Chapter 6

After Tad goes, taking his music and his beachy scent with him, the place is quiet. Just me on the floor with Tad's beer in my hand, watching the sky darken through Mother's immense windows. Tad offered to stay, but I said, I'm fine, thank you, Tad, and again his name mocked me. I am fine. Really. Just an apartment. Just Mother's apartment. Filled with her furniture, all of it sharp-edged and winking in the light. Shouldn't be afraid, it's silly. If Mother knew I was afraid, she'd laugh and laugh. She'd say, Ridiculous. I stare at the wall of cracked mirrors in their heavy frames. Were there always this many, Mother?

Angelica has disappeared, slithered whitely away. A clock somewhere ticks and ticks. Didn't know Mother had a clock like that. Tick, tick, telling me I should move along. All I've done so far is unpack the box Sylvia gave me from the shop basement. Disappointing. Mostly old dolls—my childhood dolls, I guess. They all looked exactly alike, like Mother, in fact. Pale skin. Blue eyes of glass that stared up at me unblinking. There was an old clock in there too, with a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the face. Funny, I don't remember owning a clock like that. There was a red diary, locked, no key. A picture book of what looked like a Snow White story. The Beautiful Maiden, it was called. Very worn. Spine cracked. I must have loved that story once.

The shoebox was a little curious, I guess. I thought it was just the dolls, the clock, and the books in the box at first, but something told me, Put your hand in deeper. And there was the shoebox at the very bottom. Taped up just like the box itself had been. Taped tighter than the box. Someone had wrapped the tape around and around. I had to take a knife to all sides to get it open. Then what? I held my breath a little. Maybe this would be… something. What was I looking for? But it was nothing, really. Just an old torn poster of Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Some magazine clippings, mostly of Tom Cruise too, it looked like. All of Tom Cruise, it turned out. Each one carefully folded. I stared at page after torn page of his glossy face, the cracked mirrors shining in my eye corners. Dizzy, I felt then. Cold suddenly in the very white room. Who ripped these out? I wondered. But I knew. I knew before I even saw the childish handwriting scrawled across one of the clippings—Tom smiling in his sunglasses in Risky Business. I'm yours, I'd written in tiny red letters. How funny. I'd even drawn a heart, how very funny. Right around Tom's face in red ink. I looked back at the torn Top Gun poster. Half was missing. Kelly McGillis, his co-star, torn out so it was just Tom alone on his motorcycle. I looked at Tom's face, the mirrors nearly blinding me now with the light of the dying sun. His eyes were in shadow, so they looked like black holes. I must have had a crush or something at some point.

Now I stare at the open box brimming with dolls, the clippings, that worn little picture book. Just more shit to pack up, really. Are you moving in or moving out? Tad joked again as he was leaving.

Moving out, Tad. Moving out.

So get going, I tell myself. At least now you have a box. Her books, her clothes, dishes, just fucking pick something. Beer in hand, I wander the apartment, my footsteps clicking along the floor. Belle, Mother would snap, shoes!—but I keep them on. As I go from room to room, my heart sinks like a stone. Because her hobgoblin lawyer was right. Her place is in terrible shape. The more closely I look, the more I see. Cracks in the white walls. Water stains on the ceilings like ink blots. Paint peeling everywhere. In the bathroom, where I hid away yesterday watching Marva, I notice chips in the sink now, decaying grout around the rim. When I pull back the flowery shower curtain, I see the tub's filled with cracks. The shower head yields nothing but a thin stream of rusty water. I try to turn off the tap, but it comes off in my hand. The kitchen is a disaster. Ancient stove, I can't see the numbers around the dials anymore. Fridge that hums, that's the humming noise I was hearing during the memorial. I thought it was Sylvia playing some Gregorian chants. I take a long swig of beer. This is bad. Mother, did you really live like this?

And the jars. Red jars and bottles in every room, how did I not notice them all before? Lining the walls of her bedroom. Cluttering her countertops. She really loved her products, didn't she? Sylvia said. I think of the video, the glowing girl in the bright bathroom, holding a jar up to her face like an apple. Red glass just like this. It feels heavy in my hand. Gold, slanted characters like runes are etched across it. ROUGE, it reads, and nothing else. No ingredients list. No instructions. Oh, I have my secrets, Belle. We all have our beauty secrets, don't we?

