[...] Artemisia looked at me then and our eyes met. She stubbed out her cigarette. The heat pulsing through my body, at that moment, I called it admiration. Admiration because Artemisia knew herself so well and I, at twenty-one, did not, had not yet settled on the governing narrative of my life. Had not yet realized the folly of governing narratives. The certainty of Artemisia’s voice, this is what I was responding to. It is what, remembering her story, remembering that summer, knowing that folly, I still, unwilling, respond to now.

Respond to but don’t trust. What I mean is that Artemisia seemed to know herself. Seemed because Artemisia was less master of her fate, captain of her soul, than she was a clever gardener. Sequestered in a domestic plot, she worked with the tools at her disposal. Trapped, yes, but in a hedge maze of her own careful design. How else to interpret her insistence that she had never wanted control? That she had, in her relationships with men, only ever wanted to be a child? How else to interpret her insisting all this to someone she barely knew, to someone who was still a child herself? Though sometimes I think in fact she did know herself. Sometimes I think one of the things she was trying to tell me was that she was unhappy in her marriage.