The uneasiness her narration had caused me had dissipated, but for a variety of reasons, including my desire to avoid late evenings and excessive consumption of alcohol, I stuck to my resolution to decline invitations to drinks or to dinner at her place. Occasionally, we took advantage of the fine weather and talked in the afternoon on a bench facing the Central Park boat basin. One day in the park, she asked me point-blank, and with only the thinnest smile, whether I was writing a book about her and Thomas. Was that the purpose of our interviews? Wasn’t that what they really were, ever since I first came to dinner at her house? I told her the truth: I was working on something quite different, a novel set in my native Salem, but after I had finished, if I lived long enough and hadn’t lost my marbles, I might want to write a book about the breakup of a marriage. A marriage, I stressed, a fictional character’s marriage, not hers and Thomas’s. Naturally, everything I learned in the course of our talks would be part of my experience and my store of knowledge and observations and could have an impact on the story I’d tell.
