“I guess you could move in with me,” he said.

  It wasn’t much of an invitation. “Okay, maybe,” she said.

  But Troy figured out a way to petition the housing office for a six-month extension.

  By summer, Lina and Sacha rarely went to Chelsea anymore. Lina had developed an aversion after walking unprepared by a window full of work by the less-talented weaver. The other weaver had moved to North Carolina, where she was making outdoor rooms out of living vines on her family’s cherry farm. Sacha had lost interest in galleries that weren’t new anymore. They both preferred obscure places farther out in Brooklyn, where they could also shop in junk stores for his new apartment. In a packed, five-story warehouse, Lina collapsed on a plaid sofa. Sacha was carrying a coffee table over his shoulder. He set it down and pulled her up to dance.

  She told him about Dino, who had taught her the box step.

  “That was the first guy you slept with?”

  “Kind of. Not really. But we could talk pretty well. He asked me lots of questions.”

  Sacha looked at her with keen interest and sadness. “Sounds like a good guy.” Sometimes they talked like this, as if they were friends in that other room again.

  “I was completely myself with him. With you, it’s different; I’m afraid of losing you.” She had an impulse to tell Sacha everything, even her fears about him.

  He kissed the top of her head.

  For no reason, she started to cry. She liked to cry with him.

  * * *

  —

  Then, in September, Lina got a call. It was like being tapped. And it wasn’t Sacha who opened the door, offering the glimpse of an empty ballroom, but a middle-aged gallery owner named Sheila Geller who liked Lina’s slides.

  Everything changed, though in a way nothing had yet. Lina had a gallery. This was an idea more than anything material. But Lina trusted it and signed the paperwork to move out in six months. She had a calm perspectival vision of the future. She would be one of the fortunate.

  It was like being picked on the playground. She’d never been first—she wasn’t athletic—and it was always excruciating waiting, hoping every time that the name called would be yours. When at last you were summoned, suddenly free, on the good side, it felt inevitable, and you looked away from the others huddling in a smaller group. Troy was in that cluster. And this year when everything began to loosen and move, her mother was still in the place.

  Seven years. And she was making her bouquets.

  Lina didn’t want her brothers or Julie at the opening. She said it was too much travel for just a group show. Only two of her paintings. It seemed wrong for Julie to be at these ceremonies when her mother wasn’t. For a second, she irrationally longed for her mother to come; at the same time, she counted on her never seeing these paintings. Those contradictory wishes canceled each other out. Lina had tried to tell her once that her bouquets were models for her own painting, but she didn’t think her mother had understood. Would her mother think she’d used her illness for her own gain? And in any case, she couldn’t stop Julie from booking a flight.

  * * *

  —

  Lina was trying to figure out how to blow-dry—she’d once known—when Walter knocked on her door, surprising her. He looked up at the corners of her room, as if realizing that to pull his sister up the socioeconomic ladder with him would be more difficult than he’d thought.

  “If I were you, I’d try to find another place to live,” he said.

  “That’s not very nice,” she said, so quietly it was almost only to herself. The rooms were dark, true; she had no views or real kitchen. But in New York, it mattered that the lobby was clean and that there was a doorman. She’d always been proud of her apartment.

  “Reminds me of Donnie’s dorm.”

  From now on, she decided, she’d meet him at the museum.

  “I have to move in two months anyway.”

  Lina was anxious about having to move out. Sacha hadn’t asked her again to live with him. For her opening, she brushed on makeup she didn’t remember how to apply. Looking at herself in the mirror, she felt downhearted; she’d looked better before. She took it off with a washcloth. She thought of Joseph Cornell, living with his disabled brother and mother. Of Emily Dickinson. Reclusive geniuses. Of course for that you needed to be a genius.

  A crowd filled Sheila’s tiny gallery. Lina’s boss, Harry. Martine with her forty-five-year-old artist boyfriend. The guy from the program who’d painted her bee. Lina had never before seen Troy in a tie. In a corner, Sacha stood with Sheila Geller, the two of them talking like professionals. Lina found it hard to speak to Sheila, whose head stilled like a bird’s stiff profile, as she waited for Lina’s random words to make sense.

  The department secretary entered, unwinding a flowered wool scarf. Strange; she’d seemed to dislike Lina. Lina angled through the crowd, to make her way over, then bumped into Larkin, standing in front of her canvases. She gave Lina a gift. “This book changed my life.” By the time Lina reached the secretary, she was pulling on her gloves to leave. Out of the corner of her eye, Lina saw Walter talking to Larkin.

  “Congratulations,” the secretary said. “I see you’ve been working.”

  “Did you like them?” Lina couldn’t help herself. She wanted the woman finally to admit she’d been wrong about her.

  “I like them, but it doesn’t quite come naturally to you, does it?”

  “How do you know?” Lina asked.

  “Your brushstroke. What you see.”

