How to Be Luminous

by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

  Through a yawn, he mumbles, “Hey, Minnie.”

  “Um, hi?” Confused, I step out onto the porch, half closing the door behind me. The tiles are cool beneath my bare feet, the sunshine pale and creamy.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  Felix holds up a sketch pad in ink-stained fingertips. “You never finished the homework. Thought we could try again.”

  “Oh.” I fold my arms over my thin dress. My sisters are both upstairs, Ash said he’d come by again this morning, and the Professor’s net curtains are probably already twitching: I don’t want to invite this glowering, towering arthead into our domestic disharmony. I’m about to tell him to go away when curiosity gets the better of me: “How did you even know where I live, anyway?”

  Felix gives me a smile so dark, it’s a frown.

  In black and white, I’d forgotten that our house is something of a spectacle. With its Jordan almond paintwork, chartreuse front door, and shiny, bee-shaped brass knocker, it sits in the middle of the brick terrace like a gift bow. A couple of TV channels even showed it on the news when we did the Missing People appeal, before the Professor made a series of barking phone calls on our behalf.

  “Head’s up, Alice in Wonderland…” says Felix.

  I follow his gaze to my toes. Salvador Dalí has nudged open the door and is hopping out of the house, between my feet. I sigh, scooping him up, and bob my head for Felix to follow me inside. As I frog-march him through the house to the back door, I can sense his head swiveling at the bohemian decor, drinking in the bobbly rag rugs, endless Emmy-Kate originals, bright walls, miniatures of my mum’s sculptures.

  In the back garden, I plonk Salvador Dalí on the dew-anointed grass. He hops off to chew on a hydrangea.

  “This is … wow,” says Felix, looking around. “I half expect to see another dinosaur.”

  “Huh?”

  “This garden. It’s beyond,” he continues. “Out of this world. Much more likely home for a—what did you call it? The thing with all the teeth.”

  “Iguanodon,” I say. Seeing my life through Felix’s eyes makes it all brand-new, the way I’m hoping the EnChroma glasses will transform everything back into color. I’m re-remembering the bright exterior, the art-crammed house, this wild jungle of a garden. It strikes me that none of us chose to be artists—but growing up here, within this aesthetic, there simply wasn’t room for us to be anything else.

  Felix retrieves a packet of cigarettes from his satchel. “Mind if I…?”

  I shrug in acquiescence. Emmy-Kate will probably come climbing out of her window any moment, and I don’t want her to be encouraged to smoke, so I nod to Felix to follow me beneath a willow tree. The long branches form a bell jar, hiding us from view.

  When we’re ensconced in willow, Felix drops his sketchbook and satchel and leans back against the trunk. The boy can’t handle being vertical—he’s all slouch-hunch-lean. He kicks one boot up as he lights his cigarette and takes a deep drag. It’s weird: I never thought I’d miss Mum’s smoking—the way it made everything in the house smell stale and gross—but I do. I gulp in the scent.

  “I can’t believe this is London.” He takes a long drag, then blows smoke from the corner of his mouth. His eyes are ringed in sleeplessness, panda-style. “I haven’t seen this much greenery since we moved here.”

  “Are you joking? London is nothing but greenery.”

  “In what universe?” Felix shakes his head. “Could be you have to grow up here. Because all I see is concrete.”

  “Then you’re not looking properly,” I argue.

  “Is that so?” He gives me a shark smile, watching me intently. The conversation between us flows the same way it did on dinosaur day: Something about our shared hopelessness is helping me to breathe a little easier.

  “So, listen…” He puts out the cigarette on the bottom of his boot, discarding the stub in the wet grass without asking. I bristle, a little, and then he says, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of an art nut? And Ms. Goldenblatt told me you’d be the best person to work with.”

  “I’m not,” I reply quickly, although I’m secretly touched that Ms. Goldenblatt said that.

  “Well, I didn’t think so either.” The joke is so unexpected—I didn’t know the Prince of Darkness had a sense of humor—it makes me gawk. Felix gives me the ghost of a wink and says, “But why not hang out with me anyway? I hear London has all this greenery we could draw.”

