This great white house, in which it appears I shall live out the remainder of my days, was designed to welcome natural light. During the day any one of its cavernous, echoing rooms would make a perfect studio, though I have chosen to work at the rear of the building as I cannot bear the idea of being observed by passersby on the street. At night, electricity has the same effect on my surroundings as it had on my old studio in Greenwich Village, and the same effect upon my soul. No arching lamps or muted shades can change the horror that I feel towards walls, floors, objects, furniture, my shoes, the sleeve of my jacket, the liver spots on my hands when they are exposed by artificial light. Normally I arrange to be asleep rather than witness this monstrosity of illumination and its attendant combination of darkness and images mirrored in my walls of glass. But today, after working on the collection all morning, I fell asleep in my chair in the afternoon. So now I find myself here in the electric light, painfully alert, remembering my break with Rockwell.

Get out. Get out and don’t come back.

What was it that caused the anger to burst out of me that night? Why did I feel I had to reject the criticism — the man himself — so forcefully? Did I have any idea what I was doing? Friends had criticized my paintings before, sometimes publicly, in print, and while the experience was never pleasant, the accompanying feeling of ill will disappeared in a week or two. But Rockwell’s comments stuck. I took them with me to the opening of the exhibition, where I could hardly bear to glance at my paintings on the wall and where I considered the patrons dupes for their purchases. Even months later, in the summer, I took them with me to Silver Islet, where the entire landscape looked used and cheap to me, as if it were suffering from the effects of the same artificial light that swims around me here now. I couldn’t forgive Rockwell — perhaps because I believed him — though I never would have admitted that then. I couldn’t forgive him, and I lost him, completely. He had caused me. you understand, to see my work as flawed. I believed I would look at my painting forever through the lens of his disapproval, and, though I refused utterly to examine the possible source of his disapproval, I hated him for it. In my vanity, I could not blame myself. For a while I tried to blame Rockwell, but he, after all, had not painted the pictures, so, despite my rage, I had to abandon that convenient option. But I could not indict myself, my own cherished expression. So I blamed the subject matter. I blamed Sara.

I looked at her standing, stricken, on the other side of the room. It was the end of summer and I was preparing to leave. For good. “This is an aesthetic decision,” I told her. “I’m not talking about character.”

“Fifteen years,” she said, turning her face partially away from me.

“Fifteen summers,” I corrected.

I was wrong. I had been talking about character. My character. It was not in my nature at that time to commemorate the past, just as it was not in my nature to be able to forget it. I never forgave Rockwell and I never forgave Sara. And those you never forgive you find impossible to forget. It would be years before I relaxed, paused long enough to wonder if they ever forgave me.