  Lina felt punched, airless. She didn’t know for how long. As the crowd thinned she found Julie, at Sheila’s desk, arranging shipping; she’d bought one of Lina’s two paintings. No! Lina had dozens in her apartment. She could give Julie one. But Julie had already written the check and insisted she wanted this one. Sheila Geller put a small round sticker on the frame.

  During the large, chaotic dinner afterwards, Julie asked each of the other artists where they were from while Walter tried to assess Sacha’s future earning potential. Troy wasn’t there. He’d left, probably thinking of what he’d have to chip in for dinner. Lina could have paid, of course, but that would embarrass him if everyone else was throwing in twenties. It occurred to her that she should have found a way, these past months, to funnel five hundred bucks to Troy, who was juggling bills as they always had, counting the days before his paycheck. He didn’t talk about that with her anymore.

  Walter insisted on picking up the check anyway.

  In the taxi to Sacha’s new apartment, she opened her gift: a book called Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.

  “Big success,” Sacha said, pouring himself a glass of grapefruit juice.

  Lina told him what the department secretary said. “She doesn’t think paint is my medium.”

  “You’re good in three dimensions, too. But the show was a big success.”

  She’d sold one painting. To Julie.

  Something was bothering Lina that she couldn’t put into words. She lay on her elbow, facing Sacha. He kissed her forehead, folded his arms, and went to sleep. She sat cross-legged on the bed, sketching him. He was beautiful, even sleeping. His breath made a small whine. She wanted to sleep next to him every night. If she moved in, would she stop drawing their nights? Three sketchbooks already tilted on a shelf.

  The morning after the show, Sheila called to say that the other painting had sold and that the buyer wanted Julie’s, too; he’d pay more. “It’s still here. I could rip up the check. Can’t you give another to Julie? You could save her the commission.”

  Oh, good. Lina could give Julie a painting after all. At Walter’s hotel, when she went to say goodbye, she picked up Sacha’s favorite book from the bedside table. He’d taken a whole class on it. Walter said a friend he’d once had a thing for gave it to him. A librarian.

  “Carrie? When did you see her?”

  “Take it. It’s a brick. I’m not carrying it on the plane.”

  When Lina returned to her apartment, her answering machine was full. Sheila with scheduled studio visits. The next day, a man called at the Evergreen, a friend of Sheila’s, and offered Lina an adjunct teaching gig, one night a week. Not middle school boys or retirees. Graduate students. Harry looked at her with narrow curiosity, as if frankly surprised that she was amounting to something.

  * * *

  —

  In a week, Lina’s studio was almost empty. The collector offered Julie twice what she’d paid for the painting still in Sheila’s gallery, but Julie refused to sell.

  “I can make you another one,” Lina said. “That I’ll give you.”

  But Julie declined. There was just something about this one, she said, that reminded her of Diane.

  A glimpse into another vast room. Lina would never understand what her mother meant to Julie.

  66.

  Lina figured out what had been bothering her: Sacha said nice things about the show, but he didn’t seem to love her any more for this small triumph. It didn’t matter to him.

  “Isn’t that what you want?” Troy asked. This was the only time she could remember him defending Sacha.

  But it wasn’t what Lina wanted. She worked for love, to deserve it; she needed that equation to work. If anything, Sacha seemed more aloof. Lina received a letter, inviting her to be in an exhibit of young American artists in Paris. She and Troy had entered many contests; the slide she’d sent was of daffodils, dandelions, and thistles in a can. A foundation would pay for the shipping, insurance, Lina’s flight and hotel.

  She had never been to Europe.

  When she told Sacha, he said, “Good.”

  “Maybe you can come with me. They’ll pay for the hotel.”

  “I wish.”

  She told Troy about Paris in a flat voice. Before, in their work lives, they’d always been a we. Unlike being picked on the playground, where you ran to join a team, here, in her success, Lina stood alone.

  Sacha hadn’t mentioned marriage again. If he did now, Lina thought she’d give a different answer.

  * * *

  —

  After the show, Martine invited Lina to a dinner party. Lina was excited; they’d never socialized together before. Lina buzzed, and from an upstairs window in the cast-iron building, Martine threw down a sock with a key inside. Lina rode up the shaky freight elevator, which opened onto the artist’s large loft. “He’s been making his grandmother’s Bolognese all day.” Adults of all ages arrived; a man in his seventies, carrying skis upright, said he’d come cross-country from Westbeth. Someone turned the lights down and the buckets of brushes and years of accumulation blurred, and they saw only the faces of people around the table and the city lights and towers outside. “Candlelight improves bone structure,” Martine said. Her forty-five-year-old boyfriend poured glasses of red wine, then walked around the table with a bowl of pasta. Several women in their fifties, all artists, seemed to be partnerless. They looked at Martine with expressions of greed. A wedge of pecorino made its way down the table with a kitchen grater.

  Martine’s boyfriend bent to tell Lina he’d liked her paintings. Her face warmed. She understood what Martine saw in him. He’d made a life already. He showed at Knoedler. But she wouldn’t have traded. She wished Sacha were here. She felt proud of him. Maybe the two couples could go out together. But somehow, despite Lina’s hopefulness, she and Martine never did really become friends.

