“Now let it out,” he says. “And take another breath.”

Misty says, “Did you know, did Peter ever have a vasectomy?” She breathes again, deep, and says, “Peter told me that Tabbi was a miracle from God so I wouldn’t abort.”

And Dr. Touchet says, “Misty, how much are you drinking these days?”

This is such a small fucking town. And poor Misty Marie, she’s the town drunk.

“A police detective came into the hotel,” Misty says. “He was asking if we had the Ku Klux Klan out here on the island.”

And Dr. Touchet says, “Killing yourself is not going to save your daughter.”

He sounds like her husband.

Like you, dear sweet Peter.

And Misty says, “Save my daughter from what ?” Misty turns to meet his eyes and says, “Do we have Nazis out here?”

And looking at her, Dr. Touchet smiles and says, “Of course not.” He goes to his desk and picks up a folder with a few sheets of paper in it. Inside the folder, he writes something. He looks at a calendar on the wall above the desk. He looks at his watch and writes inside the folder. His handwriting, the tail of every letter hanging low, below the line, subconscious, impulsive. Greedy, hungry, evil, Angel Delaporte would say.

Dr. Touchet says, “So, are you doing anything different lately?”

And Misty tells him yes. She’s drawing. For the first time since college, Misty’s drawing, painting a little, mostly watercolors. In her attic room. In her spare time. She’s put up her easel so she can see out the window, down the coastline to Waytansea Point. She works on a picture every day. Working from her imagination. The wish list of a white trash girl: big houses, church weddings, picnics on the beach.

Yesterday Misty worked until she saw it was dark outside. Five or six hours had just disappeared. Vanished like a missing laundry room in Seaview. Bermuda triangulated.

Misty tells Dr. Touchet, “My head always hurts, but I don’t feel as much pain when I’m painting.”

His desk is painted metal, the kind of steel desk you’d see in the office of an engineer or accountant. The kind with drawers that slide open on smooth rollers and close with thunder and a loud boom. The blotter is green felt. Above it on the wall are the calendar, the old diplomas.

Dr. Touchet with his spotted, balding head and a few long brittle hairs combed from one ear to the other, he could be an engineer. With his thick round glasses in their steel frames, his thick wristwatch on a stretch-metal band, he could be an accountant. He says, “You went to college, didn’t you?”

Art school, Misty tells him. She didn’t graduate. She quit. They moved here when Harrow died, to look after Peter’s mother. Then Tabbi came along. Then Misty fell asleep and woke up fat and tired and middle-aged.

The doctor doesn’t laugh. You can’t blame him.

“When you studied history,” he says, “did you cover the Jains? The Jain Buddhists?”

Not in art history, Misty tells him.

He pulls open one of the desk drawers and takes out a yellow bottle of pills. “I can’t warn you enough,” he says. “Don’t let Tabbi within ten feet of these.” He pops open the bottle and shakes a couple into his hand. They’re clear gelatin capsules, the kind that pull apart into two halves. Inside each one is some loose, shifting dark green powder.

The peeling message on Tabbi’s windowsill: You’ll die when they’re done with you.

Dr. Touchet holds the bottle in her face and says, “Only take these when you have pain.” There isn’t a label. “It’s an herbal compound. It should help you focus.”

Misty says, “Has anybody ever died from Stendhal syndrome?”

And the doctor says, “These are green algae mostly, some white willow bark, a little bee pollen.” He puts the capsules back in the bottle and snaps it shut. He sets the bottle on the table, next to her thigh. “You can still drink,” he says, “but only in moderation.”

Misty says, “I only drink in moderation.”

And turning back to his desk, he says, “If you say so.”

Fucking small towns.

Misty says, “How did Peter’s dad die?”

And Dr. Touchet says, “What did Grace Wilmot tell you?”

She didn’t. She’s never mentioned it. When they scattered the ashes, Peter told Misty it was a heart attack. Misty says, “Grace said it was a brain tumor.”

And Dr. Touchet says, “Yes, yes it was.” He closes his metal desk drawer with a boom. He says, “Grace tells me you demonstrate a very promising talent.”

Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.

Misty askes about those Buddhists he mentioned.

“Jain Buddhists,” he says. He takes the blouse off the back of the door and hands it to her. Under each sleeve, the fabric is ringed with dark sweat stains. Dr. Touchet moves around beside Misty, holding the blouse for her to slip each arm inside.

He says, “What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.”

WHEN THEY WERE in school, Peter used to say that everything you do is a self-portrait. It might look like Saint George and the Dragon or The Rape of the Sabine Women, but the angle you use, the lighting, the composition, the technique, they’re all you. Even the reason why you chose this scene, it’s you. You are every color and brushstroke.

Peter used to say, “The only thing an artist can do is describe his own face.”

You’re doomed to being you.

This, he says, leaves us free to draw anything, since we’re only drawing ourselves.

Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand.

Everything is a self-portrait.

Everything is a diary.

With the fifty dollars from Angel Delaporte, Misty buys a round ox-hair number 5 watercolor brush. She buys a puffy number 4 squirrel brush for painting washes. A round number 2 camel-hair brush. A pointed number 6 cat’s-tongue brush made of sable. And a wide, flat number 12 sky brush.

Misty buys a watercolor palette, a round aluminum tray with ten shallow cups, like a pan for baking muffins. She buys a few tubes of gouache watercolors. Cyprus green, viridian lake green, sap green, and Winsor green. She buys Prussian blue, and a tube of madder carmine. She buys Havannah Lake black and ivory black.

Misty buys milky white art masking fluid for covering her mistakes. And piss-yellow lifting preparation for painting on early so mistakes will wipe off. She buys gum arabic, the amber color of weak beer, to keep her colors from bleeding together on the paper. And clear granulation medium to give the colors a grainy look.

She buys a pad of watercolor paper, fine-grained cold-press paper, 19 by 24 inches. The trade name for this size is a “Royal.” A 23-by-28-inch paper is an “Elephant.” Paper 26.5 by 40 inches is called a “Double Elephant.” This is acid-free, 140-pound paper. She buys art boards, canvas stretched and glued over cardboard. She buys boards sized “Super-Royal” and “Imperial” and “Antiquarian.”

She gets all this to the cash register, and it’s so far beyond fifty dollars she has to put it on a credit card.

When you’re tempted to shoplift a tube of burnt sienna, it’s time to take one of Dr. Touchet’s little green algae pills.

Peter used to say that an artist’s job is to make order out of chaos. You collect details, look for a pattern, and organize. You make sense out of senseless facts. You puzzle together bits of everything. You shuffle and reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.

If you’re at work and every table in your section is waiting for something, but you’re still hiding out in the kitchen sketching on scraps of paper, it’s time to take a pill.

When you present people with their dinner check and on the back you’ve drawn a little study in light and shadow—you don’t even know where it’s supposed to be, this image just came into your mind. It’s nothing, but you’re terrified of losing it. Then it’s time to take a pill.