After I check out of the hotel, I drive over to the shop, bracing myself. A little afraid to see it all again. But when I pull up, there are no sinister sisters in the window. No scissor door handle anymore. No girl on a crescent moon above the door, either. The storefront is all chrome and glass. Behind the window, there’s a row of gray torsos under track lighting. Drab dresses hang from their headless bodies like sacks. Dark gray columns of fabric that show no shape at all. There are the odd embellishments at the collar and cuffs. Some absurd rhinestone swirls—are they meant to be galaxies? Eye-catching! I can picture Sylvia thinking. Eclectic. I see my own face reflected back in the window, between the torsos. My own face looming over my black sack, looking punched. There’s a furrow in my brow. The scar on my forehead’s throbbing darkly. The one I’ve been trying to lighten and brighten, exfoliate away. The one I barely noticed when I used to live here. Back now with a vengeance.
Tsk, Belle, Mother would say, patting my shoulder. Don’t frown or your face will freeze that way. You’ll thank me later.
When?
And Mother smiled. When your soul starts showing, of course. Sooner than you think. I remember she looked excited by this.
The sun goes behind a cloud, and I see Sylvia through the glass. Standing behind the counter. Mother’s counter. Once artfully arranged with scarves and brooches and a few choice perfumes. Filled now with what appears to be shitty costume jewelry. Sylvia’s talking to a customer. The customer’s back is to me, but I know the type, I can see her face in my mind’s eye, hear her awful voice in my head. Sylvia’s palms are pressed into the counter, so at ease in her terrain. Ingratiating smile. I feel my furrow deepen, my scar darken. My heart beating more quickly now.
* * *
When I burst through the shop door, ready to scream, ready to shout, Sylvia just looks at me out of the corner of her eye. Smiles with one side of her face, a saleswoman trick. I see you, I’m with someone, I’ll be with you in just a bit. Then she goes back to talking with the customer. “Oh yes. Hahaha. Absolutely. And with a blazer, you’ll be all set.”
I stand there, feeling like a ghoul, waiting for her to finish. Michael Bublé’s playing softly. Hideously. Gone is the scent of Mother’s perfume from the air. The customer turns around to look at me. A woman in capris and Nine West flats. Coral lip gloss. Chunky jewelry. Smiling tersely. She would never have come in here if Mother were behind the counter. Driven away by the pointy-faced mannequins, Mother’s beauty, the sex-and-death scent of the room atomizer. Bonjour, Mother would have said, smiling coldly. And what brings you here today? Meaning well, possibly, but she still would also have scared the living shit out of this sort of woman.
Sylvia isn’t like that. Hers is the wily face of the sycophant. Greasily beaming. Doesn’t mind being walked all over. Walk over me, her face says. I love it.
“I was going to go to J.Crew,” this woman is telling her, telling us both, “but then I thought I’d come here instead.” And then she looks around with a proprietary smile. So pleased with herself for shopping local.
“Well. We’re so very glad you dropped in.” Sylvia smiles, folding up the woman’s purchase. Some sort of brown sack dress. Wrapping it in tissue paper like it’s worth something. Winking at me. See? Customer service. Something your mother didn’t understand.
“Please come see us again sometime,” she urges the woman. She slips the turd-colored dress into a plain brown bag. Mother used to use glossy red paper bags, I remember. Belle of the Ball embossed on them in loopy gold. Some gold stars swirling around the words. Belle, like my daughter, she might explain, her hand on my neck, softly throttling me. I could feel her red nails sinking into my nape flesh as she beamed at me. And the customer would smile. How sweet, they’d think. What a beautiful example of mother-daughter love.
“Now, Mirabelle,” Sylvia says softly. “What can I do for you?”
I look around the place, at the headless torsos in their sacks, the swell of soft hits like an aural lobotomy.
“You stole Mother’s shop,” I hear myself say. My voice is calm, flat, polite, though I’m trembling. Did I really just come out and say it like that?
Sylvia looks at me, horrified. “Excuse me?”
The customer who bought the turd dress turns around on her way out. Looks at us. Oh, now this is interesting. Some drama!
Sylvia turns pink. Something like anger flashes in her dark eyes.
“I didn’t steal anything, Mira.” Now it’s Mira. “She sold it to me.”
“That’s impossible. If she’d sold it, she would have told me. I know she would have.” I can hear the crack in my voice. The Formula stings my eyes. I’m thankful for Mother’s dark glasses. But Sylvia sees through them. That searching gaze of hers.
“Esther,” she says softly to a joyless-looking clerk hovering nearby. The clerk, Esther, is clutching a few hangers heavy with sack dresses to her chest like a shield. She observes my grief wordlessly, through thick glasses with whimsical red frames. The glasses are attached to a red chain around her neck. “Mind the register for a minute, will you?” Sylvia says to her.
Esther just blinks.
Sylvia leads me to the back room, Come along with me, dear. More shitty, shapeless dresses back here hanging in sad rows. A few of Mother’s old mannequins are in here too. The white, red-lipped ones from my nightmares. One is standing up, two are lying down. The standing one beams at me with her golden eyes. She’s naked. A purse hangs absurdly from her shoulder, shaped like a glittery black swan. A bit of fun, Mother would have said of the purse. A reminder to fuck function. Embrace form.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mira,” Sylvia begins. “I really thought you knew. I thought surely she would have told you.”
How’s the shop, Mother?
The shop? What are you talking about?
Belle of the Ball? Your shop?
Oh right. The shop. Fine, fine. ?a marche.
“To be honest, she left me in a bit of a lurch, too, doing that,” Sylvia says. “But I wanted to help. I wanted to be a friend. I’m honestly very surprised she didn’t share her decision with you.” There’s an accusation in there. Estranged from each other toward the end, weren’t you? Not so terribly close after you moved away. If you ever were. Whose fault is that?
Behind Mother’s glasses, my vision goes swimmy. The Formula has gone rogue, I guess. I find myself telling Sylvia everything about the meeting with Chaz. Mother’s multiple loans to repair god knows what. It all comes gushing out of me like the tears I don’t shed. I can’t stop the tide of words.
“All that money,” I whisper, sinking to my knees. “Where did she spend it? Where did it go?” As I say this, I flash to her bathroom full of red bottles and jars. Mother’s unlined face behind the wheel of her Jaguar, expressionless. Pale, empty eyes fixed on the windshield.
“Well, your mother never really thought too much about things like money.” She crouches down beside me, pats my back.
“Was she in her right mind?”
“Right mind?” Sylvia looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“Was she… going crazy?”
“Crazy? No. No, no, no, not crazy. Eclectic, maybe. And of course…”
“What?”
“Well, you know your mother. She never had much of a filter.” Embarrassed laughter. “Not with me. Certainly not with the customers. You know she was French,” she adds, lowering her voice.
“What does that mean?”
“Just that maybe she was getting a little more… French. In her old age is all.”
“More French?”
Sylvia shakes her head. “Look, Mirabelle, I really wouldn’t worry yourself about this now. We all get more eclectic in our old age, don’t we? Although sixty-one’s not so old. She wasn’t even a senior citizen yet, right? Too young to get a discounted bus pass! Not that your mother would ever ride a bus.”
I stare at the naked mannequin. Shorn of all but her little swan handbag. Her topaz eyes staring at me sadly. “Why did you move the mannequins back here?”
“No one liked these but your mother. And you know,” she says, lowering her voice again, “I never found them to be very… inclusive.” She looks at me meaningfully. Surely this word, inclusive, will get me on her side. I stare at her.