* * *
Midnight on the Snow White clock when every petal is crushed. My ceiling stars are glowing. Grand-Maman is dead silent. She could be sleeping in the rocking chair. She could just be staring at the dark. She does that sometimes. I have no idea what she’s seeing there. The perfume of the roses is so thick in the bedroom. It smells just like I’m back in Alla’s garden and the yellow squares of light are coming on behind me, freezing me in the soil. The phone rang twice earlier. Once and then once again right after. Maybe Alla. Maybe Stacey. What the fuck were you doing in our garden? Grand-Maman never picked up, though. She let it ring and ring. It rang so loud, it rattled my pink phone. The spiders in the corners are awake now, spinning bigger webs, dangling down from threads, but I’m not afraid of them anymore. Funny, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Mother’s still not back. She won’t be back till dawn, Tom says. He says it at the very back of my mind. That’s where I still hear his voice when I need to. That’s where he reminds me of everything I need to know.
The next step, Tom says, is the trickiest of all.
To go into Mother’s bedroom. To her vanity with the three mirror faces. To find the jar of night cream on the table. The one she uses every night. Rubs tenderly into her face in counterclockwise circles. I sometimes watch from her bed, making wishes in my head until she tells me to leave. Why do I have to leave? I always ask her. Because this is Mother’s secret, Mother says, and her face is suddenly a closed door. The night cream smells like perfume and is named after the sea in French. Because the cream has red algae in it, Mother told me once. Plus a magic sea broth.
Like a potion, I said.
Yes. Mother laughed. Exactly like that. Mother needs all the help she can get these days.
I look at the jar shining on the vanity in the blue light of the moon through the window. I’m supposed to open it, Tom said. Take the dark red powder from Tom’s black bag and mix it in. Easy, Tom said. I picture Mother’s throat closing. I think of the open throat of the rose whose petals I plucked.
This will hurt her, I tell Tom in my mind.
And in my mind, Tom smiles, amused. Didn’t I already know that? Didn’t I fucking know that when I plucked the red petals? When I crushed them one by one by one with the heavy black stone? I’ll have to mix them into Mother’s cream. Your mother’s cream comes with a little gold spoon, remember?
Yes. Of course I remember. Mother using the gold spoon to scoop. How she dabs it on her face dot by dot like she’s anointing herself, she says. I always ask if she can anoint me, too. And Mother always says my skin is young and plump and perfect just as it is, so I don’t need anointing. I won’t ever need it anyway because of my father. That Egyptian blood. It will always save me in the end. How she wishes she had it, Mother lies, so it could save her, too. And she cups my face between her hands like a light she wants to keep lit.
Can you believe that cream actually comes with its own little gold spoon to mix? Tom said in the bedroom last night, delighted. Shaking his head at the ceiling stars like how perfect was that?
Yeah. And I just stared sideways at his so perfect face. Glowing like a sunrise right beside me. If I touched it, would it burn me?
Too perfect, right? Tom whispered, turning to me.
Too perfect, I whispered. I smelled the cold ocean of him. And I thought, how could someone be a sky and a sea and a sun all at once? How could someone be heaven and also the endless deep? Tom, I thought, this is what you are to me. This is what you will always be. Everything all at once.
It’s fate in a way, Tom said, oblivious to my staring. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s why he was smiling. Do you know what fate is, Belle?
I thought of the picture of him I’d torn from Sky. Folded three times then hid like a secret. And now here he was in the flesh, here with me in the flesh.
It’s what’s meant to be? I whispered.
And Tom nodded in the dark. Definitely.
Like you and me, then, I said. Shy suddenly. My turn to look away up at the stars. But I could feel him still watching me. I could feel his fang shining in the dark. The fang was my favorite part of Tom.
Yes. Exactly like you and me, seedling.
But Mother will see, I told the stars. She’ll notice the red powder. She’ll smell the roses.
Which is why you’ll have to mix it well, Tom said. So well that Mother won’t be able to tell. She won’t be able to see or to smell that anything is amiss. It’s a good thing her cream is red, too. Red like roses. Red like blood. Red like the algae she steals from the Deep to make her look young and beautiful forever. But it won’t save her in the end.