And I do know the one. I’m reaching for it just as Tom tells me: The gold one she bought for you that doesn’t even work on your coarse dark hair. So she had to take it back. It works such magic on hers. So let’s see what sort of magic it works now, Tom says as I sprinkle the powder on the brush and my hand not at all shaking.
And then her perfume. A few roses for her dead violets and smoke. Just a sprinkle in her jagged star. Very good, Belle. Now shake it up. Perfect. Oh wait. Don’t go just yet.
Not yet? I say.
No, no, Tom says in my head. There’s one more thing.
What? But I know what Tom is going to say.
The drawer, Belle. Where Mother keeps her lacy hideous things she wears for her Creeps. The red ones with the little garters hanging down. I open up the drawer. The scent of Mother’s skin hits me. I smell it through the roses. Powdery. Sweet. So familiar. How she held me in the night when once I woke up screaming from a bad dream. Oh Belle, she whispered. Dreams aren’t real, remember? Dreams are just dreams. The powdery sweetness enveloping me then like now. Making the tears in my eyes sting.
I don’t know, I tell Tom, shaking my head. Will it kill her?
Belle, what am I, a monster?
I think of Tom’s burning kiss, his cold, sticking touch. His insistence that I call him Seth—why Seth when he looks just like Tom Cruise except for the red in his eyes sometimes? Suddenly I’m not so sure. But I shake my head no. You’re Tom Cruise, I say.
I feel him smile that amused smile. We’re just giving her a little rash is all.
Will it hurt? I ask him.
Nothing like you hurt. Not even close. It’ll just give her a taste of the hurt you feel. So she’ll definitely know. So she won’t lie to you anymore about wishing she had your face.
Now go on, he says. A little red powder there, too, for good measure. And Mother won’t even notice the red. Because her lacy hideous things are red too. Good. Very good, Belle. His voice is so clear in my head now, so near, like it’s at my ear the whole time. I can almost feel his breath on my neck.
And then it’s gone. And then it’s done. I’ve sprinkled it all. I’ve closed the drawer. Nothing in my hands but red dust. And a pounding in my chest like a petal crushed.
I’ve done it. Which means…
I run back to my room, to Mother’s mirror shining in the corner. I’ll see you on the other side, Tom said. Now that I’ve done what he’s asked, he’ll be there, won’t he? Waiting. Maybe holding roses for me. I’ll step through the mirror and we’ll go to California, where the water will be as blue-green as his eyes. An ocean of Tom’s eyes to swim in. And I’ll be beautiful.
But when I get to the mirror, all I see is me. My stained white dress. My scratches and cuts that look like black bugs in the dark. The bruise of Tom’s kiss is glowing like a strange star on my forehead. Underneath, I’m the same. A seedling in the dirt. My same ugly face full of every ugly thing I have done. Telling it in my eyes of mud and in my pale worm mouth even though no words come out. Tom, where are you? You’re supposed to take me away now, remember?
But Tom’s voice is gone from my head. I’m alone.
I call his name. Tom, Tom.
I knock on the mirror like it’s a door.
Tom Cruise, I whisper. Where are you? Where are you?
But he doesn’t come.
Just me in the glass and my hands full of red dust. My pounding heart, I can see it pounding through my skin, darker against my dirty white dress. My breathing ragged like I’ve been running miles.
Like I’m running still.
* * *
In the morning, the sound of sirens. A red flashing light outside my window. A phone ringing and ringing and a man shouting in the next room. The scream has the word fuck in it.
“Fuck! What the FUCK happened?”
I remember it was Mother who first taught me what a siren meant. An ambulance, darling, she said. It means an emergency. That someone’s very sick. Or hurt.
Will they be okay? I asked.
Maybe, maybe not, Mother said. That’s why the ambulance comes.
I see there’s a trail of red powder on my bedroom floor. I didn’t see it last night in the dark. The red trail goes from my bed to the door. It goes past this door, I know. All the way down the hall. To Mother’s bedroom, where there’s screaming now. I look down at my red hands trembling.
And then? It’s like a nightmare except I’m awake. Still in my white dress. Lying in my pink room, where I barely slept. Hearing shouts and loud voices now in the hall. That man who was screaming fuck is saying, “In here, in here!” I hear the word unconscious. Poison. Reaction. My heart is pounding and pounding. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. I follow the red trail to the hallway, where men in uniforms are running to the bedroom blue as dreams. No one sees me or hears me asking, “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” I run after them to the bedroom, my heart pounding so hard in my body, surely they hear it pounding. Then I see her. Lying on the floor between their crouched bodies. Lying like she fell there. I’m crying. One word over and over. I try to run to her but someone’s holding me back. Bryce. Creep. Shouting words in my face I don’t hear because I’m crying, “Mother, Mother.” Tears in my eyes make the blue room swim, make her body on the blue floor seem to float like a swan on a lake. Please, god, don’t die, Mother.
“What is she talking about?” Creep whispers.
Over Creep’s shoulder, I see her face. The white skin is red and raised like it’s been burned all over. The skin on her neck and chest is red and raised too, all over. I’m screaming, No, no, no, but then I see her breathing. Quick and shallow. I hear it too, rattling, like when I had pneumonia. “Please,” I cry through my tears. “Please be okay, Mother.” She looks over at me then, through the bodies of the emergency men all around her. Tears in her eyes that make more tears in my eyes right away. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. And then the look in her eyes changes. I see she reads everything. Every page all at once. Shakes her head like she can’t look at me anymore, can never look again. Close the book forever. The hurt in her face is a stab in my heart. Her eyes close.
“Mother, no!”
I try to run to her again, but Creep’s still holding me fast. I watch the emergency men lift Mother from the floor onto some kind of bed. They lift up the bed and carry her like the seven dwarfs carry Snow White’s body. I see Snow White in her glass coffin when they carry her away, please don’t take her away. But Creep is carrying me into my room now. There, he sits me on the bed and holds me down by the shoulders. Looks at me with new eyes. “You better stay in this room for now.”
“Where are they taking her?”
“She had an accident. We’re going to the emergency room.”
“Please let me come!” I try to get free, but he’s still holding me down. He looks down at the floor and I follow his eyes. But there’s no trail of red powder on the floor anymore. All is gone like nothing. Nothing at all happened. Magic, Tom said. Only my hands are red now.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper. I can hardly speak because I’m sobbing, shaking. I can hardly breathe. I hear them carrying Mother out the front door, toward the red flashing lights outside. Away from me. I feel the hurt in her heart. It makes my own heart hurt like never before. I look back up at Creep. His face has no expression at all.
“Please,” I tell Creep. “Please let me go with her to the hospital.”
And he just shakes his head. Leaves, slamming the door. I hear the slam of the front door soon after. I feel the slam in the back of my head, in my chest.
I run out to the front door but the siren’s sounding and the ambulance is already pulling away, speeding down the island road toward the river, the bridge to the city. I’m alone now. More alone than ever before. Standing in the living room in my dirty white dress with my red hands open and empty. The phone is ringing and ringing, it will never stop ringing. I pick it up before I remember about Stacey, the garden.
“Let me speak to your mother.” A woman’s cold voice. Russian accent thick. “Now.”