Our days, now that we are somewhat accustomed to each other, are simple. I have my work, the work I have always done here; she reads, lies in the sun, sometimes does some sketching, having seen mine. She is no better, no worse, than I. It amuses both of us to see what bad artists we are, and how much pleasure there is in it. Katie says she always thought there was a correlation of some kind between ability and pleasure, but now she’s considering that there may not be.

At meals and for a little while in the evening, until it starts to get dark and Katie leaves because she doesn’t see well at night to drive, we are together. Sometimes we talk; often we don’t. Usually it is Katie who begins a conversation.

She wants me to tell her how I feel, and doesn’t understand what that means. It is adolescent, to be sure, her probing, but she says it helps her. She doesn’t imagine that it is possible to have a relationship (and she says the word as if it were capitalized,) without analyzing it. An instance: Katie and I are at the lunch table. We are drinking coffee that she has brought from town, and soon I will be going outside again to chop wood.

She is looking at me, wanting to talk. She says, “I’ve been watching you. You have a very interesting body language. Do you know your limbs are always open? Unless you’re carrying something your arms are always down at your sides, your legs, look at the way you sit, your legs apart, you don’t have any defensiveness about you. I bet you can sleep on your back. It’s only people who aren’t afraid who can sleep on their backs. You always look open, you always just sit there, kind of exposed. I think that’s very interesting.”

Perhaps she is right. What do I have to be afraid of? But she says that and instantly my arms want to wrap themselves around my body, my legs want to pull themselves up; I do not sleep on my back, but on my stomach, whatever that means, but I do not tell her that. I have, inside, reacted to what she has said: my body has wanted to protect itself from her watching, her analyzing; my mind acts swiftly, tells the body “no, don’t show it.” So suddenly I’m playing a role, consciously holding myself “open” although I have closed up against her. What is all this about? What sort of corners am I being backed into? It is all quite bewildering. I do not like being watched. I wish she would stop.

And then I am collected again, almost instantly, and I see that it’s her way, not mine, and I go on with my work.

But you see how she is chipping at me?

I remember.