When you paint me, I sit in a darkened room. I lean toward a dark desk, quill pen in my hand. I am dressed in a fur-trimmed yellow satin mantle; my hair is beribboned and pulled back from my face. Does this sound familiar? Are you with me on this? “Woman Writing a Letter,” by Vermeer.

Look at me. My concerns—are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. WeVe read our Shakespeare. “There’s no art/To find the mind’s construction in the face.”

And what are my chances of enacting “Young Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window”? I have, as you can see, no wiles or guile, the things I would need to elicit a letter from you in return. I would change this if I could, this curse of earnestness. Am I out of my mind?—putting my cards on the table! A woman should conceal, not reveal. Now my lipstick is chewed off, my lingerie is dingy, my high heels scuffed and broken.

There was reportedly a painting of a woman writing a letter that was found in Vermeer’s studio at his death.

I would like to know—did you see me that day as a woman? Did you think of me just as a fan? The way you have painted women—do you see us that way in the flesh? Do you ask permission to paint someone, or does she offer herself to you? Or do you paint a woman from memory, taking her without her knowing? Are you clinical as a doctor, or do you fall in love a little? Do you start out painting one woman and end up painting another?

This is what happens to me. I start out being myself, and end up being my mother. It isn’t something I try to do. In fact, I try hard not to. That is the crucial difference: I don’t want to end my life, but I can’t keep myself from trying.

The pills that she swallowed were mine. They were pills prescribed to me because I couldn’t sleep. With as much thoughtfulness as she showed me in her life, she left one behind in the vial. Presumably, it would be hard for me to sleep the night we found her.

I have never slept better.

I saw a movie in which two girls share an apartment. One day, one of the girls opens the other’s diary and makes an entry in it as though she is the diary owner. It scared me, that scene, because what—except for dying—could be scarier than merging?

Men are afraid this will happen with women. Often, after an intimate visit, a man will pick a fight. Have you done this yourself? I find you can count on it. And the closer you have been, the more snappish after. To separate himself, to keep from being pulled in. I have learned to head this off. I find an excuse to take myself away. I find this is easier all around. Even if where I take myself is into the next room, to sit and listen to music.