Silence now. No creaks, no gasps, no music anymore. I hear not-Tom leave her bedroom, then the apartment. Get in his car and drive away.
I fall asleep staring up at the stars Mother pasted on my ceiling. Because I was afraid of the dark, she put them there. There, she said, better? Like a night-light but less childish.
She didn’t even get the constellations right, Stacey told me when she slept over. So each night when you look up at those stars, you’re looking up at the wrong sky. You’re looking at the wrong heaven.
So?
That’s fucked, Stacey said quietly. But it explains a lot.
* * *
Still dark when I open my eyes. Woke to a sound like a song. “In the Air Tonight” playing again. Again? But it’s midnight on my Snow White clock. Mother is surely asleep. So why do I hear the song still? And a sound under the song again. Not breathing or sighing this time. Footsteps. Maybe it’s part of the song? No. Footsteps aren’t part of the song. Different footsteps than earlier. Not a click or a clack. Fear in my stomach. Opening up like a black pit.
Then I see the mirror in the corner is shining. I see someone walk through the glass like it’s a door. I smile in the dark.
“Tom,” I whisper.
“Seth,” he says.
His silhouette makes its way to my bed. Putting a shadow finger to his shadow lips. Our secret. Like Beauty, remember? He sits on my bed’s edge. Right where Mother sits when she tucks me in. It feels like he sits closer to me than Mother ever sits. My skin is goose bumps, my breath is caught. “You’re here,” I whisper.
“Of course I’m here.”
“I thought you left me. I thought you were gone forever.” Tears fill my eyes. I hope he doesn’t see.
He leans in and strokes my hair. So softly. His hands are cold and sticky. That’s how I know it’s him, though I can’t see him so well in the dark.
“Why didn’t you meet me in the mirror today? I waited and waited for you, but you didn’t come.”
“It wasn’t safe,” he whispers under the music. “I knew your mother was plotting something. So I found another way.”
“Through her new boyfriend.”
Tom nods. “He’s a fool. Very easy to infiltrate.”
“Was it you drinking and laughing with Mother all night? Did you have…？” Saying the word sex to Tom is impossible.
Tom smiles, shaking his head. His hair waves in the dark. “I just did it to get to you.”
“You did?”
“Definitely.”
I thought of what Grand-Maman told me when we were watching Tom’s movies, Tom and the girls. Just acting.
“Are you really going away with Mother to California? Are you leaving me?”
“Belle, don’t you trust me by now?”
“She’s going to put a lock on the door, Tom,” I whisper.
“Seth,” he says quietly.
“Seth. Then I’ll never see you again.”
He walks over to Mother’s mirror in the corner. I watch him stroke his own jaw in the shining glass. There’s a dark shape in the glass, I see, doing the same. Tom’s reflection.
“Who’s that old actor your mother likes again?” he whispers.
“Montgomery Clift.”
“Right. Monty.” He smiles to himself in Mother’s mirror. “How could I forget?”
“She says you look a little bit like him.”
“Does she? Interesting. I guess I do, don’t I?” He looks lost in his own reflection, shimmering darkly in the glass.
“Only because Tom Cruise looks like him,” I whisper. “Only because you’re Tom Cruise.”
For a second, he looks like he’s going to laugh. But then he smiles in the mirror, almost sadly.
“I won’t let her separate us,” he says to the glass. “Ever.”
“How?”
“You know how. But I need your help. We have to get rid of your mother, Belle. There’s really no other choice if you want me to take you away to California.”
I knew Tom Cruise was going to say this. I knew he was going to say it just as he said it. I might have even said the words with him, like when you sing along to a song.
“But I can’t get rid of her,” I whisper. “She’s my mother. I love her.” I’m devastated that this is true. I think of Mother and me in the apple orchard that day. The warmth of her hand in mine, her laughing voice. “I love her,” I repeat, but there’s a crack in my words.
Tom hears it. He looks at me in the shining glass. “You know I’d really hate to leave you here, Belle. All by yourself on this island you hate, beside your muddy little river. With the spiders that Mother won’t kill. With these dumb dolls that look just like Mother’s stolen Beauty. Reading your fairy tales rather than living them. Do you want that?” Standing by the mirror, he looks like he’s about to leave me right now. Disappear through the glass.