Kaleidoscope
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Synopsis
A dazzling novel about the tumultuous relationship between two sisters, a shocking loss that changes everything, and the life-altering adventure that follows.
Morgan and Riley Brighton are joint heirs to Kaleidoscope: a glittering, ‘global bohemian’ shopping empire—created in sleepy Oregon and catapulted into haute New York—sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Morgan, statuesque beauty and Kaleidoscope’s talented designer, is adored by all, especially by the Brighton parents. Yet no one loves her more than Riley, whose shy and adventurous spirit is exalted by her sister.
When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons’ world, Riley must stand in the spotlight for the first time in her life, with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity, and loyalty. Restless and heartbroken, she sets off across the globe with the person she least expects, to seek truths about those she thought she knew best—herself included.
Kaleidoscope is at once an examination of the precious bond between sisters as well as a vibrant story of exploration and surprising love. Moving and funny, warm and wise, Cecily Wong delivers a transporting, addictive page-turner that will tempt your appetite for food and travel and change the way you imagine your place in the world.
Release date: July 5, 2022
Publisher: Dutton
Print pages: 320
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Kaleidoscope
Cecily Wong
No Special Occasion: August 2006, New York City
The clinic was on Bleecker and Mott, just south of Union Square where Riley had booked the hotel room, paid for it with the collection of money they called the Fund: partly hers, partly her sister’s, partly cash taken from their parents’ house, the knickknack drawer by the kitchen phone, the silver box on their mother’s vanity, the pockets of her father’s cast-off pants. A week before, when she first found out, Riley had called to book the room she saw online—with a king bed and soaking tub—and to request a high and quiet floor. The receptionist asked how many guests, and when Riley said she’d be with her sister, the woman wondered if there was any special occasion. Riley had laughed, unexpectedly, paused for a minute too long imagining the flowers by the bed, the bottle of champagne they might receive, and if her sister would find it funny, or if this would be the thing to finally freak her out.
Miss Brighton, are you still there?
Yes, Riley said. Sorry. Just a regular weekend. No special occasion.
Of course, the receptionist said. No special occasion required.
It was late August when Morgan came to deliver the news, arriving at Riley’s sophomore dorm with iced coffees and croissants. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly three weeks. Morgan had been at a trade show in London, Riley assisting her sociology professor to prepare for a research trip to Lithuania. These stretches of time were becoming more familiar; a distance that was once intentional was by then simply natural, a byproduct of living in New York, their schools at opposite ends of the island. They tore immediately into three weeks of material, the things they’d been saving up to discuss, like how their father had recently discovered poking on Facebook and had been poking them both, along with god knew who else, with disconcerting frequency. They swept through the primary subjects, school and work and their mother’s new “Sharon Stone” haircut, when Morgan announced she had something to say, and she was so calm, so perfectly nonchalant, it took Riley a minute to register that they had crossed into serious territory.
It was Kyle Webber, Morgan said. Her high school boyfriend had come to the city back in July and they’d stayed out late. One thing had led to another. As Morgan tried to make light of her condition—tried turning the spotlight of astonishment on Riley, at her concern, because she’d always hated Kyle, hated how hard he hammed for their parents, how he picked people up when he was drunk—Riley sat there, quiet and stunned.
“What am I missing here? Why aren’t you more upset?”
Morgan took a bite of croissant, oblivious to the spray of flakes—another uncharacteristic lack of care. “Why should I be upset? I don’t want it. The idea of keeping it is absurd.”
“We agree on that, but Jesus. Morgan. You dated the guy for two years, not me.”
“Am I supposed to want it, then?”
Riley leaned forward in her chair, examined her older sister.
“You’re being really weird.”
“Am I?”
Morgan sat crossed-legged on the bed, wearing one of her trademark designs, a gauzy marigold kaftan that draped her long limbs in her easy, frustratingly glamorous way. The fact that she was growing a tiny Kyle Webber was incomprehensible, made Riley’s heart beat a little slower.
“I’m going to take care of it,” Morgan said, slightly more serious, reprimanded.
“Have you looked? Have you made an appointment?”
“I will,” Morgan said, and Riley reached for her laptop right there, opened it, and began to google. “Riley, come on, I’m more than capable of—” Riley lifted a hand, silenced her sister, whose stupid, stubborn glibness made Riley want to angrily google.
“I,” Morgan said, and Riley could hear the tightness in her sister’s throat, how hard she was trying to keep herself steady. “I need your help. I know it’s serious. Please don’t be mad.”
For the next hour, Riley read, asking her sister questions without looking up. Morgan swept the pastry crumbs from the duvet and made the bed, answered Riley’s questions, and sat quietly while she made phone calls—sometimes pretending to be Morgan, whose personal details she recited as easily as her own. At a certain point, Riley put on music and stood up to stretch, to jump in place, before plopping beside Morgan on the bed. Riley had made a to-do list in Excel, the cells turning slowly green as they were completed. The cover story was Morgan’s only task—to find some event in DC or Boston to tell their parents—and now Morgan flipped through the tabs, showing her sister how seriously she’d done her job, presenting the options like they were actually going.
