“And now they dance,” Marla says. She is smiling, a whole new Marla, one who is truly happy and squinty-eyed and sweet.
The last boy to make his way down the stairs is my father. He doesn’t look as different as my mother does. His hair is a little blonder and more filled in on top. He doesn’t have a shadow of stubble on his chin or little lines around his eyes. But otherwise, he’s Dad.
My mother and my father are dancing in a room of gold and crystal and marble and magic. Dad has one arm around Mom’s waist, and the other arm is held high in the air with her hand in his. They are straight-backed and shiny-haired. They are perfect dancers. Neither of them so much as looks at their feet. They are too busy staring at each other to look anywhere else. They are falling in love in front of our eyes.
They are the people Dad reads about in books. They are their own fairy tale.
“This is why Mom is going to be fine,” Marla says. I was going to say the opposite. This is why Mom doesn’t like the life she’s living now.
“Mmm,” I hum in response, so that I don’t lie but I also don’t let her down too hard. “How’d Dad get in here?” I say. My mind is flooded with information and confusion, and I have to swim through it a bit. “I mean, Mom makes sense—it was her closet when she was little. But why is Dad in here?”
“It’s a fairy tale. Don’t ask so many questions,” Marla says. “That’s what Dad would say, right?”
She’s wrong, of course. Dad would say the opposite. It’s a fairy tale, so think about every little bit of it really, really hard. Marla doesn’t get him at all.
But I wish I could feel how Marla does right now: like the details and reasons don’t matter because it’s all so pretty and romantic and nice. But with my drowning mind and my pounding heart and my open eyes I think of all the times Dad has strangely avoided telling us where he’s from. I think of the Mets hat that isn’t because he loves New York and the fact that we don’t have aunts or uncles or grandparents. That all we have from his family is that one beautiful magical-looking mirror.
I think of all the fairy tales Dad loves and the way that they are sometimes more important to him than anything else, than real life. That he can understand every nuance of “Sleeping Beauty” or the myth of Echo and Narcissus, but not his own daughters, not my mother, not the way real life is falling to pieces.
“Dad isn’t from the real world,” I say.
I want to rush at them, and I suppose I could, but they wouldn’t see me. We are spectators here. In the other closets we are everything, but here we are nothing. We are meant to watch, but not meant to participate.
Another one of the twelve princesses sweeps past me. Her full skirts hit my legs with such force I trip and fall. It would be embarrassing if anyone could see. But they can’t. I scurry back into a standing position and hold Marla’s hand as our parents dance circles around everyone else.
It makes perfect sense and no sense at all. Dad’s from a fairy tale. Of course he is. He’s got that perfect jaw and nice laugh and never-ending vat of hope and a belief in happily-ever-after in his heart and an endless knowledge of princesses and stories we tell and dragons and magic.
I miss my father.
And also, I miss my mother. Not the way I miss LilyLee when I haven’t gotten a letter in a while. Not the way I have missed my home since we moved away. I miss my mother in a place further down than that. I miss a version of her that I’ve seen so rarely over the years that I can’t even remember her. I miss her Before, teasing my father about his goatee and playing freeze tag in the backyard with us, and sewing outfits for my stuffed animals with scrap fabric.
I miss the mother who is dancing with my father in front of me, so close I could touch her, I could hide under the draping of her dress. I miss the mother who was so brave and sure that she would steal a prince from a magical palace and bring him to the real world. I miss the mother who cared so much about love and happiness and wonder, even though I think I never knew her. I miss this look on her face that I’ve maybe never seen before: sweet and excited and something else. Enchanted. Words I would never use to describe the mother I have now.
“This is just a fairy tale, though,” I say. I don’t like Marla thinking we can save Mom, or that we can get this version of our mother to move from her closet to our house. “This isn’t who she is anymore.”
“You’re not seeing the most important part,” Marla says. She points to another princess, a shy, small one not dancing with boys.
One in a blue dress who looks a little like Mom and a little like Marla and a lot like me.