The Twins

Monet's Garden at Sainte-Adresse hung over my grandmother's fireplace. As a child, this made perfect sense to me because I believed Garden at Sainte-Adresse was a painting of my grandmother's house. She lived on Jamaica Bay in Breezy Point, New York. Like Monet's terrace, her wrap around deck was lined with plastic planters of red and pink geraniums, impatients, and begonias. When you stepped off her deck, stained the exact, (the exact!) orange as the fence in the painting, you stepped directly onto the beach. There were fewer boats, true, and buildings in the distance (the skyline of lower Manhattan, no less), but when I was young correlation was enough. Sainte-Adresse and Breezy Point were the same to me. What was France? What was Europe? Who was Claude Monet? My grandmother's house, her beach, her waves, her red and pink flowers - this was the center of the universe.

Occam's razor tells us the simplest answer is preferable to a more complex one. The years that have passed, the realization that this painting was fitting for but not inspired by 353 Bayside Ave., the house gone, my grandmother gone, and still I think the simplest answer, though wrong, was the best. To recognize your similarities with the world rather than doubt them, I think, is a gift. The more I look at the world, the more of myself I see in it, and the more of myself I see in it, the better I understand it, and the better I understand it, the more I love it.

I admire Garden at Sainte-Adresse's subtle complexity. The marine world of canvass sails, flags, of blue and white, laps up against the country green grass and kaleidoscopic flower beds. Salt and soil. Petticoats, sailboats, umbrellas, and steamers. My grandmother's house was just as complex: geraniums, seashells, and a global city coexisted in one scene. She even had the lacquered wicker chairs Monet includes. Hers were white.

My grandmother's American beach house had French Impressionist paintings on every wall. Her ex-husband remarried a Japanese woman, my Japanese step-grandmother, my o bāchan. Garden at Sainte-Adresse is a French painting steeped in Japanese influence as military missions, art, and culture crisscrossed the seas between these two countries trying to understand one another. Worlds meeting, two figures speaking, and two figures sitting. Who are they? What are they discussing? What are they thinking?

The Twins

I love beginnings. The opening movement of the symphony, the first sip of champagne, part I of a novel. I love summer mornings in the same way. There's so much potential in the low, sharp angles of the early hours. The sun rises, the temperature climbs, and the air holds its breath until a thunderstorm erupts - or the clouds stay over the sea instead, kept away by a taut breeze, the sun sinking cool and colorful beneath the waves having spent itself over the long day. In the morning, in beginnings, there are only possibilities. I love imagining them in front of me like little ships on the horizon.

"What is it you're thinking of?" Charles' extra loud voice assaulted my parasol which I had tilted in his direction.

Cousin Charles had an opinion about everything, and he had been providing them loudly and without cease from the moment we sat down at breakfast. Now they had spilled out onto the terrace with us. He was against the involvement in Japan and for withdrawal, for involvement in Mexico and against the withdrawal, scornful of the "lofty" aims of The Exposition Universelle, cynical about the "efficacy" of Drury's female education bill - topics with no direct impact on him as a bachelor businessman approaching middle age. The way he practically leaned across Papa and Mama to speak to me annoyed me. And the way Mama and Papa allowed this to happen, looking placidly through space as if they couldn't hear him! Emerging from the breakfast room to the terrace, I rushed ensure Mama and Papa would be seated between us, but distance only made Charles' heart grow fonder. He redoubled his efforts leaning and straining over the arm of his chair, catapulting his ideas in my direction, coming perilously close to toppling over. As much as I would've enjoyed the sight, I couldn't stand him a minute longer. I leapt up and took a turn around the terrace. It was charmingly laid out but small. I was back in my seat sooner than I wanted to be.

The moment my backside touched the uneven, uncomfortable wicker seat Charles started up again. "Mexico is a long-standing partner to our interests in North America. We shouldn't be afraid of spending a little blood and treasure there."

He was wearing a full head-to-toe brown suit and matching top hat. Even for a holiday, the ensemble struck me as a bit overdone. The dark suit looked suffocating on him.

"We shouldn't draw back now just because we've suffered a little defeat or two!" He belatedly realized this was a blunder. "Not that I mean Jules has anything to do with that or wish him harm, God forbid!" he tacked on, pulling at his starchy stiff bright white collar. "Your brother is a truly great and brave man."

