All her resolutions faded in the cold, pragmatic light of morning. She was especially disheartened by the sight of another cockroach. In the middle of the night, unable to hold it in any longer after all the wine she’d downed at dinner, a reluctant Mrs. March slipped into the bathroom. As soon as she turned on the light, her eyes darted toward a black spot in the middle of the white floor. Antennae swaying, a fat little body crawled forward. She screamed, calling for George, who wasn’t in bed, and smashed her slipper down again and again upon the insect, leaving a black jelly-like stain on the marble. She used toilet tissue to scoop its remains into the toilet bowl and spent more time than probably necessary scrubbing the sole of her slipper and the tile. “Out, damned spot,” she said out loud. A fluttering laugh escaped her lips, surprising her.

The next morning she pounced into the bathroom, brandishing a slipper. She caught her wild-eyed, disheveled reflection in the mirror and felt sorry for herself. The idea of a uniformed exterminator walking through the lobby and eliciting questions from the doorman terrified her. She weighed her options at breakfast with George. Both sat in silence, George reading the newspaper, Mrs. March stirring her tea. She stared at the centerpiece as George’s teeth crunched into his toast, crumbs dropping on the paper like loud raindrops. Meanwhile, the grandfather clock ticked, ever faithful, in the foyer.

Amidst the ticking, George’s chewing, and the crumbs scattering, it dawned on Mrs. March, in a flurry of inspiration, that she would head to the museum today. She had studied art history (a degree her father had deemed “absolutely pointless”—probably picturing his daughter sketching her classmates’ braided hair all day and filing her nails as she awaited a potential husband), in a New England college so bucolic, so engulfed by red and mustard-colored foliage and detached from the outside world, that she had felt she was in a painting herself. She had luxuriated in the concept of art—the idea of it, yes—but was intimidated by how it seemed to encompass everything, from medieval iconography to Kandinsky’s paintings to avant-garde operas and books and baroque architecture. She even shared a cinema course her senior year with the bohemian students from the drama department, who smoked in class and walked out with an air of casual indifference when told to put their cigarettes out. She had been studious and quiet, an obedient student who received satisfactory but never stellar grades. She was most comfortable as an observer, an awed witness to the spirited debates about what constituted art, about its true value.

“Art is intention,” her favorite professor had said once. “Art has to move you. In any way—positive or negative. Appreciating art is really just about understanding what the piece set out to do. You don’t necessarily want to hang it in your living room.”

Over the years Mrs. March repeated these words as if they were her own at various charity dinners, publication parties, and awards ceremonies. She never stopped to interpret the professor’s message, and would never admit, even to herself, that she couldn’t. Still, she liked the idea of possessing this knowledge, this small intellectual advantage over others. And she quite enjoyed visiting museums. She tingled with the possibility as she prowled the cold, quiet halls that someone she knew might find her there, appreciating it all.

She was going to go today, she decided, and all her troubles would disappear. Smiling, she sipped her tea.

IT WAS COLD but the sun was shining brighter than it had in a long time, and in a bout of optimism she decided to walk, leaving behind her umbrella, which she often carried with her as a precaution. If it began to snow, she could flag a cab, although it always made her nervous to hail one for such a short trip.

The morning air was chilled, rouging cheeks and running noses. Mrs. March experienced New York as if for the first time. Making her way up the street, she smiled at a discarded sofa—cotton frothing from the upholstery—sitting on the curb next to an overflowing trash can. She sauntered past a row of fragrant Christmas trees stacked against some scaffolding, and waved at the sellers huddled against them as they warmed their hands with their breath. On the other side of the street, a hot dog vendor, his face threaded with engorged veins like a horse’s, manned a cart under a striped parasol, while others offered stacked pretzels kept warm under heat lamps. Mrs. March exchanged the last of her cash for a scoop of roasted chestnuts in a brown paper cone. She stuffed them into her purse, with no intention of eating them—she just liked the smell.

She passed an elderly woman in a plush fur coat pushing a toddler in a stroller. The woman had spiky white hair—short like a boy’s—which impressed Mrs. March. She would never be so brazen as to reveal her age like that. Short hair only ever looked good on women with thin frames, anyway, and at the rate she was going, Mrs. March very much doubted she would be a skinny grandmother.

Her heart swelled with undeserved pride as she approached the majestic building with its grand Beaux-Arts façade. Red banners hung between Greek columns in official pronouncement, which gave her a sense of importance but also a feeling of fraudulence, of attempting to belong where she didn’t.

