In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.

Two decades later, when I finally told my mother—we were on Long Island, taking a walk on the beach—­she stopped, stunned, and said, “But she was such an ugly woman.” The remark wasn’t as petty as it sounds. If I was aware of it then, it neither repulsed me nor affected my feelings for Naomi. It was just a thing I took for granted, like the color of her hair.

Wiry and ashen, it had the shading but not the shimmer of pigeon feathers. Naomi kept it long, so that it fell past her shoulders. I knew it by touch, for my face was often buried in it. Only later did I wonder if she considered herself unattractive, because she always wore sunglasses, as if to hide her face, large gold frames with blue-tinted prescription lenses. When we were driving together, which was often that year, she’d allow these to slide down her nose and then look at me over their bridge. She might’ve considered this pose winning, but it was more likely to see me better. Her mouth often hung slightly open. Her lower teeth were uneven, and her tongue, which pressed against them, always tasted of coffee.