That one has spaghetti straps that tie at each shoulder. A bow tie at the back. Wearing that will show all the cuts. “Do I have to?”
“Yes.” And now her voice is cold. “Two minutes to get out here.”
So I put on the white dress. There’s a folded piece of paper in the pocket. That picture of Tom I tore from Sky so long ago. I stare at his glossy face. Smile though I feel strange. He looks different than when he’s in person. But that’s how pictures are sometimes, right? It’s Tom, of course. I fold it up, tuck it back in my pocket. Put a sweater over the dress, though it’s hot and it itches and it doesn’t cover everything. Not my neck or my hands or my face. All I have to do is look at your face, Mother says, and I know everything. I can read you like a book, remember? Every page.
* * *
When I come out in the dress and sweater, I expect Mother to scream, but Mother is smiling. She looks like Vogue magazine. Like she stepped out of the movies she watches to cleanse from Ladies Apparel. She’s wearing the black Saint Laurent suit today. Lips shining with her best red and her hair a soft wave. White sunglasses on her head, the lenses big as a bug’s eyes. There’s a gold chain on her neck with a gold Nefertiti head.
“How sweet you look,” she says, not looking at me. Looking through me, it feels like. There’s Bryce beside her. He doesn’t look anything like Tom Cruise today, not even close. He’s a completely different man. Very tall. Glasses. Beard. Small, bloody, watery eyes. Something spidery about his long legs and arms. He’s wearing a look on his face like he expects something from me. My apology. That’s when I know I hate him. Creep, I think.
My hands are behind my back so Mother won’t see the scratches on them. Though she has to see the bruise on my forehead is worse. But she doesn’t at all. She keeps glancing at herself in the mirror behind me, nervous. Checking her hair, her jacket, her best red. Checking that Nefertiti’s head hangs from her neck exactly like it should.
So I reach out my hand to Bryce the Creep.
“Sorry,” I say. “For yesterday.”
He doesn’t smile at first. He just looks down at my hand like it’s a bug. And Mother doesn’t tell him to stop being a baby like she would to me if I did that. She just stands there, looking at Bryce like she’s nervous. She doesn’t scream at the sight of my scratched-up hand either. Finally, he takes my hand, shakes it, but he doesn’t hold it back. It’s like I’m holding something dead.
“It’s fine,” he says. But he’s lying. Now I know what Mother means when I’m lying and she says, Do you see your face? Because I see the lying in his. I want to ask Bryce if he sees his face. I want Mother to ask him that. But Mother is looking at herself in a gold compact now. Sometimes her best red smears beyond her mouth corners and she needs to check. On the back of the compact, there’s a picture of a lady also looking at herself in a compact. She’s checking her best red just like Mother is.
Any minute now she’s going to snap the compact shut. Really look at me and scream. She’s going to notice my forehead bruise, so much darker now. The cuts and scratches on my neck that my sweater doesn’t cover. She’s going say, What the fuck happened? She’ll be so mad, she’ll say fuck. And I’ll have to deny everything, like Tom Cruise said. But she’ll read my eyes and she’ll know the whole story. Tom’s kiss. The bracelet with Father’s eye lying in the dark soil of Alla’s garden. The crushed stolen roses under my bed in the black sack. Probably I stink of their alive perfume. But Mother doesn’t notice, even though she’s snapped her compact shut. She’s looking at Bryce the Creep mostly now, his lying smile.
“Mother has her audition today,” she says to me. So that’s why she doesn’t see. On audition days, Mother sees only herself, her dream of herself in what she calls that other world. Far from Ladies Apparel. Among the lights and palm trees. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” And suddenly I’m angry about Mother not seeing. When usually she sees a button missing on a dress, a loose thread on a sweater. What the hell is this? Mother will say, poking at the hole where the button was, holding up the loose thread like evidence. What happened? What did you do? Do you know how hard I work to buy you these things?
But Mother’s just smiling now. “All right, Sunshine, we’re off. We can’t stay and wait for Grand-Maman today, okay? But you’ll be fine.”
She’s not asking me. She’s telling me.