  “Because—” I’m answering automatically, then stop. Am I really going to tell him this? Apparently, yes: I don’t know why, but the words are bubbling up in my chest, long overdue. I look away—to the dappled sunlight dancing through the willow branches, making the world spin like a mirror ball—and admit, “Because I lost all my colors. When my mum left. They faded out. The way the red leaches out of the paint in old paintings or something. Only it wasn’t only red. It was everything. She was gone and so were they. Everything I see is black and white.”

  A train rumbles by, somewhere above us. In the distance, there’s traffic, a dog barking, BBC Radio 4 wafting through a neighbor’s open window. The Professor’s, probably. I peep at Felix to see how bananas he thinks I am.

  “That makes sense,” he says, nodding with understanding. “So how—”

  “Hey, Minnie, what are you doing?” Emmy-Kate’s disembodied head pokes through the branches. She’s dressed for the pool. When she spies Felix, her eyes dart from me to him, and narrow in suspicion. She signs, “Who the Leonardo da Vinci is this?”

  * * *

  When we follow her into the kitchen, Emmy-Kate hops up onto her usual gargoyle perch on the counter and folds her arms. Niko is deep in slow, concentrated conversation with the Professor at the table, his hands steepling between each sign like errant pauses. He stands up when we come in. Everyone stares at Felix. At me with Felix. The way they’re looking at us, it’s as if we came in holding hands.

  I can’t be bothered to explain what we were doing in the garden together; I sign and say, “This is Felix Waters. He goes to Poets Corner High.”

  “We’re in art together,” Felix adds, while I translate. As if the paintbrush in his pocket and the mess on his clothes and the tousled hair didn’t make this obvious. He looks like he walked here from beatnik Paris.

  There’s this hour-long pause where none of us know how to behave. We haven’t had visitors in the house since those early weeks, when we were overrun with social workers and police; and they took charge of the conversations. It’s only now occurring to me that we should have had visitors—where were Mum’s friends from the art world? Old SCAD colleagues?

  Emmy-Kate and Niko are both staring daggers at Felix for some reason. Finally the Professor bumbles into action, blustering across the room, holding out his hand. “Professor Rajesh Gupta.” He actually says that, the professor part.

  “I heard about … your … wife?” says Felix, questioning me with a glance as he accepts the Professor’s hand. He notices how I’m signing everything that’s spoken and looks around quizzically. “I’m sorry.”

  Something spills over the Professor; he folds into himself for a minute. Probably communicating with his home planet. Then he shakes it off, saying, “Ah, hmm, no. I’m the girls’ neighbor.” Felix nods, puzzled, as the Professor continues. “You might already know the er—Emmy-Kate and Niko.”

  Emmy-Kate says sulkily: “I’m the er—Emmy-Kate.”

  When Felix turns to her, Niko signs-says hello. She taps her ear with two fingers, the sign for Deaf. In case Felix doesn’t get it, she does it twice, before shaking her head firmly, and signing meaningless mumbo-jumbo that has more in common with the hand jive than BSL. This is what she does to test people on first meeting, to see if they’re the kind who stare.

  Her fingertips are free from bandages and paper cuts. I haven’t seen her with a knife or scissors in a little while, actually.

  “Is Felix staying for breakfast?” Emmy-Kate asks. Then adds, in BSL o
nly, “Perhaps he can sit next to Ash.”

  “What are you talking about?” I frown, as we switch into silent Sloe-sister conversation. Although, for some reason, I’m relieved that Ash isn’t here yet. “Felix came over to do homework. He’s an arthead, like us.”

  “Oh, really?” Emmy-Kate hops down and plants herself in front of Felix. “I paint. These are my paintings,” she tells him, gesturing to me to interpret for Niko. Signing and speaking is like simultaneous translation—it’s easier for me and Em to take turns interpreting. “The paper work is Niko’s; Mum does the ceramics, obviously; Minnie too.” Her eyes are blazing. “What do you do?”

  “I’m into clay,” he tells her, unfazed. “Porcelain, actually. Some charcoal. Pen-and-ink. A little bit of everything.”

  “Huh.” She scoffs. “You need to focus. Monet didn’t invent impressionism by dabbling.”

