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architecture he also grasps in one hand, so it looks as if the figure is a matador, and the architecture his cape. The figure’s other arm is bathed in light and reaches to the edge of the canvas and in that light tiny people dance, make love, fly and sing: a satiric and whimsical answer to Paul’s irritation. Of course she knew the War was over.
    Each of the twelve in
Series B
was painted in the same precise, intense manner, some more complex that
B One
, some less. By the time Quiola made her way across the busy room C.C. was at
Series B Three
, her face tented, unreadable. When she felt Quiola beside her she said, “I haven’t seen this one in so long. My parents owned it, you know, but they never hung it. Couldn’t bear it.”
    â€œI thought
Series B
belonged to the museum?”
    â€œIt does, now. Father donated it, and also his version of
Wirkorgan
, back when the Museum acquired the others in the
Series
. It was a relief to Mom and Dad to have a legitimate reason to get them both out of the house.”
    â€œBut why? They’re so lovely.”
    Wirkorgan
and
Series B Three
are, in fact, lovely, the latter so vital and mystifyingly alive, the former showing a naked white child, fat as a cherub, who gives off a hot, blue light that graduates to rose-gold. The flaming child vaults, a diver defeating gravity, toward a corner of the canvas where stars dot space. Gracefully looped around the child’s shoulders and neck is gossamer black lace. It drifts across the figure’s back and vanishes off the canvas.
    So why did Tom and Nancy Davis find them unbearable?
    â€œIt was a bad year,” was all C.C. could say that night in MoMA.
    â€œ1947?” asked Quiola, helplessly. “I don’t understand.”
    â€œLook at the lace. See?”
    Quiola bent forward. “Names? A scarf of names? I never noticed before.”
    â€œYou can’t see them in reproductions. Liz used a magnifying glass to paint them – the names on the blacklist. She added name after name, until 1952, I think.”
    â€œWere your parents blacklisted?”
    C.C. laughed a pleased laugh. “Oh, no, nothing like that. McCarthy outraged them but they had no sympathy for communism. Conservative liberals.”
    Quiola glanced over her shoulder. “I wonder how she’s doing.”
    â€œShe’s fine. Look at her. Drinking it in. Who is that man? He looks as if he’d kiss her ass, doesn’t he?”
    â€œYou’d think we were nothing more than country mice,” said Quiola, folding her arms tight across her chest.
    â€œAh, but she’s waited a long time for this. Let her enjoy it.”
    Huffing, Quiola turned away, back to
Series B
. “Her work I can stomach,” she said. “Liz herself is another matter.”
    Series B
. Critics will tell you that these Moore paintings are an idiosyncratic take on the post-war years in America.
Series B Three
1947, they say, commemorates both young American daring – Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier – and American paranoia – Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt.
    But in 1947, there was also Tucker.
    Liz called Tuck Davis her watching child. His eyes, of no striking color, nevertheless caught you: large, and bright and watching. Photographs show a boy whose head, adorned with hair in long ringlets, seems too big for his nose, and his nose too delicate for those eyes and his eyes too watching for comfort. In that summer of 1947, as Nancy had told Al and Pat Kronen, the Davises had vacationed in Florida. They’d camped near a small lake. Picture this, then: the family eating BBQ, and here comes Tucker up from the lakeside, his wet diapers sagging because he’s running as quick as his fat legs can go and right behind him, clumsy swift, a ’gator, jaws widening and then Dr. Davis is there, his big hands slipping under the boy’s arms, and Tucker swings in the air. The ’gator, discouraged,