How to Be Luminous Read online

  Then, when I was twelve, she resigned from SCAD and made her headline-grabbing return to the pottery wheel, reinvigorated. Bigger, better, bolder, more famous.

  That’s the mother who’s zooming around my imagination. Not Mum but her artist self, the one who makes Emmy-Kate look like a wallflower, sucks every inch of oxygen from a room.

  It’s so good to see her. I breathe in the rose, desperately, hoping to enhance this vision. Rachael Sloe, Artist, turns to me and says …

  … and says …

  I can’t remember her voice.

  The memory falters, flickers, fades.

  My eyes fly open. The garden is desolately gray, and it’s all too much: her absence. The uncertainty. The monochrome. And how have I already forgotten her voice? It’s only been one summer.

  I go slumping into the kitchen, where I find the Professor perched politely in his usual spot at the table, opposite Emmy-Kate. Silence and the Sunday newspapers are spread between them. Seeing me, Em makes a grrr of annoyance and zips from the room, hurling her damp towel onto the floor by the washing machine as she leaves. The Professor stands up—I know from experience he won’t sit down again until I do. He’s a nightmare at neighborhood parties.

  “Hi,” I mumble, attempting to skirt around him. He dithers, blocking my path.

  “Well, now, er—Minnie,” he harrumphs—but kindly.

  Mum appears clearly again, now at the table, wheezing with hysteria.

  What’s wrong with me? I haven’t so much as dreamed about her in eleven weeks, and now I’m visualizing her twice in one day. In full color, too. But perhaps the Professor sees her as well, since his face is broadcasting distress signals. Sloe-sister theory: He’s madly in unrequited love with Mum. And has been for the past twenty years.

  “How are you?” he asks, formal as a tuxedo.

  “Fine.” I tuck my thumbs into my cardigan sleeves, squirming. Ordinarily I don’t mind the Professor, despite his aura of tweediness—he’s a familiar mainstay, like a comfortable old sofa—but since I’ve become more or less tongue-tied, every conversation between us is stilted.

  “Er, ah, er—Minnie,” he huffs. “As I was explaining to er—Emmy-Kate, I have some good news. The university has granted me a sabbatical this year. I plan to write another book.” He clasps his hands, like a bell ringer. “Which leaves me very much at your disposal for the, er. Until, um. For the forthcoming,” he finishes.

  Translation: The Professor is going to be working from home, right next door, for a whole year. Which means he’ll be “popping in” practically every day. All summer long he’s been checking up on us, bringing with him hours of awkward silences and inedible pakoras. Even though the social workers grudgingly approved Niko as our guardian—they side-eyed her Greenpeace T-shirts and general dungareed demeanor—the Professor has appointed himself our responsible adult. What with the lack of godparents, distant relatives, or even deadbeat dads.

  All we know of our absent fathers is that there are three. Every time we ask for more details, Mum changes the story: They’re cowboys, astronauts, rock stars, explorers, renegades; lifelong love affairs or holiday romances or one-night stands. She spins tales like clay on the wheel.

  She keeps secrets.

  Me too. There’s one in her studio.

  If I unlocked the door, I could trace my hands over her last movements: the swivel stool adjusted to her height, her finger marks fossilized in the bags of clay, a coffee cup with a lipstick tattoo on the rim. And four kilns, squatting in the corner like a family of Daleks. The largest is locked, on a cooling cycle from a glaze firing. I’m the only one who knows this: that inside the kiln is Rachael Sloe’s last-ever piece of art.

  The doorbell pulls me from my thoughts, the chime accompanied by flashing lights for Niko’s benefit. When I escape the Professor and throw open the front door, Ash is standing on the doorstep, a guitar strapped to his back. With his skinny jeans, calligraphy swoop of dark hair, and mouth permanently curled into a half smile, he looks for all the world like Indian Elvis.

  “Hey, Miniature,” he says, opening his arms.

  Surprise roots me to the spot, as though he’s a total stranger and not my boyfriend of almost a year. (Not to mention, the Professor’s nephew.) Ash goes to university in London but spends the summer holidays at home in Manchester, aka a million miles away. We’ve spoken on the phone, but this is the first time we’ve seen each other in person since … since everything.

  “Hi,” I say, focusing on the bull’s-eye dimple at the center of his chin, strangely shy. “You’re back.”

