“Milot is trying that one on. They’re calling me the ‘daughter of post-post-modern painting.’ It’s this whole riff on the idea that painting ‘died’ and it’s being ‘resurrected.’”

“Are you?”

“Well…No. I don’t think painting is dead. Despite the fact that ninety percent of famous living painters are men, painting still is and has always been an essential element in the art market, the hydrogen in their ocean of money. And secondly, no, I’m nobody’s daughter, that’s for sure,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I hate that we’re supposed to have these matrilineal bonds of motherhood and sisterhood. Like everything for women is about this kind of physical connection. But—men get to be themselves.”

Max nodded, and we continued the tour. Plant life bloomed everywhere in the house, through living walls—vertical gardens integrated into the building itself—and she told me about many of the plants, moonflowers that bloomed only at night. She told me, too, about each painting and work of art we passed, and had a funny, loving, or kind anecdote about the artist who had created it, positive stories that built on whatever myths were already associated with each particular person.

On the second floor, she took me into Charlie’s home office, the one I’d seen from the deck. The white-walled and white-floored room was filled with drafting tables and shiny red enamel stools. Slender drafts of installation plans, labeled with handwriting that was blocky and even, hung from clips on the walls. The air in the room was so still that the delicate papers fluttered from the breezes made by my body as we passed them by, and I felt that I was disturbing not just the drawings but Charlie’s own aura—the room rang with presence and particular, deliberate energy.

We returned to the third floor, where the garage, Max’s office, and her darkroom took up most of the space, though there was a small box by the front door. “Where is that messenger,” Max muttered. “He was supposed to pick this up an hour ago. The lawyers called this morning and insisted that I box up the original design plans for the house immediately. But the messenger still hasn’t bothered to show.”

“Why? What do they want them for?” I had to put one hand over the other to stop myself from reaching for the box. I was desperate to know how she did it—how someone so untrained, from nothing, from a backwater like me, learned how to translate her ideas into the magic of this house.