How to Be Luminous

by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

  “That’s right, I forgot. You saw it already. I kind of felt like you for a moment,” I tell her. “When I was stirring—well, exploding—the porcelain.”

  Mum tilts her head, gives me a Professor-ish “hmm” as she wanders to the desk, brushing the porcelain pieces aside. They make a soft clattering noise. Each is an off-shape oval, gently concave: not petals but seashells. She ignores them, holding my flower drawings up to the light.

  “Forget those,” I say, embarrassed. What must my Turner Prize–winning artist mother think of my inability to finish anything? Even today in the studio, Felix had to finish mixing the clay. “I was experimenting.”

  “What do you think of them?” she asks. “What do you see when you really look?”

  I walk over to her. When I try to breathe in her Mum-smell, I can’t catch a whiff of Noix de Tubéreuse or clay or glycerin or even her cigarette. Only salt and seawater.

  “I see someone who hasn’t decided on anything yet.”

  What is the art I want to make? I only know I want to undo the dark, discover the secrets I’m keeping from myself. Looking at the porcelain flower-shells, I know, with absolute certainty, that they aren’t it. I’m not going to find the colors this way.

  Mum blows a smoke ring. “Min, remember how there’s no blue in the Bible?”

  “We’ve been through this already,” I say, frustrated. “I don’t know what that means, remember?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “Holy vague, Batman.” I throw up my arms in annoyance. I’m kind of wishing I had Ash’s headphones and some of Emmy-Kate’s noisy rock music so I could tune Mum out. The more I see her, the more it feels like she’s daring me to go nuts.

  “In The Odyssey, Homer calls it ‘the wine-dark sea.’ Not blue. Dark,” Mum explains. She’s waving her arms too. “And in the ancient Hebrew version of the Bible, there’s still no word for blue. Don’t you see? People didn’t have a name for it, so they couldn’t see it. Blue was dark. And you know there are communities who can’t distinguish blue from green? To someone without the word green, it’s the same color.”

  She spins toward me, sizing me up like I’m a lump of her clay. This is Mum in starlight mode. She’s acting the way she does when she’s been up all night, researching some new idea. Speed-talking and giddy, not quite making sense, a supernova. She’s me today, drilling through the bucket. We’re becoming the same person.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to be logical. “How in the world did no one have a word for blue? Behold, the sky.”

  Mum doesn’t answer: closes her eyes instead, swaying on her feet, dripping seawater.

  I sit down on the bed, watching her. Then perhaps I fall asleep, because the next thing I know, it’s pitch-dark outside, Mum is gone—like she always, always is—and Emmy-Kate’s window is opening with a ghoulish shriek.

  I poke my head out into the night air to discover my sister hanging half-in, half-out of the house, resplendent in a shimmering dress. She doesn’t appear to be going anywhere this time: staring at the sky, blowing smoke at the moon. Since when is Emmy-Kate a smoker? The Beatles drift from her room, a song called “I Feel Fine,” which couldn’t be more wrong.

  I get this gut wrench of nostalgia for her, for us. Not the Emmy-Kate who’s smoking like a chimney, ten feet below, but another, long-gone sister.

  “Pssst,” I hiss.

  She swivels around and peers up, silvery in the starlight, her eyeshadow as sparkly as her dress. I’m wearing Mum’s shoes, but Emmy-Kate is wearing her effervescence. She looks like a sugarplum fairy. The kind of girl who’s the heroine in the story. Unlike monochrome me.

  She scowls, but at least speaks to me. “Did you see the Cy Twombly sunset?” she asks, her voice less piano-y than usual, even as she accesses her mind thesaurus. “Way Quattro Stagioni: Autunno, you know what I mean?”

  “Rarely,” I say, which prompts a begrudging smile. “Are you going out?”

  “Thinking about it.” She shimmies, and the sparkly dress rustles like wind through the trees. “You missed dinner,” she adds, curious.

  “Wasn’t hungry.”

  “Did you get me the Cézanne postcard?”

  “The what?”

  She squints up at me. “Your. School. Trip.”

  Oh. This morning’s lie feels like a lifetime ago. I blink down at her for approximately eons before saying, “Sorry, I forgot.”

