R had loved reversible images ever since she saw her first optical illusion. It was hanging on the wall of the art room in her small island school: the duck that was also a rabbit. R regarded the bird reversing into the mammal and the mammal reversing into the bird every time she went to art class. She loved drawing animals with her crayon lines.
When she was older, she discovered the famous white vase that reversed to two black profile silhouettes—a roller-coaster ride for her eyes. And the illusion that most resisted her perception was the one of a young woman in a hat that became an old woman in furs.
R was surprised to encounter the baffling drawing in tatters on the office wall of the pithy, rumpled, renowned ecology professor, head of the Nature Centre where she applied to intern. The ramshackle field station sat on a rise at the edge of the wetlands, home to those magnificent fishers, the great egrets. She was determined to learn to draw their round white bodies and black stalky legs. The professor saw she was rigorous in this desire and took her on.
Every Saturday she rambled out there—wearing waders to get to the place. She would unpack her rucksack and set up to draw at the observation window. After muddled attempts, she would remove herself to the rickety deck simply to watch them, standing on one leg, unconsciously curving the other behind her.
The professor corrected her drawings not as her art teacher did, but from the ready observations of the scientist who knew more about these radiant water birds than anyone. “Never apologize for an honest mistake,” he would say when she muttered, “Sorry.”
R revered her weathered and recondite role model—who was quite a cryptic raconteur if she caught him in the right mood. Sometimes he’d gesture to the optical illusion and say, “That’s my reminder.”
“Reminder of what?” she’d ask, regarding the old woman/young woman on the wall, now so familiar her eye untangled it, just as she’d begun to untangle the lines in her drawings of the egrets. Yet the illusion was still mysterious. “Reminder of what?” she’d prompt him.
Then he would sum up: “Life’s reversals.” And, quietly singing Non, Je ne regrette rien, he would announce that soon he would kick her out because it was time for his weekly stiff Rob Roy, which he intended to savor in lonesome splendor as the sun set over the swamp. Then he would say, “How I relish my solo rut!” And R would be dismissed.
Over the two years of drawing and watching the great egrets, R grew taller but no less gawky. She cut her hair in a feathery cap, got better at sketching—though nothing about drawing the great egrets was straightforward; at first they were animals, but then they became lines raveling and shadows reaching and ragged radials raking the water as they lifted their heavy bodies into the sky—better at watching, and no better at all at reconciling the professor’s contradictory remarks.
“What does ‘Je ne regrette rien’ actually mean?” she asked one day as she finished a vivid version of another spiky head.
“I regret nothing,” the professor said, approving of the sketch. But by young R’s lights, the scientist seemed to regret everything. Quickly and stealthily, as a fishing bird might snatch its dinner from the water, she resolved never to regret.
After graduation, she moved to the city. Then she shot straight up to her goal of Never Regretting with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master’s degree in Fine Arts. She began to earn design awards. Often she imagined the professor behind her, toasting her with his Rob Roy and a quick nod of approval, but she hardly ever went back to the island.
She was working up her courage to develop a portfolio for the Rare Bird Fellowship, which, like its name, was given only rarely. This was the year. She might not get the award, of course, but she would regret not trying. When the portfolio was nearly prepared, she visited the RBF Headquarters. No one at the front desk, she ventured into the nest of offices behind. There she found a formidable woman leaning over a drawing table, standing on one high heel, the other dangling off the foot curled behind her.
When the woman turned around, she peered regally over her chic glasses, regarding R’s painter’s pants and thick-soled sandals. “May I help you?” she said, passing a manicured hand through her dramatic white hair. Her silk suit disguised her figure in a most sophisticated way, emphasizing her long legs in black tights. She carried her age beautifully.
R, who couldn’t summon words to respond, presented the half-completed portfolio. The woman pursed her very red lips.
“Yes, I see some talent,” she said. “Come next week with more, R.”
“How did you know my name?” R marveled.
The woman sneered. “From your huge, adolescent signature on these egrets.”
R scampered out of the office and went all out on the portfolio. When she brought it back the following week, she encountered a receptionist at the front desk.
“I’d like to see—” R suddenly realized she didn’t know the woman’s name. After she began to describe her, the receptionist said in awe, “You must mean Madame.” After a considerable wait and several tentative-sounding calls, R was led back to her.
Madame imperiously perused the drawings. “With whom have you studied?” she demanded. R rattled off the names of her teachers; hoping to bolster her credibility, she even ventured to name the professor. A distinguished scientist might help.
“Monsieur le professeur,” Madame purred, “so, he is still at the Centre de la Nature?”
“Well, I think he is,” R said.
“Keep going,” was all Madame said. R did. She brought in her third attempt just before the deadline.
“This is getting a bit boring, don’t you think? Why you are pestering me?” Madame lowered her glasses and smoothed her startlingly white hair.
“I didn’t mean to pester you,” R ventured, “but the Rare Bird Fellowship deadline is this week.”
“Do you not think I’m aware of that?” Madame snapped as she opened the beautifully organized, complete portfolio. “You do not really mean to apply for this award, do you?”
R’s silence conveyed that, of course, she did.
Madame slapped the portfolio closed. “Surely you’re not serious about this application. You are too young; your work is too undeveloped. It is simple.” She continued with exquisite rancor. “It is not rich. Not sophisticated. It affects old-fashioned principles. You will only be rejected. Don’t do it, ma petite R. You will regret it.”
At that R was dismissed. Undeveloped? Not serious. Too young? Too simple? Not rich enough? Unsophisticated? Redundantly out of date?
R went home and regarded her images. Revolting, all of them. Risible. Rotten. Rejectable. NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN! she tried to roar alone in her room, but couldn’t. Her lovely long neck hung in defeat. She regretted every heron, ibis, kingfisher, crane, stork, pelican, spoonbill, and egret she had drawn since she was a child. Of course she did not apply for the RBF.
Then came the echoes of self-recrimination. She would not have a fellowship because she hadn’t even given herself a chance to be turned down. She’d run away like a rabbit. R had a fleeting mental picture of her island school classroom where the rabbit reversed to a duck. I’ve … she thought, ducked my goals. Just gone off my roll toward the top and curved out and reeled back down to where I started. She resolved never to pick up her pencils again.
The resolution didn’t last. Even if she was a bad bird artist, it was the only thing she wanted to be.
R wrapped her sketchbook in plastic and fled the tall buildings for the sea-level island, putting on her waders to go out to the field station. The swamp resounded with the racket of rills and rough calls.
She found the station unlocked, but empty. Still on the wall flapped the familiar reversible image of the old woman and the girl.
Below the observation window, among the reeds, stood a great white egret. She could not step outside and risk disturbing it, so she flipped her sketchbook open and drew, her hand taking a line for a walk around the profile of the bird.
The professor silently appeared in the doorway. “Having regrets about the city?” he asked, his voice as whiskery and rough as his face. There was something blurred about him, something undefined.
She began to weep.
“Regret doesn’t mean you’d change what you’ve done,” he said. “It’s a place. The negative space a choice leaves.”
Her sobs quieted as she took this in.
“Yes,” he said, “you see what you did and what you didn’t do. Both of them before your eyes. A reversible image.” His hand hovered about six inches above her head almost seeming about to pat the feathered cap of her hair, then withdrew.
R blew her nose and looked down at her sketch. When she had let her hand walk around the bird’s profile, she had also made an outline of her own profile, reversing it to the avian silhouette.
“My ‘Great R-Egret,’ ” she said.
Below, the real great egret dipped and flew toward the roiling ocean.