When in the early spring you eventually crawl out to meet and exchange a couple of polite words with your numerous neighbors, whom you have been observing, involuntarily and absentmindedly, from your picture window overlooking the street and extending your desk situated on the second floor of a Cambridge triple-decker, their already familiar physiognomies, and their already figured out—conjured but fixed—social rôles, will undergo such a rapid transformation, especially with respect to their eyes and their mouths, as well as the sounds of their voices, that every subsequent sighting of these people will appear fresh, unexpected, and somewhat disturbing, as though your innocent neighbors have maliciously multiplied, split into doubles, changed unnecessarily, unpredictably, and in concert. The two images, the old one and that acquired only recently, will refuse to merge, congeal, and reach a peaceful equilibrium of yesterday. That will take weeks, months. That will perhaps take another long winter. Elliot, Leslie, Peter, Ann, and Beth will have become familiar by the time snow descends upon the neighborhood once again, just like the maple trees lining your street and giving it its innocuous name.

To Beth LaDow

Addendum (November 12, 1995)

Beth’s room was across a narrow alley from our bedroom. I saw her naked a few times, and on occasion I made sure she would hear Elise’s orgasms in the heat of a summer night, but I talked to her only twice. The second time we met, we took a long walk. I remember sitting with Beth on the bank of the Charles one sunny morning and trying to persuade her that my marriage with Elise would be no impediment for our relationship. Her curiosity was tickled by my urbane nonchalance, but she was also apprehensive of my arrangement with Elise. She was from the Mid West. I did not pursue her, mainly because of her very pale eyes, which startled me the first time I talked to her: from close up she looked very like a sheep.