Almost from the moment we landed, Artemisia exhaled smoke, there were signs. Virgilio was not as comfortable in English as I was, and so, when we landed, I was the one who called the woman who had rented me an apartment, I was the one who gave the cab driver directions. I was the one who spoke to Virgilio’s department head. My landlady lived in the apartment below the one she had rented to me. She had offered to let me use her phone for the first few days. Just until I was able to get my own line set up. Virgilio went downstairs to call his department head. A moment later, I heard him call my name. The necessary English words were escaping him. He needed my help. Well, it had been a long flight. Naturally he was exhausted. So I came downstairs and he gave me the phone. Artemisia exhaled smoke. Me helping him. I could tell right away that he was finding the experience unpleasant. Whereas he had found the inverse very pleasant. The experience of being the helper, of helping me. At some point the landlady asked if we were father and daughter. Artemisia smiled. Possibly this, too, disconcerted him. And then I began to notice little comments about Columbia. What a shame that it wasn’t at the level of Harvard, of Princeton, of Yale. Throwaway comments, but persistent. How it was too bad I hadn’t gotten into one of the first-tier Ivies. I don’t know if he thought he was being subtle. Perhaps he did, if only because I said nothing. I wished to save him the embarrassment. But so perhaps thinking himself subtle, he began to go further. He began to speak about the undergraduates he was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. How exceptional they were. He told me that of course they’d all gotten into Yale and Harvard and Princeton. But they’d chosen to go to a smaller school. A liberal arts college. At a liberal arts college, he said, they knew they would receive the full attention of their instructors. And those instructors would of course be full professors. Not underqualified graduate students whose time was divided between research and teaching and classes of their own. He said this all very casually. Or he must have thought he was being very casual. Certainly he could not have thought his jealousy was as obvious to me as it was. His sense of inadequacy. Because still I remained silent. As I said, I did not wish to embarrass him. He had been, Artemisia exhaled smoke once more, ground her cigarette into the base of the glass ashtray. As I said, he had been a kind of father to me. To see him diminished in this way. She paused a moment, shrugged, and I thought of her breasts moving under her shift, perking and then flattening, she was not, I could tell, wearing a bra, for now a light breeze was blowing and I could see her nipples, hard beneath the loose linen. It was difficult, Artemisia said. I felt implicated. I felt myself diminished. One searches, in one’s choice of partner, for a kind of reflection. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Often unconsciously. And often not an honest reflection. One searches for a better-than reflection. An as-I-wish-I-were reflection. This is, Artemisia took a sip of wine, knit her eyebrows together, pitiable is perhaps the word. Meschino, my father would say. Small. But it is also human. Virgilio had reflected well on me. He had shown me to be intelligent, worldly, mature. He had shown me to be older than my years, which is often what young people, what young women in particular, wish for. Perhaps you, Artemisia said, you, too, have wished for this. And now I thought of my former professor. I thought of how the games we had played, me taking dictation from him while—how they had emphasized not my maturity but my inferiority. But in New York, Artemisia continued, he shrunk. And as he shrunk, so did I. At first I remained silent. I was saying nothing. I was ashamed. But then, Artemisia shrugged, something changed. I became a little colder. A little less deferential. A little bolder. I began to treat him a bit like a child. Knowing what someone else does not: this defines the relationship between the adult and the child. The adult knows something that the child does not. And knowing how foolishly he was behaving I began to protect him. From the world, but also from himself. His accent was difficult to understand, so at restaurants, I ordered for him. I helped him set up a bank account. We went shopping together and I picked out his clothes. What I mean to say is that in public it was clear, Artemisia smiled, who it was who wore the pants. She shook her head. So, okay, at first I behaved this way only with Virgilio. With him I was aloof and assertive, and with others humble, shy. But then, again, something changed. It became natural to act in this way at all times, with all people. And I found that, acting in this way, I attracted many men. Many American men. It’s a cliché. That the woman who seems not interested, who plays what is called hard to get, that she is attractive to men. Any women’s magazine will tell you this. Any romantic comedy. But clichés become clichés because they are rooted in truth. At least this has been my experience. Of course not every man will find himself interested in a woman he suspects does not respect him. But many will. Many of the men I encountered did. I did not tell Virgilio about the men who had made their interest clear. Mostly they were other graduate students. But there were professors as well. A few bold undergraduates. But his jealousy. She shook her head again. Jealousy does not need confirmation to flourish.