  “Well, what about Michelangelo?” Felix counters. Entering this impromptu art debate, he stops slouching, stands upright. Brooding Boy becomes the Energizer Bunny. And am I overthinking this, or does he keep looking in my direction? “That dude sculpted in marble, painted the Sistine Chapel, wrote poetry, he was an architect…”

  “Pfffft, special case,” says Emmy-Kate dismissively.

  As they argue, swapping favorite artists back and forth, the kitchen recedes. Emmy-Kate marches Felix around the room, trying to intimidate him with a tour of her greatest hits. The Professor stands forgotten by the table. Niko watches me translate the debate, smirking. I lean against the counter, wondering what Ash will think of all this when he arrives.

  Mum sticks her head through the open back door. Unlike everything else in the room, she’s neon: yellow hair and blue eyes and Barbie lipstick. She’s got her gardening gloves on, and denim dungarees that match Niko’s.

  “Pssst, Minnie,” she hisses. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Even though it leaves Niko on the outskirts of the Emmy-Kate/Felix argument, I follow Mum outside, walking through the garden and out onto the street.

  I wonder what Felix would say if I confessed this element of my monochromacy, that I see my missing mother in color. Back away slowly, not meeting my eye, probably.

  When we reach the main road, Mum throws herself onto a bench outside the Full Moon Inn. The hulking and Harry Potterish pub presides over Poets Corner, heralding the promise of Full Moon Lane’s mile-long stretch of bakeries and bookshops. It’s a building fit for Beauty and the Beast.

  “Wow.” Mum exhales, peeling off her gloves and throwing them into her lap, then turns to me with a wicked smile. “Oh, boy. Wow—again.”

  “Um, what wow?”

  “That bee-yoo-tiful boy, Minnie. The one you couldn’t take your eyes off in the kitchen, Felix. You know why he knocked on the door this morning, don’t you?”

  “Actually, he didn’t knock…”

  “Details.” She waves her hand, dismissing me, a pearl ring on her finger the size of a gobstopper. “He reminds me of the boys at SCAD—you know, there’s a reason I graduated pregnant…” She nudges me, laughing. “Here comes trouble…”

  “I don’t think so,” I tell her. “I’m going out with Ash, remember?”

  Mum raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t Ash why you left the house?”

  “I left the house because you showed up…”

  “Hmm, and who’s in charge of that?” She points to the road. “Here he comes.”

  “Ash?” I spin around, follow her gaze.

  Ash is coming down the steps from Poets Corner station, not noticing me as he turns away down the road that leads toward my house, taking a swaggering sidestep to avoid walking into Felix—who’s heading straight for me. I hold my breath, instantly aware that I don’t want them to meet. I don’t know why: perhaps because of what Mum said, that Felix is bee-yoo-tiful. And trouble. And I told him about my monochromacy when I haven’t yet told my boyfriend.

  Luckily, it’s London and they’re strangers: they pass within a hair’s breadth, ignoring each other, totally unaware of the person they have in common. Ash bounces from view and Felix arrives, all Doc Martens swagger and scowl. He sits down next to me, right where Mum was, but isn’t now.

  “Hey, again,” he says.

  I stare at his profile. There’s a smudge of paint on his jaw that I didn’t notice before, near his beauty marks. He has three—chin, cheekbone, and one beneath his left eye, like a comma.

  “Are you stalking me?” I ask.

  He cocks his head. “I live here.”

  “You live in the Full Moon Inn?”

  “My dad’s the new landlord.” He says this in a no trespassing tone.

  I nod and lift my feet onto the bench, circling my arms around my knees. Resting my chin on them, I watch the traffic queuing up to drive under the railway arch.

  “So I had this idea,” says Felix, as though everything is totally normal and I didn’t walk out of my house barefoot in the middle of a conversation. “Your scary sister inspired me, actually—she’s a force of nature. Anyway, I’ve worked out how to fix your whole monochrome deal. Close your eyes.”

  I shoot him a glance and he urges, “Trust me.”

  Feeling idiotic, I close my eyes. The sun plays patterns on my eyelids as Felix’s low rumble of a voice washes over me: “Now tell me about your favorite piece.”

  “I feel like I’m being hypnotized.”

  “You are getting very sleepy … Come on.”

  “My favorite piece of art? It’s a sculpture.”

  “Yeah? Is it in London? Could we go and see it? Keep your eyes closed.”

