Mother, I said, staring at a mannequin.
Who is this?
Your daughter.
Pause. Who?
Belle? Your daughter? Mother, what’s—
Oh, Belle of the Ball. Sunshine, yes of course. Sunshine was her nickname for me. Sunshine because I was such a rain cloud according to her, a glum drop. Sunshine to spite me.
You know it’s seventy-two degrees and sunny here. The sky is so blue and lonely, Belle. You should see it.
Lonely?
Did I say “lonely”？ I meant lovely, of course. You should see it.
I’ve seen it, Mother. Are you okay? You seem a little—
I’m roses. I’m wearing a dread—a dress made of stars. The question is how are you, Sunshine? Are you still exfoliating your face off?
No, I said, though of course I was. I had seven different kinds of acid on rotation, each one for what Marva called a different skin predicament. I had the Universal Brightening Peel Pads and the Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix and of course, the triple-exfoliating Lotion Magique, a cult French elixir that’s still illegal in some countries—the one with the banned ingredient that reeks of sulfur and numbs your face. I also had the infamous blood-colored Eradikating Ambrosia, which smells like turpentine and looks like fresh goat placenta. Each night I rub one or more on my face with a cotton pad, and my skin screams beautifully. Goes an unholy red. I watch it burn in the mirror while an animal scent, a smell of sacrifice, fills the bathroom like smoke.
I’m not, I lied to Mother.
And Mother tsked. You know those cells turn over all by themselves, Belle. Your sin’s beautiful on its own.
My sin?
Skin, of course, why would I say “sin”？ So funny. Anyway, the point is, Mother Nature is a fucking wonder.
Is she? And I stared at the mannequin. Little sideways smirk. Little slant of her gleaming eye. Mother said nothing. Silence filled the connection as it often did between us. I could hear the waves crashing on her end of the line. Chiding me. That I should have stayed in California. Been happy. Sunnier of soul and mind. But no, I had to choose darkness, didn’t I? I had to skulk back to our bleak homeland of snow and ice. To look after Grand-Maman, I always interjected. But then Grand-Maman died, didn’t she, and I still didn’t come back. No, I felt compelled to stay and brood in the Montreal shadows, working in a dress shop, no less. Talk about a slap. When she herself had a dress shop in paradise where I could work right alongside her, didn’t she?
And then there was our last phone call a couple of weeks ago. An evening shift at Damsels. No customers. I could see snow falling outside through the window, slow and fat. I remember the way the mannequins shone under the track lights. How they seemed to smile more broadly that night. Mother was speaking so quickly, so breathlessly. She kept slipping into French the way she did only when she was extremely distraught.
Mother, please, I said. What are you saying?
I’m wearing a dread of liquid gold that burns like the sun. I’m wearing shoes of reddest blood. The mirrors are cracking all around me. The waves are saying, entrée, entrée.
What? Mother, you’re scaring me.
Belle, do you ever look in the mirror and see…？ She trailed off. I could hear her breath quickening on the line. I thought I could hear her heart beating. Or was it my own heart I was hearing pounding in my ear?
Mother, what are you seeing?
I’m going the way of roses, Belle, she said at last, dreamily. Remember the roses? Te souviens-tu?
And my vision filled briefly with a red fog. Mother, you hate roses.
And click went the phone on her end of the line.
I sat there on my cashier stool with the phone in my hand, wondering, What the fuck? How she had answered the phone like a torrent. How like a torrent she was gone. And I was left. Left even though I was thousands of miles away, in another country. I could feel the slam of her door in my face. The wind blowing my hair back. The cloud of violets and smoke she’d trail in her wake. What the hell was she on, anyway? Drugs? Not drugs, surely, I told myself, trudging home through the snowy dark. Not Mother. Just her usual romanticism and joie de vivre gone awry, that was all. Getting stranger in her older age. A little more lost in her own world, her own reflection. （I’d have to be careful about that. Wasn’t I going down the same road? I was, I was.） Or god, could it be early-onset dementia? I made a mental note to call Sylvia about it. To check in with Mother again the next day. If not the next day, I told myself, then soon. I’d go and visit soon too. I’d take her to a doctor myself.
It was the last time I’d ever talk to her.