I shake my head at Tom but it still won’t shake. He’s blurrier around the edges, his face flickering on and off like the most beautiful light.
“Not a child anymore,” I say. Beside us, in the glass tank, our red jellyfish has grown bigger now. Nearly the size of the glass tank itself. Not quite the size of the red jellyfish floating up there in the sky of water, but close.
“You blossomed in that beige room, didn’t you? Grew up faster than the seasons change. Raised up out of the dirt just like I said you would. Bloomed like a hothouse flower, the red throat of you opening. It was stunning. Even with the mirror gone from the wall, you knew. You could see it in all their eyes whenever they looked at you. Teachers. That sleazy priest. Even the dumb, cruel children at that stupid island school. The dark, aching want in their eyes. That wants in spite of itself. That looks in spite of itself, transfixed. That consumes and is consumed.”
I nod with my eyes.
“Envy,” Tom and I both say, basking. A smile ripples across his face. He loves how I can say the word even with my dead mouth, clear as a bell.
“You knew that feeling, didn’t you? Because you’d looked at someone else like that once. Who did you used to look at like that?”
But he knows the answer.
The answer is up there in the sky of water.
Her face. Its pale eyes looking surprised. Then troubled. Very troubled at what they see…
* * *
…Me. Arriving in San Diego to meet her after so many years away. She’s standing at the foot of the escalator, a long airport escalator at arrivals. I’m at the top and she’s at the bottom and I’m making my slow way down.
I’ve just flown over the clouds for six hours. Staring at the sky going bluer and brighter the farther west we went. On the plane, a movie called A Few Good Men played, starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, both very good actors. I mostly watched the screen while I listened to Nirvana on my Walkman that Grand-Maman bought me as a going-away present. To watch Tom Cruise made me feel strange. Made me grip the armrests whenever he came on the screen. Wanting the truth that Jack Nicholson told him he couldn’t handle. Still wanting it.
All okay? said the man sitting beside me.
He smiled in a way I would come to know very well. Like even though I wasn’t saying anything, my face was telling him something. Some secret thing. Something that pleased him. But when I turned to look at this man, my heart stopped. Dark hair a wave. White movie-star smile. Eyes blue-green as my dream of the sea. He looked just like the actor up there on the screen.
Tom? I said, stopping the music.
Excuse me? the man said. Still smiling at me though he didn’t understand.
And then I said, Seth? Which was funny. Where did I get that name from?
He looked at me like he wished that Tom or Seth were his name. I’m Jeff.
Sorry. I thought… you were someone else.
Oh, don’t apologize, please. I’m sorry not to be who you thought I was.
Why would someone be sorry for something like that? I thought. But I didn’t ask. I turned to the window, turned my Walkman back on. I didn’t want to talk to Jeff. But Jeff wanted to talk to me. I could feel his want oozing out of him. He tapped me on the shoulder until I turned back.
Flying home? Jeff mouthed, and smiled. Like there were more questions in this question. And my answer would answer them all.
I looked at Jeff. Businessman. Boring face. Earthly smile.
I don’t know yet. And I turned up “Lithium” and looked out the window. Jeff was still looking at me. I turned it up as high as it would go, but I still heard the want of Jeff the whole way across the ever bluer and brighter sky.
* * *
When we landed, Jeff asked me if I needed a ride. My mother is picking me up, I told him as we walked down the long, wide arrivals corridor, my headphones still on. They’d stay on, in one form or another, for the rest of my life.
Your mother, Jeff said, like that was something he wanted to see. Where is she?
We’re riding the escalator down together toward baggage claim. A long, slow ride down. Jeff is asking me if I’m sure I don’t want a ride. If my mother doesn’t show up, he can take me. More than happy to, definitely. Anywhere I want to go. He has a limo, have I ever ridden in one of those? Oh, they’re fun. He’s surprised that a pretty girl like me has never been in one before. Striking, has anyone ever said that? Definitely.
And then I see her. At the bottom of the escalator. She’s alone. Doesn’t see me yet. She’s looking all around for me, her eyes wide open. Worried. Maybe a little afraid, which hurts me. I almost don’t recognize her because she’s cut her hair to her chin like Isabella Rossellini. Dyed it ice-blond. She looks beautiful still. But older, smaller. The blue of her eyes is less bright, more watery. Her mouth is still red, but small and puckered like now the world has a sour taste. There’s a new softness around the edges of her face, like she eroded. When she sees me, she smiles. I smile back. And just like that, she stops smiling. It’s only for a second that she stops. Something dark comes over her face like a shadow. And then it’s gone. When I get to the bottom of the escalator, she’s smiling again.
“Belle,” she says, and her eyes flood, and mine flood too. She hugs me and Jeff scuttles away. I smell her violets and smoke, and something else—a ripe sourness, a faint rot of the flesh. She holds me at a distance. “Let me look at you.”
And in Mother’s watery eyes, I see it. The dark ache. Consuming and consumed. She looks like my face is telling her something and she’s deciding if she wants to tell me. Whatever it is makes her happy and sad and scared all at once. And then she smiles over it, a window with a drawn shade. Shakes her head.
“I’m just… So happy to see you, Sunshine.”
“I’m happy to see you, too.” It’s a lie and the truth. The tears in my eyes sting with it—the lie and the truth. She hugs me again, a hug full of air. Her body so far away, I can barely feel her arms there. “I love you,” she says into the space by my ear. There’s a space between us now. A space that feels as big as the years. It’s been there ever since.
* * *
“Why did she stop smiling at you?” Tom asks me, pulling me out of the dream, back into the fog with the red jellyfish.
“I don’t know.”
“You do,” Tom says. “Because of what she saw. What did she see, Belle?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Though of course I do.
“You. Her Beauty in your face. Her Beauty that you took back. You thought I didn’t keep my promises. But I did, Belle. Didn’t I get you to California in the end?”
Tom’s smiling his constellation smile, his gaze an ocean wave. If I try to focus on his face, he nearly seems to dissolve before my eyes. I remember longing for him, loving him even as I hated him because of Mother, because he left me. I remember standing in the mirror, knocking and calling his name until the glass shattered and the shards cut and my blood pooled red as roses onto the floor.
“But you weren’t there,” I say with my dead lips, with my broken voice. “You said we would be together, but you weren’t there.”