I heard, she answered in French at last. And how is that?
Good.
But Mother wasn’t listening. She hadn’t called to ask me how it was. I do love you, Belle, she said in English.
I love you too. It’s the truth. Just not the whole.
“I don’t want to go,” I tell Grand-Maman in the beige room now.
“I know,” Grand-Maman says. “But she’s your mother. And you’re still a child.”
* * *
“But you weren’t a child anymore, were you, Belle?” Tom says, calling me out of the beige room, back with him in the Treatment Room, under the sky of water. Where we still lie side by side on the floating table. My lips are deader than ever. I can’t move my body. He’s touching my face and I can’t feel his hands. Tracing it like he made it himself, made every shape and shadow that lives there. The forgotten touch I somehow still longed for each night in the beige dark, watching the flies in the window, watching the leaves of fire, watching the glittering white snow and then the green buds. Closing my eyes to the beige and the paintings in their gold frames and the mirror ghost. Finding him only in the very corners of my dreams. Turning to smoke the minute I reached out my hand.
I shake my head at Tom but it still won’t shake. He’s blurrier around the edges, his face flickering on and off like the most beautiful light.
“Not a child anymore,” I say. Beside us, in the glass tank, our red jellyfish has grown bigger now. Nearly the size of the glass tank itself. Not quite the size of the red jellyfish floating up there in the sky of water, but close.
“You blossomed in that beige room, didn’t you? Grew up faster than the seasons change. Raised up out of the dirt just like I said you would. Bloomed like a hothouse flower, the red throat of you opening. It was stunning. Even with the mirror gone from the wall, you knew. You could see it in all their eyes whenever they looked at you. Teachers. That sleazy priest. Even the dumb, cruel children at that stupid island school. The dark, aching want in their eyes. That wants in spite of itself. That looks in spite of itself, transfixed. That consumes and is consumed.”
I nod with my eyes.
“Envy,” Tom and I both say, basking. A smile ripples across his face. He loves how I can say the word even with my dead mouth, clear as a bell.
“You knew that feeling, didn’t you? Because you’d looked at someone else like that once. Who did you used to look at like that?”
But he knows the answer.
The answer is up there in the sky of water.
Her face. Its pale eyes looking surprised. Then troubled. Very troubled at what they see…
* * *
…Me. Arriving in San Diego to meet her after so many years away. She’s standing at the foot of the escalator, a long airport escalator at arrivals. I’m at the top and she’s at the bottom and I’m making my slow way down.
I’ve just flown over the clouds for six hours. Staring at the sky going bluer and brighter the farther west we went. On the plane, a movie called A Few Good Men played, starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, both very good actors. I mostly watched the screen while I listened to Nirvana on my Walkman that Grand-Maman bought me as a going-away present. To watch Tom Cruise made me feel strange. Made me grip the armrests whenever he came on the screen. Wanting the truth that Jack Nicholson told him he couldn’t handle. Still wanting it.
All okay? said the man sitting beside me.
He smiled in a way I would come to know very well. Like even though I wasn’t saying anything, my face was telling him something. Some secret thing. Something that pleased him. But when I turned to look at this man, my heart stopped. Dark hair a wave. White movie-star smile. Eyes blue-green as my dream of the sea. He looked just like the actor up there on the screen.
Tom? I said, stopping the music.
Excuse me? the man said. Still smiling at me though he didn’t understand.
And then I said, Seth? Which was funny. Where did I get that name from?
He looked at me like he wished that Tom or Seth were his name. I’m Jeff.
Sorry. I thought… you were someone else.
Oh, don’t apologize, please. I’m sorry not to be who you thought I was.
Why would someone be sorry for something like that? I thought. But I didn’t ask. I turned to the window, turned my Walkman back on. I didn’t want to talk to Jeff. But Jeff wanted to talk to me. I could feel his want oozing out of him. He tapped me on the shoulder until I turned back.
Flying home? Jeff mouthed, and smiled. Like there were more questions in this question. And my answer would answer them all.