I hang up. The phone rings again.
Covering my ears, I run to Mother’s bedroom. The door is wide open. The jar of night cream named after the sea is open, oozing its red onto Mother’s white wicker vanity. The drawer full of her red lacy things is open too, the lacy things spilling out like red tentacles. The jagged star of dead violets and smoke has been shattered against a wall. Someone broke the gold brush that never brushed my hair in two. But the red dust is gone. No evidence of it anywhere.
The phone is still ringing. Alla wanting to tell more, wanting me arrested. I have to get away from here. Mother won’t look at me ever again. Mother will never love me again. She’ll never forgive me even though I am so sorry, Mother. I can’t breathe. Creep is going with her to the emergency room and he’ll never leave her side now. He’ll be her knight in shining armor forever. Protecting her from me.
Tom.
I need Tom.
But Tom hurt Mother. Tom, you said it wouldn’t kill her. You said we were just taking my Beauty back, that it would hurt only a little. Belle, what am I, a monster? Isn’t that what you said?
But I don’t hear Tom’s voice in my head anymore. He’s gone like Mother is. Somewhere on the other side. Didn’t he promise he would take me with him? Definitely, Tom said.
I remember the folded picture in my pocket. I pull it out and stare into his kind, light-filled eyes. I think of Tom’s eyes. Red as my trembling hands.
Do you trust me? he said.
Yes, Tom, I trust.
Seth, Tom said.
I shake my head. No. Run to the mirror in the corner of my bedroom. Once it was Mother’s and now it’s mine. Once it was cracked and hidden away, and now it’s sealed and here with me. Heart pounding, slow steps, eyes closing and opening, wanting and not wanting to see what’s there. Will he be there? Tom, will you be there on the other side, waiting? To take my hand? To take me with you to the other world? To save me from all this. Please save me from all this. I look into the dark, shining glass. But all I see is my red face, my red hands. White dress dirty and torn. The scratches on my arms still black and raised. My bruise isn’t glowing anymore, just an ugly blotch on my forehead. My hair’s one big dark tangle. I’ve never looked more ugly, more alone. I’ve never looked more like Father’s child. Tom is nowhere. Not in the mirror, or a breath on my neck, or even a voice in my head. I don’t feel him on the other side of the glass like I did before. It feels like a light there went dark. I look down at the crumpled picture in my fist. Something in me is sinking, drowning. The not-breathing feeling. I knock on the glass.
“Tom,” I call, and my voice sounds broken.
Nothing.
I knock again and again. “Tom, where are you? Will Mother be okay? What did you do to her? Please. Please take me away like you promised. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay.” And my voice sounds more and more broken. Like my heart is right there in my words, breaking like my words, and still I call for him.
Now I hear a knock at our patio door. From a pounding white fist. The fist wants to come in. It won’t take no for an answer. I know the fist. I know the eyes of ice peeking through the door. Alla. I pound on the mirror so hard the glass cracks, but I don’t feel the pain.
“Tom, please! Please take me away from here. Please save me. I can’t stay.” But even as I say this, as I knock and knock on the cracking glass, even as I scream his name, my heart is breaking. I remember his face like a sunrise in my bed. Smiling in the dark when he said, Nothing saves us. Nothing saves us in the end.
Seth, I whisper.
The mirror shatters. It makes a sound so much louder than my scream. I’ve fallen to the floor. Lying here just like Mother was. Not screaming anymore. All is suddenly silent. Broken glass falling all around me, so many shards, shiny and sharp. They fall and fall over me in slow motion like the prettiest snow. The snow hurts terribly. I feel it cutting me everywhere, deeper than the thorns cut. I watch my blood flow onto the floor, onto my bed of snowy glass like a small red puddle. The puddle becomes a pool. I stare at the man in the crumpled picture in my hand, his smiling face eclipsed by red.
And still it snows more.
24
“All that broken glass,” says a voice. I open my eyes. Tom’s there, smiling beside me. Shaking his head. We’re back in the dark Treatment Room, in the room full of fog. Lying side by side on the floating table under the sky of water. The red jellyfish pulses beside us in the glass tank. Pulsing fast like the heart in my throat.
“It’s amazing you didn’t go blind,” he says. “Healed beautifully, didn’t you, just like Mother.”
“What did you do to her?” I whisper, but my mouth is frozen. It sounds like nothing. A whisper of a whisper through my dead lips. I’m still under. Still in the treatment. Still half dreaming. “What was in that red powder? Not just roses.” Though it’s a whisper, Tom hears.
“Belle. I think it’s time to take some responsibility, don’t you?”
I’m shaking my head, but it won’t shake; it won’t move. Tom’s nodding and smiling. Oh yes. “Didn’t you envy? Didn’t you want? A mirror is only a mirror, Belle. It only ever reflects back what we desire and long for.”
“You made me.”
And Tom’s smile fades then.
“Who crept into Mother’s closet where she said not to go? Who turned the mirror around? I didn’t make you do anything. I just saw what was inside you, seedling. Saw you tell it in the eyes of mud. You want to know what was in that red powder? You. Your dark feelings about Mother. Want. Hate. Envy. That’s what poisoned the roses. Poisoned Mother, sad to say. That’s what made the red dust.”
“No.”
He strokes my numb face. So tenderly, like I’m a child. “I was only ever a mirror for your darkness, seedling. I only gave words and a shape to what you wanted to do all along. Gave permission. Showed you what you fucking wanted. So much. Took your breath away.” And he smiles his sunrise smile that burns me. His red eyes go the blue-green of Tom Cruise’s eyes, filled with laughing light. Shame rises in me like a dark wave.
“You tricked me,” I whisper through my dead lips.
“You saw what you wanted to see, Belle. You still do. Something shiny and torn from a magazine. Folded three times, then tucked in your little dress pocket like a secret. No matter how many times I told you my name.”
I look at his face, the face that lights up my blood. For a second, he seems to ripple and blur around the edges like an image going out of focus.
I shake my head. No. “No, you lied to me. Tricked me into hurting her and then she never forgave me. My whole life. She abandoned me.”
“Well who knew Mother would hold such a grudge?”
“You abandoned me too.”
The white smile reaches its zenith. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
No. But Tom’s nodding yes.
“I believed you,” I whisper, but my mouth is still frozen. It’s so hard to say any words at all. Like a nightmare when you try to speak and your mouth can’t move right. My words come out garbled, at different volumes, in fits and starts. “I… loved you.”
Tom sighs, amused. He knows. Of course I loved him. Look at him, for fuck’s sake. A dream in the flesh. A movie in the dark. Rippling around the edges now, blurring slightly if I look too close.
“And I loved you,” he lies. “Definitely.” He’s saying it like it’s a line in a movie.
“You broke my… heart. You hurt my… mother and you broke my… heart. I felt it… shattering inside me… like glass.”
“Tell me about your heart, Belle. Tell me what happened next.”
I’m afraid. I try to shake my head, but it still won’t shake. “Don’t remember. I don’t remember.”
He looks back up at the sky of dark water and sighs. “Oh, you do. This part, I know you definitely do. You don’t have to tell me. We can watch it together.” And on the sky, the screen is back. A dark beige bedroom. A young girl lying on the bed, her face covered in bandages. Staring straight ahead.
25