  Emmy-Kate’s lip curls. I think she’s going to accuse me of not going on the school trip but she only inhales, coughs, and says, “Have you heard of something called super amnesia?”

  I shake my head, pulling my duvet around my shoulders. “What about amnesia?”

  “I read about it on the internet.” Emmy-Kate lets her cigarette drop and wriggles further out of the window, holding on to the top of the frame to keep her balance. I want to tell her to be careful, but I know she won’t listen. “About a woman who disappeared? Twice. Anyway, the first time was, like, ten years ago. In New York. She went for a run and poof! Vanished. Turns out she had this super amnesia. They found her three weeks later, facedown in a river, and when she was rescued, she had no memory of going missing at all, even though she’d been to Starbucks and the Apple shop and the gym. And swimming…”

  Emmy-Kate trails off, her eyes making planets in the dark. It’s obvious why she’s telling me this. She wants me to say that Mum is coming back, that she has super amnesia.

  I could. I could tell her that Mum’s already back; that she visits the studio all the effing time, but hasn’t made it to Poets Corner yet. I could tell my sister that I see Mum everywhere, that I saw her earlier tonight. But the thought of admitting this to anyone terrifies me. Is that why Mum never acknowledged her sinkholes? We never spoke about them. She would simply emerge from the despair and act normal again, for a while, before winding herself up into a frenzy and then plummeting again. She was loud and proud and bold in every other aspect, but she denied this element of herself like a shameful secret.

  I get it. When I think about telling someone what’s going on, my skin grows clammy with embarrassment. My stomach churns, my face flushes, I dry heave.

  Or I could tell Emmy-Kate the whole story: that Mum left a suicide note. I wonder what painting she’d talk about then. Something surrealist and macabre, probably. A Hieronymus Bosch, with bloodied demon heads and hellfires.

  “What about the second time this woman disappeared?” I ask. “Super amnesia again?”

  Emmy-Kate gives her head a tiny, unhappy shake. Then she swings one long leg out of the window. She’s also wearing Mum’s shoes: a too-big pair of high heels that dangle from her feet. It takes me a moment to recognize them as the sandals that Niko tidied into the wardrobe.

  I have a horrible feeling that they were never thrown on the floor by Mum; that the dress on the chair wasn’t left by her. That the mess I wanted to preserve was Emmy-Kate’s kleptomania. It doesn’t matter now anyway; Niko has cleaned it all up. When someone is gone, they’re truly gone. Holding on to their hairbrush or clothes won’t make any difference. Nor will holding on to their shadow, the way I’m doing. But I don’t know how to stop.

  “So, where are you maybe-going?” I change the subject, pretending it’s entirely ordinary for one’s fifteen-year-old sister to escape the house night after night.

  “None of your beeswax,” she says automatically. Defiantly, daring me to say anything, she starts speaking in capitals. “There’s a party on campus at SCAD. Have you SEEN the boys there? Some of them are so CUTE they need to be CENSORED. Holy Michelangelo!”

  Her voice hopscotches in fake enthusiasm, and it occurs to me, a thousand light-years after it should have, that Emmy-Kate is pretending to be a person too. She’s a big faker.

  The night we found the shoebox rushes into my head.

  It was a few years ago, before Emmy-Kate became this fully fledged adult. Mum had dragged the Professor out to some razzle-dazzle art-show-gallery-opening-awards-whatever, and the three
of us sisters were home alone, having a fright night. Scary movies. Afterward, we brushed our teeth side by side, quaking and giggling with pretend terror until Niko dared to yank the shower curtain back to prove there wasn’t a psycho killer behind it.

  None of us wanted to go to bed alone, so we climbed into Mum’s instead and stayed up talking, finger spelling on each other’s palms. Every time the old house creaked, we’d shriek and double-dare each other to creep out into the dark corridor, or peer under the bed for monsters.

