and more self-pitying shit,” Em was saying, but Giuseppe had stopped writing this down. “Losers never stop whining—‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’—all Trump will end up doing is whining,” Em went on. Giuseppe was confused about Macbeth; he might have thought Macbeth was like McConnell, one of the craven Republicans.

I was waiting for Richard III—I knew Richard, the murderous coward, would be coming. Em was working herself up to him. “And there’s fucking Richard—‘Now is the winter of our discontent,’ the scumbag begins, but he ends up sniveling,” Em told Giuseppe, who looked lost. Giuseppe was wondering if fucking Richard was like dickless Lindsey, one of the Senate Republicans. “The chickenshit ends up crying—‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ Fucking Richard is begging,” Em was crying. That was when the older Italian woman started screaming about the beetles. Em had more to say as we were leaving the terrace, but only Matthew and I could hear her over the shrieking. Giuseppe was stomping on the olives.

In the car, on our way back to the Albergo, Em kept talking; she was saying something about a plague. Matthew and I were wondering what plague she meant, but Em only meant that Trump would be a bad plague president—even worse than Ronald Reagan—if there ever was another plague.

“Not to change the subject, but Bella knows something about Giuseppe,” Matthew told us.

“My girlfriend went out with him. She calls him Pino, which means ‘pine tree’—she says he has a little penis!” Bella said. She was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, but she wiggled the pinky finger of her right hand. “The littlest one she’s seen, since she saw her baby brother’s—he’s no pine tree!” Bella cried, her pinky still wiggling. Em and I were happy to hear Bella’s story, and her hee-hawing.

In December of that year, 2019, I would obey the notice to appear at the government office for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in Scarborough—this was for my swearing-in ceremony. As an old Yankee from New England, I wondered what my grandmother might have said—to hear me swear to be faithful and bear true allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II. The same day I was sworn in, I took the Oath of Citizenship with eighty-three new immigrants, from thirty-five countries. I’m guessing there were families who’d been granted Protected Persons status by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. There must have been families who’d suffered hardships—they’d endured a more dangerous life than mine, before getting to Canada. A young girl spoke to me; she was only twelve or thirteen, wondering what my story was. “What about you, Mister?” she asked me. “What are you running away from?”

That July night in Barolo, our last night at the Albergo, Em and I were just lying in bed. We weren’t in need of Protected Persons status. We were just feeling old. We weren’t too old—we were just too old to be roadies. I almost said we were too old to be writers, still singing for our supper, but I didn’t.

“There are German students somewhere, kiddo—they’re still singing,” Em said. I hoped she would keep saying it. I almost said the nostalgia could finish us off, but I didn’t. From the bedroom next door, we’d heard Matthew and Bella—they’d been singing Thirty Seconds to Mars songs to each other.

Now even the hee-haws had stopped; everything suddenly seemed more serious. I thought Em was asleep when she rolled closer to me, holding my penis. “You know, kiddo—we’re both lesbians’ children,” Em said.

“I know,” I said. This I didn’t hesitate to say.

That was when Em told me what Molly had told her. “Don’t tell Adam until I’m dead, but Ray and I were just bluffing about shooting Zim—speaking from our hearts isn’t the same as doing it,” Molly said. As the old patroller put it, if she and Ray had been serious about shooting Zim or me, they would have done it with a .22, not a shotgun. At close range, that twenty-gauge would have blown off Zim’s leg—or mine. Not even Little Ray or Molly would have gone that far, except in their hearts.

It made me wonder if Nora and Em would have shot me—if Em really would have pulled the trigger, the way Nora had said. “I keep thinking about that. I hope I wouldn’t have,” Em told me, cuddling closer, not letting go.