Chapter 9

Evening. I'm in the living room, staring at the red shoes by Mother's front door. Just sitting there. Shining there. Almost like I never wore them last night. Never walked along the shoreline, then along a dirt road to the house on the cliff's edge. We hope you'll come back, they said. A visitor would be coming, they said. Someone important. Very important to my mother. Who? I think of those strange jellyfish swimming in that massive tank. The woman in red waving at me from the landing of the grand stair, beneath the blazing chandelier. Shouldn't go back to that house. Was it a spa? Some cult or pyramid scheme too, probably. Rich eccentrics peddling red jars. For the face, dear, for the face. Unlike you, I need all the help I can get. Mother was such a sucker. Probably they were going to try and sell them to me. Mother knew some very strange people, it's true. People who wore gloves in the summer. People who owned rare exotic pets. People who always smiled at me with far too many teeth. Pointed and white and shimmering.

We know so much about you, the twins said. And that shudder I felt. Deep in the pit of me. What do you know?

All a scam, surely.

Sylvia's long gone. Left in a huff after I told her I'd think about her offer. From the door, I told her again. I told her thank you, and she waved back at me like she was batting away a fly. Tad's just left too, after a day of handymanning around the apartment. This is so satisfying, I heard him whisper to the walls, running his hands over them lightly.

Today, I did some things myself. Didn't I?

No. There's still just the open box sitting there in the middle of the room. Anjelica's sleeping in a sea of dolls, eyes opening and closing. All day I ignored the endless ringing of my phone. First, Chaz wondering if I'd made a decision about selling the house, if he could bring in a real estate agent later today or tomorrow? Then my boss, Persephone from Damsels, checking in. She was looking forward to seeing me for my Sunday-afternoon shift, to hearing how I was doing, too, of course. We're all here for you, she lied. Then the funeral director called. Mother's ashes were ready to be picked up. Whenever I was ready.

I did an extended version of my morning skin routine to make up for the fact that I had somehow, unbelievably, missed my evening routine the night before. The morning ritual is all about protection. Each morning we must arm ourselves, Marva says, against the many free radicals and pollutants that assail the air, leaving their unsightly oxidizing marks on our epidermis, that most porous of membranes between our souls and the world. After Sylvia left, I went into Mother's bathroom and triple cleansed, then doused myself with a copious amount of snail slime. I then used my NuuFace followed by my MasknGLO. Then ten skins of a green tea, algae, and rice essence for much-needed hydration and luminosity. Then an antioxidant serum specifically targeted toward my free radicals, followed by the Lumière Pigment Lightening Correxion Concentrate because an even skin tone is next to godliness. Then the Alchemie Liquid Lift followed by the Brightening Caviar for Radiance, followed (of course) by the Diamond-Infused Revitalizing Eye Formula. I misted diligently between skins with the rosewater and birch milk Moon Juice to create what Marva calls a moisture mille-feuille. I then anointed myself with the Marine Collagen Regenerating Day Soufflé using her patented seventeen-dot technique. The Day Soufflé not only brightens, firms, and plumps, but seals in the hydrating Moon Juice skins, preventing any transepidermal water loss. I patted it in with the recommended upward, counterclockwise strokes. Like an overcoat for the skin, Marva says of the Day Soufflé, and I have always loved this idea. And then of course the most crucial step, an overcoat for the overcoat: Glowscreen, physical and chemical. I applied both in Mother's unlit bathroom, staring at the dark outline of my reflection, repeating the seventeen-dot technique, which works so well for the Day Soufflé. Why don't you turn on the fucking light at least, Mother might have said if she'd caught me. So you can see what you're doing to yourself? I'd turn to find her standing there in the doorway. Morning cigarette in hand, flawless face watching me as if to say, This is my daughter? This is mine?

I can see fine, Mother, I'd say.

