Once, just once, I attempt to paint Mother facing outward. I gather all the photographs I have of her and stand them in a row. The one I like best is the one in which she is wearing a lace cap. She is still a young woman in the picture, though there is an expression of suffering in her eyes that reveals her depth of experience. As I stare at the photograph I realize that by the time it was taken she had already lost her first husband, a man she loved. This is what you see in her face, that inner knowledge of loss. Her features are exquisite. I study the arched cheekbones, the finely wrought nose. Her skin is so smooth it could be alabaster. A frieze of overhanging leaves surrounds her so that she appears to be emerging from a wood. She might be a character in a myth. My painting beckons. I cannot work with Mother watching me. I take her photographs down.

I start, then stop, then obliterate what I have done. I create a backdrop of greenery, the path and summerhouse in the garden, a table with a vase of flowers. The pinks and lilacs of my peonies and foxgloves wrangle with my crimson poppies. All the while the central space looms. Every time I try to paint Mother’s face or the outline of her body as she rests in her chair, the shapes miscarry, the structure collapses. It is as if I dare not alter the design. You could. You succeeded where I failed. You were not embroiled as I was. The portrait of Mother you drew in your novel was so convincing that I heard her voice, saw the perpendicular of her back, as I read. I gaze at my picture. The emptiness remains. I paint a random figure, hurriedly, haphazardly, to fill the space, then take the canvas down. It is only years later when I look at the picture again that I realize the figure is my daughter.

The trees at this time of year look like broken fans, their bare branches splaying in all directions. We are sitting on the terrace in Cassis, where I have kept on the villa I rented for the summer. It is mild despite the lateness of the season. You are reading, pen in hand. Every now and then you pause to write a thought in your notebook. You look absorbed, settled, as if you are engaging with your author—it is Proust, I think—as an equal. I open the newspaper and leaf through the pages, stopping at the pictures. Compared to you I am an intellectual butterfly.

“What do you think about this business of Adrian’s?” I ask at length.

You look up.

“What do you mean?”

“This psychoanalysis he has embarked on.”

You lay your book face down on your knee.