  “Yes. Well, no.” I shake my head. “It’s at Tate Britain. That’s over the river from here, miles away. And it’s not on display anyway. It’s in the archives. You’d have to be a SCAD student or a historian to get permission to see it.”

  “So how do you know about it?” Felix asks. “What’s so great about it, if it’s hidden in a cupboard?”

  “The original is still on display; that’s where I saw it. In Paris…”

  “La-di-da.”

  I smile, putting my arms behind me on the bench, stretching my legs out, basking in the sun. The day has warmed up. This is nice—bizarre, but nice—talking with my eyes closed. Without my weirdo vision, my other senses come alive. London’s soft soundtrack. The faint smell of cigarettes from Felix, his spicy cologne. The sculpture I’m talking about grows more distinct. I saw it when Mum took us with her on a research trip to Paris; a holiday where Emmy-Kate ate so many crepes, she threw up in the Louvre. I smile again at the memory.

  “Why will this help me get my colors back?”

  “Step one is thinking about the piece of art that speaks to you the most.” Felix has a great voice, I find myself thinking. The kind that could do voiceovers for film trailers. “The thing you connect with. Step two is working out why you like it. Step three, you create something that makes you feel that same way. Step four is boom, your colors come back.”

  “You think it would work that easily?”

  “Worth a try.” He adds, gently mocking, “So, go on. Tell me about this fancy Parisian sculpture.”

  “Well, it’s white,” I say, “so it might not be much help. White marble. Two people. Rodin—the artist, Auguste Rodin—he found the glow inside the stone. This couple are kissing their way out of the stone, and it’s practically giving off light.” I smile one more time, remembering seeing it in the artist’s house on the Left Bank, sun pouring in through the windows. The rose gardens outside reminded me of Meadow Park.

  “You’re talking about The Kiss,” says Felix. My eyes fly open. He’s giving me a look so intense it could be X-ray vision.

  My fingers are tingling, pins and needles running up and down my arms. I’m surprised to find I want to plunge my hands into clay, or grab a hammer and chisel and attack a block of stone. I can feel the marble beneath my palms, cool and inviting.

  “I would love,” says Felix, “to see The Kiss in real life. It looks like a sculpture wort
h lying underneath.”

  He holds my gaze so wolfishly I wonder if I’m Little Red Riding Hood. And too late, I remember why there are multiple versions of this particular artwork. The French original tells the tale of adulterous lovers: It’s famous for the couple almost falling over with lust, almost falling out of the stone in their passion. A near-identical edition was made for London, with one key addition: It was specifically commissioned to emphasize the man’s arousal.

  I rhapsodized to Felix Waters about A GIANT FRENCH HARD-ON.

  “You could make something like that,” he says in a voice so deep it could be a bottomless lake. “Harness the light that way. Have you ever made porcelain?”

  Liquid clay. Completely different thing from Mum’s heavy pots. Instead of shaping it on the wheel, you pour it into molds and tip out the excess, forming a shell as thin and delicate as a robin’s egg. When fired, it turns white and almost translucent, with a kind of luminosity. That’s the theory, anyway, but I’ve never tried it.

  I tell Felix this and he says, blinking a sweep of dark lashes, “You know, I could teach you. If you want…”

  The air is humming with possibility. My sisters’ glares come back to me, along with Mum’s words: Here comes trouble. Holy effing Gustav Klimpt: Do they think…? Did Felix knock on my door this morning for a reason? We’re still staring at each other when a bus roars by, blowing dust and leaves across the sidewalk and sweeping my hair around, transforming me into the love child of a yeti and Cousin It.

  Felix reaches out his hand and pushes the strands away.

  As he tucks my hair behind my ear, his fingers graze my cheek. He leaves them there for a few seconds, his clay-dry skin against mine. I should say the words “I have a boyfriend,” but I’m having trouble breathing.

  Because this small moment feels enormous. Like a pin pushed into a map. A declaration. A flag planted on the effing moon. The beginning of something.

  Brown

  (An Ongoing List of Every Color I Have Lost)

  Sloe sister can’t-keep-a-secret eyes, though it turns out we can—I’m a treasure trove of secrets. The acorns scattered in Meadow Park, burnished gold. Leaves about to fall to the earth all over London, like pennies from heaven, and the same coppery color.