Sunday by the Seine

As they walked past picnicking families, along the bank of the river, Ms. Kim tut-tutted at her daughter Molly. 

“We walk up straight, Molly,” she told her, holding her daughter’s tiny hand. “We don’t slouch. Do you want to be a hunchback?”

“No, mommy,” Molly said quietly, although her white boater was causing her much discomfort. 

The sky above them was an endless blue, the weather fine and studded with heat despite the tempering ripples of the river along the park. The trees above them, Molly thought, were little of a bulwark against the sun. 

Unlike her daughter, who was fidgeting in her white sundress, Ms. Kim was not swayed by the heat. She wore a two-piece dress with a bustle and held a reddish parasol to herself, but she was too tall to shade her daughter with it. 

“It’s beautiful,” said a man in front of them, a cane in his hand, his eyes on the river. There was a white sail in the distance, the boat slowly materializing as it came closer to the shore. 

“On Sundays, especially,” agreed the man sitting next to him. He was smoking a long cigarette pipe, his elbows slumped against the grass. The lapis-blue cap on his graying hair flapped in the wisps of breeze. 

“It’s different here at La Grande Jatte,” the woman, who was sitting in between them, finally spoke up. “Everything seems—more real.”

“Yeah,” said the man with a cane. 

Outside the glass casement and white frame, visitors at the art gallery walked by. 

“Seurat’s masterpiece,” the tour guide told them.

The End

Renee Chen

Renee Chen is an Asian-American writer. She has been published in the Daphne Review, the Wilderness House Literary Review, and elsewhere. As an addict to detective and mystery fiction, she can be found reading Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle when she is not writing!