“The lagoon,” the goblin says, so suspiciously. “I see. So you’re saying you forgot that you had hundreds of thousands of dollars. You forgot that.”
“But then I remembered. Which reminds me.” And it really does remind me. “I’m late for work.”
“Work?” they both say.
But I’m really too late to explain. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“So wait,” the goblin says. “Then your plan is to keep the apartment?”
And it’s when he says it that I know. Suddenly the floor beneath my feet solidifies. I feel something soft slinking around my ankles. The pretty white cat walking circles around my legs now. Beside me in the glass, I feel my reflection nodding and nodding.
“You are?” Tad says.
Of course you are, she mouths.
“Of course I am. I’ll have to fix it up. Tad’s going to help me with that, aren’t you, Tad? Sell some of these things. Get a very nice price.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to sell her things, Belle,” Tad says. “I thought you said you had an emotional attachment, remember?” He’s pointing to some sort of black chest on the floor. I look at it and feel nothing. Just an old box of wood. Taking up space.
“Not attached at all,” I say, a smile in my voice. “We can’t form silly attachments like that.” And my reflection’s shaking her head as if to say, No, no. Can’t do that. “Have to cut things out. Cut things off. When they do us no good. Letting go is so worth it, n’est-ce pas?”
He’s just looking at me.
“Are you all right, Tad? You look like you’ve seen… someone dead.”
“Just surprised,” he murmurs. “By the change in your…” He trails off, staring at my face. “Feelings,” he says at last.
“Belle, can I talk to you for a second?” This from the goblin, trying to look fatherly. It’s hard with his evil sprite face. He pulls me away into a corner of the living room, a pretty room now that I really look at it. “Are you all right?” the goblin whispers. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be overheard by the merman. “You seem a little… off.”
“Off?” Over his shoulder, in another one of Mother’s mirrors, my reflection smiles at me. A smile that warms my heart. “Not off at all. Roses.”
“Roses?” he repeats, staring at me. Like he’s not so sure about that. About my smile in the morning light. He’s looking for cracks. “Maybe you should talk to someone,” he says.
In the mirror, I see my reflection is laughing at him now. I laugh with her. It is funny. Talk to someone. “I am talking to someone. I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” the goblin says softly. This is true. He can’t deny it. He’s staring so deeply into my face, like he’s lost in some kind of dream.
“And I wish I could talk more,” I lie. “But I really am late for work, I’m afraid.”
“Where do you work, Belle?”
But the answer to that isn’t one I have just now. Not in my head or on my tongue. Just roses beaming in the thickening mist. Just the lovely sound of those chimes from the Treatment Room, I can still hear them vibrating all around. Just my bright reflection smiling at me in the glass.
It’s then that I notice it. Just beyond the goblin’s hunched shoulder. The many mirrors in the living room. All of them sealed back up. All of them uncracked and shining now. All of them reflecting me back to myself. All of these selves smiling. All of them glowing. Well, more than a glow, really.
Way more than just a little glow, isn’t it?
15
Outside, the chime sounds are still playing somewhere, seeming to follow me. The light from the sun stings my eyes. Had to put on Mother’s black hat with the widest brim, her sunglasses with the frames big as a bug’s eyes. I’m walking on the shadow side of the street. The shady side, I mean. Sometimes the words I think aren’t quite the words I mean. Maybe just part of the fog I’m in this morning. When it comes to the words I mean, there might be a lag or a blank. Sometimes the blank stays blank no matter how long I wait for it to fill up with something. Like when I said goodbye to the goblin man just now. He had another name besides Goblin, I knew that, and I waited for it to come back to me so I could say goodbye in a nicer way. But when I looked at his face, the only word in my head and on my tongue was goblin. My reflection was even mouthing it beside me in one of Mother’s many mirrors. I could feel myself in the glass going, Goblin, goblin, goblin. So in the end, I just said, Farewell. I said it in French, which was funny. Adieu, meaning “to god.” Curtsied as I closed the door, to make it look like I meant to say it that way, to make it pretty. Pretty is a word that’s always there for me in the fog. And the French for it, which is my own name, Belle. That’s lucky.