“They’ll have it.”
He leaves at last with a soft click and a Be right back. Don’t go anywhere. Once he’s gone, I run to the mirror, to my dress hanging over it. Lifting and falling so gently in the breeze. I take Mother’s dress down, still damp and cold in my hands. In the glass, I watch the silk fall away, part like curtains. The mirror is like a window now. In it, I see the house on the cliff. I see the tall black gates are open. The glass walls of the house are glowing red. And there I am inside its walls, inside the house itself. My reflection standing on the stair, beside the woman in red. Glowing, lifted, eradicated. Smiling at me with the reddest lips. Waving at me to come in, come in.
17
The Treatment Room has a different smell tonight. But it’s the same fog, the same bell and chimes, the same soft-voiced woman with me in the tea-lit dark. Rubbing her hands in a heady oil while I lie on the heated table, smiling in wait. She holds those hands over my nose and mouth, telling me to breathe in, that’s it. Deeply, please. “Three deep breaths. We’ll take them together again. Shall we take them together again?”
“Yes, please. And what is this scent, may I ask? Apocalypse? Sage?”
“Oh, why it’s our special blend.”
“It’s different than the last one you gave me.”
“It is a little different,” she says. “Are you ready for that?”
And I nod yes. I’m ready. My head starts to feel very warm. And fragrant. Like pine trees on fire. On fire? That doesn’t sound so good. The little white jellyfish is beside me in its small tank. Not so little and pale anymore. It’s grown since the last time. Turned a pinkish-red like it’s blushing everywhere. “We were able to do quite a significant extraction last time,” she says to me through the fog.
“Really?” I say, looking at my pulsing fish. “That’s great, right?”
“It’s wonderful. We were very successful. Well, didn’t you enjoy the result?”
“Yes,” I say. I’m radiant with fiery pines. “I have a Glow now, don’t I?”
And the woman just smiles. Because surely I already know the answer to that. My Glow has been causing a stir all night. The woman in red couldn’t believe it when I walked through the doors of the house this evening, led by the woman in silver, who also couldn’t believe it. If you’ll allow me to say so, Daughter of Noelle, the woman in silver said, you’re looking quite luminous ce soir. There was a party in the hall. Larger than last time. People in silks of red and white and black. Music, heavy with harpsichord, played somewhere. The chandelier was ablaze. We’re doing a number of treatments tonight, the woman in silver said, tugging me down the hall. Including yours, Daughter.
Mine?
You’ve been Selected. Bravo, Daughter.
Bravo, people echoed as I passed. Everyone appalling. Applauding, I mean.
Bon Voyage, Daughter, they said. Some smiling. Some not so smiling. Some maybe even glaring a little.
Dear Daughter, one woman hissed, how excited and happy and fortunate you must feel.
Yes, I said uneasily. I feel all these things.
The woman in red applauded the hardest of all. She stood on the landing of the stair as she’d done that first night and, as I approached, she put her hand to her mouth with such shock. Could this be? She raised her opera glasses to her eyes. Surely this couldn’t be… our very own dear Daughter?
Our very own, said the twins behind their black veils, standing on either side of her.
In honor of your Beauty Journey, she said, handing me a flute full of red stars. And to celebrate Mother’s debts being cleared, of course, she whispered into my ear. I looked at her and she winked at me.
You cleared Mother’s debts for me?
We can’t have our dear Daughter furrowing her brow over such mundane concerns as Coin, can we? Not when she is on her Beauty Journey.
I don’t know what to say. How can I ever repay you?
Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Daughter. We’re just so terribly thrilled to see you pursuing your Most Magnificent Self. Aren’t we, Lord and Lady Vichy? she said, turning to the twins. So they were royalty.
They smiled at me through their veils. Oh, very much.
At its heart, you’ll find Rouge is a deeply human-loving enterprise, Daughter.
Very deeply. Lord and Lady Vichy smiled.
I nodded. That made sense. Much more sense than what Hud Hudson was telling me in the hotel room, his face very close to my face. What was he saying again? Something about wading into some deep, dark water. I was having trouble recalling anything but his eyes, full of deep, dark water themselves. Didn’t know what he was talking about. Look at all these lovely people, drinking and dancing under the brilliant chandelier, I thought. Not laughing, but only because they didn’t want laugh lines. They were laughing on the inside, though, I heard them. I was laughing there too. I was having such a good time on the landing of the stair with the twins and the woman in red, all of them stroking my shoulders with their silk-gloved hands. Deep water, what deep water? Just a beauty house. Just a beauty house full of caring fiends—friends.
I am wondering, I said to them. I mean, I am a little concerned about my memory lately.
Their faces fell then. Concerned?
Well, I’ve been forgetting things like names and places.
Names? Places?
And faces, I added. I can’t seem to put the faces to names. Or the names to places. Words, too, seem slippery suddenly.
The twins looked at the woman in red. They shook their heads behind their veils. The woman in red appeared to frown, though her face stayed very still. Interesting. Well, Daughter, I think you’ll find that there are some faces and places that simply aren’t worth recalling. Perhaps you’re discovering that on your Beauty Journey.
But it really does feel like I’m a little scrambled, I said. For instance, I forgot that I couldn’t swim, if you can believe it. I ended up nearly drowning.
And they smiled with their eyes. Oh well, being a little scrambled, the woman in red said, is to be expected. Absolutely a normal side effect of the treatments. Memories are all connected, aren’t they?
They are, they are, Lord and Lady Vichy said.
If you extract one memory, the bad one, the absolutely unnecessary Free Radical of the Mind, the Comedo of the Soul, the one that’s dulling and creasing and darkening your visage so hideously, it’s bound to affect the others, isn’t it?
The others need a little time to adjust, so to speak, said the Lord.
They get a little turned around, that’s all, said the Lady.
But I’d happily be a little scrambled for this… Brightness. She pushed me closer to the giant mirror on the wall so that I could see for myself. There was mirror me. Synced and smiling with very red lips. Beaming at me with shining eyes. And my skin…
There is a whiteness, isn’t there? I whispered. Brightness, I meant to say. Not a whiteness, I told myself, call it a Brightness.
Oh yes. Like the moon if it had its own Light, is it not so, Lady Vichy?
The Lady smiled. Like if the moon were plugged in, she agreed, over my shoulder.
For a Glow like that, the woman in red said, I’d be willing to forget quite a few things, let me tell you. The day of the week, who needs to know it? Which breakfast tisane I favored, a chance to try a new one, n’est-ce pas?
You’ll find life is full of lovely little surprises this way, said the Lord.
The opportunity to live moment to moment, in the present tense, like never before, said the Lady.
They pushed me closer still to the mirror, so that I was inches from my reflection in the glass. And though I was afraid, I was smiling at myself the whole time. Of course, we’re not quite there yet, are we? the woman in red said, over my shoulder.
Not quite, not quite, the twins whispered, staring at my face in the mirror.
But that’s why you’re back here, isn’t it, Daughter? Because Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Or a treatment, offered the Lord.
It was built in three treatments, the Lady said.