They should have turned around and walked out the minute they arrived, Ruth thinks; she should have known that this was a mistake the minute she saw the table with name tags in the greeting room; there is something about name tags that Ruth despises. All the girls wear the uniform pleated skirts of private schools, with thick tights and cardigans; Isabelle sticks out like a sore thumb in her blue jeans with ratty cuffs and Shetland sweater. Ruth should have thought to dress her differently, she thinks, should have remembered that all the other girls would be coming with their mothers straight from school.

This mother-daughter art class is not a mother-daughter art class at all; the teacher has herded the mothers into one classroom and the daughters into an adjoining one separated by a glass partition. Each room has four tables; there are paints at one table, crayons at another, clay at another, and charcoal at the last. The teacher has explained that the object is to create a piece of art at each of the four stations. When you have finished your work at one station, she’s explained, you must raise your hand and have your work evaluated before moving on to the next station. At the beginning of class Ruth started to raise her hand, to say how nice it would be if the mothers and daughters could work together, but a menacing look from her daughter through the glass stopped her.

Ruth’s crayon panda bear has met with the teacher’s approval, though she knows that the drawing is terrible, and she has moved on to the clay table. She pulls a chunk of it from the pile in the middle of the table and starts to roll it into little useless balls. A panda bear and little balls, she thinks, and she begins to wonder what they’re really doing here at all. What would Dr. Steingold think she meant by panda bears and little balls? Because by them, she means nothing at all. She feels a small pang of guilt at the thought of Isabelle’s sketchbook now in Dr. Steingold’s hands, delivered there by Wilson this morning. But then she tells herself that simply because she means nothing by her art—if you can even call it that—she is not Isabelle, and Isabelle does mean something by her art. Ruth speaks; Isabelle draws. She looks through the glass partition at her daughter, who is still at the table where she began. She has set her paintbrush down. The other girls move between their stations around her; most are at their third or fourth table, since they’ve been told they’re allowed to make as many rounds in the two hours as they like. Isabelle sits quietly, her hands in her lap and her eyes down. Raise your hand, Ruth thinks. You won’t have to speak, just raise your hand!