Now, however, I had made the bold step. I had already made my qualifying drawing for Andy Glynn, and he had as much as invited me to enroll in the Andy Glynn School of Art. . . .

I FOUND that all the talk about drawing was making me twitchy, eager, and impatient. Earlier that morning, I had found myself awakened by a desire, the way I might have been awakened by the sun. Perhaps desire is too strong a word. I suppose it was just an urge. I wanted to learn to paint . . .

     “You misunderstand me, sir,” said the man, the ice in his voice melting. He was a small man with a round face, cherubic cheeks, and a bashful manner. “I’m here to help you.”

ONE MORNING, when the time was right, Andy woke her with an armload of rolls and said, “My darling, it’s time. Today is the day. Hurry. We have to go while it’s still dark.”    Rosetta gathered the few belongings she had with her, and in a moment she was ready to go.

     “He had a pad of paper mounted on a board that he held in the crook of his arm—like this—and in a hole in the board a pot of paint. Black paint. One big brush. And he would make his pictures with big gestures—like this—big swooping gestures. . . .”

ROSETTA GLYNN greeted me at the big wooden door when I returned on Saturday afternoon. She wore a look that I recognized: the look of someone with a story to tell, sizing up her audience with bright, curious eyes.

     “Is this the only color you use—black?” I asked. “It’s charcoal gray,” he corrected me. “And no, it’s not the only color. If you look closely at each of my paintings, you’ll find a little bit of pink in it somewhere.” “Aha!” I said. “I thought so.”

     Margot pointed to a ladder, a jerry-built and flimsy thing, standing away from the comforting solidity of the stone walls, leaning against nothing more than one of the narrow catwalks above. I knew what I had to do: mount the ladder, climb up, make my way across the rickety boards to Mr. Glynn’s side, and make conversation with him. I had to try to win him over.

THE CARRIAGE HOUSE, the Glynns’ home, had a roof of imbricate tile, like the mansion itself. The walls were made of stone, like those of the mansion. A stone building was an extraordinary thing in Babbington, for the town lay in the alluvial plain laid down by an ancient glacier, a plain of fine grains, silt, and sand. There were no sizable rocks anywhere nearby.

AN ASIDE on the subject of the compulsion to tell a story. When, as a small child, I couldn’t get to sleep at night, my mother, after she tired of reading to me or just talking with me in the dark, used to tell me, “Make up a story for yourself.”