SPOILER ALERT: This recap contains key plot points from the first two episodes of “Lady In The Lake.” Don’t read it if you don’t want to know.

It’s all about the gaze.

When we look at someone, what do we see? Are we taking in the truth of that person, or is our vision tainted by our own assumptions about what matters about them? If that stranger is not the kind of person we usually consider, why do we claim the authority to write the definitive version of their story?

Both Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel “Lady in the Lake” and the Apple TV+ limited series based on it center on Maddie (Natalie Portman) and Cleo (Baltimore School for the Arts graduate Moses Ingram), living in two very different Baltimores in 1966. They spend only a few seconds in each other’s presence, separated by a fancy department store window, but their perception of each other will forever influence each other’s lives — or, in Cleo’s sake, afterlife.

The Black woman’s body has been found in a fountain in a Baltimore park, and the show, like the book, is narrated posthumously. She instructs, scolds and informs Maddie about Cleo’s story leading up to that gruesome discovery. But Maddie can’t hear her. One wonders if she would have really listened if Cleo were alive. As Cleo explains hauntingly, her own end is a mere tool in Maddie’s new beginning.

You will note that, in this and future recaps, I will mention explicitly the race and, when applicable, religion of various characters. It’s crucial to how they live in segregated 1960s Baltimore and what they make of themselves and of each other. Cleo’s community, for instance, must be aware of the news of the day in whiter places, particularly if they’re afraid someone in their neighborhood might be rousted for it. Meanwhile, a wealthy Pikesville housewife like Maddie can be blissfully unaware of what goes on outside of her bubble — until it serves her to know.

Our story opens at the annual downtown Baltimore Christmas parade. The Durst family, visiting from the county, is trying to shepherd their young daughter Tessie (Bianca Belle) toward the car, explaining that they’re Jewish, Santa isn’t real and her dad will buy her whatever she wants. But, as they make their way through the crowd, seahorse-crazy Tessie spies a fish store and wanders inside, making conversation with a Black guy with an eye injury. A sketchy-looking young white store employee asks Tessie if her parents are around. The kid doesn’t pick up on how sinister this question seems.

Meanwhile, Maddie is making a trip to the market to buy lamb for the holiday dinner that her strict, socially conscious husband, Milton (Brett Gelman), has invited extra people to. Her obvious confidence reminds me of our introduction to fellow hostess with the mostest Midge Maisel in the premiere of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” chatting charmingly while holiday prepping and not realizing life is about to monumentally change. The packaged lamb drips blood on Maddie’s smart yellow suit, so she covers the stain with her purse and runs to a downtown department store, which just happens to have a similar suit in the window.

The thing is that the outfit is currently being worn by Cleo, a live model. Maddie dashes in and finds it’s the only one left in the store, and the store managers fall over themselves to confirm that Maddie “doesn’t mind.” What they don’t say out loud is they’re afraid she’ll mind because Cleo is Black, and there won’t be any time to launder out her possibly offensive Blackness. The prized garment is quickly pulled off of the human dress form and handed to Maddie, meaning Cleo’s usefulness in this situation is over.

She might just be a mannequin to the white ladies, but in Cleo’s own community she’s a hardworking mother who models, bartends, does accounting and volunteers for well-connected political activist Myrtle Summer (Angela Robinson). Cleo’s trying to keep her young son away from the neighborhood numbers game — the illegal lottery — and other criminals, including the powerful Shell Gordon (welcome back to Baltimore, Wood Harris from “The Wire”!), who owns the club where she works.

In Pikesville, news spreads that Tessie has fallen victim to some nefarious situation at the fish store, and everyone in the community is asked to join search parties to find her. Distracted by possible tragedy befalling a young Jewish girl, whose family she knows, Maddie accidentally puts the lamb on the dairy plates, making it no longer kosher. Milton decides they must throw away the meat his wife has worked so hard on, and you get the feeling he’s kind of enjoying it. Maddie thinks so, too — apparently she’s been unhappy about a lot more than lost lamb. She defiantly breaks the platter, packs a very 1960s suitcase and tells Milton she’s leaving. Their son, Seth (Noah Jupe), who seems to really dislike his mother, doesn’t care.

Maddie rents a dingy apartment in a Black section of town called The Bottoms, also known as Sandtown. Even though her new home is in a Black neighborhood, she’s barely aware of anything happening outside of her own misfortune and her growing obsession with finding Tessie. By the end of Episode 1, she and Judith (Mikey Madison), her new friend and the daughter of her landlord, do indeed find the poor Tessie dead, dumped in the water.

Just as we’re reeling in the horror of that gruesome discovery, we start Episode 2 getting to know more about Maddie and, perhaps, the root of her obsessive need to glom onto other people’s stories. We meet her in flashback as an aspiring high school journalist dating the rich son of an artist, an impressive woman who inspires Maddie to chase her newspaper dreams. We also meet her boyfriend’s creepy dad (Mark Feuerstein), who looks at Maddie just a little too closely. If she notices, she doesn’t appear to mind.

Flash-forward to Adult Maddie, now under the gaze of the Baltimore City Police Department, which is suspicious of her reasons for being out at dark lakes late at night, finding dead bodies. Later, at Tessie’s funeral, the girl’s mother desperately begs Maddie to describe her daughter’s last moments. Did Tessie cry out for her? A stricken Maddie has no answers, but she does notice Tessie’s father (David Corenswet, the next big-screen Superman), who happens to have been that long-ago high school boyfriend.

Cleo is having similarly bad luck trying to keep her son out of trouble, deal with her strained marriage to aspiring comedian Slappy and tend to her lifelong friend Dora (Jennifer Mogbock), a talented but drug-addicted singer. She’s also having trouble getting a permanent job with Myrtle, even though she’s being used as a public face of the activist’s efforts in a television interview. Bitter and stung by rejection, Cleo does not handle the interview well.

Things are also not going well for Maddie, who wants to sell her car for cash now that she’s living like a single lady but finds that, in the bad old days before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, she can’t legally do the transaction without Milton. Desperate, she goes back to her apartment and fakes a break-in, presumably for the insurance money. The case is assigned to dashing Black cop Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel). He’s very handsome. Maddie notices. Uh-oh.

The cops soon find more important things to investigate, as the sketchy guy from the fish store who last saw little Tessie has become a suspect and is holding his abusive mother hostage. The police get him to confess and surrender, but it’s clear this isn’t over.

There’s sketchiness happening over in Cleo’s world, where a series of unfortunate events finds her in a car with bad guys from the club who make her drive them to Myrtle’s house. She’s not sure what they’re up to, but she’s sure it’s not good. And she’s right — the men go up to the door and start shooting. She jumps out of the car and starts running. But, in this situation, you probably can’t run far enough.

After all, we’ve established she’s going to wind up in that water. It’s just the sad and inevitable details of how.