What followed, Artemisia sighed, from the psychological perspective, it was a natural progression. She topped off her glass, refilled mine. He began to question me about my whereabouts. To demand that I tell him with whom I spent my evenings and what we discussed and for how long. Now, with cellular telephones, it is easier to demand this kind of accounting. Then, the imposition was more obvious. At that time, I did not even have an answering machine. Just a rotary telephone. And this telephone was always ringing. Often it was ringing when I opened the door to my apartment. And if I did not pick it up it would begin ringing again, ten minutes later. Or five, or three. Sometimes only thirty seconds would pass between the last ring of one call and the first ring of the next. Not always Virgilio. But almost always. During the day, too. When he knew I would be in class. Or at the library. I think he was hoping to catch me in a lie. I tried taking the receiver off the hook, but a couple hours of silence and I would begin to worry that someone else might be trying to contact me, a professor or perhaps even my parents, and I would replace the receiver, and often, not always but often, I would forget then to remove it before leaving for campus in the morning. The phone rang so often that my landlady asked me to speak to Virgilio. And when that didn’t work she spoke to him herself. And when that didn’t work—Artemisia shrugged. She told me that she would not break my lease but that she could not allow me to renew it for the following year. She said she was sorry but the ringing was giving her headaches. She dreamed only of telephones. Still, Virgilio would not stop calling. Only on weekends, when Virgilio and I were together, was the phone silent.
Finally, Artemisia sighed, one afternoon, I found him waiting for me outside my door. This was a weekday. The building was two stories. The front door opened onto a small landing and on the left side of that landing a hallway led to the door of the landlady’s apartment. On the right side were the stairs. Artemisia’s hands were moving as she spoke, sketching. He must have knocked on the front door and my landlady must have heard and let him in because that afternoon I found him sitting on the second floor. His head was bowed and his back was against the door to my apartment. I remember my cheeks were flushed. It was late March but still cold. I think my landlady let Virgilio in out of pity. She would not have wanted him to wait outside. Certainly that was why I let him in. By then it was clear to me that our relationship could not continue. I had not yet decided whether that meant it had to end or if its—its terms, the terms under which we were operating, if they might still be transformed. We had not had sex in months. Not since our first weeks in New York. By choice. By my choice. It wasn’t that he was controlling—that he was trying to be controlling. In the end this is not what bothered me. It was that his desire to control, she paused. This desire, it stemmed not from his power but from its lack. It was his desperation I despised.
I slipped a cigarette out of Artemisia’s pack and she handed me her lighter, poured more wine into both of our glasses. I let him in, she said. She paused. She took another cigarette
from her pack, tapped one end on the table, rotated the cigarette, tapped it again. It happened quickly, she said. I opened the door and set down my bag and as soon as I straightened my back his hands were on my shoulders. He turned my body so that I was facing him and then he pushed me against the wall. One hand was on my shoulder and one hand was on my neck. He pushed the door closed with one foot. This all happened in a moment. I felt his hands on me, I gasped, and by the time I’d finished inhaling, by the time I was beginning to exhale, Artemisia shrugged. The door was closed. She lit her cigarette. Normally, this is where one would say, You can imagine the rest, no? But what I suspect you would not be able to imagine is this: I felt scared only for that moment. The moment of the gasp. Then the door was closed and I was exhaling and what I felt was relief. Relief and also excitement. Because the power dynamic that I was familiar with had been reestablished. As I said, in Buenos Aires, he had been a kind of father figure. But then in New York, I had played the role of the adult. I had protected Virgilio as a mother protects her child. I was the one with hidden knowledge. With understanding. With power. But the introduction of violence, Artemisia exhaled. The effect was regressive. I was again the child.
He left immediately after. I think he was ashamed of what he had done. Virgilio was by nature a gentle man. I imagine that his actions confused him. I waited until I could be sure that he was back in Bronxville. And then I called him. I said it would be best if we did not see one another again. He did not argue. He said very little during our conversation. As far as I know, he left New York at the end of that semester and returned to Buenos Aires. The two of us never spoke again. Artemisia smiled. Actually, we never divorced. I met Pablo soon after. He was a professor. One of my friends was in one of his classes. We fell in love and got married and I became pregnant with Camila. All of this happened very quickly. When we applied for the marriage license, I said I had never been married.
