A Door, A Little Ajar: Introduction

You know the way you hear a voice sometimes, muffled, as from another room, and what you hear is
intonation, and you can tell, almost right away, if someone is arguing with someone, or just talking, or making love, or if a child is there, or children. Intonation: the rise and fall of sound and breath. Where the voice starts and stops. And starts again: a pitch higher, now a pitch lower. And sometimes you get up from your chair -- what is going on in there? -- and move towards the wall, and . . . Look, here's a door, a little ajar, and you want to lean into it so you can hear more clearly, so you can overhear. You know how that is: standing at the bus stop, you move kind of casually closer to the two women who are talking: He did
what? Or you're on the bus, and you tilt your head back against the seat and close your eyes, listening to the low voice two seats behind you. Or you're in a room, walking quietly towards a door a little ajar, and you lean towards it and listen:
Oh, it's nothing, you say,
just the kids come home, or, gesticulating wildly:
Listen to this.

Some manuscripts are voices heard through a wall or a halfopen door: at first, intonation, and then you walk closer:
What is she saying?
Who is he talking to? Compelling voices -- it didn't matter, at first, what they were saying -- urgent, odd, brave, human, sincere -- and then it mattered.

What I mean is: they chose me. I found myself sometimes inadvertently rising up from the chair and moving towards the door. Some of these voices, as it turned out, I knew, I recognized; some of them I had never heard before.