By the time they left the dorm, winding down the stairwell and spilling into the summer night, bleary from screens and sober with information, starving, crazy from being inside too long and softened into their regular selves—Morgan the calm, sensible one; Riley cursing Kyle Webber, that fucking fuck—they’d begun to refer to what they’d planned, the coming weekend, as their abortion vacation.
In the waiting room, Riley looked up each time the door opened and a person stepped out, until nearly two hours later, that person was her sister. Morgan looked fine, surprisingly civilian-like in her shorts and T-shirt, her hair hiked up in a ponytail. She checked out at the counter, paid the woman with cash from the Fund. In her hand, she held a small plastic bag.
“I’ll get a cab,” Riley said as they left the clinic.
“Perfect. Could we get a wheelchair too? Or did you bring a stretcher?”
Riley looked up to glare at her sister.
“I’m sorry.” Morgan tried to smile, her wide, heart-shaped face jangling with nerves. She scratched at both her arms. “I’m sorry. I’ve been sitting too long. Can we please walk?”
“We have to stop at the pharmacy anyway. You got the pain prescription?”
Morgan lifted the plastic bag.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Morgan said. “I mean. I don’t know.” She looked at the inch of concrete in front of her feet. “I saw it on an ultrasound.”
They stood on the sidewalk, August sun beaming hot and bright, Riley no good at this kind of thing. Asking what it looked like or how it made her feel, that was Morgan’s territory. Beyond that, they were out of practice.
“Oh man,” Riley said. She waited for her sister to say something more, whatever she needed to say, and when she didn’t, just stood there atop her long, leggy shadow, Riley took the plastic bag from Morgan’s hand, reached for the rolling bag she’d packed for the weekend, and led them forward.
The hotel room was smaller in real life—the bathroom door, when fully open, nearly touched the bed—but it was clean, reassuringly white, everything smelling briskly of eucalyptus. Riley checked the time. Morgan could take the codeine the next morning at eleven, the misoprostol at noon. Morgan swallowed the antibiotic and they lay on the bed, the air conditioner humming impatiently, frustrated that she couldn’t drink.
Morgan flipped on her side. “Let’s go see a movie.”
“Really?” Riley sat up. “What do you want to see?”
They saw Step Up, Riley pretending not to notice when Morgan wept each time—at the one appropriate part, when Skinny dies and Mac vows to be a better person, but also when Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan dance on that rooftop, when the violin starts to play and the curtain lifts for the year-end recital—chewing passionately on her Milk Duds. Feeling her sister’s familiar warmth, Riley tried to remember the last time they’d done this, killed a whole weekend just the two of them, and found that she could not. It brought her world into strange perspective, sitting there in the freezing dark. She realized Morgan had kept her word, had granted her the space she’d promised back in Oregon.
Afterward they went for pizza, and when Morgan started to cramp, leaning over the table just slightly, eyes closed, they returned to their room so she could change her pad.
“What’s going on?” Riley asked as her sister emerged from the bathroom. She handed her the dress she’d packed in the suitcase.
“You don’t want to know.” Morgan took off her T-shirt and shorts and pulled the dress over her head. Riley was already in hers, applying lipstick and fluffing her hair with her fingers. When Morgan stuck out her hand, Riley gave her a pair of big Kaleidoscope earrings. Then they took a picture for their parents, posing dumbly in the mirror, all teeth and cheeks, hands in the air like they were going to a concert.
11:00 a.m.: Two Tylenol #3, plus a biscotti they found by the coffee maker.
12:00 p.m.: Four misoprostol, placed between Morgan’s gums and cheeks, dissolved in her mouth for thirty minutes.
12:30 p.m.: House Hunters International, a Michigan couple on the prowl for a centrally located turnkey condo (her) or a traditional Puerto Rican casita far from it all (him).
12:38 p.m.: Morgan in the bathroom, door closed, the unmistakable sound of liquid dropping into the toilet.
Riley turned up the volume for her sister’s privacy, once, then again, until the Michigan couple was yelling about house number three, whether or not it was over budget, which it was. When they picked house number one, which satisfied neither of them, Riley mumbled, “Good fucking luck,” and turned down the volume.
“Hey.” She knocked. “Are you okay?” The bathroom door was frosted glass and Riley could see Morgan’s darkened form, folded over her knees on the toilet. “Do you need anything?”
“Water,” Morgan said, her breathing labored. Riley cracked open the door to pass her the bottle and glimpsed her sister’s ponytail flipped over her head, shorts at her ankles.
