“This is Adam,” I said back to her, as usual.
“Adam who?” Molly always asked. “Is this Adam the Kid—Ray’s one and only—or is this some other Adam, up to no good?” (She knew it was me, of course.)
“It’s Adam the Kid, Molly,” I told the night groomer.
“I thought so,” she always said. “Ray!” Molly would then shout. “It’s your kid on the phone.”
Then the girl jocks would chime in; I pictured them, after skiing, stripped down to their long johns, or maybe wrapped in towels, after their showers. “Ray has a kid?” someone always cried out.
“How many kids have you got, Ray?” another girl jock yelled.
“I just have my one and only,” I could hear my mom say, before she came to the phone.
“Is this my Adam?” my mother always asked, as if—after the hullabaloo my call had caused—I conceivably could have been some other Adam, up to no good, as Molly never failed to inquire.
“I’ve met someone important,” I told Little Ray, not beating around the bush.
“Quiet, please!” my mom called to the girl jocks, who were still horsing around in the background. “Adam has met someone important, or so my boy says,” I heard my mother whisper, to someone else.
“Uh-oh,” a girl jock whispered back—maybe Molly. I also heard the someone important part repeated a couple of times.
“Make sure your kid has condoms, Ray!” one of the girl jocks shouted.
“Get your boy out of town, Ray—have him come live with us!” another girl jock called out.
“Yeah, right—Adam the Kid will sure as shit be safe with us,” someone (not Molly) said. I couldn’t discern more than that from the girl jocks—only their constant murmuring, frequently interrupted by a laugh as short and explosive as a bark.
“Tell me everything, Adam,” my mom was whispering. “Who have you met, sweetie? Tell me, tell me.”
“A snowshoer!” I blurted out.
“That’s funny—Molly almost ran over Bigfoot Bob just the other night,” my mother told me. “Trail groomers sometimes have an adversarial relationship with snowshoers,” Ray explained, keeping her voice low. Her expertise regarding all matters related or tangential to the ski business couldn’t deter me from telling her what I wanted her to know. I somehow knew the snowshoer was intended for Little Ray and me; he was not just my snowshoer.
“Go on, go on—tell me everything, Adam,” my mom repeated.
I did. My aspirations to be a snowshoer and a writer, which of course became confusing to my mother when I mentioned Great Expectations—failing to be clear that it was a novel.
“Sweetie, wait!” my mom cried. “What kind of great expectations did Mr. Barlow give you?”
When that was sorted out, there were various pitfalls of misunderstanding awaiting us in the area of Mr. Barlow’s extraordinary handsomeness. “Are you saying you find Mr. Barlow very handsome, sweetie?” my mother asked me.
“I’m saying I think Mr. Barlow will strike you as very handsome—good-looking and small,” I emphasized to her.
“Oh, Adam—are you fixing me up with someone?” my mom asked. “Oh, sweetie—that is the sweetest thing!” she cried. It had occurred to me, of course, that I was consciously matchmaking for my mother.
“I think you’ll like him,” was all I said. “I know you’ll think he’s handsome—good-looking and small,” I repeated.
“Adam: promise me Abigail and Martha didn’t put you up to this,” my mom suddenly said.
“I don’t think they like Mr. Barlow!” I told her. “Abigail said he was ‘a little light in his loafers,’ or something; ‘the midget fairy,’ I think Martha called him,” I said.
“Well, that explains why I haven’t heard about Mr. Barlow from those two,” my mom softly said.
“Mr. Barlow said you were ‘definitely pretty’; he called you ‘very pretty’—really, he did,” I told her.
“Mr. Barlow said that about me?” my mother asked.
“I told him you were ‘very pretty,’ and he agreed with me—he’s seen you,” I said. I even told my mom how Mr. Barlow drove his Beetle—with both hands holding tight to the steering wheel and his ass not touching the seat, as if he were doing wall sits and driving at the same time.
“Adam, sweetie—just how small is he?” she asked me. “Surely, Mr. Barlow isn’t smaller than me!” my mother asserted.
I should have known his size would be the clincher. At the time, I didn’t know all the reasons why. “Mr. Barlow is much smaller than you—he’s four feet nine, only fifty-seven inches. He doesn’t look like he has to shave,” I told her.
“My, oh my,” Little Ray said suddenly. There was a shiver in her voice, as if she were cold or had seen a ghost. “Sweetie,” my mom whispered, “Mr. Barlow doesn’t look as young as you do, does he?” She knew by the pause; I was reluctant to tell her. I could hear her teeth chattering. Her voice had given me the shivers.
“Mr. Barlow is small for a thirteen-year-old,” I said, speaking strictly as a thirteen-year-old, “but his hands are bigger than mine.”
“But how young does he look, sweetie?” my mother managed to say. She must have been visibly shaking. There was no more murmuring among the girl jocks, and not a single laugh.
“His handsomeness is the most grown-up thing about him,” I told her. “Mr. Barlow is unusually young-looking, if you know what I mean,” I added. That was all I could further contribute to our conversation, which had turned stone-cold.
“I know what you mean, all right,” my mom said bitterly. “Have you seen any ghosts, Adam?” she suddenly asked me.
“No,” I said. “Have you?”
“I have to go now, sweetie,” my mother whispered. “We’ll deal with the ghosts when the time is right—okay, kiddo?”
13. THE SNOWSHOER KISS
We meet people who change our lives—in my case, only a few. The little snowshoer was the first person I met who changed my life. The snowshoeing was an acceptable substitute for my learning to ski. My mom accepted snowshoeing, but she had her opinions: snowshoers should stay out of the way of skiers; snowshoers weren’t always welcome on ski mountains. From the start, my mother and the snowshoer could talk to each other on this subject—for hours.
It was stupefying to listen to them, but they were animated about where and when—on which ski mountains, at what hours—snowshoeing was allowed. Some ski areas let you snowshoe only when the lifts weren’t running, when no skiers were on the mountain.
As for the adversarial relationship trail groomers sometimes have with snowshoers, Molly wasn’t the only snowcat driver who almost ran over one. Mr. Barlow and my mom were in agreement: no snowshoeing when the snowcats are on the mountain. “Especially not when the night groomers are working,” the snowshoer said. In the ski towns he’d grown up in, he had learned to be politic. He’d talked to the trail groomers, the ski patrollers, and the lift operators; he’d occasionally bought lift tickets. “Some ski places make you take the lift up and down. You snowshoe above the tree line, where you’re more visible,” the little English teacher said.
While my mother believed that beginner or intermediate ski trails were the safest for snowshoers, because the skiers didn’t ski as fast on those trails as they did on the expert runs, she also said that the snowshoers would still get in the way of skiers—even if the snowshoers stayed to the side of the piste. “Make the snowshoers stay off-piste, on ungroomed trails—where the climbers and hikers and some telemarkers go,” my mom said.