But we didn’t see it.

I felt then ill. Perhaps I’d imagined its presence there, altogether. Perhaps, I thought, I’d never painted it.

And I instantly remembered my studio, my garden room, the desolation: the painting’s stasis, then death, in there, those years. The years I couldn’t bring it to life again. Joseph.

They rotate the collection, you know they rotate it, Howard said. I knew that, of course I knew that. You’ll call the curator when you get home, Howard said.

But my day was spoiled. It was a fall day. We walked home without going for coffee, we walked through the golden, reddening leaves, leaves fallen, leaves everywhere, leaves rustling around us, and people, children, dogs, tourists with cameras were joyful, joyful in the leaves, but all I could think of was the white, the snow and ice: the winter that would follow.

And of course it was an ordinary thing. The curators rotate the collection, there were months, even years, when my painting wouldn’t be on display. I’m sorry, Mrs. Kline, the curator said when we spoke on the phone, I could have let you know before.

Yes, she could have, Howard said. She should have. We were home at the table at our window, Howard had bought a sandwich on the walk home, on Columbus Avenue, and we sat, the golden leaves spread below us and across the street outside. The city, a low hum, invisible. And I, not eating at all.

AND LATER I IMAGINED the painting in its place of storage. I’d been in storage rooms, the vaults of museums, galleries. But this was different.

My painting would not be alone, it would be in a room with others, close to many others. And under covers, elaborate covers, wrapped and sealed, hidden away.

I was lying in my room, my room I loved, on my dark bed, as I imagined this. I, recumbent, like my painting.

And then I thought: but my painting will be stored vertically, that’s how they store paintings, they store them vertically. And they don’t cover them, the paint surface has to be untouched by anything.

For a moment I remembered my mother’s house in Villiers, and the dark wardrobe of dresses, my dresses. In darkness too, closed-up, all those dresses, a-rustle, against one another.

But the idea, the image of the painting lying flat, had soothed me. I pictured the conservator with his white cotton gloves: the humidity control panel; the temperature panel; the exact, exact light. The painting at rest.

The conservator would take care of my painting.

I slept.

LAST NIGHT I dreamed I took Joseph to the museum to see my painting. We were old, in the dream. It was Joseph, this time, who had his arm in mine, not Howard. And then I woke up, weeping.

Joseph never saw the painting completed. Of course, how could he have?

HELENA CALLED AGAIN. Are you feeling stronger, Mom, she said. I wished she’d stop asking me, but I couldn’t say that.