Rouge(14)

Esther just blinks.

Sylvia leads me to the back room, Come along with me, dear. More shitty, shapeless dresses back here hanging in sad rows. A few of Mother’s old mannequins are in here too. The white, red-lipped ones from my nightmares. One is standing up, two are lying down. The standing one beams at me with her golden eyes. She’s naked. A purse hangs absurdly from her shoulder, shaped like a glittery black swan. A bit of fun, Mother would have said of the purse. A reminder to fuck function. Embrace form.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mira,” Sylvia begins. “I really thought you knew. I thought surely she would have told you.”

How’s the shop, Mother?

The shop? What are you talking about?

Belle of the Ball? Your shop?

Oh right. The shop. Fine, fine. ?a marche.

“To be honest, she left me in a bit of a lurch, too, doing that,” Sylvia says. “But I wanted to help. I wanted to be a friend. I’m honestly very surprised she didn’t share her decision with you.” There’s an accusation in there. Estranged from each other toward the end, weren’t you? Not so terribly close after you moved away. If you ever were. Whose fault is that?

Behind Mother’s glasses, my vision goes swimmy. The Formula has gone rogue, I guess. I find myself telling Sylvia everything about the meeting with Chaz. Mother’s multiple loans to repair god knows what. It all comes gushing out of me like the tears I don’t shed. I can’t stop the tide of words.

“All that money,” I whisper, sinking to my knees. “Where did she spend it? Where did it go?” As I say this, I flash to her bathroom full of red bottles and jars. Mother’s unlined face behind the wheel of her Jaguar, expressionless. Pale, empty eyes fixed on the windshield.

“Well, your mother never really thought too much about things like money.” She crouches down beside me, pats my back.

“Was she in her right mind?”

“Right mind?” Sylvia looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“Was she… going crazy?”

“Crazy? No. No, no, no, not crazy. Eclectic, maybe. And of course…”

“What?”

“Well, you know your mother. She never had much of a filter.” Embarrassed laughter. “Not with me. Certainly not with the customers. You know she was French,” she adds, lowering her voice.

“What does that mean?”

“Just that maybe she was getting a little more… French. In her old age is all.”

“More French?”

Sylvia shakes her head. “Look, Mirabelle, I really wouldn’t worry yourself about this now. We all get more eclectic in our old age, don’t we? Although sixty-one’s not so old. She wasn’t even a senior citizen yet, right? Too young to get a discounted bus pass! Not that your mother would ever ride a bus.”

I stare at the naked mannequin. Shorn of all but her little swan handbag. Her topaz eyes staring at me sadly. “Why did you move the mannequins back here?”

“No one liked these but your mother. And you know,” she says, lowering her voice again, “I never found them to be very… inclusive.” She looks at me meaningfully. Surely this word, inclusive, will get me on her side. I stare at her.

“So pale,” she insists. “And those red lips. Those weird eyes.” She looks up at the mannequin and makes a face. “They always creeped me out, to be honest. I don’t know where the hell she found them. Anyway, you really mustn’t work yourself up like this, my dear. You’re already dealing with so much.”

I look at her pleading face. So very dehydrated. In desperate need of glycerin. Same age as Mother, but you’d never know. Sylvia looks her age. Older maybe, from a life in the California sun. No sunscreen regimen—probably sees it as vanity. I could send her some Marva videos. She might benefit from a replenishing miracle seed essence or a regenerating human stem cell serum. Marva tells us self-care is telling yourself you matter every morning in the mirror. You should talk to it. Become friends with what you see there. And when she says this, I feel my neck skin prickle. Nervous suddenly to look in the glass. Whom will I see there? Can I really befriend them?

“You’ll sell the condo,” Sylvia is urging. “The car, too, I’m sure. Surely someone will want to buy the place. Such a beautiful property. And with that view, that view!” I see the mouth of her soul water a little.

“But the debt. The debt,” I whisper. “What am I going to do?”

“We’ll sort it all out,” she whispers back. “You’ll see,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Someone will come and snatch that place right up. Save you from all this. It’s too perfect. Just like your mother. Which reminds me,” she says. “She left some things here.”

“What things?”

“A few boxes in the basement. She sort of treated this place as her own personal storage, even after she left. I never said anything, of course. You know your mother.”

Why do people keep saying that to me? I don’t know, I want to tell them. Even as a voice inside me hisses, You do.

“I’ll just go down and grab them and meet you out front, okay? Esther, can you grab the dolly? Oh good, you’ve got it.”

I turn and there’s Esther standing behind me, staring blankly. She’s gripping a dolly with both hands. How long was she standing there? She wheels the dolly around my kneeling body and follows Sylvia through a door I always thought was locked, that Mother said led to nothing but boilers. You don’t want to go down there, she’d said, trust me.