Outside the door, Riley hesitated. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Morgan exhaled. “Go watch.”
During the next episode—an Australian family shitting on Cambodian housing—Riley crept periodically to the door, checked on her sister’s silhouette, which remained on the toilet, head in her palms.
“Are you hungry?” Riley asked when it was nearly two.
“No,” Morgan said. “I,” she expelled with effort. “Pretend. I’m not here.”
The House Hunters song played again. Riley found the heating pad at the bottom of the suitcase. She picked it up, held it a moment, knew she shouldn’t go back just yet. Riley wasn’t hungry either, but she eyed the bottle of wine she’d taken from her parents’ cooler—something to pass the time—twisted off the top, and poured some into a glass. On the bed, she drank and watched the digital clock, waited impatiently for the commercial, when her sister turned down the heating pad.
Back on the bed, bottle on the nightstand, Riley tried to focus on the next episode—a long-distance couple moving in together, for the first time, in what would clearly end in disaster—taking determined interest in imagining their lives in each empty apartment. How he would find out she was bad at cooking. How she would discover he was dull. How they would eat her bad food to his bad conversation, sitting on the west-facing balcony. When the doorbell rang, three digital chimes, Riley leapt up, less sober than she imagined, to find the cleaning lady in the hall.
“No!” Riley said, too loud. “We’re good. No, no cleaning. We’re great.”
She plopped back on the bed, confident the couple would choose the small apartment in the giant complex, drinking her wine. It took a minute to register the sound, the two syllables of her name, then just the one, the strangled Rii. When she finally looked to her left, the bathroom door was ajar and Morgan was on the floor, face pressed against the tile, arms and legs splayed like a movie corpse.
“Oh my god.” Riley scrambled across the duvet and into the bathroom, put her palm against her sister’s slick, hot forehead. “It’s okay,” she said, stroking Morgan’s hair backward, bringing her head into her lap. Morgan closed her eyes, inhaling in long and exhaling in short, forceful bursts. Riley felt her panic beating slow and hot, the wine bringing unexpected composure to her thinking.
“How about a bath?”
Morgan grunted her approval and Riley gently returned her sister’s head to the floor, came back with a bed pillow she slid beneath her cheek while the bath filled slowly, thunderously, with water. She told her sister it was going to be okay—that she was going to get into a cool bath—compulsively sticking her hand in the liquid every thirty seconds until the tub was full.
Morgan undressed. She leaned on Riley like a piece of furniture as she peeled off her shorts, her underwear and its bloody pad, getting tangled in her sweat-soaked tank top—Riley on tiptoe trying to help. As she lowered into the tub, Morgan let out an animal sound, the knot on her face loosening slightly as her body un-fisted in the lukewarm liquid.
“I,” Morgan said, her voice pained. She put a hand on her face. “Sucks.”
Riley laughed, a tear forming in her eye. “You don’t sucks,” she said.
“Life sucks,” Morgan groaned.
“Don’t say that. Today sucks. It will be over tomorrow.” Morgan closed her eyes, unmoved. “Afterward, we’ll put you in bed.”
“I’ll bleed.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s horrible.” She looked up and winced. “You didn’t see.”
Morgan shut her eyes again and Riley tried to look around, but what else was she supposed to do, sitting on the toilet lid? She hadn’t seen Morgan naked in years. Her copper-blond hair was slicked to her head, making her eyes appear even larger, the curve of her eyelid wet and dramatic. Her nipples, floating pinkly at the surface, were the same color as her lips. Morgan was painfully beautiful, even like this, waterlogged and losing blood. For the first time in so long, the realization didn’t sting Riley. It gave her an idea.
“I’ll be back in ten minutes, okay? I’ll be right back. Just. Stay right there.”
“Uh,” Morgan said.
Riley moved swiftly, down the elevator and tipsily around the block, dodging the pedestrians like she was in a video game. Inside the Duane Reade, the blast of icy air was like a respirator, her flip-flops still hot on her feet, her cheeks flushed, following the signs to the baby products, but they weren’t there. She looped around the store, found them by the tampons. “Small,” she whispered to herself, running her fingers along the puffy packaging, selecting what she needed. At the register, she grabbed a Kit Kat, a bag of cashews, pizza Combos, cheddar popcorn, adding items to the counter as the woman scanned.
Nearly breathless, Riley found her sister where she’d left her. “How we doing?” She leaned against the bathroom door. “Ready to evacuate?”
Morgan sat up slowly and the water shifted. A little splashed over the rim. Riley crouched at the tub, let Morgan put her hands on her shoulders. Together they stood slowly, Morgan lifting wetly from the water, when she doubled over with a cramp and reached frantically between her legs. She let out an anguished gasp, part pain and part horror, as something slid down her leg and into the water. “Don’t look! Holy shit! Don’t look.”
