Matthew’s fifth birthday—March 2, 1996—was my last night in the East Dorset house. I would miss the sauna and the guest bedrooms. When Grace and I had no more wall space for hanging Matthew’s pictures in the rest of the house, we hung them in the guest bedrooms. Wherever I would live, for the rest of my life, I would never have enough wall space for pictures of Matthew. For his fifth birthday, Molly spent the night in one of the guest bedrooms; Em and I spent the night in another one. Before that house was sold, Molly would spend a few more nights there, but Matthew’s fifth birthday was the last night in that house for Em and me.
Grace and I weren’t the only ones who got to spend time with Matthew alone, telling him how things would be when his mom and I separated and divorced. Matthew got to spend time alone with Em, and with Molly, too. Matthew was very particular about the details. He asked you to repeat yourself; he corrected you if you contradicted yourself. We went over the details again and again. Repetition isn’t comforting only to children.
I felt like a five-year-old when Molly went over the details with me. For as long as Matthew was in preschool in Manchester, he would be welcome to stay with Molly when his mom had to be in New York. Matthew had the most fun with Molly and with Em, and there was no knowing when the East Dorset house would be sold. If Matthew started kindergarten in Manchester that fall, there would always be room for Em and me and Matthew to stay with Molly. “For a few more years, Kid, Matthew won’t mind the communal sleeping arrangements,” the old patroller said.
I said I still didn’t mind the communal sleeping arrangements.
Molly knew I hadn’t seen my mother’s ghost in Aspen, at the Jerome. I didn’t expect my mom to make an appearance in the vicinity of East Sixty-fourth Street, but I admitted to Molly I was disheartened not to have seen Little Ray and the snowshoer in Vermont. “Where are they?” I asked her.
“Where they are isn’t a place, Kid,” the old patroller told me. “I see those two all the time, right here,” she said, touching her heart. I knew Molly wasn’t into ghosts; I didn’t doubt she saw those two in her heart. “The main thing, Kid, is that you’re going to be seeing only half as much of Matthew as you’re used to—if you’re lucky—and Matthew knows he’ll be seeing only half as much of you,” Molly said.
“I know,” I said. Em had warned me about this.
“Matthew can follow the seasons of the year, you know—he gets it, about the passage of time,” Em said.
“Matthew understands the sequence of time, Kid,” was the way the old patroller put it. Matthew understood what happened first, and what came next. He knew the order of events; he could follow stories, from their beginnings to their endings.
“When you’re alone with Matthew, don’t be sad—he knows when you’re sad, like I do,” Em told me. “Don’t let him know you’re sad because you’ll miss him, or that you’re thinking about how it’ll be for him to miss you,” Em said.
“I know,” I said. Naturally, the next time I was alone with Matthew, he asked me why I was sad. “I miss my mom and the snowshoer,” I said. We were lying on the futon in the TV room of the Manchester house, after dinner. I didn’t like to think about Molly’s intention to leave the Manchester house to me; she’d already told me. Matthew and I could hear Molly and Em talking in the kitchen, where they were washing the dishes.
“Grandma and the snowshoer look a lot younger than they were,” Matthew whispered.
“You’ve seen them?” I whispered back.
“Grandma and the snowshoer, in the sauna—naked!” Matthew whispered. “They’re still fooling around—they’re just much younger now,” he assured me. This was what Em meant about Matthew’s following the passage of time—his understanding the sequence of time, as Molly put it—even when time seemed to be working in reverse.
After Matthew fell asleep—in Molly’s big bed, where he loved to sleep, leaving the futon in the TV room for Em and me—I told the old patroller and Em what Matthew had told me. “He’s seen his grandma and the snowshoer—they’re still fooling around in the sauna, but Matthew said they look a lot younger now.” I didn’t say Matthew had seen the ghosts of those two. I knew Molly and Em weren’t ghost people. I knew ghosts could be younger than they were when they died, but what I’d learned about the rules for ghosts was that I knew nothing.
“When I see those two, they’re the age they were when they met—of course they’re still fooling around,” Molly said. “They’re the way they were when they both wore Ray’s clothes, Kid—when your mom and Mr. Barlow were the only ones who knew the snowshoer was meant to be a woman,” the old patroller said.
Em knew I was wondering why my mother hadn’t shown herself to me—why I hadn’t seen her. Nora had told Em how I missed my mom when I was a child—how I’d always wanted to see more of my mother than I did. When I was with my mom, I never doubted her love for me. Even now, I trusted I would see her—when the time was right, as she used to say. Em knew Nora exaggerated, at times. I’d learned what Nora also told Em—that my mother was the love of my life. As far as Nora knew, this was true.
When Em spoke to me, she was trying to make me feel better. “Your mom and the snowshoer know Matthew comes first—you’ll be the next to see those two, kiddo,” Em said, giving me a hug.
I tried to make Em feel better about the review of Bonkers Nathanson’s The Hand of God in the March 15 issue of Kirkus Reviews. It was such an overcautious review, so noncommittal in tone, it came to no conclusions. In the end, what were we to make of Nathanson himself? “He is clearly not at peace with his past, and he states that he is seeking admission to the Catholic Church”—that was putting it mildly, to make what Bonkers was seeking sound as innocent as applying to a school.
“What a limp-dick review!” Em was screaming, while I hugged her. In Em’s opinion, The Hand of God was a proselytizing call for a theocracy. “In a social democracy,” Em said, when she calmed down, “I wonder if you can count on the separation of church and state—I mean, if you can count on it actually working.”
I could count on the separation of church and state to get Em’s attention. I knew Kurt Vonnegut wanted to see America try socialism. But this was when I learned that Emily MacPherson, the author of Come Hang Yourself—the formerly nonspeaking member of Two Dykes, One Who Talks—was thinking about giving a little socialism a try. This was the beginning of my paying attention to Em’s interest in social democracy in Canada. From this moment, I was on the lookout for Em’s seagull imitations. Even the way Em watched the seagulls floating over Manhattan got my attention. I knew her seagull thing hadn’t always meant she was thinking about going back to Canada. A seagull’s seemingly directionless drifting had been Em’s way of pantomiming Ronald Reagan’s laissez-faire approach to AIDS; her seagull thing had been her way of portraying President Reagan as the Pontius Pilate of the AIDS epidemic, but Reagan wasn’t in the White House now. Even when Em was asleep, I watched her for signs she was drifting back to Canada—her arms spread like a seagull’s motionless wings, a faraway look in her eyes when she woke up.
It’s hard to write about how much I missed Matthew. Every time I said goodbye to him was hard—no matter how soon, or how long, it would be before I saw him again. By the fall, the East Dorset house had still not been sold. Matthew was going to kindergarten in Manchester, but Grace and I were in agreement that he would be starting first grade in Manhattan the following fall. We were in agreement about the things that mattered. The part about missing Matthew was the hard part—also for Grace—but Matthew was always excited to see me, and Molly and Em, too.