“It’s amazing you didn’t go blind,” he says. “Healed beautifully, didn’t you, just like Mother.”
“What did you do to her?” I whisper, but my mouth is frozen. It sounds like nothing. A whisper of a whisper through my dead lips. I’m still under. Still in the treatment. Still half dreaming. “What was in that red powder? Not just roses.” Though it’s a whisper, Tom hears.
“Belle. I think it’s time to take some responsibility, don’t you?”
I’m shaking my head, but it won’t shake; it won’t move. Tom’s nodding and smiling. Oh yes. “Didn’t you envy? Didn’t you want? A mirror is only a mirror, Belle. It only ever reflects back what we desire and long for.”
“You made me.”
And Tom’s smile fades then.
“Who crept into Mother’s closet where she said not to go? Who turned the mirror around? I didn’t make you do anything. I just saw what was inside you, seedling. Saw you tell it in the eyes of mud. You want to know what was in that red powder? You. Your dark feelings about Mother. Want. Hate. Envy. That’s what poisoned the roses. Poisoned Mother, sad to say. That’s what made the red dust.”
“No.”
He strokes my numb face. So tenderly, like I’m a child. “I was only ever a mirror for your darkness, seedling. I only gave words and a shape to what you wanted to do all along. Gave permission. Showed you what you fucking wanted. So much. Took your breath away.” And he smiles his sunrise smile that burns me. His red eyes go the blue-green of Tom Cruise’s eyes, filled with laughing light. Shame rises in me like a dark wave.
“You tricked me,” I whisper through my dead lips.
“You saw what you wanted to see, Belle. You still do. Something shiny and torn from a magazine. Folded three times, then tucked in your little dress pocket like a secret. No matter how many times I told you my name.”
I look at his face, the face that lights up my blood. For a second, he seems to ripple and blur around the edges like an image going out of focus.
I shake my head. No. “No, you lied to me. Tricked me into hurting her and then she never forgave me. My whole life. She abandoned me.”
“Well who knew Mother would hold such a grudge?”
“You abandoned me too.”
The white smile reaches its zenith. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
No. But Tom’s nodding yes.
“I believed you,” I whisper, but my mouth is still frozen. It’s so hard to say any words at all. Like a nightmare when you try to speak and your mouth can’t move right. My words come out garbled, at different volumes, in fits and starts. “I… loved you.”
Tom sighs, amused. He knows. Of course I loved him. Look at him, for fuck’s sake. A dream in the flesh. A movie in the dark. Rippling around the edges now, blurring slightly if I look too close.
“And I loved you,” he lies. “Definitely.” He’s saying it like it’s a line in a movie.
“You broke my… heart. You hurt my… mother and you broke my… heart. I felt it… shattering inside me… like glass.”
“Tell me about your heart, Belle. Tell me what happened next.”
I’m afraid. I try to shake my head, but it still won’t shake. “Don’t remember. I don’t remember.”
He looks back up at the sky of dark water and sighs. “Oh, you do. This part, I know you definitely do. You don’t have to tell me. We can watch it together.” And on the sky, the screen is back. A dark beige bedroom. A young girl lying on the bed, her face covered in bandages. Staring straight ahead.
25
In summer, the river around the island turns red. Like the color of mud plus blood. Flies swarm the air in dark, buzzing clouds. A kind of fly I’ve never found anywhere since. You walk outside and you’re covered. The flies have a smell that’s almost sweet. I’m watching them darken Grand-Maman’s window. Blocking out all the light that comes through the green leaves. Grand-Maman’s guest bedroom is just like her own bedroom. The same beige everywhere, but darker, shinier. I lie on a beige satiny pillow edged with crackling beige lace. On the beige wall there’s a painting of a man with a beard of feathers in a heavy gold frame. There’s a painting of a dark house in a dark wood, also in a gold frame. A dirt path leads up to the front door. That’s the one I look at. The one I can’t stop looking at. What’s hidden inside the dark house, I wonder.