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camouflaged by a domesticated, eager-to-please smile. Was that a racist thought? she wondered, then ceased to worry about it.
    “I take it you’re already familiar with Oscar’s views on the subject of his fellow painters,” she said, “and you disagree with them.”
    “Frankly,” said Ralph. “I disagree with him on many points. It doesn’t in any way lessen my reverence for his work.”
    “No doubt you think de Kooning is a great painter,” Teddy said.
    “Guilty as charged.”
    “You’ll be taken out in the yard and kneecapped later,” said Teddy. “I’m an excellent shot.”
    Ralph laughed with his whole head and torso, as if this were very funny.
    She disliked overlaughter; it always irked her. “Actually,” she said, “I disagreed with him for years about de Kooning and Pollock and much more. All my arguments never made a dent in his convictions.”
    “Of course not,” said Ralph with an echo of fulsome laughter in his voice.
    Not sure whether he was implying that Oscar was a stubborn old wing nut of a goat or that she was an uneducated nonartist unworthy of influencing a great painter, or both, Teddy smiled a secret smile and took a bite of her lentil soup. Limited access to the best ingredients, she thought, was a real test of any cook’s mettle. This soup was rich and complex and full of
umami,
the meatiness and soul that undergirded all the other flavors, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness. The lentils had a satisfyingly mealy give between the teeth. A suggestion of cardamom in the broth hinted at duskiness. She had added the artichoke hearts because they had an enzyme that made everything taste sweeter, a different quality of sweetness from sugar, hitting a different part of the tongue. She had added the lamb sausage because it was so good.
    The doorbell rang. Teddy got up and went to the front door. Peering through the peephole, she saw Ruby.
    “Well,” said Teddy, opening the door, “you’re just in time to meet your father’s biographer. He’s in full interview mode.”
    Ruby kissed Teddy on her cheek, and Teddy put a hand against Ruby’s cheek as she did so. It was their familiar, affectionate greeting. Teddy didn’t sense any coolness in Ruby’s manner, but she felt wary about expecting too much affection from her. She stood back and looked at her dauntingly voluptuous, nearly forty-year-old daughter. Ruby’s face was wide and very pale; her mouth was red and full, and her naturally thick eyebrows had been plucked into fine arches over her smoky, slanted blue eyes, Oscar’s Slavic eyes, black-lashed, heavy-lidded. Her dark curly hair was piled on her head. She looked so much like Oscar…and she was so young still…. It was very complicated, being such a mother of such a daughter. Ruby’s nonidentical twin sister, Samantha, resembled Teddy; she was slinky and catlike, delicate and sensitive, whereas Ruby and Oscar were robust and sensual, blunt and unselfconscious. Because they were so much alike, mothering Samantha had been so easy, whereas Ruby, who loved her father more, had always been a challenge.
    “We’ve been discussing the female form,” Teddy said.
    Ruby laughed. “What else?” she said. “Well, let’s go in and offer our opinions and see where that gets us.”
    Ruby put her arm through Teddy’s as they headed for the dining room. But Teddy couldn’t fully give in to her warmth. She felt that somewhere, very early probably, she had lost Ruby, and she had never been sure how to win her back. This made her act overly sensitive and cautious with Ruby, and also caused her to think critical thoughts about her, which for the most part she kept entirely to herself.
    Ruby sat down in the chair across from Ralph.
    “I’m Ruby Feldman,” she said.
    “Ralph Washington,” he responded. “Very glad to meet you.” He had been looking over his notes.
    Ruby helped herself to some wine. “I hear you’ve been talking about the female form. A subject my father