What did she get from me? A lesson in chopsticks. We had wandered into a rather overdecorated, underlit Chinese restaurant on Lexington Avenue, with gold wallpaper and royal-blue banquettes. Chopsticks were provided in little paper sheaths, but Jane reached for the knife and fork also set beside the plates. I asked her, “Your other dates let you get away with that?”

She blushed and bristled defensively. “My other dates, as you call them, don’t take me to Chinese restaurants that often.”

I tried not to be curious about her life in the long stretches when I wasn’t there; it would have been painful for me to know too much, and painful for her to confess that there wasn’t much to know. “Not classy enough, I suppose,” I accused her, defensive in turn. Back in Buffalo, a Chinese meal out was a manageable treat for the kids or an easy way to see the boring couples Carole liked. I told Jane in a gentler voice, “Chinese food and silver shouldn’t mix. There’s no big trick to it.” I unwrapped her chopsticks and took her long, freckled, loose-jointed hand in mine. She seemed faintly frightened. I saw myself for a second in the mirror of her female mind: I was a man, frightening, with big hands that could inflict a bruising blow. Of the chopsticks, I explained, “You rest one of them here, against that finger, so the thumb holds it in place, and hold the other between these two, like a pencil. Feel the mobility? With this pinching motion you can pick up anything, from a single grain of rice to a chunk of sweet-and-sour pork.”

“I can do it!” she announced, after a while. “This is wonderful! Oops. Damn.”

“Rice is the hardest. Sort of put them together. Chinese peasants use them like a shovel.”

“Over thirty,” she said, “and I never thought I could manage the damn things. I’d watch other people twiddling away, and they seemed so debonair. Thank you, Stan.”

I accepted her thanks proudly. I doubt whether Jeffrey really got the hang of common denominators, but I want to think that to the day she dies Jane can handle chopsticks because of me.