Why do you want to do that all of a sudden?
And I went red in the face. I couldn’t tell Mother that Tom Cruise was my boyfriend. That I felt like he knew me better than anyone. Better than Mother even. Just to see, that’s all, I said to the floor. He’s a good actor, isn’t he? Mother’s always talking about who’s a good actor. Don’t you like him? And then Mother’s eyes went a little soft again suddenly. He looks a bit like Monty. I’ll say that for him. Like she could see Tom in her mind. I would’ve been jealous, but Tom had already told me what he thought of Mother. That she was awful. Ugly. Old. Her Beauty a disguise. Just a painted mask. It would slide off her face in time. It was already sliding.
Mother smiled at me. A good actor, huh? She looked amused. Well, all right. Next time we go to the video store—
She’s a little young for those movies, don’t you think? This from Chip, stretched out on her love seat. Watching some sort of car race on TV. Not even looking at us.
Is she?
No, I’m not!
Think about it, Chip said, ignoring me. Risky Business? He raised his eyebrows at Mother in the way I hate.
Oh right. It’s true, Belle. You are a little too young for his movies, I think.
What?! I screamed. But I’m ten already! Ten isn’t too young.
And Chip smiled.
Maybe in a couple of years, Mother said.
Mom! You can’t listen to—
Darling, there are scenes that are too… adult for you. I’m just remembering.
But you were going to say yes!
Well, I’d forgotten about some scenes.
But what about Top Gun? We saw Top Gun together, remember? Can’t I at least rent—
No, Belle. There was a scene there, too. And I blushed. I knew the scene Mother was talking about. Tom and Kelly McGillis in blue silhouette. Tom lying on top of her. Sticking his tongue into her mouth and how I hated her. All to “Take My Breath Away,” which was our song. It made me hot in the face, thinking about that.
Mom, that’s not—
Belle, that’s enough. Room!
* * *
So I waited. So I waited and rented them with Grand-Maman. Mother doesn’t want me to watch Tom Cruise movies, was all I had to say and Grand-Maman immediately rented all of them for me. Risky Business. All the Right Moves. Top Gun. The Outsiders. Legend.
Ooh, a Tom Cruise marathon, the girl behind the video store counter said, and Grand-Maman said nothing, just wrote her a check from her book of checks. We watched them together in Grand-Maman’s bedroom dark on her big black box television, even the kissing parts. Even the sex parts. She didn’t fast-forward anything. Just sat there in her creaking rose-gold chaise saying nothing at all. Part of me wanted her to fast-forward sometimes. Because I hated watching Tom kiss or touch or even smile at any girl. Kelly McGillis. Rebecca De Mornay. They all looked pretty much the same to me. Their hair, their eyes, their skin. Even the dark-haired, dark-eyed ones like Mia Sara in Legend or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Color of Money were still somehow more of the same. More like Mother or Stacey than me. It burned my face up seeing that. It hurt my heart. I felt a pain to breathe, like someone stuck a knife there, right in the middle of me. Watching Tom kiss Rebecca in Risky Business, I had a feeling that was so many feelings at once. The angriest angry. The saddest sad. A want so big and deep and aching, it made my stomach a sinking pit. The want was like drowning. There was a word for this feeling, I knew. Envy. Mother taught it to me when she first read me Snow White, what the evil queen feels. When someone has something you want so much and you hate them so much for it. Envy is what I felt. I envied every girl who came near Tom in the movie, so I could barely stand to watch. But I watched, through tears sometimes, wanting to run through the screen and push the girl out of the movie, out of the world. Tom doesn’t love you, I would scream at them as I hurled them out into space. I would scream and scream until I lost my voice.
Qu’est-ce qui se passe avec toi? Grand-Maman said at one point, while we watched Tom wrap his arms around Rebecca De Mornay’s naked body. Her hair was the same strawberry-blond shade as Stacey’s, I realized. Her eyes blue as Mother’s eyes.
Are you crying?
No, I said. I’m watching. This is how I watch. Grand-Maman?
Quoi?
Do you think he really likes her?
Ben non. It’s a movie, cher. He’s acting.
Okay, I whispered. I loved Grand-Maman then. I was so close to telling her that Tom Cruise was my boyfriend. That I was the only one who knew his true name, Seth. I was the only one who knew about Tom’s eyes. How they could go red in an instant, then back to blue-green again when he was calm and happy. But then I remembered that it was a secret. Our secret, Tom said. There were times when we were watching that I felt Tom looking right at me from Grand-Maman’s dusty TV screen, and I thought the screen was a mirror and that Tom would step through it in his varsity jacket or in his pilot jacket or in his white shirt and underwear and sunglasses.
?a va? Grand-Maman asked me. You’re breathing very funny.
Because Tom’s taking my breath away, I thought. But of course I didn’t tell Grand-Maman that. All I said was, ?a va, oui.
Once, in the middle of Top Gun, I saw my face reflected in the screen’s glare, right next to his. Tom was flirting with Kelly McGillis in an elevator, so sometimes it was Kelly on the screen, sometimes Tom, both of them beautiful and smiling beside what I saw was my very unsmiling face, which looked hideous, warped with want. What’s wrong? Grand-Maman said. She turned off the TV suddenly and then I just saw myself. Close-up and cross-legged on her scuffed floor, Grand-Maman rocking beside me in the dark. My face was dreamy and open like Mother’s when she watched her movies. But my dreaminess wasn’t at all pretty like hers. It was terrible. It was nothing Tom could ever love. I’m going home now, I said.
* * *
After seeing the movies, it really seems like Seth is Tom Cruise. But if Tom Cruise wants me to call him Seth, then I can do that. I’ll do anything for Tom Cruise. Seth, I mean. We’re getting so close. Every time Mother is out these days, I go to her bedroom closet and he’s there, waiting in the mirror. She told Grand-Maman to absolutely not let me go into her room ever again after the last time. It is of the utmost importance, do you hear me? she said to Grand-Maman, and Grand-Maman told Mother, I heard you. But the minute Mother leaves, Grand-Maman always turns a blind eye. I walk right in and surely Grand-Maman hears my creaking footsteps going down the hall, surely she hears the turn of that wobbly doorknob. Maybe she turns a blind ear, too.
The next time I went back to Mother’s closet, I didn’t see the mirror at first, and for a minute I couldn’t breathe. Then I saw it glinting behind her row of dresses red as blood. The glass was turned to the corner like it’d been bad. So I picked it up, I turned it around, it wasn’t so heavy really. I always take off Father’s golden bracelet first. That Eye of Horus. Father’s eye, Mother said. Watching me, it feels like, and I don’t like it. The minute it falls to Mother’s floor, the mirror begins to shimmer, and he appears on the other side of the glass like a dream. Blurred around the edges at first. Rippling like water.