And Mother would look at the jar clutched tightly in my hand. I'm not so sure about that. She'd walk up to me then. Place her hands on either side of my overcoated face, drenched and sticky with skins. Her cigarette smoke coiled around both of our heads like a gray fog. You know you don't need any of this shit. You do know that, right? I've told you. Her voice was soft and hard at the same time, like it was gently shaking me. It made a dark shame unfurl. Anger rose like a wave. Were we not, after all, surrounded by her own sea of skin products? Her many jars and vials? Was she not the pot calling the kettle black? But I just stared past her at my own reflection. You've told me.

She was leaving the bathroom when I called out. What about you, Mother?

Me?she said, like the word was a dark joke. I'm another story.

Later, I'd find a jar of the Day Soufflé on her bathroom counter, of course.

By the time I finished my morning routine, it was early evening. I sat on Mother's red couch and watched Marva until my eyes watered. Her Come to Bed with Me series, where she sits in a silk teddy talking about skincare ingredients like lovers. I watched "Acids Part One," and then "Acids Part Two." I watched "What I'm Doing about My Hyperpigmentation," where Marva solemnly points to various "dark" spots on her forehead and cheeks that I can't see, that just look like more expanses of white cream. Staying on top of it is key, she says. A multipronged approach is always best. I watched "My Tretinoin Journey." "After One Year." "After Two Years." "After Five." I watched a hand vigorously rubbing cream into a cheek. Finger pads dotting oil over eyelids fluttery with hope. Marva sniffing rapturously from an open vial of marula oil. Then a voice was calling my name. Again and again. Belle. Belle?

I looked up from my screen. Tad. Standing in the darkened living room in his biker jacket. Holding a hammer in his fist like Thor. Behind him the sky was black. Done for the day, he said.

Great, I heard myself say. Thank you.

He looked down at the open box full of dolls on which the cat was sleeping. Tomorrow I can get some more people in. Help you pack.

I can manage, I said.

For a while he just stood there looking at the box. Then he glanced at me, café au lait bowl full of prosecco gripped tightly in my hand.

Thank you though, I said. For the offer.

I'll still need more time. To do the foundational stuff.

How long?

A few weeks, maybe. If not more. I'd really think about selling some of this stuff. I could take you to that antiques man downtown tomorrow. Buy you a month.

A month, I thought. I have to be back at work Sunday. Three days from now.

I'll think about it, I said.

I thought he would leave, but he just kept standing there, so I said, What? It was rude. I heard the rudeness and winced at how Mother would have frowned. Tad didn't notice.

I was just going to grab some dinner, he said. Did you, uh, want to join?

I looked at Tad's face in the dark. Sandy hair. Eyes like the Pacific on the clearest day. Looking like he belonged on the screen of Grand-Maman's old box television, her world of daytime soaps. More beautiful than any of my lovers apart from the twins. And can I tell you I saw it all? Saw it all, saw it all. The levity he would make me feel, briefly, over shared tacos at some outside hut. The beers we would sip in the palm tree–filled dark. The coolness bubbling crisply down my throat. The sense of rebellion. The brief escape from my own pain. Maybe I would cry. Actual tears, not Formula runoff. Maybe Tad would comfort me with some Zen philosophy quote. About how we are all drops in the river of time. How that river flows backward and forward. The sex we would likely have later in his apartment in Pacific Beach, on his futon. Surely he had a futon. The smell of Tad would be thick in the air, would be lovely. Beachy and young. How many times had Mother breathed it in greedily? From his neck. From his chest. The dolphin winking at her from his arm with each thrust. Hands gripping her white waist, her red hair. Hands that stroked her perfect face with such wonder at its—

No, I said. Not hungry. Thanks.

And Tad half smiled.

He left, closing the door so quietly it felt like a stroke of my hair.

And now here I am. Alone. Sitting in the dark, hands clutching Mother's bowl. Staring at the red shoes glowing by the door. Which I won't put on. Of course not.

One foot then the other on the dark path along the shore. First the path by the water, then the dirt path along the cliff's edge. Tonight, it feels like the path I've walked all my life. The blackness is like an old friend. Lovely to hear the ocean roar, the grass hum and twitch. I'm whistling to myself as I click along. I'm at the spiked gates before I know it. They open for me again like they knew I was coming.