  “Came straight over,” he says, his northern accent warm and worried. When I look up, he offers me a dialed-down version of his usual phosphorescent smile. My lip wobbles. Seeing my boyfriend in black and white—it’s too weird.

  “Ah, Min,” he says, misreading my face. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  He probably believes it. Ash is an optimist. He’s happy-go-lucky and silver linings, a boy for whom toast always lands butter side up. My sisters and I all met him at the same time, one rain-drenched autumn afternoon two years ago.

  We were dodging the weather at the National Gallery, sprawled with our sketchbooks in front of the blue-saturated Bathers by Cézanne, as if we were having the same picnic as the people in the painting. Emmy-Kate was making an abstract mess with oil pastels, Niko drew neatly with graphite pencils, and I was using every shade of blue felt-tip—cobalt, navy, azure, sapphire—to try out a new pointillism technique.

  We’d been there an hour when a drop of water splashed on my sketch pad. Emmy-Kate nudged Niko, who poked my arm with her sharp pencil, and I sent a scribble of teal across the damp page. I looked to my right: This impossibly cute boy in a ridiculous puffer coat was shaking off the rain and sitting on the floor next to us. Headphones clamped over a flop of black hair, huge sneakers tapping to the invisible beat, he tilted his head at the painting.

  Oh, effing wow, I thought, then looked back at my sisters.

  “Holy Michelangelo!” Emmy-Kate signed. My tomato-cheeked sister had turned thirteen two weeks before and promptly been blessed with boobs and an unprecedented interest in boys.

  “I know,” I replied silently, noticing with alarm that Niko was blushing too. We were a triptych of pink.

  Here was something we’d never encountered before, in all our years of inseparable hive mind and slavish devotion to the same favorite artists: a boy we all liked.

  I peeped back at the boy to see if he was drawing Bathers too. He wasn’t. He was looking at me. Well, at my sketch pad. Although sometimes, especially lately, that felt like it might amount to the same thing.

  “Shit,” he said as he pushed his headphones down and pointed to the rain-besplashed page. “That was me, wasn’t it? Soaking your drawing? Sorry.”

  “Oh,” I said, out loud. The three of us had been signing without speaking all morning—the grammar of British Sign Language was totally different to spoken English, and it was easier that way—and the word emerged from my unused mouth with a rasp. I rubbed at the splotches with my thumb, smudging the blues, wishing I could splash them across my beetroot face to cool it down. Emmy-Kate simultaneously interpreted for Niko as I said, “Yeah. But it’s okay—I mean, now it’s a watercolor.”

  I wasn’t trying to be funny, but the boy laughed, a looping giggle that landed in iridescent pieces all over me. He kept grinning, amused, and I found myself smiling right back at him.

  “Let me guess,” he said, pointing to each of us in turn. “Minnie. Niko. Emmy-Kate.”

  This sunbeam boy turned out not to be psychic but, somewhat unbelievably, the Professor’s nephew. He was new to the city for his first year of university and Mum had sent him to find us, along with lurid and lyrical descriptions of who was whom. Another instance of her transforming the ordinary into the amazing: If the Professor himself had introduced us to Ash, perhaps we wouldn’t have all fallen in love with him the way we did.

  I’m so deep in this r
ainy-day memory of him it seems almost impossible that I’m actually standing on the porch, staring up at real-life Ash.

  “C’mere, you,” he says, pulling me into his arms. I sink against his soft T-shirt, his chest a place as familiar to me as the Tube map. My lungs fill with his warm, lemony scent, calming the unease I’ve been feeling all morning.

  “Missed you, Miniature,” he murmurs into my giant ginger cloud of hair.

  Guilt tugs at me: Though I’m glad he’s here now, for all the texts we exchanged this summer, I wouldn’t exactly characterize myself as missing him. I don’t get a chance to examine this thought, because—

  “Ash!” We spring apart as Emmy-Kate comes bouncing down the stairs, barreling toward us.

  She’s ditched her swimming clothes for tiny shorts and a cutoff T-shirt; in places, the inches of bare skin are zebra-striped with paint. Em’s always finger painted, but this looks like she’s been rolling around the canvas naked. I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s the sister who inherited Mum’s joie de vivre. For years, she’s been vacillating between personalities—swimming nerd versus passionate painter—finally metamorphosing days after the disappearance into this junior femme fatale.

