Rouge(65)

Really, Tom?

Seth, remember. Remember, I’m Seth.

Okay, I say, but he really does look a lot like Tom Cruise. I know that for sure now because I’ve been watching his movies. I watched them in spite of Mother, behind her back. I asked Mother to rent them for me, I begged her. This was after Mother screamed at me about being in her room. Later, she called me into the living room and said she was sorry for screaming, she was just tired of me not listening, okay? Okay. Also mirrors were not playthings, did I understand that?

Mother was curled on the couch in one of her silk robes Father brought her from Egypt. Egypt was like a pretty robe she could put on or take off. She had a copy of Vogue magazine on her lap and a Matinée smoking in the pointy glass ashtray on the pointy glass coffee table. Everything in our apartment is shiny and pointy and cold, Stacey says. Or it’s white and hissing like the wicker. It’s what Mother calls style, I tell Stacey, who says whatever. She doesn’t like coming to our place because we can’t rate each other there. Rating is something we do only in Stacey’s basement, where I watch Stacey twirling in her bodysuit in the dark until my eyes water. Sometimes I’ll look away from her, through the cloudy basement window near the ceiling, into the endless rose garden. I can’t always see the tops of the flowers, just the spiked stems in their beds of dirt, which her Russian mother Alla’s always turning. Alla doesn’t know how much I come over because we always go through the back door, but she met me a few times when we were cutting through the garden. She was smiling, but her eyes were hard and glittery as Grand-Maman’s diamonds, and her hand, when I shook it, was a limp fish. What have we talked about traipsing through the garden, Anastasia? Alla tells Stacey, her eyes still on me. No more back door, okay? Alla’s blond like Stacey. Very Stepford, Mother says when she comes to pick me up, making a face, though I know she admires their house, the garden with its gazebo. Still, Mother prefers her own style in all things. I prefer it too. Even the cigarette in Mother’s ashtray, idly smoldering, had a pretty mouth of Mother’s best red around the filter. She smelled of violets and smoke from her jagged star.

Belle, Mother said from the couch, are you even listening to me?

Yes.

What did I say?

Mirrors aren’t playthings.

That mirror especially, understood? Look at me. She was holding my chin, tilting my head up so there was nowhere else to look except Mother’s face, shining and pointy and cold. But her eyes were soft. Wanting me to really understand about this, okay? For my own good. Comprends-tu? Mother said, speaking in French the way she did only when she was very upset. And she shook me a little.

Oui. Mom, I said, do you know Tom Cruise?

Tom Cruise? Mother said, letting go. Of course I know Tom Cruise. Who doesn’t? He’s a big movie star.

Can we watch some of his movies maybe? Can we rent them from the video store?

Why do you want to do that all of a sudden?

And I went red in the face. I couldn’t tell Mother that Tom Cruise was my boyfriend. That I felt like he knew me better than anyone. Better than Mother even. Just to see, that’s all, I said to the floor. He’s a good actor, isn’t he? Mother’s always talking about who’s a good actor. Don’t you like him? And then Mother’s eyes went a little soft again suddenly. He looks a bit like Monty. I’ll say that for him. Like she could see Tom in her mind. I would’ve been jealous, but Tom had already told me what he thought of Mother. That she was awful. Ugly. Old. Her Beauty a disguise. Just a painted mask. It would slide off her face in time. It was already sliding.

Mother smiled at me. A good actor, huh? She looked amused. Well, all right. Next time we go to the video store—

She’s a little young for those movies, don’t you think? This from Chip, stretched out on her love seat. Watching some sort of car race on TV. Not even looking at us.

Is she?

No, I’m not!

Think about it, Chip said, ignoring me. Risky Business? He raised his eyebrows at Mother in the way I hate.

Oh right. It’s true, Belle. You are a little too young for his movies, I think.

What?! I screamed. But I’m ten already! Ten isn’t too young.

And Chip smiled.

Maybe in a couple of years, Mother said.

Mom! You can’t listen to—

Darling, there are scenes that are too… adult for you. I’m just remembering.

But you were going to say yes!

Well, I’d forgotten about some scenes.

But what about Top Gun? We saw Top Gun together, remember? Can’t I at least rent—

No, Belle. There was a scene there, too. And I blushed. I knew the scene Mother was talking about. Tom and Kelly McGillis in blue silhouette. Tom lying on top of her. Sticking his tongue into her mouth and how I hated her. All to “Take My Breath Away,” which was our song. It made me hot in the face, thinking about that.

Mom, that’s not—

Belle, that’s enough. Room!



* * *




So I waited. So I waited and rented them with Grand-Maman. Mother doesn’t want me to watch Tom Cruise movies, was all I had to say and Grand-Maman immediately rented all of them for me. Risky Business. All the Right Moves. Top Gun. The Outsiders. Legend.

Ooh, a Tom Cruise marathon, the girl behind the video store counter said, and Grand-Maman said nothing, just wrote her a check from her book of checks. We watched them together in Grand-Maman’s bedroom dark on her big black box television, even the kissing parts. Even the sex parts. She didn’t fast-forward anything. Just sat there in her creaking rose-gold chaise saying nothing at all. Part of me wanted her to fast-forward sometimes. Because I hated watching Tom kiss or touch or even smile at any girl. Kelly McGillis. Rebecca De Mornay. They all looked pretty much the same to me. Their hair, their eyes, their skin. Even the dark-haired, dark-eyed ones like Mia Sara in Legend or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Color of Money were still somehow more of the same. More like Mother or Stacey than me. It burned my face up seeing that. It hurt my heart. I felt a pain to breathe, like someone stuck a knife there, right in the middle of me. Watching Tom kiss Rebecca in Risky Business, I had a feeling that was so many feelings at once. The angriest angry. The saddest sad. A want so big and deep and aching, it made my stomach a sinking pit. The want was like drowning. There was a word for this feeling, I knew. Envy. Mother taught it to me when she first read me Snow White, what the evil queen feels. When someone has something you want so much and you hate them so much for it. Envy is what I felt. I envied every girl who came near Tom in the movie, so I could barely stand to watch. But I watched, through tears sometimes, wanting to run through the screen and push the girl out of the movie, out of the world. Tom doesn’t love you, I would scream at them as I hurled them out into space. I would scream and scream until I lost my voice.