Chapter 19

It's the light that wakes me. Morning light from a window, searing the backs of my eyelids red. What a strange, strange dream I had. Can't remember any of it now, funny. Must be those blanks again. But the feeling of it lingers in my body—like I went deep down into the depths of myself and to wake up was to swim a long way back up to the surface, to come up gasping for air. And now? Now, my heavy lids are still closed, and I hear the sound of chimes like a strange church is nearby. A very pretty mist over my thoughts. As I wander through the mist, I see the reddest roses in vases being arranged by white hands. Their downward-pointing thorns like shining spikes.

When I open my eyes, what greets me is the nicest surprise. Other. Mother, I mean. There's Mother right above me, smiling down at me from heaven. She's lying in a red bed on the ceiling, what are you doing up there, Mother? She looks like she, too, awoke from a very strange dream, like she may have been wandering in some mist of the mind herself. What did you dream about, Mother? Will you tell me?

But Mother just smiles like some things are secrets.

Well, that makes sense. Everything was always a secret with you, wasn't it? Like Beauty. You haven't changed a bit. Must have been a good dream, whatever it was, because you look so unbelievably refreshed. Not like someone dead at all. You're glowing, Mother, truly. It's amazing to see you. Making me a bit emotional in the morning, I have to say. I feel a tear slipping down.

Oh look, Mother, you're crying too. Don't cry, we can't both cry. Look, I'm happy again, okay? See? I'll be happy for you.

Mother smiles again. She's being happy just for me, too.

Oh, I see. Not Mother up there after all. Me. The ceiling is a mirror and that's me looking up at the glass, me smiling down. Must be my bedroom. This is my bed and these are my red silk sheets. For a minute I'm very sad that it's just me alone here. An emptiness opens up that feels bottomless. A blackness sits on my chest, pressing its knee into my throat. But I have to smile, too. Because that means that the face up there is mine, isn't it? My face, not Mother's, yet it looks so like Mother's. My face defying how many natural laws. That Glow, a most heavenly Glow. I'm mesmerized. If only Mother could see.

As I rise from the bed, I notice red jars shining prettily on the insanity. The vanity. My vanity. So very shiny and red, they do catch the eye. Gleaming like sentient apples. Each one full of skin stuff that's mine to plunder. So I'll plunder. Make a real morning of it. In the Journey of Beauty, after all, the ridicule is key. Ritual. Though it's going to be hard to improve upon what I'm seeing up there. If that's me.

Of course that's you, the jars seem to whisper. Who else would it be?

I derange—arrange the jars into exfoliants and mists, into toners and essences, into serums and emulsions, and finally moisturizers and oils, which are the somethings of the skin. Capes? Cardigans? Some sort of outerwear, anyway. The jars have no labels or instructions, which is funny, so I do it by texture or by guess. As I derange, I smile to myself. I keep thinking it's Mother I see there in the insanity mirror, what a strange trick. Wait, not a trick. It is Mother! She's back, oh joke! I mean, joy. Joy. Are you back to do the morning ridicule with me, Mother?

And Mother smiles with her very red lips. Definitely.

Now, we don't need to wash our face, right? At night, one must wash off the day, and in the morning, one must wash off the night—you taught me that. But what if we wake to find the night has already been thoroughly washed away? It appears we were thoroughly washed by the very nice people at Rouge, our friends. Your friends and now my friends, Mother. Our face is so terribly clear this morning. If we washed any more, that would just be going too far. And then what would we even have left of our faces, right?

Mother's nodding with me, yes. What would we even have left?

Let's skip cleansing and go right to acid, my favorite. Mother's favorite too. Acid is like cleansing but better, right, Mother? It goes deep into the ick you can't see with your human eye, and it just melts that away like a witch. Shall we do the one that smells like it'll numb your face or the one that smells like burning? You pick, Mother.

Mother's smile says, Surprise me.

Now normally, if your face was on fire, you'd scream like a witch, wouldn't you? Not me and Mother. We smile while our faces burn, we love it so. Because we know magic is happening, just like in a fairy tale. Transformational. We light a cigarette so as to add to the smoke. First one of the morning is always heaven, isn't it, Mother? Mother actually appears to be in a kind of heaven in the glass. A garden, it looks like. Surrounded by such tall red flowers. Red and spiky with thorns. What garden is that you're in, Mother?