  Then Niko actually did look under the bed. There was nothing there except for a box we’d never seen before. An ordinary shoebox, beige and old. Something about the way it was hidden, pushed far back out of sight, frightened me more than any of the imaginary monsters we’d been conjuring. It reminded me of the nursery rhyme:

  In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house;

  And in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room;

  And in the dark, dark room there was a dark, dark cupboard;

  And in the dark, dark cupboard there was a dark, dark shelf;

  And on the dark, dark shelf there was a dark, dark box;

  And in the dark, dark box there was a …

  “Secret,” Emmy-Kate signed, eyes wide with intrigue.

  “Should we open it?” Niko asked. I shook my head, but in customary fashion, she went ahead and did it anyway.

  Inside were medicine bottles. Plastic jars that rattled and shook with complicated-sounding drugs: citalopram and carbamazepine and lithium and quetiapine and valproate and zopiclone; prochlorperazine and a syrup called trifluoperazine that came with a measuring spoon. The bottle was three quarters full and sticky. There were half-used blister packs labeled with days of the week, but the occasional empty pill spaces didn’t correspond to any pattern. A stack of unfilled pharmacy prescriptions was stuffed in the corner of the box. The name on each of the bottles was Mum’s. The dates went back years.

  Somehow, we absorbed all of this information in seconds, and what it might mean. That the tidal ebb and flow of Mum’s sinkholes and starlights might signal something serious and medical and real and forever. She wasn’t a magical mother after all: There was something wrong with her. My stomach flipped. All I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to know what. It was too much.

  Emmy-Kate grabbed the lid from Niko’s hand and grappled it back onto the box, her fingers shaking, then shoved it out of sight. On wobbly legs, I climbed from the bed. We all did, clearing our throats and finger-combing our hair. Niko tweaked our shapes from Mum’s duvet, and we crept from the room, closing the door behind us as gently as possible, not speaking of what we’d seen, more frightened than we had been all night, watching the horror films.

  When the police asked me if Mum was on any medication, I answered in all honesty that I didn’t know.

  Emmy-Kate has made it halfway down the trellis.

  “Are you going to tell on me?” she asks.

  “No.” For some reason I sign it, don’t say it.

  Emmy-Kate clambers down the roses and lands on the grass with a soft little whoomp noise, then looks up, surrounded by thick night.

  “Good.” She signs too, her hands half-invisible in the dark. “Were you really at the Cézanne exhibition?”

  Worry glides through me. “Emmy-Kate, what—”

  “Listen,” she interrupts. “You weren’t at school, and neither was Felix Waters. And I know you weren’t on a field trip. I saw Ms. Goldenblatt.”

  Then, very carefully, she finger spells it out, each letter hovering in the air like a star:

  “W-H-A-T A-B-O-U-T N-I-K-O?”

  Emmy-Kate slinks through the garden, a streak of glitter, then gone, leaving her words behind. For a while, I watch for her to come back, but she doesn’t. Nor does Mum. All that’s left of this day is the pile of porcelain flower-shells, and this inescapable truth: Emmy-Kate is right.

  I think of the impenetrable fortress between me and Niko in the kitchen earlier, how it’s been there ever since I stole Ash with a kiss. How could you, Minnie? And it will only get worse if we break up. I will have betrayed my sister for nothing—a relationship of less than a year. She’ll never speak to me again. And I can’t afford to lose another Sloe.

  Apricot

  (An Ongoing List of Every Color I Have Lost)

  Niko’s nubby winter coat, the one that makes her look like a teddy bear. The roses Emmy-Kate shakes from the trellis each night when she goes who-knows-where.

  CHAPTER 23

  Clouds, Gathering

  I wake up when the first train comes rattling through the garden and cringe under the covers for a while, listening to the soft, musical chatter of birdsong. The grays have become darker overnight, as if I slept inside a smokestack. Things are supposed to look better in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, but they literally don’t.

  Over breakfast, neither of my sisters communicates with me, and I leave the house alone, texting Felix to meet me outside the bakery. He’s there ahead of me, leaning against the wall, two paper bags clutched in his hand. Dawn is still clinging to the morning, and it’s strangely quiet. We’re the only two people on the street.

  “Hey, Minnie,” Felix says, his voice somber and sweet in a way that instantly undoes my resolve to end this thing.

