I feel like we’re just flying apart! All my friends and relatives just flying off from me like the...expanding universe or something!

Several women stood next to a mailbox, talking. Maggie turned her head to watch them. She had a left-out, covetous feeling, as if they were people she knew.

But Maggie remembered, and sometimes, feeling the glassy sheet of Ira’s disapproval, she grew numbly, wearily certain that there was no such thing on this earth as real change. You could change husbands, but not the situation. You could change who, but not what.

She glanced around and saw a semicircle of graying men and women, and there was something so worn down about them, so benign and unassuming, that she felt at that moment they were as close to her as family.

She seemed to believe it was a sort of practice life, something she could...