But Mother doesn't want to tell me. Mother just smiles while our faces burn and we smoke our cigarettes in tandem. Another secret she wants to keep. She loves sitting here at the insanity with me—our insanity, I should say—even though I'm on one side of the glass and she's very much on the other side in what looks like another, more beautiful world. Will you tell me about it, Mother? Mother shakes her head no. She can't. She's with me here in the glass, though. She loves this morning's ridicule that we're doing together. It's hers, after all. She taught it to me, didn't you? Well not willingly, never willingly. I learned it by watching you in the mirror. How many nights and how many mornings. How many mirrors and how many years. How many ridicules. Watching just over your shoulder, you were such magic to my eyes then. And I'd say, What's that you're putting on your face, Mother? And you'd look at me in the glass like you're doing right now. Smiling sadly just like that. And remember what you said to me every time? Something about never minding. Something about blood. How mine saves me, I remember that. Can't remember what about my blood saves me. I'm having just a bit of trouble this morning with my memory. Those blanks I seem to get after I see our friends at Rouge. It'll come back to me, I'm sure. Everything will. It'll all come dancing back like a pair of red shoes, right?

Now that we're done burning our faces, what's next? Oh a mist, that's right. How could I forget? A hydrating mist to put out the fire, to set the stage for the rest. A pretty mist like the one swirling in my mind, over my thoughts, where the flowers bloom. Like the mist swirling around in the garden Mother seems to be sitting in right now, there on the other side of the glass. Looking down at our insanity, I see we have many mists to choose from. Here's a spray and here's a spray and here's a spray. Which should we pick? Can't read what's in any of these red bottles. What language is this? Looks pagan. Can you read runes, Mother? I can't, and Mother can't either, because she's shaking her head like I'm shaking mine. Better spray them all to be safe, right? We spray and we spray and we spray and it's lonely. Lovely, I mean. I smell an orchard of chokeberry blossoms, a field of Orpheus flowers, a dead sea of rose milk. That's the lonely thing about a mist, isn't it, Mother? The lovely thing. It's not just a hydrating possibility. It's another world to wander, a bit of dreaming, right? And if you mist just enough, you can even maybe go to that other world. Maybe that's how you got to where you are now. To the other side of the mirror, to that pretty garden. Maybe the lonely mist took you there. Maybe if I spray enough of one or all of these, I can follow.

I spray and I spray and I spray and it's very lonely. All these worlds of hydrating possibility waft around us now, and in your garden the mist grows thick, but I'm still here and you're still there, sadly. It's hard to see you somewhere so pretty where I'm not also. Of course that was always the way with us, wasn't it? You in your world of hydrating possibilities and me in mine is sort of like old times. Yet so close that I can almost touch your hand. But not quite, right? When I reach out my hand now, there's just glass there. Cold under my finger pads. You're reaching out too now, looks like. Just glass for you, too?

Mother smiles with her very red lips. Red as the flowers in the garden growing tall all around her. Are they growing even taller now, Mother? Am I losing you in the mist? Well I'll just keep spraying until I get myself there. I'll spray and I'll spray and I'll—

"Belle?"

Just then our bedroom door opens. And we both scream, Mother and I.

But it's only a beautiful blond man, naked from the waist up. He looks like a merman. What is he doing out of the sea? Interrupting our ridicule, which we don't love. Do we know who he is, Mother? Mother's red lips smile in the glass like she's been eating too many cherries. Of course we do. Our boyfriend, Tad. Your boyfriend or my boyfriend, Mother? Can't remember. But he washes the windows so preternaturally, it's amazing. You'd never know there was a glass there.

"Hi, Tad," we say.

He's dumbstruck, of course. No surprise there. After the transformational magic of acid, after the lonely mist, our Glow is really out of this world. Our Lift upends the natural law. To say nothing of the Brightening.

"Good morning," we say.

Tad says nothing still. Look at him just looking at us like he's afraid. Afraid? That can't be right, can it, Mother? But he really does look afraid. Well, Beauty can be scary sometimes, it can take your breath away. Maybe that's what's happening to Tad. Maybe we need to give him a minute to collect himself. Regain the power of speech. We smile at him. Not too sluttily or anything. We try hard not to be too dazzling. Oh, but we're failing. The Beauty just drips from us like our many hydrating possibilities.

"Jesus Christ," he whispers at last. "What happened to you?"

"Happened?" Like we were in an accident. Well, we were in a kind of accident, weren't we, Mother? In a manner of speaking, sure. Beauty, when you come face-to-face with it like Tad is right now, can be very like a collision. A kind of violence. This must be what Tad is experiencing. Beauty happened, Tad. A Glow. An unfurling of the red flowers of our faces.

"Belle. Please tell me."

Don't tell him, right, Mother? Because Beauty is our little secret, isn't it? So we seal our lips into a smile that says over my dead body. The mystique must be putrefied. Petrified? Preserved. The mystique must be preserved. Far more magical that way.

"Belle, say something, you're scaring me."

