Don’t listen to him, Belle! screams my sister on the couch.
Oh, listen to him, he’s so intense, says my sister by the flowers. So filled with conviction, this detective of Beauty. It’s quite entrancing.
Let’s please run to the cliffs now, beckons my sister by the window. The waves are high and crashing against the rocks. And I have a game for you and me.
“And now here you sit, memory scrambled and full of holes. But who wouldn’t want to exorcise a few demons, kick a few skeletons out of the closet for that Glow? Letting go is so worth it, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m shaking and shaking my head.
“Maybe we should ask your mother if it’s worth it? Oh wait, that’s right, we can’t ask her, can we? She’s dead.”
He’s lying!
“You’re lying,” I shout, along with all three of my sisters.
“I wish I were,” he says quietly. His gaze holds mine. Sorrowful, knowing. Hurts to look at. He reaches for my hand, and my sister on the couch hisses and my sister by the flowers shudders and my sister by the window sighs. “Listen, Belle. Please. There are those who go through those black gates, walk up that rosy path, and they never come back. They disappear. Or they wind up dead on the rocks like your mother.”
What is he saying to me, Sisters? Can this really be true? But when I look at the wall of mirrors, all three are dead silent now, and still. My sister on the couch stares straight ahead coldly. My sister by the flowers has given up on the flowers. She’s facedown on the coffee table. My sister by the window looks out at the water with a tear in her eye. Her face is filled with some secret grief.
I turn back to Hud Hudson. Eyes still sorrowful. Gaze holding mine like a glass. “How do you know all this?”
He lets go of my hand. Lights a cigarette. “Didn’t I tell you there were two of me once?” In the mirrors, he’s in shadow now. The smoke hangs over his face like a veil.
“Your brother.”
“Edward. He was a member, like your mother. An actor like her too. Who knows, maybe they even saw each other at the house. Shared a glass of the bubbly drug by the Depths.” He smiles darkly, takes a long sip of his drink.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared about six months ago.” Another drag from his cigarette. I watch his scar gleam as he smokes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” His voice is cracked with pain. So familiar to us. “We weren’t very close, not since we were kids. Sort of estranged, actually. Especially after our mother died.”
A sigh from my sister by the flowers.
“About a year ago, I’d started to notice that on the phone, he’d have these word slips. Blanks. Little things, then bigger things. Mix past and present. I worried it was drugs at first—Edward was never all that… stable. Or early-onset dementia. Our mother had it. The last time I saw him, he was playing Iago at the Playhouse. He kept messing up his lines. It was painful to watch, he was always so flawless. I stayed after the show to see how he was holding up, though I worried he’d see that as some sort of insult—Edward took any dent in his armor so terribly. But when he opened the door to his dressing room, I couldn’t believe…”
And now Hud’s just staring at himself in the mirror as if struck.
“What?”
“His face,” he says. His eyes look afraid. And there’s that other shade of feeling creeping in again, what is its name again, Sisters?
“He’d looked different onstage,” Hud continues, still lost in his reflection. “I’d thought it was just lighting, makeup maybe. Maybe another one of his procedures—Edward had always been into those, always a little vain. But this was something else. This transformation was unreal. Not any of his newfangled treatments, not even surgery could account for…” He turns to me. Reaches out as if to touch my face. Instead he runs his hand through his own dark hair, takes another drag of his cigarette.
“I didn’t say anything to him, of course. Edward didn’t like to talk about his looks, but he was obsessed. Sort of like it was a… secret for him. Or something. You know?”
We do, mumbles my sister by the flowers in her sleep.
“So I just congratulated him on his performance. And the way he looked at me…”
“How?”
“Like I wasn’t his brother. Like he didn’t know me at all. Sound familiar?”