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ago, she said, but not too long after the last time we saw each other, she married a man named Keller with whom she was not in love. She had not wanted to tell me. (I became dizzy thinking up reasons why.) She continued to write to me as if nothing had happened. Soon she had a son, but—because of her prior omission—could not find a natural way to tell me about him. So she never did, and so on: she & her husband divorced. She didn’t tell me. She was left with his name—she is Charlene Turner Keller now. She never told me. She raised her son alone. She didn’t tell me. “You’d love him,” she said firmly, on the phone. & I believed I would. Kel Keller. An odd, endearing name.
    Then she came to the meat of it, & the reason for her contacting me, & the reason that I am now quite alarmed.
    She said he wasn’t doing very well in school but would be getting ready to apply for college soon. She said he had lots of friends but maybe needed a little bit of guidance. She told me I was the smartest person she’d ever met which meant more to me than I can possibly convey. & she told me that I was the first person she’d thought of. “Reason I called you,” she said, “is this. Do you think you could help him?”
    “What does he especially need help with?” I asked her, & she said college applications. She said he was very unfocused. “He plays baseball,” she said. “He’s got baseball on the brain.”
    “I see,” I said, & looked frantically about my house, & clutched the hem of my shirt in my right hand in dread.
    “We could come to you,” said Charlene. “Whenever it’s best.”
    “I’ll have to look at my schedule,” I said.
    At this point I was sweating. Several thoughts occurred to me simultaneously: among them, what I would tell Charlene when, inevitably, she asked me why I’d stopped teaching.
    But all she said was, “All right. Look at your schedule,” she said, “and then call me back.
    “I’ve told him all about you,” she said.
    When we hung up I could not catch my breath & I could not imagine what I would do. There were a few things to immediately consider:
1. The pleasure that having Charlene & her son in my life would afford me
2. The fact that I have become very used to my little life, & that it is not after all a bad one
3. All the little exaggerations, all the omissions, all the outright lies I’ve told her in the many letters I’ve sent her over the years
4. But at least she too has been less than truthful
5. The appearance of my house, its disrepair
6. My own appearance
7. When I answered the phone it took me a moment but then her voice came through the wires like electricity & I knew who it was without asking
8. When she lost touch many years ago I thought it meant that she had forgotten me. But as it turns out she has not forgotten me & has been thinking about me. She said it to me. O just like that.
    After mulling things over for several hours, I decided upon an initial course of action.
    •
    Writing the letter & confessing some version of the truth was the first step. For while the idea of doing it gave me a great deal of anxiety, the thought of simply having Charlene & her son appear on my doorstep—of throwing the door open & saying Look at me, look at my house—was infinitely worse.
    The second involved readying both of us as much as I possibly could in case Charlene still decided to come. To prove to myself that I was serious, I did something very frightening. I opened the phone book and ran my finger down a list of cleaning services until I found one deplorably named Home-Maid. I called them & asked if they had somebody who could help me.
    Yes, they said. Her name is Yolanda. She’s coming tomorrow.
    & no one has been in this house for seven years.

• • •
    Dear Charlene , I wrote,
    It would give me a great deal of pleasure to invite you both to my home & to meet Kel. I would be happy to provide him with any counsel I might be able to give. I agree with you