She has been working on the mammal dioramas for the past week, having made her way through amphibians and reptiles. Mary did not go to art school to work at a natural history museum, but this is where she has found herself. Her business started with a few murals in local restaurants. They were mostly nature scenes—mountains and rivers and underwater portraits that featured animals the customers would be having for dinner. A man named Harry Turner ate in one of these restaurants, enjoyed the mural, and hired her to paint three large-breasted sirens on the ceiling above his bathtub.

“I want the nipples rosy,” he said. The tub was the size of a wading pool. Mary stood on the ladder and closed her eyes and found the color the way her father had taught her. She imagined the soft underside of petals, the silkiness between the layers. Harry Turner was so happy with the breasts that he made a few phone calls, recommended her to friends, business partners, and board members.

The work at the natural history museum is mostly in the late afternoons and evenings, when the school groups and tourists clear out of the marble hallways and begin to think about having dinner. Mary arrives at five o’clock, after her father’s nurse takes over for the evening, and reports to Dr. Fisher, who is supervising the renovation.

Together they walk through the exhibition. They are supposed to be going over the progress she has made, but Dr. Fisher wants to talk about her father. “I wrote a paper on him in college,” he says. “Did he really use brushes made out of his own hair?”

Mary smiles but does not answer. This is her usual response to comments about her father. Sooner or later the speaker usually gets the hint and stops talking. Dr. Fisher does not. He is short and, as if to make up for this, quite muscular. The sleeves of his jacket fit snugly around his biceps. Mary towers over him, a beanpole.

He reminds her of a chemistry teacher she had in high school who was discovered, near the end of the year, to have been leading a double life as a professional bodybuilder. He had been such a quiet, simple-looking man that when a classmate handed her a photograph of him at a show, greased up, flexing in a thong, Mary shut her eyes, horribly embarrassed for him.

In the center of the hall is a large black bear posed on a pedestal outside the dioramas. The animal is on all fours, its head lifted as if something has just caught its attention, its behind round and large enough to fit a person inside. Dr. Fisher puts his hand on the bear’s neck.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be related to him,” he says. “This must seem so dull in comparison, repainting someone else’s scenery.”

“You didn’t hire my father,” says Mary.