ask her how her painting had gone while he was away. She always said when he had to go to Minneapolis that she would stay behind and work, that this time, being alone, with no distractions, she could make the breakthrough that meant her happiness. So Joe always asked how it had gone when he arrived. But this time he would not. He would just talk about the drive back and where he stopped for lunch. No mention of stopping at the falls. The stereo was playing full blast when he went in the house but he didn't see Becky. She had loaded some New Age junk into the CD player. They had an extensive library of good CD's that she could play but she never did. He shut off the stereo and wandered through the house. She didn't answer when he called to her. Becky was nowhere. The living room was a mess. Empty beer cans, half-empty plates, and overfull ashtrays cluttered every table top. He climbed the stairs to the bridge that spanned the living room and connected their studios with the bedrooms. Their own bedroom was deserted, the bed unmade, large piles of her clothes draped over the chaise and the black lacquer ladderback chair he had bought for her in St. Paul. He knocked on her bathroom door. There was no answer. He pushed open the door and then recoiled at the musty smells of wet towels and unscrubbed tiles. The mirror over the sink reflected the total disarray of the room and of Becky's life. Joe gathered the towels and shoved them into the hamper. He went into the hall and listened for any sound. The silence was complete. He knew she wasn't in her studio. From the bridge he looked down on the living room he had conceived with such joy, conceived with a picture of Becky always in his mind. He had decorated it with unthinking extravagance to please her but it had been a useless extravagance that had brought them no joy. Becky was not in the house. She was not in her studio. He knew that but he had to see for himself. There was no sign that she had been in the room while he was away. Her brushes were dry and uncleaned. A half- finished portrait of a woman stood on the easel. It was like a half-dozen such portraits she had painted of her friends and neighbors, but the woman in every one of the portraits had the empty eyes and tight, thin mouth of Becky's mother. He went down into his studio where his new canvas awaited him. He had mounted it on the wall because of its ten foot by fourteen foot size. The painting he planned would depict the Battle of New Ulm, one of the highlights of the great Sioux uprising in Minnesota in the 1860's. He had researched the battle with the greatest care, as he had researched each of his historic paintings. No one could quarrel with his scholarship. They sold well to white insurance companies and banks whose large walls demanded large canvases. Their presence seemed to assuage the consciences of corporate officers