But Riley had already looked, and now she couldn’t look away, the two of them clutching each other, knees queasy. In the water was a gray mass the size of a kidney bean with a short, blood vessel tail, slowly leaking a cloud of pink. Morgan began to cry. “What the fuck.”
“It’s okay,” Riley said, blinking hard. “It’s fine,” she said. “We read about this. It’s supposed to happen. You’re done now. You did it.” Now Riley was crying too, cheering her sister and crying, coaxing her out of the tub and closing the curtain. Riley wrapped a towel around Morgan. “I got you something. Hang tight. We’re going to put you in the bed.
“For you,” Riley said, handing her the soft white wad. Morgan took it, began to cry again, harder and harder until she was laughing.
“Goddamn it,” she said, leaning over to put on the diaper. Riley stretched a clean T-shirt over her sister’s head. It was Morgan’s favorite—soft and black with a thin gold star—and seeing that Riley had packed this item, Morgan wrapped her damp weight around her sister, tight with unwieldy gratitude. When Riley led her to the bed, Morgan crawled in.
“Take this,” Riley said, two painkillers on her palm, “my little dumpling.” She returned with water, found Morgan swallowing the pills with the wine she’d left on the nightstand. Riley opened her mouth to scold her, but instead she slid in beside her sister, took the bottle and filled her mouth, passed it back to Morgan. They spread out the three pillows, the fourth still on the bathroom floor, but ended up with their heads practically touching.
“I hate this concert,” Morgan said. A minute later she was asleep.
OREGON MAGAZINE
September 8, 2007
EAST MEETS OREGON: THE KINGDOM OF KALEIDOSCOPE
By James Greenly
The night Hank and Karen Brighton opened the doors of their first Kaleidoscope—the Eastern-inspired retailer that has since swept the country—the town of Eugene was hit with a party that has since been etched in local lore. The Brightons unveiled their new enterprise with spectacular mystique. Without a word, they boarded up their previous business, a humble but well-loved grocery store called Om Organics. Shortly after, an explanation arrived in the mail. The gold metallic envelope contained a heavy, bedizened card inviting 200 guests, my family included, to the grand opening of “Kaleidoscope: An Eclectic Bazaar.”
It was October of 2002, and the Brightons had recently returned from India.
As I stepped into the former grocery store, the space was unrecognizable: Indian handicrafts and glassware were stacked across wooden tables, hand-blocked tunics hung from circular racks. Where once there were dairy cases and aisles of chips, there were leather satchels, linen lampshades, yak-wool blankets, mosaic mirrors, and silver jewelry. Karen Brighton wore a gauzy peach sari, Hank Brighton a brocade tunic. Their teenage daughters, Morgan and Riley, donned full-skirted lehenga cholis. The lights were low and moody. Bollywood music throbbed from speakers. My mom had so many free wines—chased by crunchy, spicy snacks—we went home with a lamp, a pair of slippers, and three scarves.
“I still don’t know how we pulled it off,” Karen Brighton tells me in her Manhattan town house, where the Brightons relocated in 2005. “I don’t remember it all, to be totally honest, we were so stressed.” Karen, who insists on first names, looks at Hank. “Fine.” She laughs. “I was so stressed.”
But the Brightons didn’t merely pull it off; Kaleidoscope soared. After a breakout success in Eugene, they expanded quickly into Portland and Seattle in 2004. A year later, when both Brighton daughters chose New York for college, Hank and Karen followed behind and opened the flagship store that stands in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Today, the Kaleidoscope empire contains seven brick-and-mortar locations and a thriving catalog business.
Just how much business? Hank Brighton gets this question a lot, and he isn’t sharing.
“We do okay,” Hank tells me, winking. A sandy-haired former surf instructor from Oahu, Hank has a playful, easy-to-like demeanor. When I compliment his summer Nehru jacket, Hank offers me one. “Come by the shop next week,” he says, and when he takes down my measurements, I realize he means it.
Karen Brighton, a wiry second-generation Chinese American, wears a silk kaftan embroidered with birds of paradise. We sit in a room that looks like the Kaleidoscope catalog brought to life. There are iridescent drapes from India, butter-soft Moroccan leather club chairs, an ivory Turkish carpet with mineral-colored filaments, an antique Tibetan birdcage, a Japanese tea set. Did I mention their brownstone, tucked in a row of russet and brick, is painted a deep cornflower blue?
But life wasn’t always so good for the Brightons. In 1993, financial constraints steered them from Honolulu, where they worked at the reception of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, to Eugene, where they hoped to find a more affordable life. The transition wasn’t easy. Hank was unemployed for nearly a year, while Karen worked part-time in the shoe department at the now defunct Emporium. They rented a small duplex next door to a cemetery where their daughters, a year apart in elementary school, shared a room meant to be a nursery. That first year, the Brightons worried they’d made a huge mistake. ...
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