“You’re as pretty as my husband said you were,” my mother told Eric when she met him, giving the much younger man a hug. And we were all at Pete’s Tavern, that old place in Gramercy Park, when we ran into Charlie, who was rubbing someone else’s shoulders at the bar. “I’ve heard all about you, Charlie, and I’m jealous,” my mom told the other English teacher in Mr. Barlow’s life. “No one ever rubs my shoulders when I’m cooking,” Little Ray said to Charlie.

“You don’t ever cook, Ray—Elliot and I do all the cooking,” Molly reminded her, but my mother was laughing. She was just having fun; everyone was laughing.

Once, when we ran into Dave, he was with a woman. Was she a patient or a date? Did Dr. Dave have a girlfriend? No one knew; no one seemed to care. “This must be your mom—she looks just like you, only she’s prettier,” Dave said to me.

“This is my wife, Ray—this is Dave,” the snowshoer said, beaming.

“I’m so glad to meet you. It must not be the ski season,” Dave told my mother.

“I never dated a doctor,” Ray began, taking hold of the doctor’s hands. She had a strong grip, from all the ski-poling. “There’s stuff about me I could only say to a specialist,” Little Ray whispered to Dr. Dave. He was charmed by her.

All of them made me feel welcome and at home with them, all the time, although I was the outsider among them—the straight guy with a questionable history of unfriendly former girlfriends.

Once in a while, I ran into Rose on the academy campus. I didn’t ask her about her muscle spasms. Our friendship wouldn’t recover from her headfirst, self-exposing descent of the attic stairs.

“There are worse things than limping,” Rose told me.

It was Maud who warned me my grandmother was “losing her marbles.” Maud ran into Nana in downtown Exeter, where Nana said she’d parked her car but couldn’t find it. Maud knew we didn’t let my grandmother drive—not after she’d driven into the garage and kept on driving, through the back wall. Maud knew Dottie drove Nana everywhere.

My grandmother mistook Maud for poor Rose. “Your limp is much better, dear—if I didn’t know you had a limp, I would scarcely have noticed it,” Nana told Maud.

“I’m Maud, Mrs. Brewster. I broke my arm, I had a cast for a while,” Maud said to her. “Rose had a wicked limp, but her limp is all gone now.”

“How are your muscle spasms, dear?” my grandmother asked her. Then Dottie showed up. “What on earth are you doing here, Dottie?” Nana asked her housekeeper.

“I was lookin’ for you!” Dottie told her.

“As for exposing yourself on the stairs, dear,” my grandmother was saying earnestly to Maud, “the best thing you can do is not think about it.” Maud knew what and how much I’d seen of Rose, as poor Rose was descending the attic stairs. Maud had told me she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maud believed Rose’s sex life was ruined by her unthinkable exposure.