"An Illumination that Works," From Dawn of the Summertons: A Work in Progress
Nine miles away, in the northwestern section of the city, Twyla Summerton was trying to keep herself from rushing the painting she’d been working on for nearly a week. She had a yoga class at 9:00 in Chestnut Hill and then coffee and tea at Peggy Laughtons’. The painting was the last and best in a series of a school bus parking lot filled with banana-lemon vehicles lit just off their usual tone of gold by a pale blue sky amplified by hints of silver. “Like sun sparking against raw aluminum siding or an Airstream wall in a Texas summer desert.” The hard thing was not the bus shimmer in their banana shells. It was, indeed, the light. She’d spent a year playing with gold and yellow and white and silver. Her first instinct had been to try some version of Hundertwasser’s child-like strokes, the way you saw that he actually loved yellows like a child, but they all seemed cheap and shabby for her intent. She’d asked Reggie and Kristen both and they said they loved what she’d done. Reggie