At this time of day, the museum was almost empty, except for a few tourists and chaperoned groups of schoolchildren. A larger party walked past her toward the exit, and among their clothing Mrs. March caught the blurry glimpse of a familiar tennis racket print. Alarm spurted in the dark recesses of her mind as a memory resurfaced—like the whiff of a rotting fruit forgotten in the back of the fridge—but when she turned to look back at him it wasn’t him at all, it was a lady in a strawberry-patterned raincoat.

The click of her heels echoed as she made her way toward the galleries upstairs.

Here, they all needed her, these people in their portraits. Their eyes seemed to find hers no matter what corner of the gallery she was in, some craning their necks to watch her. Look at me, they all seemed to be saying. Mrs. March made her way through the endless labyrinth of corridors, each gallery crowded with eyes and hands and frowns. She passed by an oil painting of Jesus in which his spent body was being lowered from the cross onto a pile of luxurious fabrics in hues of red and blue. Such images were familiar to her, evocative of all those Sunday mornings spent in church. Her parents had always favored St. Patrick’s, right down the street from their apartment. The sermons had bored her. Once, she leaned over to her mother and asked in a whisper why women couldn’t be priests. “Women get pregnant,” her mother whispered back.

She looked now upon the Crucifixion scene, in which Christ was looking to the heavens, eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted. The suffering painted on his features was so dramatic, so enduring—so very female, now that she thought about it.

She continued to the end of the room and turned right, stepping into the gallery that she knew displayed, in its baroque gilded frame, Vermeer’s less popular counterpart to Girl with a Pearl Earring. Cocking her head to one side, Mrs. March took in the portrait. The girl, wrapped in a shimmering, silky shawl, was so ugly, her facial anatomy so odd—ample forehead, wide-spaced eyes, barely-there eyebrows—that if she weren’t smiling, she would be terrifying. There was something unsettling about that grin, too. Like she knew some gruesome fate awaited you, and was enjoying the vision.

“Hello, Kiki,” Mrs. March said.

She had first encountered the girl on a visit with her parents when she was nearing puberty. Upon first glance, she had assumed the girl was slow, or, as shouted by cruel children in the schoolyard, retarded. The eyes did not align properly, and there was something dim-witted about her vacant expression. Mrs. March had hidden behind her father when she’d first seen the painting; when she peeked out from the folds of his jacket, she swore the girl was smirking at her.

Mrs. March saw the similarities between the two of them immediately: their pale complexions, plain looks, and yes, that stupid little half-smile. There were enough unflattering photographs of her at home to reinforce the connection.

That night, in the dark of her bedroom, she awoke to the sounds of thick, phlegmy breathing. It was the girl from the portrait; somehow they had brought her home with them. Panic seized her at first, but after a few evenings, the familiarity of the breathing almost comforted her, and she found herself talking to the girl.

Soon, Mrs. March was interacting with her on a daily basis: playing with her and taking baths with her and dreaming about her too. The girl’s face merged irrevocably with her own, and the girl was no longer the girl from the portrait, but her twin, whom she named Kiki. Her parents, to whom Mrs. March had introduced Kiki over an awkward dinner, brushed it off as a phase, until Kiki began showing up at every meal. A psychologist friend, consulted in passing so as not to arouse suspicion, theorized that Kiki was an elaborate tool for Mrs. March to convey her feelings. Kiki, like Mrs. March, didn’t like pumpkin pie, for example, so Mrs. March would request them not to serve it. Kiki didn’t like the cold, so the maid was asked to be quick in airing out the rooms.

Mrs. March took Kiki with her everywhere. Kiki whispered the answers in her ear during a math test. Kiki amused her while her mother looked at curtain samples at the department store. She would call her school friends on the telephone and tell them her cousin Kiki was visiting and would put her on the phone, speaking in a kind of infantile lisp. Once she wrote a praising letter to herself—with her left hand, so her handwriting couldn’t be traced—and displayed it proudly to her friends, alleging it was from Kiki. Not long after that, one of her classmates told her she wasn’t welcome in their friend group anymore because they didn’t like liars. “I wasn’t lying,” Mrs. March replied indignantly. She knew she had been lying, of course, but she couldn’t face the humiliation of confessing, and she wouldn’t be able to explain why she had done such an absurd thing anyway. Mrs. March’s shame upon revisiting these memories was palpable. To this day she had confided in no one about the lengths she had gone to with her fictitious friend.

She took one last, searching look at the girl, at her Kiki, who looked back at her, tight-lipped, her eyes tired, almost disappointed.