So I open my hands. Watch Tad run out of the room. It’s fine, I think. Go ahead. Leave me here, I’m not alone. I’m lovely. I have my mists. Each one a world to wander in. All of them running down my face in rivulets, so very luminous I am. Dripping from my eyes onto my empty hands gripping air. I guess in the end we misted too much, Mother. But Mother’s not in the mirror anymore, must remember. Through the mists, I see a gold bracelet winking on the table. Nested between the red jars. Mother, did you leave me a gift? The bracelet itself is so small, so delicate, the gold thin as thread. It could have belonged to a child. Perhaps it did. What a slim little wrist it must have fit once. It has an eye in its center, I see. Strange, slanted. Staring at me like it can see my heart. Have I looked into this eye before? Why do I feel I have?
I slip it on—and look at that, it fits. Makes me smile a little, clears the mists. The chimes quiet, the roar of the ocean in my head goes still. I remember I’ve got work today. At my shop, of course. That’s right. I’ve got a shop, don’t I? How could I forget?
20
By the time I get to Belle of the Ball, I can see and think very clearly. Clear as a bell. Just like my name, Belle. Just like my shop, Belle of the Ball. There’s Mother in the shop glass. Mother, I’m so glad you’re here. To be honest, I thought you left me there back in my bedroom, left me for your garden world. I wouldn’t have blamed you. But it’s good to see you here in the window display, and look, you took your pretty garden with you. Wearing a dress red as its flowers, just like I am, the same red shoes to match. I chose it after Tad left me to get some fruit for a juice I don’t even need to drink. And he never came back, can you believe that? Mother can’t. Once more, she’s shaking her head just as I’m shaking mine. Or is it something else you can’t believe, Mother? Mother, why do you look so horrified?
Then I see, of course. Why she looks horrified.
There’s something else in the window display, something else with Mother in her garden. A horrible obstruction that hurts my eyes like the light. Hurts Mother’s eyes too, it looks like. A row of gray headless… are they scarecrows? Garden statues? They look like corpses. Standing all around you, Mother, oh god. Almost as if on ghoulish display. Each one backlit and wearing some sort of sack dress and… is it chunky silver jewelry? I know it sounds crazy. Because who would do something like that, right? Mother, no wonder you look so upset. What are these wretched creatures? They must be statues. And yet they look so much like corpses, I can’t help but whisper to them: When was the beheading? And why wasn’t I here, protecting you from the guillotine? Who dressed you in these fashion sacks? Who put chunky silver jewelry around your necks like chains?
Thank god I’m here now. Have to fix this immediately, right, Mother? Put the Belle back in Belle of the Ball where she should be.
“Can I help you?” says a voice. A woman poking her head out of the shop door. Grim face. Fish eyes. Red glasses hanging from a red chain around her neck. She looks a little afraid of me, like Tad did.
“Can I help you?” she repeats. Which is funny. Because we’re the ones who work here, aren’t we, Mother?
“We should really be the ones asking you that, Esther,” I say to her, and smile. She has a name tag, that’s helpful.
Esther looks around, confused. We? She must not see that I’m with you, Mother. She must not see you in the shop glass or she must think we’re one and the same. We look so much like each other today, it’s true. Esther doesn’t seem to see very well. Completely immune to the abomination in the window display.
“How can we help you, Esther?” we say in our best salesperson voice. I say it; Mother mouths it along with me in the shop glass with her very red lips. We make the delight drip.
“I work here,” Esther says.
She does? Oh god, then things are even more not pretty than I thought. Mother, did we really hire this woman? With the dead-fish eyes and the resting bitch face, who’s scared of Beauty? But we can’t let on that we forgot her.
“Of course you do.” We smile. “Sorry we’re late, Esther.”
