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forbid," he said. "The thought never entered my mind."
    Before Bill escaped to Fanelli's, he introduced me to his parents. Regina Wechsler, who had become Regina Cohen after her second marriage, was a tall, attractive woman with a large bust, thick black hair, considerable amounts of gold jewelry, and a sweet, lilting voice. When she spoke, she cocked her head sideways and glanced up at me from under her long eyelashes. She undulated her shoulders as she declared the evening "wonderful" and referred to the toilet, before she went off to use it, as "the powder room." And yet Regina wasn't all artifice. She sized up the soberly dressed crowd in a few seconds, pointed to her red suit, and said, "I feel like a fire engine." She let out a deep, sudden laugh, and her humor cut straight through her posing. Her husband, Al, was a pink-faced man with a square jaw and a deep voice, who seemed genuinely interested in Bill and his work. "They take you by surprise, don't they?" he said about the paintings, and I had to agree.
    Before Regina left, I saw her hand Bill a letter. I was standing right beside her, and I suppose she thought I deserved an explanation. "It's from his brother Dan, who couldn't be here tonight." An instant later, she turned to Bill and said, "Your father just walked in. I'm going to say hello to him before we leave."
    I watched Regina approach a tall man who had just come out of the elevator. The resemblance between father and son was striking. Sy Wechsler had a narrower face than Bill, but his dark eyes and skin, his broad shoulders and strong limbs were so much like his son's that the two could have been mistaken for each other if viewed from behind, a fact I would remember later when Bill began a portrait series of his father. While Regina spoke to him, Sy nodded and answered, but his expression was vague. I guessed that the encounter was awkward for him and that he was bearing up by adopting a polite but distant attitude toward his ex-wife, but the expression on his face never changed. When he approached Bill, he stuck out his hand and Bill shook it. He thanked his father for coming and introduced me. When we shook hands, I looked into the man's eyes and he returned the look, but there was little recognition in his face. He nodded at me, said, "Congratulations and good luck," and then turned to his pregnant daughter-in-law and said exactly the same thing. He did not comment on his forthcoming grandchild, who by then was a small bump under Lucille's dress. He glanced at the paintings as if they were the work of some stranger, and left the gallery. I don't know whether the suddenness of his father's arrival and departure rattled Bill enough to make him leave or whether it was just the pressure of finding himself under scrutiny by an art world he feared might reject him.
    As it turned out, the critics both rejected and accepted him. That first show set the tone for the rest of Bill's career. He would always have passionate defenders and violent detractors, but as painful or pleasant as it might have been for Bill to be hated by some people and worshiped by others, he would become far more important to reviewers and journalists than they ever would be to him. By the time of his first show, Bill was already too old and too stubborn to be swayed by critics. He was the most private person I have ever known, and only a few people were ever allowed to enter the secret room of his imagination. It is ironic and sad that perhaps the most important inhabitant of that room was and would always be Bill's father. Alive, Sy Wechsler was the incarnation of his son's unfulfilled longing. He was one of those people who were never fully present at the events of their own lives. A part of him was not there, and it was this absent quality in his father that Bill never stopped pursuing — even after the man was dead.
    Bill showed up for the small dinner at Bernie's loft after the opening, but he was mostly silent, and we all went home