“Not me,” I say. “My father.”
“Well that’s you, too,” Mother says, and her voice is a smiling warning. “That’s why she’s so exotic-looking,” Mother says, her eyes still on my face, telling me, Please. For me? “Aren’t you?”
I stare at my plate of snails.
“That’s why,” not-Tom agrees, smiling.
“And beautiful. If it weren’t for the long face.”
“Even with the long face,” not-Tom offers politely.
“So jealous,” Mother says. Liar, I think. She’s wearing the scarab necklace and her red Dior. The same Dior Tom Cruise kissed me in. I watch the blue beetle shimmer on her white neck. Egypt is an accessory tonight. There will be honey-and-pistachio pastries later, which Mother will say she made, which she did not. She gets them from the Arab store, taking me with her because this is your heritage. I hate going there with her. Every dark eye on Mother, then on me. And Mother loving every minute.
“You know I visited Morocco recently?” not-Tom tells Mother, who looks at me with such delight. All the lights in her face are shining violently on me.
“Really?”
“Magical place.”
“Magical, magical,” Mother agrees, even though we’ve never been there. She beams at me like I’m Morocco, sitting right there in front of her. “Belle and I visited once, didn’t we?”
“No.”
“Not Morocco, Egypt. Similar. With your father.” She lowers her voice on the word father.
“And how was it?” not-Tom asks.
“Oh, interesting. Exotic. Unforgettable, really. Wasn’t it, Belle?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember.” I remember. Riding a bus with Mother and everybody staring like they do at the Arab store. Holding her hand in what she said was a pyramid but felt like a cave. Walking in a white dress with Father through the Valley of Kings. Sun in my eyes. Dust on my dress. His hand warm and dry. His gold watch ticking by my ear.
Now Mother’s eyes flash darkly at me across the table. Then she smiles. “Belle thought the Sphinx was talking to her.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Oh yes you did. It was just a recording, of course. But we let her think it. We said, Oh yes, of course it’s talking to you, Sunshine.” More laughter. More blood.
“Well, maybe it was,” not-Tom offers, accepting even more blood from Mother, who pours and pours.
“You know, when she was little, she would go into my closet looking for Narnia. Or Wonderland, wouldn’t you? Or Oz.”
“No.” Yes. I remember knocking and knocking on the closet walls. Hello, hello, hello? Do you hear me? Are you there? The mirror wasn’t in the closet then. It was still hanging on the back of Mother’s bedroom door. She wasn’t mad at it yet.
“I told her, It’s not there, honey. I wish it was. Believe me.” Sweeping laughter that sweeps it all away. “She still goes in there. Still looking for something, aren’t you?” Now her eyes are sad. Looking at my forehead, still burning where Tom Cruise kissed me.
I look back down at the snails. I’m hot in the face.
“Well who knows, Belle. Maybe it is there. Anything’s possible, right? Definitely.” This from not-Tom. Something in his voice. I turn and look at him.
Tom. He suddenly looks like Tom again. So much like Tom Cruise that I can’t take it.
“I love the movie Top Gun,” I whisper into Tom’s face.
Tom nods. “Oh, it’s a great one. All those fighter planes. Was it the planes that you liked? All that flying around in the sky?”
“No.” I’m looking right at him.
“Oh?” He smiles at Mother. “What did you like, then? Tell me.” Reaching out for Mother’s hand across the table.
“I don’t know why you’re being like this,” I whisper.
“Belle.”
And then he’s not-Tom again. Just a strange man blinking at me like he doesn’t understand. I walk away from the table with Mother calling and calling my name to come back here. And then: “Fine. Go. Go ahead.”
* * *
I lie in my bed, watching the sun set through the white frilly window. Fiery red. All the rose-gold shades I’ve seen in Tom’s face are in the sky tonight, the same blue as the universe of his eyes. Tick, tick goes my Snow White clock. I let the seconds and minutes and hours go. Go ahead. Through the wall, I hear the laughter of not-Tom and Mother together in the living room, eating pastries, clinking fishbowls of blood, and I think of squids. Not-Tom or Tom? He looked so much like Tom Cruise, and then he didn’t. Not even close. He just looked like a boring old man. Bryce. Before I came in here, I went into Mother’s bedroom. I was fearless, because Mother’s Sting was playing so loudly in the living room, the walls were vibrating with “Englishman in New York.” I crept into her closet, took the mirror, and carried it back here. Now it’s shining in the corner of my room where it belongs. Empty of all but my silhouette. I stared at it until I couldn’t see myself anymore. Until I was just a black shape in the blue dark. Fine, I told myself. Go ahead. Now the sky’s black. It happens in the blink of an eye, the movement from blue to black. I stare at my ceiling full of glow-in-the-dark stars. In each corner, a spider’s spinning a web. I was so afraid of those spiders in the corners for so long. Mother, please kill them, I’d beg her each night. But Mother said no. She said this is what happens when you live in an apartment on the ground floor, on an island by the river. Things creep in through the cracks, through the screens. We can’t keep them out, Belle. Get used to it. I can’t kill every creepy-crawly for you, honey. There are far too many for that. I hear them both walk down the hallway now. Mother’s clicking heels, then the deeper clack of not-Tom’s shoes. At my bedroom, the clicks and clacks stop. Mother pausing at the door. Should she open it and deal with me? No. They walk past to her blue bedroom, click, clack. Door closes with a thud. Through the wall I hear new music, a song I know. “In the Air Tonight.” I know it because it’s a Tom song. From Risky Business. When Tom and Rebecca are on the train. The sound of it makes me sick, my stomach sinking, sinking. But it’s not just the song that makes me sick. It’s the sounds I hear underneath the song, like sighing, like breathing. The breathing of Mother and Tom or not-Tom. Soft. Heavy. Together. Like a knife, I feel it. Right in the middle of me, twisting. I close my eyes but I can’t cover my ears enough, not with my hands or my pillow or one of my dumb dolls with Mother’s hair and skin and eyes that watch me. My forehead burns. Dumb to cry. To feel this… what? Just sick, I tell myself. But no, not just sick. I know the word I feel. The one Mother taught me from Snow White that is so many bad feelings at once. That I feel when I watch Tom Cruise with any girl, when I watch Mother put on her hat with the wide brim to protect her pale face. The dark, twisting poison one that aches and eats and empties. And wants. All by itself.
Silence now. No creaks, no gasps, no music anymore. I hear not-Tom leave her bedroom, then the apartment. Get in his car and drive away.
I fall asleep staring up at the stars Mother pasted on my ceiling. Because I was afraid of the dark, she put them there. There, she said, better? Like a night-light but less childish.
She didn’t even get the constellations right, Stacey told me when she slept over. So each night when you look up at those stars, you’re looking up at the wrong sky. You’re looking at the wrong heaven.
So?
That’s fucked, Stacey said quietly. But it explains a lot.
* * *
Still dark when I open my eyes. Woke to a sound like a song. “In the Air Tonight” playing again. Again? But it’s midnight on my Snow White clock. Mother is surely asleep. So why do I hear the song still? And a sound under the song again. Not breathing or sighing this time. Footsteps. Maybe it’s part of the song? No. Footsteps aren’t part of the song. Different footsteps than earlier. Not a click or a clack. Fear in my stomach. Opening up like a black pit.