Equally blinding white cuffs flared over his pink hands which gripped a short walking stick tightly, even when sitting down.

"Japan on the other hand. I think we can agree that's a whole other story, no?" Neither Mama, Papa, nor I made any show of answering this rhetorical question, so he pressed on. "What's Japan to us? A funny little island if you ask me. Why should we care about the chief in charge over there? And I simply don't understand the obsession with their art. Such an emphasis on it at this Exposition!" he tapped his walking stick tartly on the cement. "As if France doesn't have anything else to spend her money on! We should be investing in manufacturing, industry, maybe then we would be faring better in Mexico, hmm?"

Two rhetorical questions were two too many for me. Charles seemed annoyed that we had let his rehearsed comments about Mexico and Japan float away like an unattended balloon. I took the opportunity to unfold myself from my chair and escape to the front of the terrace where a small three sailed sloop cruised close by. He could only be a dozen yards out, but the sailor looked small and far away as he sat at his rudder in slate gray trousers, jacket, and cap. His face was turned toward me, but his expression was masked by shadows.

I had barely arrived when Charles' walking stick announced his arrival next to me and he asked what I was thinking.

I had been thinking of beginnings and possibilities, but I didn't want to say this because even if I could explain what I meant by it, I wasn't confident that Charles would understand. As a matter of fact, I was afraid he'd interpret it as an invitation. Showing up to our family vacation unannounced, following me around, wearing his best suit, Mama and Papa's noninterference - my stomach rose and fell like the waves at our feet. I was afraid he was going to ask me to marry him.

"Hm? Oh, just the weather," I lied. "Whether the clouds will come in this afternoon or not," I added, keeping it light.

Charles squinted up as if scrutinizing something atmospheric and mysterious. "Huh! With such a wind blowing already we're in for a storm this afternoon - mark my words! Yes, a storm. Truly, I can feel it." He smiled stupidly, completely wrong, unable, I knew, to tell East from West or high tide from low tide. I forced my mouth into a small smile and let other sounds do the work of filling the silence between us.

When I attend concerts, I like to close my eyes and dissect individual lines with my ears. What are the cellos doing beneath the violas and violins? Speaking to the timpani! A connection my eyes might have prevented me from seeing. I tried to do the same now, eyes open, letting my gaze crystallize on a spot in the water.

First, I noticed the ropes and metal rings clanging against their flagpoles, sometimes synchronized, sometimes not. Sometimes one beat, sometimes two following each other swiftly. Atop the pole, the heavy flags th-wacked in a steady breeze. Then there were the gulls, unseen, sometimes crying out long laments sometimes laughing loudly. Further in the distance the ships spoke to each other with their sharp two tone whoo-whee whistles and their heavy bronze bells tolling out G naturals.

"I meant," Charles continued, leaning heavily on his walking stick, "What you were thinking of in relation to what we were talking about that made you jump up so abruptly. Was it Jules?"

Hearing Jules' name from him bothered me. "I remember you speaking on several topics relating to my brother, but I don't recall saying anything about them." Isolation with Charles was worse than the wicker chairs. I started back to mine. Immediately, I heard Charles' walking stick poking the cement as he started back toward his. I pulled up short. If I sat back down, the same series of events would occur. A few moments would pass, Charles would start speaking nonsense, lobbing his voice over my mannequin-like parents, I would spring up out of my chair, and he would follow me. I changed tact.

"Mama, the view is beautiful this morning. Come stand with me by the fence."

My mother tilted back her tightly flexed parasol, looking startled to hear my voice and see me standing in front of her. As if we weren't on holiday together. As if we had both arrived at this terrace through a series of wildly serendipitous circumstances.

"Oh no, dear, I'm perfectly fine here. I can see very well from here." She returned her pale eyes to the horizon. My father fiddled with his cane but didn't acknowledge this interaction happening directly next to him. Charles looked dangerously ready to jabber. I decided against shoving my skirts back into the chair, clearly made for pants-wearing men. I was on my own and distance was my only hope. I turned toward the overflowing flower beds on my side of the neat little terrace, pretending to be in deep contemplation of the flowers. Really, I was thinking of Jules.

