We stopped on the bridge. Robin unfolded the stool, and I divided my attention between the water and the house that leaned dangerously out over it. Okay, imagine a lot of huge concrete shoe boxes clamped together at different heights. Windows in the slits between them. Gray stone chimneys. All balanced like a shelf over a fast-moving stream, and not only a stream but a two-level waterfall that actually goes right under the house so the crashing never stops. The house and the falls were very clear and real to me, now that I was five years older. Five years from now I’m sure I could remember every single detail, not just the gift shop. Which was why I went back and forth from wanting to memorize the place to thinking, What’s the point? Just let the water run.

“Something, isn’t it?” Mom said when Laura had finished her speech about cantilevered trays, local sandstone, European Modernism, structural daring, and the annex for guests and servants.

“It’s not pink,” I said. “It’s kind of orange.”

“It’s pinker around the back,” said my mother. “Down below where all the pictures are taken, it’s totally gray. We’ll go to the viewing point after the tour, if we’re not too tired.”

While we were sitting on some low walls behind the terrace, I asked Laura about the color. She said it was so the building would blend into its surroundings when the leaves changed in the fall. I nodded, but to me it seemed odd to have a house you can’t stand the color of for most of the year, just so it looks good in the fall. And anyway, since when are leaves pink? But the fact was, once we were inside the house, it didn’t matter about the color and the concrete. This was what we’d come for.

The living room was a huge horizontal space with light coming in everywhere and glass doors that opened onto a balcony above the falls. From the balcony there were steps going down. It was spooky the way the steps ended in this little platform that went nowhere and didn’t even have a rail around it. You could drink your coffee there in the morning with your feet in the moving water. That’s what the guide said. Back indoors we were shown the bedrooms, which were on different mezzanines. Wherever you went, you could see another part of the house and a part of the outdoors.