And what if you don’t like the person you are? Where do you find the parts to make yourself into some other kind of person? Can it be something you read in a book, a gesture you see on the street? Half-smile of a teacher, the walk of a girl on the beach.

I would like to go to a matinee with you. Any afternoon, any theatre, I would not care what we saw. I would like to sit next to you in the dark in a public place and lean over from time to time to better hear your caustic asides.

I want to ask the questions I failed to ask that day when all I could think was: he is sitting across the table from me, and he has ordered fruit salad! I was like the woman who met Anaïs Nin and walked with her in Central Park, and couldn’t help exclaiming that Anaïs Nin was eating a hot dog. The woman’s incredulity bothered Anaïs Nin, just as I am sure my behavior bothered you. But surely you are used to it.

I want to know everything about you. So I tell you everything about myself.

A psychic once told me that I was too honest. It was the first thing he said to me before he had turned over palm or card. He was not urging duplicity; I think he meant for me to be what a certain kind of woman calls “clever.”

The psychic was right, yet I am such a fraud:

“Are your parents still alive?”

“My father lives out West.”

“And your mother?”

“My mother is dead.”

“Of what?”

“She did it herself,” I said, and let you think that that was hard on a girl, a tragedy.

Is this where I exhibited a ruinous lapse of judgment? Asking if you had known my mother when you were both in art school? You might have known each other. Yet is this an instance where I might instead have been clever, and not pointed out how much older than me you are? Worse, did you think I was suggesting that you knew my mother well? That maybe she posed for you?

The truth is, it was hard on me. Not her death—her life. The only surprise when she killed herself was that she had killed herself. I said to my father, “I always thought if she killed anyone, the one she killed would be me.” And my father said, “I know.”

My only job was not to get killed. At home, at school, at the movies, at a party, riding a horse, rowing a boat, skating on ice, raking the gravel drive, getting the mail, swimming in a lake, hiking in the mountains, on a bike, in a tent, in a church, in a car, eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, on Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, awake and asleep, I had no other job.

Two slips of the tongue: I said to Chatty, “In all important ways, I believe I am her evil,” instead of “equal.” And when Chatty voiced an opinion, I added, “I feel the shame.”