painting. We stood in front of a French door that looked out on the back of the house. I was bored and didn’t want to stand with my brother’s arm around me, staring out at the recreation room, when it was warm and pleasant outside and frogs and other playthings beckoned. But I did as I was told, because I was a “good boy.”
When outsiders look at the painting, it is clear to them that Tony and I are well fed. The color of our eyes isn’t quite accurate—mine were actually lighter than his—but they are good eyes, with a clear view of our world. What is most striking about the painting are the strong differences between us. I am a curly blond, Tony’s hair is straight and black. His complexion is umber in tone, with almost a greenish tint, like our mother’s; mine is light, like Dad’s. His lips are thin and pale, mine almost like a woman’s and bright red. Allowing for the artist’s choice of color and line and her attempt to make us look part of the same family of colors and tones, it is almost impossible not to see that we are far apart in terms of looks, but we were also far apart in terms of temperament.
The ovum is fertilized. Immediately, it splits into two, then four, then eight, carrying with it into the multiplicity of cells copies of new genes, made up of the DNA of mother and father, but in a different combination from before. Each of us inherits from the same parents, but in permutations that dictate some of what we will be. Nothing can be said to be solely responsible for our future looks, behaviors, actions, feelings—but this random splitting and distribution are a big part of it.
Many of the differences between Tony and myself were inborn. The physical ones are easy to see. But I think much of our emotional and psychological differences were also due to the hybrid tossing of genetic matter.
Still, not all character traits are from our genes. Nature and nurture work together, and though my brother was always darker in color and spirit than I, there is surely more to it than his inborn temperament. As all of us grow from infant to adult, we learn to tell our own stories, our personal worldview. Sometimes, we construct good stories. If we’re unlucky, we build unpleasant ones. Luck, skill, fate—all play their roles in who we become and how we face the world. The remarkable thing is how long Tony survived.
If you regard my brother in that painting closely, I believe you can see clear through to his soul. In his eyes, you can see the dark, brooding boy and man that I came to know—the Tony who shows in his photos a serious intent, his lower lip pushed out just a little, his elegant fingers clasped in front of him. Tony of the “raccoon eyes,” rimmed with dark shadows. A wounded look sometimes crosses his face—as if he has been stabbed or punched in the solar plexus. I recognize the same look from my father and my grandmother: a wounded bear in the forest or a deer about to be run down by a car could not have stared with more hurt and, often, more anger.
I HAVE READ MOTHER’S LETTERS to Dad shortly after my birth. She had taken Tony and me up to Marblehead, Massachusetts, where Missy had a summer rental. While Dad slogged along in the sweating city, practicing the kind of law he would later abandon, Mother enjoyed cool sea breezes, unlimited space, and coddling by her mother. In one of those letters, she says, “Kit bubbles with delight. He is pure joy.” Missy wrote: “Kit is Master Sunshine as usual; easing his way into everyone’s heart.”
“Master Sunshine!” While Tony was what—“Master Gloom”? That was the difference people saw between us. The big painting in my living room already describes that disparity. But if the psychologist was correct—and Tony’s depression stemmed from Mother’s depression—then what went right with me? Was Mother a beaming, communicative person with me, whereas with Tony she had been a gloomy woman who could not take her son into her
When outsiders look at the painting, it is clear to them that Tony and I are well fed. The color of our eyes isn’t quite accurate—mine were actually lighter than his—but they are good eyes, with a clear view of our world. What is most striking about the painting are the strong differences between us. I am a curly blond, Tony’s hair is straight and black. His complexion is umber in tone, with almost a greenish tint, like our mother’s; mine is light, like Dad’s. His lips are thin and pale, mine almost like a woman’s and bright red. Allowing for the artist’s choice of color and line and her attempt to make us look part of the same family of colors and tones, it is almost impossible not to see that we are far apart in terms of looks, but we were also far apart in terms of temperament.
The ovum is fertilized. Immediately, it splits into two, then four, then eight, carrying with it into the multiplicity of cells copies of new genes, made up of the DNA of mother and father, but in a different combination from before. Each of us inherits from the same parents, but in permutations that dictate some of what we will be. Nothing can be said to be solely responsible for our future looks, behaviors, actions, feelings—but this random splitting and distribution are a big part of it.
Many of the differences between Tony and myself were inborn. The physical ones are easy to see. But I think much of our emotional and psychological differences were also due to the hybrid tossing of genetic matter.
Still, not all character traits are from our genes. Nature and nurture work together, and though my brother was always darker in color and spirit than I, there is surely more to it than his inborn temperament. As all of us grow from infant to adult, we learn to tell our own stories, our personal worldview. Sometimes, we construct good stories. If we’re unlucky, we build unpleasant ones. Luck, skill, fate—all play their roles in who we become and how we face the world. The remarkable thing is how long Tony survived.
If you regard my brother in that painting closely, I believe you can see clear through to his soul. In his eyes, you can see the dark, brooding boy and man that I came to know—the Tony who shows in his photos a serious intent, his lower lip pushed out just a little, his elegant fingers clasped in front of him. Tony of the “raccoon eyes,” rimmed with dark shadows. A wounded look sometimes crosses his face—as if he has been stabbed or punched in the solar plexus. I recognize the same look from my father and my grandmother: a wounded bear in the forest or a deer about to be run down by a car could not have stared with more hurt and, often, more anger.
I HAVE READ MOTHER’S LETTERS to Dad shortly after my birth. She had taken Tony and me up to Marblehead, Massachusetts, where Missy had a summer rental. While Dad slogged along in the sweating city, practicing the kind of law he would later abandon, Mother enjoyed cool sea breezes, unlimited space, and coddling by her mother. In one of those letters, she says, “Kit bubbles with delight. He is pure joy.” Missy wrote: “Kit is Master Sunshine as usual; easing his way into everyone’s heart.”
“Master Sunshine!” While Tony was what—“Master Gloom”? That was the difference people saw between us. The big painting in my living room already describes that disparity. But if the psychologist was correct—and Tony’s depression stemmed from Mother’s depression—then what went right with me? Was Mother a beaming, communicative person with me, whereas with Tony she had been a gloomy woman who could not take her son into her
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