“I want to go back,” I say. I’m still whispering, just in case my voice carries and its shakiness vibrates and destroys a tree or a bush or a golden bridge.
“We’ll go back soon. You have to see first,” Marla says. She won’t stop smiling. She rubs her knees with her hands, and I hate looking at her hands because then I look at her wrists and then I remember our mother and the bruise that was underneath the bracelets and all the letters Mom chose not to write Marla. And then I have to wonder if there are bruises anywhere else. If maybe I’ve been missing them all along.
I can’t wonder too hard. The palace appears in front of us. Exactly like the fairy tale said it would.
Twenty-Seven
I do not turn into a princess the moment the double doors to the palace open. If anything, I turn invisible in the sea of floor-sweeping ball gowns and tuxedos and gold columns and silver silk draping the entire hall. Dozens of people walk by without giving us a second glance. They hold hands and sway to the music and fix their hair as it slips out of complicated knots and braids and buns.
“Where are the princesses?” I’m still mostly concerned with the fairy tale, and my theory that we are living in it somehow. I need to know if that’s what is happening to us.
“You have to wait,” Marla says.
“How’d you find out your closet works? I thought your closet was the only one that wasn’t magical. When did you try it without us? And why?” Marla is nodding along with the music, but she doesn’t answer. More than that, she seems to know what’s going to happen before it does. She looks to her right, and a moment later a beautiful woman enters. Marla looks to the left, and on cue, someone starts dancing there.
“It’s a memory,” Marla says again. “It’s a place that holds memories.”
“The closets give you what you need,” I say, repeating the very first rule I understood, and realizing how desperately Marla wants to know about the past. So badly, apparently, that her closet only shows her things that have already happened. Although I can’t imagine why she thinks this is memory and not a fairy tale.
She’s counting on her fingers and surveying the ballroom. “Almost time.” She nods at the door with a huge grin.
Twelve princesses walk in.
I guess I don’t know for sure they are princesses. They certainly don’t look like sisters. They are different shapes and sizes and shades. They do have long, wavy hair, all of them, and pretty dresses that they look surprised to be wearing, and thrilled at the prettiness. They walk on tiptoes. They do not have tiaras.
“It’s them!” I say. I grab Marla’s elbow.
“It’s her,” she says. She gestures to the last girl in the line of twelve.
Silver shoes. Pale-blue gown. Long chestnut hair. Pale-blue eyes. Sloped nose. Cheekbones even higher than mine.
“That’s—” I can’t stop looking at her face. Familiar and foreign all at once.
“Mom,” Marla finishes my sentence for me.
It is Mom. Before.
Before “unwinding time” and afternoons of sleeping and stringy hair and a puffy face. Before Arizona and Away and moving to the New Hampshire house. Before everything went wrong. Before us.
She is so beautiful.
She looks exactly like Marla, when Marla isn’t grumpy.
“I wanted to know when Mom was happiest. And it showed me,” Marla says.
“Are there other memories too?” I say. I want to ask if we are in any of her happy memories. But Marla doesn’t seem to be thinking about why Mom’s happiest times are before we even existed.
“I think so. But I haven’t tried. I only want to visit this one.”
I want to know everything. I want to visit everything. And I guess I could, but I stay in the memory Marla has chosen for now, knowing I’ll be back for more.
Princess Mom wanders farther into the room. The gowns are a forest of taffeta and silk and tulle, and every texture brushes against my arms and tickles. No one looks our way, not even when my arm hits theirs. I feel them, but they can’t feel me.
“It gets even better,” Marla says when we are in the center of the room, a little lost in all the beauty.
“Is it really her?” I say. I have so many other questions, but I only know how to ask this one.
“I think it has to be. Because . . . look.”
I look to where Marla’s pointing. Up a staircase that is marble with gold railings and a swooping, curvy shape. It seems to practically reach the ceiling, which is painted with clouds and blue sky and angels and skinny trees with too many leaves.
In the same way the twelve girls paraded into the room, so does a line of boys in puffy shirts and coats with long tails and shoes so shiny they are practically mirrors.
“No,” I say, when the last one reaches the bottom of the stairs. I recognize him. “No way.”