  His vampiric unhappiness reflects my own. Whether I like it or not I’m drawn in, walking toward him. Felix pushes himself upright and I rise onto my tiptoes, our two sadnesses colliding before we even touch each other. There’s a split-second opportunity for me to say something, like—

  I can’t

  I have a boyfriend

  my sister

  we need to stop

  but then it’s gone and Felix’s mouth is crushing mine, the bakery bags smooshing between our out-of-control bodies. This kiss isn’t like yesterday’s. It’s pure commotion. We’re entangled, his fingers bruising my waist and simultaneously running through my hair; our teeth and tongues mashing together. We’ve barely said hello. Come to think of it, I barely know this person, and I’ve never made out in public before—not like this. But I can’t seem to get a grip on myself. Because as long as we’re kissing, nothing else matters, because there is nothing else. It blanks out my brain, disappears all thoughts of medicine or madness.

  We finally come up for air and the world rushes back in. I step away so quickly it’s almost like a shove and teeter, losing my balance. The croissant bags tumble to the sidewalk. Bending to grab them lets me catch my breath, hide my flushed face. That wasn’t a kiss: It was an exorcism. When I’m upright again, Felix is shoving his hair to and fro. He looks feral, totally effing unhinged—which is how I feel. I stare back at him, my heart threatening to burst right through my rib cage.

  I think we’re never going to stop staring at each other, when his eyes flick across the road and he says, “Your sister.”

  Sick adrenaline kicks in. My legs wobble. I turn around in super slow motion.

  On the other side of the road, Emmy-Kate is trudging to school, a snail under the shell of her enormous backpack. The glitzy, glittering girl of last night is gone. My sister looks like isolation personified. It makes me want to hurl these croissants I’m clutching into the sky.

  I have no idea if she saw us kissing. Possibly not—her eyes are on the sidewalk, and she’s not screaming at me or setting my hair on fire—but bile floods my mouth anyway.

  Delirious, and not in a good way, I turn back to Felix. He’s a charcoal sketch of a boy, hawk eyes watching me from beneath thick brushstroke curls. Together, we form a deep shadow. A place where nothing exists but loss.

  And I don’t want to be there anymore.

  I don’t want to believe that I’ll feel this terrible for a lifetime, or that being with Felix is the only way to retrieve my colors. I don’t want Emmy-Kate to look like a cloud, or for Niko to hate my guts. I don’t want to kiss a boy who knows my mum’s art but doesn’t know her, doesn’t have any idea that she did ordinary things too
, like cook grilled cheese. When Ash came around to dinner he’d say happily, “Student food!”

  Before I know which words are going to spill from me, I’ve said them: “We have to stop, I can’t kiss you again. It’s not—” I thrust the croissant bags at him, as if this is explanation. “I can’t.”

  Felix’s jaw tenses. His eyes grow darker, trying to work out what’s changed. I don’t blame him: Twenty-four hours ago, we were skipping school in marmalade sunshine. Two minutes ago, we were practically having sex on the sidewalk.

  “You’re serious?” he asks, tugging at his hair again so hard I’m amazed he isn’t bald.

  “Yes.” No. I don’t know.

  We’re standing in the exact spot under the lamppost where we hugged two nights ago. I look away from Felix’s desolation to Meadow Park. Beyond the gates, the hill is veiled in a damp, spooky fog, as though a piece of deepest winter has been cut out of some other year and transported here into this September day.

  Far in the distance, Emmy-Kate is drifting to school, a speck of dust blown through the landscape. I want to go back to the beginning of the story, play the song again, tear up the drawing and start over. There are some things you can’t undo.

  “Why?” asks Felix.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. This is the perfect moment to explain to him that I have a boyfriend, but I still don’t say so. I don’t want to admit out loud what a monster I am. Instead, I edge away on shaking legs, walking backward, then turn and head toward home. The thought of school, art, seems beyond impossible.

  Waiting at the traffic lights, I take gigantic gulps of London smog, wishing-hoping-wondering if Felix will follow and try to talk me out of this. It’s not absolute: There’s still a small part of me that wants to run back into his arms and carry on merrily smashing my life to pieces. But when the lights change, I make myself cross the road.

  When I finally look over my shoulder, he’s not even there.