But really, I said. I’m curious.

He looked at me. There’s a woman at the house where we go at night, she sits me in a chair, she covers my shoulders with a white sheet, she takes out her scissors, she cuts my hair. I shook my head, we both smiled, in disbelief and amazement. She’s employed at a hairdresser in town, he said. She told me, you have to look reasonable, Joseph, you have to stay reasonable.

Reasonable, I said. We laughed again. Have a seat, Jacqueline, he said.

No, I said. I have something I want to give you. I looked around the room, I had looked around it before, but this time I was looking at its walls, its whitewashed, faded walls.

I’m going to bring you a painting, I said.

He was silent. I think he was moved. He said nothing. Then he covered his face with his hands.

I’m so sorry, I said, I’m so sorry for everything. I felt tremendous grief.

But I had no other words, there were no words that came to me that I could say.

I turned abruptly, my cheeks burned with shame as I remembered that later, and I left, left the room, I ran up the grass into the house.

I SPENT THE NEXT FEW MORNINGS in my studio looking at canvases, at paintings I had finished and put aside. I’d lift one, and put it up. I sat in my chair. I’d look at it, at the canvas, the morning light slanting along it. Then I’d lean my head against the chair back, and close my eyes. Then I’d look at another one.

Finally, after some days, and many hours, hours of solitude and beauty in the studio, I chose one. I chose it.

And I drove to André soon after, with the painting. It was a small one, from the group inspired by the river in Villiers, from the group Howard’s painting came from. It was an abstract, oil.

The painting differed from Howard’s, but it’s hard to say how it differed. A slight variation in shading, in shade, in hue. A line that strayed in a different way. I’m not good with words.

How a painting by an artist can resemble another of hers, but differ from it, like siblings in a family. I’ve said before: I used to worry about repeating myself in my work, but I learned, I know now, that that’s how it is, how it must be. Sameness, and difference: an endless pendulum between these two.

André admired the painting I had chosen for Joseph. We spent an afternoon choosing a frame, André brought out frame after frame, lighter ones and darker ones, heavier ones, then finer ones. He carried them back and forth, from his shelves behind him, then from his room at the back, while I sat up on a high stool (he had one like Eric’s). André had such precise, careful hands. He’d hold; he’d measure. We shared words. I’ve said before: I trusted André.