“What’s the way of roses?” I ask again. “Who are you?”
But someone pulls me away. A sweaty man I don’t recognize. His grim wife. They want to tell me all about how sorry they are for my loss. The man has his hand on my shoulder. It’s a heavy hand and it’s squeezing my arm flesh. “We saw your mother in a play once,” he’s saying. “And we never forgot, did we?” he asks his wife, who says nothing. Well, he never forgot, anyway. The wife nods grimly. “She shone,” this man says, his eyes all watery and red. So there is alcohol at this party somewhere, I think. “Like a star on the stage,” the man insists. And she was so nice to them afterward. That’s what he’ll never forget. How nice Mother was. So gracious and humble. No airs, despite her great beauty, her great talent. So down-to-earth. I can imagine her feigning interest in their lives. Sucking his admiration like marrow from the veal bones she used to enjoy with parsley and salt.
I want to laugh in their faces. My mother, down-to-earth? And then I think of what’s left of Mother. Soon to be in the literal earth. Suddenly I can’t breathe again. “Excuse me,” I say, and push past them.
But she’s gone, the woman in red by the railing. Where that woman was standing is just empty space. I stare at the rosebushes planted along the other side of the railing. A red so bright, it hurts my eyes. Petals shivering in the blue breeze. Shining so vividly in the light.
2
At the pink hotel by the sea, there’s a bar right on the water. Don’t know why I came here. Can’t afford this place, not at all. And if the lawyer’s tone on the phone is anything to go by, that isn’t going to change. We’ll talk tomorrow morning, Chaz said when I asked him to tell me the worst of it. Please tell me, I said. Tomorrow, he said. I’ve been staying at the hotel ever since I landed. Of course I’m afraid of the bill. But I’m more afraid of being alone in Mother’s apartment. Have to face it tomorrow, of course. Pack up the place. But not now, not yet.
“Table for one, please,” I tell the waiter at the bar. Because I may as well go down in style. You would have approved, wouldn’t you, Mother?
“Of course,” the waiter says. He looks a little like Tom Cruise, which is funny. Funny, too, how I suddenly feel a little dizzy looking into his face. Maybe it’s just how intensely he’s smiling at me. He brings me to a table with an ocean view but looks puzzled when I sit with my back to the water. I just smile. “Glass of champagne, please.”
He stares at me. Still that smile, that puzzled look. What? I want to say. He looks up at my forehead. Is he noticing the faint scar there? Shaped like a warped star. Faded now but never gone, despite my regimen of acids and lightening agents. Barely there, really, Mother always assured me. No one can see it but you. But this man sees it. Does he see it? Very rude to stare, I want to tell him. I think he’s going to ask me about it, but instead he says: “Do you have ID?”
My turn to stare now. Is he serious?
He doesn’t flinch. Oh yes, he’s serious.
I forgot this about America. How they card the very obviously over thirty. I give him my driver’s license, and he stares at it forever, squinting. My mother’s dead, you know, I want to tell him. I just left her funeral. This drink, it’s deeply important to me. My fingers begin to twitch to show him the birthdate on the license. It’s a Canadian license, so he probably has no idea where to look, and I should be patient, I should help. But I’m a little mesmerized by how long this is taking. How many times he looks at me, then at the license.
Finally, he hands it back. “Miss?”
Miss? “Yes?” I steel myself for his words. That he can’t take this kind of international ID, sorry. He’ll need to see my passport, please.
But he just looks at my face, sort of dreamily. “Whatever you’re doing?” he says in a low voice. “It’s working.”
A smile in spite of myself. A vile flush of shallow happiness. “It is?”
“Definitely,” he says. “Definitely.”
Shouldn’t matter at all. What this stranger makes of my skin. But there’s my hand on my cheek, there’s me looking up at his well-meaning expression.
“Thank you,” I whisper, thinking of my bathroom counter cluttered with Marva-recommended jars and bottles and vials. My purse full of sunscreens and rejuvenating mists. “I have a whole thing that I do,” I tell him, surprising myself. I never speak of what I do, with anyone. Because it’s for you, isn’t it? Marva says. A secret between you and the mirror.
He smiles. “Let me get you that champagne.”
* * *
It comes in a chilled glass, bubbling like a cauldron. Like drinking stars, Belle, Mother would have said. I always rolled my eyes when she said that, but now look at me with my glass. Marva says alcohol is a collagen destroyer. Dries you up, dries you out. If you want good skin, you must stop drinking immediately, she says sternly. And when I watch Marva say this, I usually have a coffee cup full of champagne in my hand. Sometimes a cigarette in the other, also verboten by Marva. And I feel scolded, hideous, guilty. But Marva also says, We are human, aren’t we? We all have our little fixes, our little indulgences, balms to this mortal coil, don’t we?
We do, I agree. And there are tears in my eyes at Marva’s compassion. Her understanding of the paradoxes. You should be kinder to yourself, she says to me softly, her eyes staring right into my eyes. Like they know. They know exactly how cruel I can be.
First one glass, then another. Not going back up to the hotel room to start my evening routine, though I can feel the grit and dust and debris on my face. The many free radicals that are burrowing their way through my skin barrier, oxidizing my flesh as we speak. I’m in desperate need of a clarifying cleanse, followed by a regenerating cleanse, followed by a triple exfoliation, after which I’ll likely baste my face in some barrier-repairing zinc. But not just yet. The sky is an unholy pink fire, the palm trees blackening. I feel the waves roaring at my back. Not too many people at the bar tonight. Just a man nearby staring hard at his laptop, clicking away. Working late, I guess. A breeze blows through the terrace. Warm. Gentle. I forgot that about California. How even the breeze is a dream. Where would I be right now if I were back in Montreal? Working late too, probably. Staring at the checkered black-and-white store floor. Avoiding the mirrors on the walls. Not wanting to see my face ravaged by a day of smiling falsely under bright lights. Smiling still, just in case anyone should push through the doors at the last minute. That ring of the little silver bell. I hear it in my dreams. I hear it now. People coming into the dress shop so hopeful. Wanting what? Never just a dress. Mother taught me that. What they want, she said, is an experience. A transformation. A touch of magic.