  * * *

  —

  In November, Lina and Sacha bought their first piece of art together, from a Saturday pop-up in a high school gym in Queens. It was white on white, handmade paper textured with stitches done on a sewing machine. The woman who took their money said that the artist was a teacher in Kansas. They split the price.

  When Lina called Walter, she learned that he’d bought a house. Dr. Moss said he could pick up their mom to stay overnight when it was ready, he told Lina. A house in the Palisades. Her dream, Walter said. Now she would have it. But no, Lina shook her head, not that he could see. Their mother lived in the hospital. Walter said that Julie had driven her to see Donnie at college. A nice day. They’d sat in a café outside under a huge sycamore.

  Lina had called to tell him that she and Sacha bought a painting. But she didn’t now. It sounded too small, or just of a different world.

  Julie was finally moving to Michigan, Walter said. She was keeping her apartment through December so they could all be there one more Christmas. Pretty soon, he said, everyone could stay at his new house.

  * * *

  —

  At a diner, Lina cried on a bright cold Tuesday morning. She’d be kicked out of her apartment at the end of the month. Julie was moving. She couldn’t even go home. “You said I could move in with you, but I don’t think you really want that,” she whimpered.

  He ushered them to a booth. “Why do you think that?”

  She was blubbering now, aware that she looked terrible. “Once, you said you could see yourself married now, but you never mentioned that again. I guess that means you could see yourself married to someone else.” She blew her nose on the rough napkin.

  “We can get married,” he said. He looked small, slumped in the corner. Lina had wanted this, but she’d pushed him to it. She tried to compose herself. Outside, a breeze lifted trash on the curb. A sheet of ice blew in every time someone opened the door.

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know I don’t have to.”

  This didn’t seem enough. She wanted a declaration, some flourish. But she only said, “You’re really okay with me moving my stuff there before I go home for Christmas?”

  “Sure.”

  They’d been together almost two years. Nothing quenched the longing.

  * * *

  —

  “Are we engaged?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we tell people?”

  “Let’s wait,” he said.

  “Maybe just Troy.”

  “Yeah, sure. Troy,” he said.

  What would I be doing with diamonds? someone wrote, in one of the books Lina read in college. She didn’t need jewelry; she reminded herself, she wanted to be an artist. Still, at a holiday crafts fair, in a booth where the wind taunted the vinyl roof, she picked up a ring from a table and said, “Buy me this.” Sacha handed over a twenty, put the ten back in his wallet. She slid it onto her ring finger.

  She bought a small rosemary plant for his kitchen windowsill. She moved over her clothes. Of her couch and chairs, he’d said, “They match.” She hadn’t known that that was a bad thing. He didn’t mind the Morris chair from Etienne.

  The next morning, he gave her a key. When she stepped outside the building, a man in front of a small shop was carrying out clay pots of geraniums. She tightened her hand around the metal talisman. Better than any ring.

  * * *

  —

  But when she told Troy at Empire Szechuan, he shook his head.

  “Be happy for me,” she ordered.

  She offered him her couch and chairs. He shot her a look.

  “It’s not the way it sounds.” Sacha liked her easels, her table with brushes and cans, she told Troy.

  “So he likes some picture of an artist.”

  They opened their fortunes. Where there is love there is no question. Lina slipped the strip of paper into her wallet.

  On a gray December day, they carried her couch and chairs over to Troy’s tenth-floor studio. Her paints, scraps, nests, and folded drop cloths all fit into one box. She covered her canvases with brown paper and pulled them on a borrowed dolly to Sacha’s apartment, while Troy, her easels over his shoulder, carried the box. They were making a second trip with the Morris chair when it began to snow. She let them in with her key. The apartment was quiet and orderly. They moved the easels to the room that overlooked the back of a church. Lina offered Troy coffee, but when she looked in the refrigerator there was no milk.

  Troy laced up his boots and left, taking the newspaper to hold over his head.

  * * *

  —

  On the plane home, Lina read Sacha’s favorite book. With a pencil, she underlined a passage.

  There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Everyday things with us would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal.

  Lina was twenty-five years old and engaged to the smartest person she knew. He’d been an art major at Bard, so he understood painting; he got her world, but he’d never aspired, himself, to be Pascal. He called himself “average,” said, “I’m just the guy who knows how to keep a ledger.” He wanted her to be an artist, though, and believed she could be. And unlike the old scholar in the book, he was young and beautiful.

  * * *

  —

  This year, Julie gave Lina the cot off the pantry. The upstairs sewing room was Donnie’s now. He slept every day until afternoon.

  “Leave him be,” Julie said. “It’s his vacation.”

  He’d done three semesters of college and hadn’t gotten into trouble. When Lina asked him about classes, though, she couldn’t get much out of him. “They’re okay.” He had acne and an uneven mustache, and his expression was evasive. They’d always been close, but now he didn’t seem to like her.

  He fell asleep during the Christmas show at the hospital. Lina elbowed him to stop snoring.