I open the jar. More than empty. Like it's been licked clean by the cat. There's a faint scent of ocean and roses that rises up like a ghost.

I look in the cracked mirror. "Mother," I whisper. "What the fuck is all of this?"

Belle, do you ever look in the mirror and hate?she asked me once on the phone.

Hate?I stared at the silhouette of my reflection in the dark. Yes, I thought. Of course. All the fucking time. But I said, Hate what, Mother?

I could picture her sitting alone in the dark like I was, staring at herself in the mirror.

Ce que tu vois, Mother whispered. A crack in her voice. She sounded lost and sad and afraid. What were you afraid of, Mother?

Now in the mirror I see a shimmer of something. A shape. My heart pounds. Oh god, what—but it's just the cat sitting by the front door. Staring at me with her eyes pale and sharp as Mother's. She blinks at me slowly and slinks away.

A pair of red shoes come winking into focus. Shining by the open box behind me.

I turn around and there they are for real. Gleaming between the dolls and the shoebox full of Tom Cruise clippings. Like they were always there. Like they could have come out of the box. Maybe they did and I just didn't notice them in the sea of dolls. Pretty, I think, walking over to them. So very red. Mother's, they have to be. Funny, I don't remember her having a pair like this. And yet there's something familiar about the worn, thin heel, the sharply pointed toe with the feathers, this red web of straps. The clock, that clock I didn't know she had, ticks louder somewhere. Quicker? Maybe quicker, too. Try me, try me, the red shoes seem to say. Almost like they're speaking to me. I shake my head. Mother's shoes would never fit me. I think of her little white feet with their painted red toes. Nothing at all like my freak shows. What are we going to do with you? she used to say when she took me shoe shopping as a teenager. Shaking her head at my huge, misshapen feet in their scuffed black Doc Martens, the only shoes we could find that fit. I don't know, Mother, I said. Put me in a sack. Drown me. I'm hopeless. And she'd frown as I smiled.

Holding the shoes, I feel a strange charge in my hands. Light as feathers. Giving off a faint scent of flesh, her flesh. I close my eyes. It's funny how Mother's shoes make me feel silly, sort of ashamed. Like a stupid, sad child again. Just then a memory hits like a cold, crashing wave. My childish feet in red shoes. I'm looking in a mirror, but it isn't myself I see there. Someone else is in the glass. A man. I can't see his face, but I feel him smiling at me. I'm smiling too. Then all goes black.

I open my eyes. I'm a grown woman again. Lying on the floor of my dead mother's living room. Anjelica's licking my face with her rough little tongue. I thought she hated me. Maybe she still does and just wants food.

It's dark now. No more blood-colored sun. No more blackening trees. Now a moon shines whitely through the curtains, which lift in the black breeze. How did it become night? Clock's ticking quick. Fridge humming its Gregorian chant. I'm wearing one of Mother's dresses, I see. The silk silver one that falls like such luxe water. Pretty, but how did that happen? When did I take off my plain black dress and put this one on? The red shoes are on my feet now too, gleaming in the dark. I was about to try them on when I went down some sort of memory hole. When something unbidden just floated up and sucked me in. What? Can't remember now. I stare at the red shoes shining on my feet. They fit, look at that. Suddenly I feel like going for a walk, why not? On a night like this, so black and windy and warm, why not? The air is calling to me. There's a song in it, it sounds like. I feed the cat, then hurry out the door. I'll pack later.

Outside, the roses are swaying in the breeze. So alive, they seem to be breathing, like each one has a little gulping mouth. Can't see the ocean, but I can hear it. The roar, the crash against the sharp black rocks. So long as I can't see the water, it's pleasant, the sound. A kind of music. I'm walking the coastline, snaking right along the winding path beside the beach, the same one I used to walk late at night as a teenager. It's black as pitch but I'm not afraid, just like I wasn't afraid then. Back then, we lived farther from the beach, but I'd come here all the time. Knew every turn and groove in the path. Still do, it seems. I guess feet never forget.