As I walk up the path to the house, the roses sway gently in the black breeze, seeming to nod their red heads in welcome. I feel such welcome. It's good I came, I think. They were expecting me. Then I see the front doors are closed. No woman in a silver dress with eyes of smoke waiting there. Smiling at me and my red shoes.

I stare at the closed doors and my heart suddenly sinks. Someone important to Mother. Even if it is just a scheme, I need to meet this person. I knock. Nothing. Knock again. Nothing. I notice there's a peephole in one of the doors. I try to look through. Black. But I feel an eye looking right back at me. An eye I don't see so much as sense. And then the door opens.

Tonight, the hall is shimmering grandly. Empty. No radiant rich people in red, silver, or black. No one there behind the door. Just the sound of my own footsteps clicking along the marble floor. Just that chime-y music, that airy spa drone. The boutique in the corner is dark, all the glass cabinets unlit. I look at the great coiling staircase where the woman in red stood on the landing, waving. No one on the landing tonight, though on the wall, a screen still plays the video of that blissed-out white woman with the black discs on her temples, ocean waves lapping endlessly over her face. Tonight her eyes are open. Smiling at me, it seems.

Above my head, the red chandelier blazes brilliantly. Though I crane my neck, there's still no sign of a ceiling. In my mind's eye, I see myself as a child, Mother reading me a story in the dark. About a beautiful maiden. A castle by the sea. This castle by the sea, I asked Mother. What did it look like inside?

Oh, you wouldn't believe this place, Mother said. Great halls like labyrinths. A ceiling so high, you could look up, up, up and never find it. Only the chandelier blazing down. The grandest chandelier you ever saw. Dripping with honest-to-god crystals.

"Hello?" I call now. Nothing, no one emerges. I walk a little farther down the hall, toward the Depths. Tonight, the red curtains are drawn around the tank. Behind them, I feel the jellyfish float. I notice there's a single champagne flute on a small silver tray on a lacquered black table. Filled to the brim with that red champagne. It's bubbling in a way I've never seen before. Like it's excited. There's a little black card beside the flute that reads Santé, in elegant red scroll. I lift the glass to my lips. Cold bubbles course down my throat, sweet and sharp. In my head, I can almost hear the house applauding me. So many silk hands clapping. I look up at the video of the woman with the black discs, still smiling at me through the waves. Why do I feel as though I'm being watched tonight? As though the house is watching? Not just watching, but holding its breath. A particular person is holding their breath.

I take another sip and sigh. The whole hall seems to sigh with me. It's strange but pleasant. The red curtains are drawn suddenly, quickly, in one velvety swish. And there are the red jellyfish in the great glass tank. Pulsing in the blue-green water. I'm surprised that I'm delighted at the sight of them. Delighted or horrified? I drink more of the excited champagne. Walk up to the tank, though I don't want to come any closer to those creatures, beautiful as they are. So red. Bigger than they were last night. Do jellyfish grow that quickly? My face is right up against the glass now. The water's cloudy tonight. A little darker, though still blue-green. I'm noticing one jellyfish in particular. Floating away from the cluster of floating spheres. Drifting toward me, close to the glass now. Like it can see me.

"Hi," I say to the big jellyfish. And feel stupid. I even blush.

But it moves in closer still. It has some sort of pattern on its body, can't quite make it out. And eyes. Do jellyfish have eyes? These ones do. Red and jellylike just like their bodies. Ghostly so it almost looks like a trick of the light. As I'm looking into its eyes, I smile. The eyes are looking back at me. Tense. Could the eyes of a jellyfish be tense? My heart begins to beat very strangely. I feel it fluttering in my chest like a panicked bird. Someone's here. Watching me from one of the black mouths of the corridors. I hear a clicking sound. A breath drawn in. In the corner of my eye, a figure appears. The woman in red? No. A stranger clad in black silk. Clearing her throat. About to call to me in greeting.

But instead of walking toward her, my shoes walk me away, around the tank. Away? Why away? I think.