  She pushes me aside and goes running into Ash’s arms.

  “Oof.” He staggers, unbalanced by his guitar, and hugs her hello. Then they launch into their standard playground handclap/dance/greeting. For all his dreamy Disney-prince eyes, Ash is a goofball, and momentarily he transforms Emmy-Kate back into my little sister. Laughing, he takes in her paint-covered appearance and says, “Check you out, Junior Picasso. Happy belated birthday.”

  “Since you’re here, we can have pancakes again,” Emmy-Kate convinces herself, skipping into the kitchen.

  I move to follow her, but Ash puts his hand on my arm, tugging me back. “How are you all doing, Min, really?” he asks, his voice low. “Em seems good. But are you all right?”

  I love his Manchester twang, the way he slurs all right into one word: aight. But it’s not a question I can answer. Am I all right? Okay, answers on a postcard, please …

  I can’t see color

  and it makes me want to scream

  or set fire to something

  become a statue

  delete my dreams

  smash up whole planets with my fists

  … all of the above?

  I scribble out all of these ludicrous options and go for: “School starts tomorrow.”

  Ash tugs on his earlobe. “Yeah. One more year, then SCAD.”

  I make a face like broken glass, and he raises his eyebrows, surprised.

  “Never mind,” I say, and lead him into the kitchen, where the Professor has made himself at home by pouring tea. Ash tackles him with a hug, saying, “Uncle Raj, you’re in the wrong house, mate!” Then he ruffles Salvador Dalí’s fur and falls into a chair with his guitar, glancing at me for permission. When I nod, he bends over the instrument, spine curved. Ash has less than zero interest in art; he’s all about the music.

  Niko marches briskly in and taps Emmy-Kate on the arm, signing an order: “Put a cardigan on.” As ever, she’s dressed as a hippie-feminist-vegetarian: headscarf, dungarees, clogs, slogan T-shirt with this week’s cause on it. Whales, trees, tigers—my sister’s heart bleeds for everything.

  The whole room sucks in a breath, watching her take charge. She huffs at Emmy-Kate’s wet towel on the floor and removes the pancake mix from her hand; sweeps the newspapers from the table; hacks a loaf of bread into slices and shoves them into the toaster with a clang. Niko’s always been the sensible Sloe sister, but lately she’s gone into efficiency overdrive.

  After all this, she greets the Professor, far more enthusiastically than I would. He signs-says his reply in the same ponderous fashion he speaks. Niko nods semi-patiently, then turns to Ash, who’s still bent over his guitar. For a moment, she watches him strum, her own hands mimicking his as he shapes the chords. He looks up and smiles at her, saying a carefully clear hello, and slowing his playing. She smiles back. For a moment, it’s as if the mechanics of the music are sign language.

  When she spots me spying on them, she snaps out of it and asks me without speaking, “Is Ash staying for breakfast?”

  I shrug, switching into silent Sloe-sister signing mode. “Probably, why?”

  “Because then we’ll have to invite the Professor too…” She doesn’t look unpleased at this idea, but peers around the kitchen. “He didn’t bring food, did he?”

  We’re signing too quickly for the Professor to follow. I confirm we’re safe and Niko clatters down cereal, bowls, jam, and a rack of charred toast, then knocks on the table for our attention. When she has it, everyone obeys her command to sit. Except Ash, who hovers by our mother’s empty chair.

  “Aren’t we waiting for Rachae—ahh.” He breaks off, eyes widening in mortification. Emmy-Kate is interpreting for Niko and her hands freeze in mid-air. “Sorry,” Ash mutters, sliding into Mum’s seat. Under his breath: “Shit.”

  I crunch Coco Pops, my heart stuttering. I’ve had eleven weeks to absorb Mum’s absence, fill the gap, get accustomed. But with Ash here, acting as if the hole she left is brand-new, it reopens the wound. Conversation falters.

  After breakfast, Ash and I retreat to the back garden, flopping down on the grass. It’s a gorgeous morning: toffee-scented sunshine, September spreading itself out like a quilt.

  I yank up a daisy, start tearing out its petals one by one. This could be the exact same plant with which Mum taught me the trick when I was little. Picking off the petals with her slim, quick fingers and reciting, “Loves me, loves me not.”