I'm walking quickly like I'm late for something, like I'm going somewhere. Funny, because how could I be late for anything? How could I be going anywhere? Nowhere to go at this hour. Just a night stroll I'm taking along the beach in these pretty red shoes. So surprisingly comfortable, despite the high, narrow heel. Feels like I'm wearing nothing at all, really, like I'm floating. And yet there's a pull to my steps as though something's carrying me. The click of my heels gets faster, though in my mind I'm walking slowly. Maybe just the wind. Yes. That has to be all it is.

I've reached the other side of the cove now. Where the seals congregate on the rocks and stink up the air. I used to visit them, talk to them. Funny to think of myself back then. Lonely teen in black with buds in her ears blasting dark wave. Sunglasses forever over my eyes, even at night just like Corey Hart. Speaking to seals only. Whispering the secrets of my heart to them like they actually heard me. Wearing dresses that hurt Mother's eyes, they were so black and mournful. Are you in mourning? she'd ask me.

Always, I'd say.

The path beneath my feet is dirt now, not sidewalk. I'm on the dirt path that rims the cliff; I'm on the cliff's edge. On one side of me are trees, shrubs, tall grass, flowers; on the other side, nothing at all. Just air, and at the very bottom, the dark, whirling ocean. Where Mother must have walked, must have fallen. Don't think about Mother falling. Keep walking. One foot in front of the other, though it's so dark, I can't see a thing. Just black. And yet my feet still seem to know where to go. My feet, or my shoes?

As I turn a corner, something lights up the dark. Houses on the side of the cliff, nested deep into the greenery. Not houses, mansions, really. Glowing with money and architecture. I used to wonder about these places. Who was rich enough to live here? There's a house I've never seen before on the very edge of the cliff. All curved glass and extravagant geometry. Black polished concrete that shines in the dark. What I really notice is the red light. Glowing from the dramatically contoured floor-to-ceiling windows. I'm heading for this house like I was heading there all along. A soft, airy music's coming from the place like an exhalation. Filling my ears so pleasantly. I'm smiling in the dark in my red shoes as I walk toward the light and the sound.

As I approach the iron gates, they open, look at that. Like they knew I was coming. Knew I would walk the tree-lined path to this front door. The eucalyptus trees look red from the red light of the house. There are roses growing on either side of the path, tall and red too. So pretty. What a very impressive structure this is all around, I think. Which is a strange thought. Why am I walking toward this opulent monstrosity gleaming redly in the dark with such a smile? But even as I wonder, I walk on. Just a night stroll to a strange house I've never seen before. Just walking right up to its sleek front doors of obsidian glass. LA MAISON DE MéDUSE, it says on a small black plaque beside the doors in red looping letters. Méduse. Huh. Next to it there's a symbol. Some kind of squid, it looks like. Or maybe a flower?

The doors open. A woman's standing there in the doorway, smiling like she expected me. "Bonsoir," she says.

Bonsoir?But I say "Bonsoir" to her too.

She's beautiful in a way that destroys me a little. It's a lot of things about her. Little things that add up. Hair sheen. Eye gleam. Mostly it's her skin. Not a hair or a line or a blemish. Like actual glass. So very white. She glows, moonlike, Mother-like, against the tall black doors. Wearing a long silver dress like I am, though hers falls like a literal dream. Eyes clouded in glittering smoke. The reddest, ripest lips I've ever seen. She could be wearing a very rich lipstick. She could have eaten a bowl of overripe cherries.

"Bonsoir et bienvenue," she says, in a voice that could only come from that kind of mouth. Impeccable accent. I'm wondering if she's actually French when she says, "You're just in time." American accent. Equally flawless.

"Just in time," I hear myself repeat. "Oh good." In time for what exactly? But something about how this woman's smiling at me keeps my mouth shut tight. I smile too, like I know what she's talking about.

She looks me up and down, her eyes lingering on my face. I become painfully aware of my own abominations, my many layers of corrective, protective product suddenly sitting so heavily on my skin. Yet she looks delighted by what she sees. When her eyes meet mine again, she beams brightly. Opens the door wider and says, "Entrée."

And I go right in, don't I?

Is there a moment where I wonder if I should enter this stranger's house on the edge of the cliff? No. When I look back at this moment, this moment of going through the spiked black gates, down the path flanked by roses, through the wide-open doors of La Maison de Méduse, everything awash in red light, I'll remember no hesitation at all.