I live on a dead-end road, an ideal location for walking as there is not much traffic. When I walk, I wave at the cars that pass, assuming that they are neighbors and that maybe, some day, we will meet. Because my house is set one-quarter of a mile back into the woods, I rarely see, much less meet, my neighbors. And now I have met quite a few, usually because of Rolf, my Standard Poodle. For example, one day when I was walking without Rolf, a man in a pickup truck stopped to ask me where my dog was. I stared at him blankly — I had no idea who he was. I told him that Rolf was at work (he goes to work with my husband, so I like to tell people that Rolf works). After that day, every time I see him he stops to say hello. He no longer is an unknown man in a pickup truck, but a neighbor.

In addition to my neighbor in the pick-up truck, I have met quite a variety of people on my street: some stop their cars to chat; some, like me, are walking; some are outside of their homes when I come by. Many are dog owners. One neighbor whose conversations I especially enjoy used to drive by in a Subaru with her old dog hanging out of the window, barking nonstop. The dog made Rolf frantic; he never had heard a thirty-mile-an-hour bark before. She stopped once or twice to talk about our dogs and, when her dog died, she stopped for a longer conversation to tell me of her loss. Last fall, before the election, we shared our first conversation that was not dog-related. A Republican, she was voting for Obama, her first Democratic vote in fifty years. She listed many reasons why she was abandoning the Republican Party, and, when we parted, I felt that I finally knew her a little better. She had become more than a former dog owner driving a Subaru; she had an identity.

But I haven't gotten to Susan. My neighbor down the street is a friendly woman, perhaps a little younger than me, who has an elderly Jack Russell terrier. Rolf enjoys peeing on the daylilies in front of her house, an act that leads Bodie, the Jack Russell, to bark hysterically through the window. Years ago this neighbor and I introduced ourselves and our dogs to one another. She knows Rolf's name, and I know Bodie's name. I can't remember her name. And she calls me Susan.

At first I didn't realize that she was calling me by the wrong name. Maybe I thought she was referring to her sister, who often is with her. I remember turning away after a short chat, raising my hand to wave goodbye, when she called, "Goodbye, Susan!" I looked back, but she already had entered her house. Then I didn't see her for a while, and when I next saw her and she called me Susan, I didn't have the energy to contradict her. Last summer I debated — actually, anguished — over whether I should tell her now, after several years of her thinking of me as Susan, that she has been mistaken, that I am Lynne, not Susan. I became so uncomfortable that I tried to avoid walking by her house, or I chose times when I knew it was unlikely for her to be outside. I became obsessed with "Susan."

But then I began to wonder. Maybe on some level I am Susan. Why not? "Lynne" doesn't even sound like "Susan." There must be some cosmic reason why she calls me Susan. I wondered what my "Susan-like" characteristics were. I thought of all of the Susans I have known to consider what we have in common. Or what we appear to have in common, since there are depths to these women that I can't imagine. This neighbor only knows that I have a black Standard Poodle named Rolf and that I walk on her road. She doesn't know whether I prefer chocolate or toffee, whether I am a teacher or an accountant, whom I voted for (or if I voted at all) in the last Presidential election. But she knows that I am Susan. I feel that if I can decipher the mystery of Susan, then I will know something about myself, something beyond the mundane day-to-day facts, something deep and subtle, understood by a few who are outside of me but not grasped by the inside me.

And, of course, I wonder about identity and the creation of identity. If my parents had named me Susan rather than Lynne, would I be different? What rhymes would the kids in grade school have come up with to insult me? What on earth rhymes with "Susan"? Do people treat Susans differently from Lynnes? Does "Susan" carry with it more weight or respect than "Lynne"? In Mary Gordon's novel Pearl, one of the characters claims that she cannot take seriously a woman named "Lynne." Would this character take "Susan" seriously? How much power does a name have in the creation of others' perceptions of us, of our self-perception?

Now when I walk past this neighbor's house, I become Susan, and I am, somehow, different. I inhabit a new body, a new mind. I feel less weighed down by the petty insecurities that I generally carry with me. Is this because Susan is new to me, so her depths have not yet been exposed? Or is it because Susan is an act, and, since I am not really Susan but pretending not to be Lynne, I am not burdened by Susan's issues? Once I turn and head back toward my own house, Lynne returns to inhabit my body, and with her all that is annoying and all that is good. Lynne, however, is still herself mysterious, full of surprises, as are all humans.

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