Rouge(74)

“Like her,” he says at last, looking afraid.

Her?

“Just before,” he says. “I can’t believe it.” He pulls away—why would he pull away, Mother? But Mother’s gone. Just me and Tad in the glass now. No misty garden of tall red flowers. No Mother smiling there amid the blooms and thorns. Just Tad standing up. Leaving me sitting here alone at my insanity with my open hands empty.

“I don’t know if you should sleep in this room anymore,” Tad is saying. “The energies are off. Or maybe it’s mold.”

Mold?

“I told her a long time ago that it might be. Maybe it’s in the walls. Maybe I should call a doctor,” he offers. “Get you something to drink.”

A doctor. Something to drink. Is he serious? He seems to be. Though maybe playing like I’m sick is his thing, what excites him. Maybe he’d like to save me. “Well, before you do that, you’d better come back and feel my forehead again,” I tell him. “I’m feeling a bit faint.”

He reaches out tentatively and I pull him down and kill him hard on the lips. Surely this is what he wants. But instead of melting beautifully into my kill like a witch in acid, Tad stiffens. His lips stay very pressed together. “I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away, getting up. “It’s just… It’s too weird, right?”

“Weird?” Why weird? You’re my boyfriend. “No. How is it weird?”

“Belle,” he says, and something in his voice makes me look away.

I stare down at my hands gripping his. Many mists drip from my face. I hear the sound of chimes in my head, and underneath, a roar like water. Through the roar, Tad’s voice comes to me very faintly. Something about rest. How it’s all I need right now. Something about juice and how we’re out of fruit. He’ll just go out now and get some, okay? His hands in mine are lax, patient, waiting for me to let go. Please let me go.

So I open my hands. Watch Tad run out of the room. It’s fine, I think. Go ahead. Leave me here, I’m not alone. I’m lovely. I have my mists. Each one a world to wander in. All of them running down my face in rivulets, so very luminous I am. Dripping from my eyes onto my empty hands gripping air. I guess in the end we misted too much, Mother. But Mother’s not in the mirror anymore, must remember. Through the mists, I see a gold bracelet winking on the table. Nested between the red jars. Mother, did you leave me a gift? The bracelet itself is so small, so delicate, the gold thin as thread. It could have belonged to a child. Perhaps it did. What a slim little wrist it must have fit once. It has an eye in its center, I see. Strange, slanted. Staring at me like it can see my heart. Have I looked into this eye before? Why do I feel I have?

I slip it on—and look at that, it fits. Makes me smile a little, clears the mists. The chimes quiet, the roar of the ocean in my head goes still. I remember I’ve got work today. At my shop, of course. That’s right. I’ve got a shop, don’t I? How could I forget?





20


By the time I get to Belle of the Ball, I can see and think very clearly. Clear as a bell. Just like my name, Belle. Just like my shop, Belle of the Ball. There’s Mother in the shop glass. Mother, I’m so glad you’re here. To be honest, I thought you left me there back in my bedroom, left me for your garden world. I wouldn’t have blamed you. But it’s good to see you here in the window display, and look, you took your pretty garden with you. Wearing a dress red as its flowers, just like I am, the same red shoes to match. I chose it after Tad left me to get some fruit for a juice I don’t even need to drink. And he never came back, can you believe that? Mother can’t. Once more, she’s shaking her head just as I’m shaking mine. Or is it something else you can’t believe, Mother? Mother, why do you look so horrified?

Then I see, of course. Why she looks horrified.

There’s something else in the window display, something else with Mother in her garden. A horrible obstruction that hurts my eyes like the light. Hurts Mother’s eyes too, it looks like. A row of gray headless… are they scarecrows? Garden statues? They look like corpses. Standing all around you, Mother, oh god. Almost as if on ghoulish display. Each one backlit and wearing some sort of sack dress and… is it chunky silver jewelry? I know it sounds crazy. Because who would do something like that, right? Mother, no wonder you look so upset. What are these wretched creatures? They must be statues. And yet they look so much like corpses, I can’t help but whisper to them: When was the beheading? And why wasn’t I here, protecting you from the guillotine? Who dressed you in these fashion sacks? Who put chunky silver jewelry around your necks like chains?

Thank god I’m here now. Have to fix this immediately, right, Mother? Put the Belle back in Belle of the Ball where she should be.

“Can I help you?” says a voice. A woman poking her head out of the shop door. Grim face. Fish eyes. Red glasses hanging from a red chain around her neck. She looks a little afraid of me, like Tad did.

“Can I help you?” she repeats. Which is funny. Because we’re the ones who work here, aren’t we, Mother?

“We should really be the ones asking you that, Esther,” I say to her, and smile. She has a name tag, that’s helpful.

Esther looks around, confused. We? She must not see that I’m with you, Mother. She must not see you in the shop glass or she must think we’re one and the same. We look so much like each other today, it’s true. Esther doesn’t seem to see very well. Completely immune to the abomination in the window display.