We're circling each other now. She's walking toward me and I'm walking away. We go around and around the tank slowly. Every time she takes a step forward, click, click go my shoes around the tank. Stop, I tell my shoes. Please.

And then they do. I turn around and look at the young woman standing a few feet away. She's looking right at me as if she was waiting patiently for me to turn toward her all this time.

"Daughter of Noelle," she says.

For a moment, my breath catches. I'm struck. A beautiful young girl. Maybe thirteen or fourteen. Translucent skin. Pale glowing eyes. A fountain of golden curls like a living doll. Long black dress, a grown person's dress, on her child's body. And yet there's something about the way she's looking at me. Cold, knowing. She doesn't seem at all like a child. Familiar-looking, too. I've seen her heart-shaped face before. Felt those eyes on me. Was she Mother's friend?

"I'm Mother's friend," she says. "Exactly. And Daughter of Noelle's friend too, I hope."

She smiles at me with her red bow of a mouth. The childhood memory comes flashing back again: me sitting on a princess bed clutching a doll I hated, watching Mother brush her red hair in my three-sided mirror. She's telling me that fairy tale about the beautiful maiden. So beautiful, Mother said, that all admired her from near and far. I remember I thought ridiculous, even as I ached to be so beautiful. I thought what a lie, even as a picture began to form in my mind of a young girl. This young girl, in fact. Standing before me now. Same golden hair, same face of glass, same cold eyes. Same dress falling from her lithe white body like liquid jet. On her shoulder, a pinned red rose.

"You," I whisper.

She smiles like she knows my child's dream, though how could she possibly know it? Just a dream.

"No dream is ever just a dream," she says.

My skin begins to crawl a little. When she smiles, I'm devastated by the awful symmetry of her face. "Excuse me?"

"Eyes Wide Shut. One of my favorites. So mysterious and full of fucking. Lots of skin. Have you seen it?"

I look at her heart-shaped face that is a child's and not a child's. The word fucking so comfortable in her little mouth. "No," I lie.

"You like skin, don't you, Daughter of Noelle? Like your mother."

"You really knew my mother?" Why would this child know my mother?

She looks up at my forehead scar. But unlike the woman in red, she keeps looking at it. Smiling at it, like it's telling her a joke.

"Oh yes," she says. "And I know you, too, Daughter of Noelle."

"Through my mother?"

"Perfect," she says. "Yes, exactly. Through your mother."

"You were important to her." I say it like a question. Desperate to know all the things I don't. To be out of the dark.

She stares at me, looking sadly amused. "Yes. And she was dear to me, too. To all of us here." She smiles dreamily. "At Rouge."

"Rouge?"

She holds up her excited red drink in a toast.

"A way of being. A way of becoming one's Most Magnificent Self. Your mother was among our most prized members."

She moves toward me. But as she does so, my shoes walk me backward, away from her. I can't believe I'm doing this. Surely she'll be disgusted at this rudeness. But she just smiles and catches up to me easily. Cups my cheek with her gloved hand. She's tall for such a young girl. Tall as I am.

Now I'm walking backward and she's walking forward at the same pace. We're moving like this around the tank, with her hands on my cheeks like we're a couple in the strangest slow dance.

"Dear Daughter of Noelle," she sighs into my face. And her breath is cool and crisp as smoke. "This has been a very trying time for you. I imagine it must be."

I look into her eyes, bright like stars. I first saw them with my child's mind. They dazzled me then, and they dazzle me still. I nod. A tear falls from my eye. The first I've truly shed since I learned about Mother. Not the Formula this time. She looks pleased that she has this effect on me.

"Death," she says, "is just another door, Daughter, we must remember. Your mother," she sighs, "was making such progress. A shame to lose her. But she did go the way of roses." She smiles sadly. "Surely that's a consolation."

"I don't understand," I say, as the two of us sway slowly around the tank, her hands on my face, my hands on her silk shoulders. Soft music plays from somewhere, a kind of waltz. "My mother fell off a cliff. What does that have to do with roses?"

She just keeps smiling at me. So sadly.

