“Your face gives you away, Belle. That Glow.”
“Plenty of people glow, Detective.”
“There’s the Lift, too. The Smoothness. The Whitening,” he adds, lowering his voice.
Whitening? And we all have to laugh, me and my sisters. Call it a Brightening. “I’d call it a Brightening.”
“Is that what you’d call it?” He looks at me until I find I have to look away, in the mirrors, at my sister on the couch. She appears outraged by his terminology. Regards him coldly. Her looks could cut.
“Also that mark that was on your forehead. Barely there anymore,” he marvels. Still looking at me, entranced. Not just entranced, another shade of feeling in his expression. Darker, sharper, I used to know its name.
Envy, snaps my sister on the couch. Envy is its name!
Not envy! Desire, says my sister by the flowers. He desires you, because you’re so very entrancing, Sister.
Well, envy and desire are often one and the same trance, murmurs my sister by the water.
I look at the scar across Hud Hudson’s sharp cheek. Like someone took a hook to the skin and ripped. Seeing me notice, he turns away and pours himself another drink. “Taken all together, I’d say the evidence is pretty damning, Belle.”
Evidence? Don’t let him get to you like this, he knows nothing! What is he going to do: arrest you for a Glow? Ha! Since when was Beauty a crime? Envy, now there’s a crime for you!
I think he just likes you, says my sister by the flowers. Really likes you and this is his way of saying it.
I think you should sit by me, Belle, says my sister by the window, who won’t meet my eye in the mirrors. We should walk to the cliff’s edge. I know a game we can play. We can play it together, you and me.
“Belle, are you listening to me?”
“Of course we—I am.”
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
Very good, denial! cheers my sister on the couch.
“You followed the path to the house on the cliff. There was a party, and everyone applauded. Said how you glow and glow. Like a moon, Daughter.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, no.”
“And once you were good and drunk on the bubbly drug, a woman, maybe in silver, maybe in red, she took your hand and led you downstairs, below what they call the Depths. They made you lie down on a table, sort of like a massage table, in a dark room full of fog. And you took some deep, deep breaths. What were you breathing in, Belle? Maybe eucalyptus. Maybe ether. Maybe a special blend of both.”
Wow, says my sister by the flowers. He seems to know the whole story. He’s very smart.
He THINKS he’s smart, shouts my sister on the couch. He knows nothing!
“And then they took something from you, didn’t they? What did they take from you, Belle?”
A little of your cloudy skies, says my sister by the flowers.
Nothing you couldn’t do without, says my sister on the couch.
Please walk out to the water with me, says my sister by the window.
“Nothing, nothing,” I whisper.
“Something they said you didn’t need, maybe? Something dark and sad from your past. A humiliation. A childhood trauma. A painful labyrinth of memory you unknowingly walk in the night that shapes your dreams. Maybe even a crime. What did they call it? A Free Radical of the Mind. A Comedo of the Soul.”
Don’t listen to him, Belle! screams my sister on the couch.
Oh, listen to him, he’s so intense, says my sister by the flowers. So filled with conviction, this detective of Beauty. It’s quite entrancing.
Let’s please run to the cliffs now, beckons my sister by the window. The waves are high and crashing against the rocks. And I have a game for you and me.
“And now here you sit, memory scrambled and full of holes. But who wouldn’t want to exorcise a few demons, kick a few skeletons out of the closet for that Glow? Letting go is so worth it, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m shaking and shaking my head.
“Maybe we should ask your mother if it’s worth it? Oh wait, that’s right, we can’t ask her, can we? She’s dead.”
He’s lying!
“You’re lying,” I shout, along with all three of my sisters.
“I wish I were,” he says quietly. His gaze holds mine. Sorrowful, knowing. Hurts to look at. He reaches for my hand, and my sister on the couch hisses and my sister by the flowers shudders and my sister by the window sighs. “Listen, Belle. Please. There are those who go through those black gates, walk up that rosy path, and they never come back. They disappear. Or they wind up dead on the rocks like your mother.”
What is he saying to me, Sisters? Can this really be true? But when I look at the wall of mirrors, all three are dead silent now, and still. My sister on the couch stares straight ahead coldly. My sister by the flowers has given up on the flowers. She’s facedown on the coffee table. My sister by the window looks out at the water with a tear in her eye. Her face is filled with some secret grief.
I turn back to Hud Hudson. Eyes still sorrowful. Gaze holding mine like a glass. “How do you know all this?”
He lets go of my hand. Lights a cigarette. “Didn’t I tell you there were two of me once?” In the mirrors, he’s in shadow now. The smoke hangs over his face like a veil.
“Your brother.”
“Edward. He was a member, like your mother. An actor like her too. Who knows, maybe they even saw each other at the house. Shared a glass of the bubbly drug by the Depths.” He smiles darkly, takes a long sip of his drink.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared about six months ago.” Another drag from his cigarette. I watch his scar gleam as he smokes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” His voice is cracked with pain. So familiar to us. “We weren’t very close, not since we were kids. Sort of estranged, actually. Especially after our mother died.”
A sigh from my sister by the flowers.
“About a year ago, I’d started to notice that on the phone, he’d have these word slips. Blanks. Little things, then bigger things. Mix past and present. I worried it was drugs at first—Edward was never all that… stable. Or early-onset dementia. Our mother had it. The last time I saw him, he was playing Iago at the Playhouse. He kept messing up his lines. It was painful to watch, he was always so flawless. I stayed after the show to see how he was holding up, though I worried he’d see that as some sort of insult—Edward took any dent in his armor so terribly. But when he opened the door to his dressing room, I couldn’t believe…”
And now Hud’s just staring at himself in the mirror as if struck.
“What?”
“His face,” he says. His eyes look afraid. And there’s that other shade of feeling creeping in again, what is its name again, Sisters?
“He’d looked different onstage,” Hud continues, still lost in his reflection. “I’d thought it was just lighting, makeup maybe. Maybe another one of his procedures—Edward had always been into those, always a little vain. But this was something else. This transformation was unreal. Not any of his newfangled treatments, not even surgery could account for…” He turns to me. Reaches out as if to touch my face. Instead he runs his hand through his own dark hair, takes another drag of his cigarette.
“I didn’t say anything to him, of course. Edward didn’t like to talk about his looks, but he was obsessed. Sort of like it was a… secret for him. Or something. You know?”
We do, mumbles my sister by the flowers in her sleep.
“So I just congratulated him on his performance. And the way he looked at me…”
“How?”
“Like I wasn’t his brother. Like he didn’t know me at all. Sound familiar?”
Not at all, murmurs my sister on the couch from behind her hands. But her voice is full of pain like Hud Hudson’s. I see Mother’s face in my mind. Looking at me like I was a stranger. Like she was empty. Emptied. And me looking at the emptiness, feeling sick, afraid. Responsible—why responsible?