Then I see the mirror in the corner is shining. I see someone walk through the glass like it’s a door. I smile in the dark.
“Tom,” I whisper.
“Seth,” he says.
His silhouette makes its way to my bed. Putting a shadow finger to his shadow lips. Our secret. Like Beauty, remember? He sits on my bed’s edge. Right where Mother sits when she tucks me in. It feels like he sits closer to me than Mother ever sits. My skin is goose bumps, my breath is caught. “You’re here,” I whisper.
“Of course I’m here.”
“I thought you left me. I thought you were gone forever.” Tears fill my eyes. I hope he doesn’t see.
He leans in and strokes my hair. So softly. His hands are cold and sticky. That’s how I know it’s him, though I can’t see him so well in the dark.
“Why didn’t you meet me in the mirror today? I waited and waited for you, but you didn’t come.”
“It wasn’t safe,” he whispers under the music. “I knew your mother was plotting something. So I found another way.”
“Through her new boyfriend.”
Tom nods. “He’s a fool. Very easy to infiltrate.”
“Was it you drinking and laughing with Mother all night? Did you have…?” Saying the word sex to Tom is impossible.
Tom smiles, shaking his head. His hair waves in the dark. “I just did it to get to you.”
“You did?”
“Definitely.”
I thought of what Grand-Maman told me when we were watching Tom’s movies, Tom and the girls. Just acting.
“Are you really going away with Mother to California? Are you leaving me?”
“Belle, don’t you trust me by now?”
“She’s going to put a lock on the door, Tom,” I whisper.
“Seth,” he says quietly.
“Seth. Then I’ll never see you again.”
He walks over to Mother’s mirror in the corner. I watch him stroke his own jaw in the shining glass. There’s a dark shape in the glass, I see, doing the same. Tom’s reflection.
“Who’s that old actor your mother likes again?” he whispers.
“Montgomery Clift.”
“Right. Monty.” He smiles to himself in Mother’s mirror. “How could I forget?”
“She says you look a little bit like him.”
“Does she? Interesting. I guess I do, don’t I?” He looks lost in his own reflection, shimmering darkly in the glass.
“Only because Tom Cruise looks like him,” I whisper. “Only because you’re Tom Cruise.”
For a second, he looks like he’s going to laugh. But then he smiles in the mirror, almost sadly.
“I won’t let her separate us,” he says to the glass. “Ever.”
“How?”
“You know how. But I need your help. We have to get rid of your mother, Belle. There’s really no other choice if you want me to take you away to California.”
I knew Tom Cruise was going to say this. I knew he was going to say it just as he said it. I might have even said the words with him, like when you sing along to a song.
“But I can’t get rid of her,” I whisper. “She’s my mother. I love her.” I’m devastated that this is true. I think of Mother and me in the apple orchard that day. The warmth of her hand in mine, her laughing voice. “I love her,” I repeat, but there’s a crack in my words.
Tom hears it. He looks at me in the shining glass. “You know I’d really hate to leave you here, Belle. All by yourself on this island you hate, beside your muddy little river. With the spiders that Mother won’t kill. With these dumb dolls that look just like Mother’s stolen Beauty. Reading your fairy tales rather than living them. Do you want that?” Standing by the mirror, he looks like he’s about to leave me right now. Disappear through the glass.
“No.” I shake my head. “Please. Please don’t leave, Tom. Please come back and lie here with me for a while.” I can’t even look him in the eye when I whisper these words. A whisper of a whisper. When I look back up, he’s smiling at me in the glass. His smile like a sunrise in the dark.
He walks back to my bed. Moves my dolls away carefully, one by one by one. Not making a single sound. He lies right by my side so we’re face-to-face, Tom Cruise and I. I’ve never had anyone lie in my bed before besides Mother. And only when I was sick with pneumonia and couldn’t breathe so well in the nights. I opened my eyes and there were her pale eyes staring at me with a crumpled look. That was the last time. Even Stacey, when she sleeps over, sleeps on a blow-up mattress on the floor. Tell me a secret, she always says. And I never had any to tell besides the secret of me and Stacey, that she twirls for me in her basement to “Maniac.” Until now. Tom’s eyes glow from blue-green to red to blue-green to red in the dark. His face just like the movies I watched on Grand-Maman’s box TV. No screen of glass between us now. His smile shines like the stars on the ceiling. So beautiful. The way he looks at me, I can’t believe it. Like no one looks at me. Like I’m so beautiful too. Maybe I’m dreaming like Tom dreams at the beginning of Risky Business. The dream is always the same, he says in the movie. If this is a dream, I think, let it always be the same.
“You have to promise me,” he says, serious now. “Do you promise me, Belle? In a way, you know, you’ve already promised.”
“I have?”
He nods slowly. His jaw gets so tight, his cheek begins to tick like a clock. The most beautiful clock. “It’s the only way.” He reaches out and strokes my face softly with his squid hands. It sends such a chill through me. Again, I think of being plunged into cold, dark water. I shiver in the hot June night.
“Is it going to hurt her?”
And Tom just smiles at me in the dark, under the wrong heaven. “Those are pretty stars up there,” he says. “Pretty as you are. So pretty you are. God. To be here with you. I definitely feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now.” I die inside when Tom says these words to me. Like we’re in a movie. The girl’s been pushed out of the world, and it’s just me and Tom now. I picture her falling off the edge, her honey-colored hair floating behind her, her pale skin glowing like Mother’s. Can it really be you saying these words to me, Tom Cruise? Of course it is. This is your face like the sun. These are your eyes like the sea. I watch him turn his smile to the stars. He doesn’t say anything about them being in the wrong place. He looks up at the ceiling like everything is exactly where it should be. The stars up there, and down here, me and Tom Cruise. Leaning in so I smell the ocean of him. Cold and blue and deep.
“Do you promise me?” he says.
I watch a red jellyfish float across his face. “If it’s the only way,” I say.
He kisses me on the lips. Just once. So light, like a touch of a touch. This time it doesn’t burn. It burns, yes, but not in a bad way. It’s like that wrong heaven of stars up there are all in my body now. Little dots of fiery light. But it doesn’t feel wrong anymore. It feels exactly right. Just like the right heaven.
“It is,” Tom says, stroking my hair. “Trust me, okay?” He takes my hand, and then sees the gold bracelet on my wrist. A funny look passes over his face as he looks into Father’s eye. Like he knows it, though how could he? “What’s this?”
“Nothing. Just a gift.”
“It’s ugly,” he hisses.
“I know,” I whisper. “Mother makes me wear it.”
Of course she would, Tom’s face says. “It doesn’t belong on your pretty wrist.” His voice is nearly a growl. So I slip off the bracelet and push it between the pile of dolls. A twinge of some bad feeling as I slide it away. Like I’ve abandoned Father. His eye is sad and alone now. I’ll put it back on after Tom goes. For now, I push it away.
Tom smiles. Red jellyfish are floating through his body. Not just his body, but the whole room. My whole bedroom is lit up like we’re underwater, how strange. There’s mist all around us now, like we’re in a strange fog. Maybe I’m really dreaming. Or drowning. Doesn’t matter.
I’m in heaven with Tom. Seth, I mean.
It’s heaven either way.
Part IV
19