"Was Mother okay?" I ask. "Was she losing her mind? My last conversations with her were…"

"What?" For a moment, she looks at me curiously.

I'm wearing a dread of liquid gold that burns like the sun.

"Strange," I whisper. "I felt like something was happening to her."

"What was happening to her was that she was becoming her Most Magnificent Self." She sighs like isn't that the loveliest thing?

"Her Most Magnificent Self," I repeat.

"Definitely. Perhaps you saw."

A flash of the last time I saw Mother. A FaceTime call about a month ago. Hey there, stranger, she said slowly, her voice terribly dreamy and serene. So nice to see your face. But I could tell by her eyes that she was staring at her own face. Lost in the dream of it. I was too. She looked shockingly pale. So smooth and flawless, she took my breath away. And empty. Empty was the other word her face was.

What's your secret these days, Mother?I asked her, though I told myself I didn't want to know, didn't want to go down this road, whatever it was.

If I told you, it wouldn't be secret, now, would it?

A feeling crept into me then. Dark and sharp. Bitter as poison. Terribly familiar. I hadn't felt it in a long time. Mother saw it in my eyes and smiled a little.

You don't need my secrets, Sunshine. You never did.

Now I nod, and the impossible girl-woman meets my eye and nods too.

"She'd peeled away all the regrets, all the mind shadows from the past. Such persistent wounds, don't you agree?"

"Yes." We're still gliding around the tank in this strange dance, me moving backward, her moving forward.

"To become one's Most Magnificent Self. To strip away the dark cobwebs in the mind. Basement boxes full of moldy memories. Chests under lock and key." She stares at me. "Get rid of all that, right?" Her hands are still on my face, grazing my forehead scar now. I feel a shiver in the pit of me. Something opening in spite of myself.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Daughter of Noelle?" she whispers. Coming close.

"Yes." Even as a voice says, No. You wouldn't. You shouldn't.

She looks deep into my eyes and smiles. And inside, I feel myself opening, opening. An electricity singing along my skin. The scar on my forehead tingling beneath her fingertips.

"I fly back home in a couple of days," I say.

"Do you? What a shame." She looks amused. Amused by my feet still walking myself backward, even as I'm so transfixed by her touch, her face. I can't stop staring at her eyes, her cheeks, her forehead, her lips, the fucking glow of her. Glowing just like Mother did. Tears, real tears, gather behind my eyes. She looks tenderly at me.

"I want to show you something."

She leads me away from the tank, and I follow her. I can follow her now. We walk hand in hand toward a small black pool in the corner of the room. She takes a seat on the pool's black marble edge, patting the space next to her. When I sit, she reaches out for my hand. I give it to her and she smiles. That awful symmetry again. She turns my hand, palm up, then lowers it into the black water. All the while looking at me with her cold, knowing eyes. The water is cool, opaque, velvety against my hand.

"What is this?" I ask, my hand in the water. "What are we doing?"

She puts a finger to her lips. Shhh. Her eyes are on my face.

And then I feel something in my palm. Light and slippery as a wish. Almost weightless.

She raises my arm from the pool. And there it is. Beating like a heart in my hand. A small white jellyfish. Translucent as a ghost. A whisper of a creature.

"Look at that," she says. She's smiling widely now. "It found you."

"It found me."

"It loves you."

"It loves me?"

"Can't you tell?"

I look at the creature undulating softly in my palm.

"You're going to go on quite a journey together," she says.

"We are?"

"Oh yes. A marvelous journey. Un voyage merveilleux. I can feel it."

Whenever I hear the word journey, I think of Marva. Her many skin journeys that I follow on her vlogs, step-by-step. Her brightening journey. Her retinoid journey. Her post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation journey. Her skin barrier recovery journey. So many journeys I've been on with her in my bedroom dark. I stare at the tiny white creature in my hand. "What sort of journey?" I ask.

She looks at me like what a question. "The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle."

"Retinol?" I whisper.

"The soul. A journey of the soul, of course."

And the white jellyfish in my palm quivers.