  I remember her handing me a daisy to try it, and laughing when my chubby toddler fists tore it in two. “Okay, not daisies,” she said. She dug around on the lawn and handed me a spherical cloud on a stem. A dandelion puff. “Try this. Close your eyes and make a wish. Then take in a big breath and blow all the seeds off.”

  Before she became an artist again, the garden was her element. Somewhere in this jungle there are raspberry canes from a jam-making era, the hole where we made a hippo mud bath for baby Emmy-Kate, pint-glass slug traps dug into the soil. The last daisy petal is not, and I drop the bent stem by my side, wishing myself into the flower bed.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say, staring up at the flat gray sky. “About Mum.”

  “’Course.” Ash slides his warm fingers into my hand, shuffling toward me through the grass.

  “She left us a letter,” I explain. This is something I couldn’t bear to tell him by text. “Before she…”

  Before she left sounds as though she went on holiday or to one of the artist residencies she’s been going to in the past couple of years, leaving Niko in charge for two or three months at a time. But before she died isn’t truthful, either. Without a body, there’s no end to this.

  She left her credit cards. She took her passport and her studio key, as if she planned to come back. She left herself as a question, unanswered.

  I can’t use the words suicide note: those syllables aren’t discordant enough for what they mean. Anyway, it’s open to interpretation. Her letter was too uncertain for the police to call it definitively: rambling, unhappy, incomprehensible, but not specific. And there’s still the kiln. Her last work, waiting for her.

  “She left a letter, anyway,” I say, trying again as clouds begin to move faster overhead, the Earth spinning inexorably onward. “A goodbye letter. I’m the one who found it.”

  Ash sucks in a breath, squeezing my fingers. “Shit,” he says. “I know, Min. I mean, Uncle Raj let me know about the letter. But I didn’t know that you…” His voice cracks. “That you were the one.”

  I drag my hand from Ash’s and make fists, coiling my body, shaking my head, a disbelieving ball. I’m about to be dragged under. Like Virginia Woolf, a writer who filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the river to drown. I’ve got whole mountains in my pockets. I’ve got an entire effing continent.

&
nbsp; “Don’t say anything to Emmy-Kate, okay?” I manage. “Niko knows, but Em doesn’t.”

  “’Course. Hey, you. C’mere.” I’m still balled up, but Ash circles his arms around me, bundling me to his chest. And gradually, in this comforting place, I relax. Rest my head on his shoulder, trail my fingers over his chest.

  As we lie here, limbs tangled, the sun warms my skin. I let myself melt into it. Let Ash’s sure and steady presence slowly envelop me. Breathe him in. His smell is more than lemons—it’s warmth and clover and coconut oil in his hair. He smells like kindness. Memories of last year’s kisses begin to echo through my heart. Ash has come home. Having him here feels like slipping on a favorite old T-shirt, thin and soft from years of wear.

  I sigh contentedly. Then jolt awake, stiffen in his arms. This is not okay. It’s not okay to let my guard down while she’s—

  dead gone missing a body

  I scramble from his embrace and stand up, loathing myself for allowing this small moment of joy. Ash follows suit, lumbering upright. He doesn’t bat an eye at my sudden movement, but brushes the grass from his jeans, then pokes at my toe with his ginormous sneaker—he wears blinged-out ones the size of canoes.

  “Hey, Miniature,” he says. “All right? I’ve got to go, but chin up.”

  I peek at him. He’s giving me an over-the-top Looney Tunes smile, designed to make me laugh. All I can give him in return is a watery one. Ash reaches out his hand to my cheek, softly tilting my face up. He leans in, possibly to press a kiss on me, but I’m turning my head and we crash into each other, an awkward hug. A brief flurry of lemon-scented confusion, then he’s gone.

  Bright Yellow

  (An Ongoing List of Every Color I Have Lost)

  Daffodils. The Post-it notes Mum left scattered everywhere, scribbled with ideas for new sculptures, research, love notes to us, art we HAVE TO SEE! Ash’s kiss.

  Cherry Red

  (An Ongoing List of Every Color I Have Lost)

  Flashing red lights on the police car. A lipstick called Flirt Alert that Emmy-Kate took to wearing the autumn we met Ash. The pattern of veins when the optician shines a light into my eyes at my contact lens checkup. I had one the week after the disappearance, passing with flying colors (ha), even though I couldn’t discern red from green on the chart.