“Late?” Esther says. “How can you be late? You don’t even work—”
“We were pursuing our Most Magnificent Selves,” I say. “But we went a little too far with the mists. You know how it is.” Probably Esther doesn’t, but it’s always good to banter with your staff like this. “First chokeberry blossoms, then Orpheus flowers… the ocean of your mind roaring along with the chimes.” I laugh and Mother smiles. “Always trauma—I mean tricky to get out the door, isn’t it? But we’re here now. We’re here to sever. Serve of course.” And we bow like we don’t own the place. “Have we been bury? Busy?”
Esther just stares at me. She’s standing in the doorway sort of blocking our way to the shop. “I’m not really supposed to let you in, Mirabelle. I’m sorry.”
I look at Mother in the shop glass. She’s horrified. Just as horrified as I feel, she looks.
“Not supposed to let us in? To our shop? Esther, that’s crazy. You need us now more than ever.” I squeeze by her, making my way inside. But Esther’s dogging my heels. She scurries past me and runs behind the counter as if to block me from it, can you believe this, Mother? I look up at Mother in the mirror behind the register. She can’t believe it either.
I turn to Esther and smile. “Why don’t you go on your lunch break?” It would really be best to get her out of the way for the plans we have. Not necessary, but best.
“Sylvia says I’m supposed to be on the floor,” Esther says, hands on the counter.
Sylvia? Who the hell is Sylvia? “Well it can be our little secret. I won’t tell if you won’t, Esther.”
“I can’t. Sylvia said.”
“Esther, do we really need to do everything ‘Sylvia’ says in this life?”
Esther says nothing. She reaches for something under the counter. A gun? A phone. She’s texting something quickly, what is she texting, Mother? Making me nervous, but in the mirror, Mother looks just fine in her garden. She’s picking red flowers now. Gathering them into a basket crooked in her arm. A pretty black bird alights on her shoulder and they appear to be singing to each other softly. You’re right, Mother. It’s not for us to be nervous. If anything, Esther should be nervous. Texting on the floor in front of her bosses like this.
“If you want to stay here and text, you go right ahead,” I tell Esther. “We’ll just wander around the floor.” In the glass, I see Mother’s already starting to drift away along the mirrored walls of the shop. Mother, wait!
“I think you better stay here at the register with me,” Esther shouts limply.
“Oh, we can’t have three of us crowded behind that register. That would be such a waste.” I walk away from her, my red shoes leading me along. And in the glass along the shop wall, Mother’s red shoes are doing the same.
“Where are you going?”
“Here and there.” But we know exactly where we’re going, right, Mother? Mother knows. Mother’s already far ahead.
“Sylvia says we’re not supposed to change anything!” Esther blurts after me, almost like she anticipates our plans.
“Does she?” I sing over my shoulder. “How interesting.” And then I run to the display window. Why do I feel like I need to do this in a hurry? I don’t really. Not doing anything illegal. This is our shop, isn’t it? We’ve let it fall into the wrong hands, obviously. Hired Esther for some reason, what were we thinking? And now this woman Sylvia to contend with, apparently. Where have we even been? Don’t know, isn’t that funny? Anyway, we’re here now. To put things back, to make things right.
Mother’s already there in the window glass, waiting. Smiling at me among her tall red flowers, though she’s surrounded by such violence again. Her smile says, Surely you know what you have to do here.
Of course I do, Mother.
First things first: get rid of these gray headless monstrosities. I say monstrosities because when I look at them straight on, I see they’re just ugly dress forms. And yet when I look in the window glass where Mother is, they’re most definitely corpses. So which are they, Mother? Dress forms or corpses? Mother’s face says potato potahto, and I have to agree in this case. The point is really to get them out of her garden. So I topple them—one, two, three. Because they’re already dead, they don’t feel a thing. I gather one of them into my arms. Surprisingly light and silvery she is. I’ll have to bury her, all of them, somewhere, I guess, right? Or should I call the undertaker? Who is your next of kin, ladies? But that’s such an absurd question. How can they possibly answer it? They don’t have lips because they don’t have heads. And dead on top of that, remember? Can’t forget.