Jules was born just 16 months after me. I don't have a memory of my life without him in it. Close in age, looks, and disposition, we were called "the twins" until we were about 12 years old when a boy had to become a man and a girl a woman. I spent my lonely adolescence cursing this unforeseen change, wishing I had been born a boy, wishing I really was Jules' twin. Though Jules never treated me differently, life was good to him, exciting. It swallowed him up in its current and left me behind. When Jules was 17, he went to military school, and I stayed home. When he turned 19, he went to technical college, and I stayed home. At 23 he sailed for Mexico with the army, and I stood on the rampart and watched him go. He was awarded The Cross of the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon III himself, and now he was a Knight of the Légion d'honneur. Jules deserved all these things, but I couldn't help but think that with half a chance, I might have deserved them too. Instead, my lot was watercolors, parakeets, gloves, hats, a piano - empty things. Toys. Distractions. I wasn't Sylvie in my own right. I was Jules' sister.

Something we did continue to share was art. I was the musician, and Jules the painter. The stalky plants had flowers just the shade of red he used in a quick painting included in his last parcel of letters from Puebla. The French invasion was withdrawing, but our hopes of having Jules home were dashed in the same sentence. Napoleon was sending an elite, experimental expedition to Japan and Jules had been selected to go. He would be on the other side of the world training the Shogun's army in artillery tactics at 28 years old. I was avoiding cousin Charles by looking at flowers and talking about the weather at 29. I was jealous. I missed Jules. Unknowingly, I had wandered to the end of the flower beds and found myself back at the front of the terrace and face-to-face with Charles. Damn.

"Sylvie, it was not my intention to hurt or offend you" Charles said hurriedly, unsure of how much time I'd give him. "Mexico, Japan, the arts, education - these are big, big topics!" I was unsure where this was all going but it sounded like he was approaching an insult to my intelligence. "I'm sure it may sound like some of the things I say are unkind to Jules or to artists or to women, but truly it's more nuanced than that." There it was.

"What is the nuance?" I asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"What is the nuance," I repeated, "to your opinions?"

The metronome in my head counted three full beats of silence before Charles answered. When he did, he started with a loud self-conscious laugh. "Oh, Sylvie if only I had the time to explain, but truly it would take all day! All week! Maybe a year!"

"Try."

"Sylvie you are an exception, truly!"

"Charles, you don't think women should be educated?"

"No - I mean yes - yes, I think universal education for women is a commendable goal -"

"But?"

"But I wonder what it would mean for our society if every female was suddenly to spend her time in a classroom. It would erode the balance, which is always dangerous. I just submit that there are big, macro aspects to consider which many have not considered."

I opened my mouth to speak but Charles held up a hand. "Of course nothing general applies to you, Sylvie. You're a credit! A female Jules! Why must you take everything to heart so personally?"

"Well," I said watching the smoke trails from the distant ships fade into the clouds like a brushstroke over his head, "My brother served in Mexico with distinction, my brother is serving in Japan at Napoleon's request, he and I have both submitted works to The Exposition, and a first-rate education was denied me because I am a female Jules."

Now it was his turn to open his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

"Charles, did you come here to propose to me?"

"Sylvie, I -"

"Because the answer would be no, Charles."

The effect was instantaneous. Charles went red. His eyes widened in horror bordering on comprehension before settling into a wide, willful ignorance. He looked as if he might be ill and leaned heavily on his walking stick.

"My apologies, Sylvie. If you'll excuse me."

He turned on the spot and left the terrace in haste, darting back into the hotel.

I turned and watched the little sloop until it became one with the water and air. Then I walked back to Mama and Papa who were still seated but had sprung back to life.

"Thank goodness you got rid of him," Papa said with twinkling eyes. "Whatever did you say to him?"

I was shocked. "Papa! I thought you liked Charles."

"Oh no, dear, he's quite a bore. He caught wind of our being here this week and practically invited himself."

"Can you believe that?" Mama asked, seeing the surprised look on my face. "Imagine your father and my dread," she laughed.

"It's always easiest to pretend you're deep in thought somewhere else and wait for men like him to tire themselves out," Papa added, tapping his temple. "But you really sent him packing, Sylvie. Let me guess, you gave him your opinion on something?"

"Yes, something like that." And I left it at that, grateful for the easy familiarity of my parents, of silences that needn't be filled, of watching the late morning unfold into the afternoon in front of us.