Artemisia paused. The relationship I entered into with Pablo, she said, the marriage we have. It is very like the early stages of my relationship with Virgilio. Only I was secure from the beginning in the knowledge that it would not change. Pablo had lived in the States longer than I had. His reputation here was already made, was growing. I could build a career of my own without fear of overshadowing him. You know, we are both now well established, and still, Pablo is better established than I. I do not mean to imply, Artemisia said, that my marriage is perfect. Pablo has had his girls. And I have had mine, my girls and my boys and my men. We do not deny each other these, she moved her hand, passing pleasures. Only that it works, my cheeks were flushing, for me. For me it works perfectly. But this is not what I wanted to say. For a moment she held my gaze, exhaled smoke. What I wanted to say, she said. The so-called rape fantasy. Most psychologists, Artemisia said, theorize the commonality of the so-called rape fantasy among heterosexual women as linked to shame. Heterosexual women and also non-heterosexual women, when indulging in heterosexual fantasies. Women are raised to believe that they should not desire sex. More explicitly in earlier generations, yes, but the message remains, implicit, today. The difference between slut, for example, and player. The word player, in her accent. Not that she mispronounced it, the mere fact of the word, in her mouth, also because she was an adult. The sound instantly and unavoidably wrong. Briefly I felt, as I had not before, embarrassed for her. The connotations of each word, she said, and how each is applied, across genders. All this you must know. Artemisia waved her hand, trailing smoke. But okay, the rape fantasy. At least theoretically, it allows the woman to have the sex that she desires without also having to admit to the shame of that desire. Force becomes a method of circumvention. A shortcut. But, and here she leaned in, this was not the case with me and Virgilio. It was not because I was released from shame that I found relief in his violence. It was because I was released from control. Artemisia paused and exhaled smoke and took a sip of wine. Of course it was crucial that I did not fear Virgilio. I did not believe he would truly hurt me. And this made it possible to appreciate the, she smiled, initiative he took. To take pleasure in it. I have, she exhaled smoke, never wanted control in my interpersonal relationships. I have only wanted to be cared for. This is what I realized, on the afternoon that Virgilio appeared outside my apartment. Romantically, sexually, economically, I have always wanted to give myself over. And I could no longer give myself over to Virgilio. Not because he was violent. No, precisely the opposite. The outbreak of violence was a sign. Artemisia took a drag of her cigarette, exhaled. It was a sign he was losing control. And violence was the only way he could think to reassert it. A temporary solution. In showing me his strength, he was also showing me his weakness. His embarrassment, afterward, this confirmed it. It was not that I was scared of him. It was that I was not scared enough. 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.
Artemisia was, at the time of our conversation, no older than forty-four. In other words, she was young and yet, because of my age, she seemed to me old, even quote-unquote wise, and therefore untouchable, metaphorically but also literally, and so even as I was coveting her sleeveless shifts, coveting the stern knot into which she’d tied her long hair, streaked with gray, the few frizzed locks that had escaped the grip of her elastic, it did not then occur to me that I might also be coveting the body beneath and below. Now I know that I am never more covetous than when someone tells me a story, a secret, the sharing of a confidence stoking in me the hunger for intimacy of a more proximate kind. I’m trying to say that Artemisia’s mouth was moving. That if I had been capable, in that moment, of true honesty, I would have said that what I most wanted to do was stop it with my own. I’m trying also to say that this desire need not be, was not in this case, sexual. Not in the way that the term is commonly understood. Artemisia had, in telling me her story, given me something of herself. My desire to kiss her was a desire to thank her, was a desire to give her something of myself, was a desire to become her, the imagined gesture equal parts grateful, generous, acquisitive.
Artemisia lit one more cigarette and smoked it down. She drank the last of her glass of wine. The bottle she’d brought to the table was empty. Well, she said, I should go to bed. Good night. She stood and then bent, placed one hand on my shoulder as if about to confide something further to me, something of so delicate a nature it would need to be whispered, her mouth moving against the skin of my ear. Perhaps I imagined, in the next moment, her head bowing as if to meet mine, the dip of her torso. Because then she merely pursed her lips and gave my shoulder a squeeze and, gathering her cigarettes, her glass, the empty bottle, reentered the suite’s living room and went, I assume, to her bedroom, the bedroom she shared with Pablo. I say shoulder but in fact she placed her hand in the curve where shoulder becomes neck. Let it, though perhaps this too I imagined, linger. I did not see her again that night.
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