Now that we’re done burning our faces, what’s next? Oh a mist, that’s right. How could I forget? A hydrating mist to put out the fire, to set the stage for the rest. A pretty mist like the one swirling in my mind, over my thoughts, where the flowers bloom. Like the mist swirling around in the garden Mother seems to be sitting in right now, there on the other side of the glass. Looking down at our insanity, I see we have many mists to choose from. Here’s a spray and here’s a spray and here’s a spray. Which should we pick? Can’t read what’s in any of these red bottles. What language is this? Looks pagan. Can you read runes, Mother? I can’t, and Mother can’t either, because she’s shaking her head like I’m shaking mine. Better spray them all to be safe, right? We spray and we spray and we spray and it’s lonely. Lovely, I mean. I smell an orchard of chokeberry blossoms, a field of Orpheus flowers, a dead sea of rose milk. That’s the lonely thing about a mist, isn’t it, Mother? The lovely thing. It’s not just a hydrating possibility. It’s another world to wander, a bit of dreaming, right? And if you mist just enough, you can even maybe go to that other world. Maybe that’s how you got to where you are now. To the other side of the mirror, to that pretty garden. Maybe the lonely mist took you there. Maybe if I spray enough of one or all of these, I can follow.
I spray and I spray and I spray and it’s very lonely. All these worlds of hydrating possibility waft around us now, and in your garden the mist grows thick, but I’m still here and you’re still there, sadly. It’s hard to see you somewhere so pretty where I’m not also. Of course that was always the way with us, wasn’t it? You in your world of hydrating possibilities and me in mine is sort of like old times. Yet so close that I can almost touch your hand. But not quite, right? When I reach out my hand now, there’s just glass there. Cold under my finger pads. You’re reaching out too now, looks like. Just glass for you, too?
Mother smiles with her very red lips. Red as the flowers in the garden growing tall all around her. Are they growing even taller now, Mother? Am I losing you in the mist? Well I’ll just keep spraying until I get myself there. I’ll spray and I’ll spray and I’ll—
“Belle?”
Just then our bedroom door opens. And we both scream, Mother and I.
But it’s only a beautiful blond man, naked from the waist up. He looks like a merman. What is he doing out of the sea? Interrupting our ridicule, which we don’t love. Do we know who he is, Mother? Mother’s red lips smile in the glass like she’s been eating too many cherries. Of course we do. Our boyfriend, Tad. Your boyfriend or my boyfriend, Mother? Can’t remember. But he washes the windows so preternaturally, it’s amazing. You’d never know there was a glass there.
“Hi, Tad,” we say.
He’s dumbstruck, of course. No surprise there. After the transformational magic of acid, after the lonely mist, our Glow is really out of this world. Our Lift upends the natural law. To say nothing of the Brightening.
“Good morning,” we say.
Tad says nothing still. Look at him just looking at us like he’s afraid. Afraid? That can’t be right, can it, Mother? But he really does look afraid. Well, Beauty can be scary sometimes, it can take your breath away. Maybe that’s what’s happening to Tad. Maybe we need to give him a minute to collect himself. Regain the power of speech. We smile at him. Not too sluttily or anything. We try hard not to be too dazzling. Oh, but we’re failing. The Beauty just drips from us like our many hydrating possibilities.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers at last. “What happened to you?”
“Happened?” Like we were in an accident. Well, we were in a kind of accident, weren’t we, Mother? In a manner of speaking, sure. Beauty, when you come face-to-face with it like Tad is right now, can be very like a collision. A kind of violence. This must be what Tad is experiencing. Beauty happened, Tad. A Glow. An unfurling of the red flowers of our faces.
“Belle. Please tell me.”
Don’t tell him, right, Mother? Because Beauty is our little secret, isn’t it? So we seal our lips into a smile that says over my dead body. The mystique must be putrefied. Petrified? Preserved. The mystique must be preserved. Far more magical that way.
“Belle, say something, you’re scaring me.”
Why does he keep only talking to me, Mother, when you’re here in the room too? Well, maybe not in the room so much, but in the glass, definitely. Smiling there with your very red lips in your misty garden of tall red flowers. And now look, he’s marching over to us, he’s sinking to the floor, his head is right between our knees. Jesus, this is quite the scene he’s making. But then, that’s what Beauty does, right, Mother? It makes people make scenes. It makes crazed fools of those who bear witness.