Why does he keep only talking to me, Mother, when you're here in the room too? Well, maybe not in the room so much, but in the glass, definitely. Smiling there with your very red lips in your misty garden of tall red flowers. And now look, he's marching over to us, he's sinking to the floor, his head is right between our knees. Jesus, this is quite the scene he's making. But then, that's what Beauty does, right, Mother? It makes people make scenes. It makes crazed fools of those who bear witness.

"What?" we say, so casual-surprised. Like we don't know that we're blowing Tad's mind right now. His mind, his dick, his eyes, his soul, really.

"Belle," he says. "Are you… sick? Did you give blood or something? Do you feel faint?"

Blood? Sick? Faint?Is he insane, Mother? Is he blind? Look at you, smiling in your lonely garden where the mist grows thick. Look at me positively dripping with hydrating possibilities. We're the furthest thing in the world from sick, right? Mother? But Tad turns me away from the mirror so I'm forced to look away from you. Forced to look right into this merman's eyes, so worried yet still serene. He reaches up and feels my forehead with his cold palm, what the hell? Like I'm a child with a fever. I want to shake him off, but his palm, the way it's pressed into my skin, reminds me of something. Another time someone put their hand on my forehead. A long time ago. I think it was you, Mother. Can't remember. I don't know about you, but my memory hasn't been the best lately. Making me emotional again, I admit. Look at me, ruining my misting like this.

"Belle, I'm sorry," Tad says, wiping away my tears tenderly. "I know this is hard. Maybe it's finally hitting you all at once or something. Maybe that's why you look so…" And as he's looking into my eyes, his expression shifts. Moves from concern to something else. He's so taken with us, Mother.

"My god," he whispers, his eyes fixed on us now, deep. Surely he wants to kill us. Kiss us. He's our boyfriend, after all, and that's what a boyfriend does. Who wouldn't want to kill a lonely dream?

"You look just like…" But he's drawing a blank. Looking at my face, words escape him. Which makes sense. I understand all about blanks, about words being slippery.

"I look just like…?" I say, leaning in, waiting.

"Like her," he says at last, looking afraid.

Her?

"Just before," he says. "I can't believe it." He pulls away—why would he pull away, Mother? But Mother's gone. Just me and Tad in the glass now. No misty garden of tall red flowers. No Mother smiling there amid the blooms and thorns. Just Tad standing up. Leaving me sitting here alone at my insanity with my open hands empty.

"I don't know if you should sleep in this room anymore," Tad is saying. "The energies are off. Or maybe it's mold."

Mold?

"I told her a long time ago that it might be. Maybe it's in the walls. Maybe I should call a doctor," he offers. "Get you something to drink."

A doctor. Something to drink. Is he serious? He seems to be. Though maybe playing like I'm sick is his thing, what excites him. Maybe he'd like to save me. "Well, before you do that, you'd better come back and feel my forehead again," I tell him. "I'm feeling a bit faint."

He reaches out tentatively and I pull him down and kill him hard on the lips. Surely this is what he wants. But instead of melting beautifully into my kill like a witch in acid, Tad stiffens. His lips stay very pressed together. "I'm sorry," he says, pulling away, getting up. "It's just… It's too weird, right?"

"Weird?" Why weird? You're my boyfriend. "No. How is it weird?"

"Belle," he says, and something in his voice makes me look away.

I stare down at my hands gripping his. Many mists drip from my face. I hear the sound of chimes in my head, and underneath, a roar like water. Through the roar, Tad's voice comes to me very faintly. Something about rest. How it's all I need right now. Something about juice and how we're out of fruit. He'll just go out now and get some, okay? His hands in mine are lax, patient, waiting for me to let go. Please let me go.

So I open my hands. Watch Tad run out of the room. It's fine, I think. Go ahead. Leave me here, I'm not alone. I'm lovely. I have my mists. Each one a world to wander in. All of them running down my face in rivulets, so very luminous I am. Dripping from my eyes onto my empty hands gripping air. I guess in the end we misted too much, Mother. But Mother's not in the mirror anymore, must remember. Through the mists, I see a gold bracelet winking on the table. Nested between the red jars. Mother, did you leave me a gift? The bracelet itself is so small, so delicate, the gold thin as thread. It could have belonged to a child. Perhaps it did. What a slim little wrist it must have fit once. It has an eye in its center, I see. Strange, slanted. Staring at me like it can see my heart. Have I looked into this eye before? Why do I feel I have?

I slip it on—and look at that, it fits. Makes me smile a little, clears the mists. The chimes quiet, the roar of the ocean in my head goes still. I remember I've got work today. At my shop, of course. That's right. I've got a shop, don't I? How could I forget?