“But a grand rush,” Catherine exclaimed.

“Well, I felt so harried . . . is harried the word? No, bedeviled. I just had to get it all out.”

“Some great stuff,” Catherine explained to me.

I stared at the woman’s pale thighs spreading into the brown leather of the chair. She was wearing short-shorts. I could feel leather sticking to my own thighs and the sting when one rose.

“I have to support the kid you see, but it still gives some time to paint. Not like in the old days.”

“I paint too,” said the kid.

“I’ve started her on watercolors. Uh, she’s very good. Better than I was at her age. Can I show them one of your watercolors?”

Tatum rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Uhn-uhn.”

“She’s certainly not like I was,” said Gillette. “I’d corner everybody who came to our house, showing them my stuff, and I wasn’t nearly so good as she is. To tell the truth, I wasn’t very good at all, but everybody would pat me on the head anyway and tell me ‘How nice.’ I wasn’t good at all, but I thought I was. I don’t know whether Tatum has that conceit or not, because you never know what in the world she’s thinking.” She stared at Tatum for a minute, but you couldn’t read what she was thinking.

“Instead of selling lemonade I used to set up my paintings in the neighborhood, pretend I was in Montmartre or on St. Germain Boulevard. I was the little darling. I thought I was good because people would come and buy my little paintings. But there was this horrible man, though, who said something perfectly awful to me. He said, ‘You’re an interesting little girl, but your work’s not very good. They’re buying your work because you’re an interesting little girl.’ He said either ‘interesting’ or ‘nice’ or ‘pretty’—one of those bland adjectives. I thought it was the most awful thing to say. But of course it wasn’t an awful thing at all. Because if he hadn’t said that I wouldn’t have got good. I went to work then. I wanted to be able to do anything in painting.”

“Anything,” Tatum said.

“Can I just show them one little watercolor?”

“Uhn-uhn.”

“She’s not like I was.”

Gillette was braless in a white T-shirt and those short-short cut-off jeans. The little girl was wearing a straw cowboy hat and had little red pimples on her forehead, which it seemed she was too young to be getting. But it was probably from candy and buttery popcorn. She looked about seven.

“She’s great, isn’t she?” or “What did you think of Gillette?” Catherine will ask when we’re on the plane heading back.

“Not much,” I’ll say, or I’ll try to please her and say, “Yeah, she’s something.”

“It’s roomier in here than I thought it would be,” Catherine said. “Than it looks from the outside, I mean.”

“Yes, it is. It’s nice, roomy enough. But I really don’t have room enough for my paintings though. A friend lets me store them in her basement.”