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that if Nancy ever found out about
     Ernest and me, I would be banished forever from Florizona Avenue, and have to quit my job—and yet I attributed those risks
     entirely to the narrowness of other people, and figured that so long as Ernest and I played our cards right, and no one found
     us out, there would be nothing to worry about. After all, he had as little wish for Nancy to discover our affair as I did.
     He was not one of those men who uses his mistresses to get back at his wife. He didn’t want to leave her for me, and I didn’t
     want to marry him. I adored them both. And so we proceeded fairly harmoniously, although I would be dishonest if I did not
     admit to sometimes experiencing a sense of emptiness in the aftermath of his departures, something akin to what one feels
     when one arrives home alone after a Thanksgiving dinner. For there was one thing that I would have liked (not that I ever could have had it), and that was to have a bed of my own at that house,
     if not Daphne’ then some other bed, specifically designated for me. Not a bed I would sleep in every night, and certainly
     not Nancy’ half of the huge bed with the slub linen spread: I still treasured my independence. Yet was it too much to hope
     that someday my role within the family might be legitimized?
    Marriage remains, for me, a mysterious institution. For instance, Ernest and Nancy often argued in my presence. If our practice
     session was going late, and he needed my help with a chapter from his book, he would feel no compunction about striding into
     the living room and shouting, “When the hell are you two going to be done?” To which Nancy—not missing a measure—would reply,
     “Hold your horses,” and continue playing. Ernest would storm out again, only to reappear a few minutes later to repeat his
     demand. She yelled, he left, he returned. With almost blithe disinterest they threatened and rebuffed each other, their voices
     rising, the level of tension escalating—and then we would finish, and it would be as if nothing had happened. Nancy would
     announce gaily that she was going to Safeway; Ernest and I would head up to his office. “Like water off a duck’ back,” as
     my mother used to say, which made me wonder if this was the secret of marriage: to develop—no, not a thick skin; rather, a
     down at once fragile and light, by means of which you could shake off, in an instant, any unpleasantness and go about your
     business. Yet it would protect you, too. Marriage protected. I wished I could have known that feeling of safety, a safety
     so deep it meant you could say anything, and never have to calculate all that you stood to lose.
    Just before Thanksgiving of 1968, Nancy received a letter from Anne Armstrong in which her friend announced that she had left
     her husband, Clifford, and was living in a rented apartment with a novelist called Jonah Boyd—recently hired as writer-in-residence
     at Bradford. Nancy took the news hard, and would not say why. Perhaps the casual ease with which Anne had abandoned her marriage
     made her wonder if staying with Ernest all these years had been a mistake; or perhaps the discovery that Anne was having an
     affair ignited some fear in her that Ernest might be doing the same thing. All I know for certain is that the Saturday Nancy
     got the letter, for the first and only time in all the years I knew her, she could not play. Her fingers shook so badly she
     could barely form them into a chord. At last, pleading a headache, she asked if I’d mind forgoing our weekly session this
     one time.
    The full story came out over the course of the next several Saturdays—details, background, and Nancy’ mess of a reaction,
     as Anne kept her abreast of developments through letters and phone calls, and Nancy passed the news on to me. She had no one
     else in whom she could confide. That Anne’ life, since the Wrights’ departure from Bradford, had taken such an eccentric if
     not downright