There is another omission in the text. I promised Arnold that I would not tell anyone about our kiss, but in fact I did. I told my mother as soon as I got home that night. I was two hours late. She had just gotten off the phone with Arnold’s wife to ask if there had been an end-of-the-year party. His wife had told my mother that she didn’t know, her husband hadn’t come home yet. I was furious with my mother for involving his wife. I told her that I was in love with him, that there was nothing she could say to stop me from seeing him again. She reminded me that he had a wife. I reminded her that she was seeing a married man, ten years younger than she, and (coincidentally) also named Arnold.

That scene isn’t in the memoir. It would have been a compelling scene. My mother and I shared a bed because I had sold mine in order to turn my bedroom into an art studio. My father, whose side of the bed I occupied, had moved out—been thrown out—the year before. What writer wouldn’t employ the irony of sleeping in your absent father’s bed after trying to seduce your father substitute?