Behold Read online

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she said, and the hurt in her voice—yep, you guessed it—moved me to tears.

  Dr. Xavier’s head ticked to one side, then the other. “No,” he said. He motioned for her to sit in a plush corduroy chair, and she did. I smooshed in beside her. The walls were adorned with pictures of people you see in National Geographic magazines. Women with rings that elongated their necks. Men with large plates through their lower lips. A child with a wood skewer impaled through both cheeks, like some human kabob.

  “My doctor fucked up my operation and left me disfigured.”

  “Disfigured?” Dr. Xavier said. “According to who?”

  If life is theater, I was sitting front row.

  “To me,” Mom said. “I mean, look at me.”

  “I am,” he said, offering his sharp-toothed smile. “Look at me.”

  “Yeah. But you choose to look that way.”

  “Sure, but did you choose to look the way you did before?”

  My mom looked down at her hands, and I looked at them, as well. Saw the deepening wrinkles despite the small fortune she spent on lotions.

  “What bothers you most about your new appearance?” Dr. Xavier said.

  Her breathing was shallow and raspy. Everything inside me was breaking.

  “Is it how people look at you?”

  She nodded. My shirt top was soggy with tears.

  Dr. Xavier stood and retrieved something from a display table near the back of the room. I heard the flick of a lighter and looked up. It was a wide cylindrical candle encased in glass with a network of intricate lines curlicued down its side and traced with what looked like glitter. He lit the wick, and the flame sparkled before taking hold.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and we both did. “Go back in time to before your operation. Picture yourself in a room full of people. Friends, strangers, colleagues. Lovers. You are standing on a pedestal before them—all eyes are on you. What do you see?”

  It takes a moment for these faces to form in my mind. It’s like they’re all gradations of the same person. A crescent of open space separates me from them like a moat protecting a castle. I want them to look at me kindly, but they don’t. I see fear in their eyes. A hint of loathing, jealousy. They are shuffling forward now. Crowding my space. Reaching toward me with greed and lust—it’s all I ever see. Hands grab to rip me down. Off my pedestal. Wanting to lower me to their level or below.

  We both gasped as our eyes sprang open. The candle flame touched the top of the glittering trench etched in wax and began to burn with purple phosphorescence.

  Dr. Xavier had pulled a sketchpad onto his lap and was drawing, his forked tongue curled up in concentration. “The world is a mirror,” he said. “What we see is a reflection of who we are.” He looked up. “So, the question is, what kind of world do you want to see?”

  “It sounds like you’re describing my job,” Mom said. “That’s what I do, alter the way people view the world. I guess I want to see the truth.”

  He began to sketch some more—quick, jagged strokes—then squinting as he shaded. The pencil made a soft scratching sound that mixed with the crackle of the candle as it burned down that phosphorescent line. “Truth, like what? Like, nature? Tell me, what do you feel when you see a flower?” he said. “Not from a florist. Just a plain wildflower, like the ones growing along the side of a road.”

  “I love those,” I said. Mom turned to me and nodded. I saw her eyes flicker to the heavy coating of concealer underneath my jaw.

  “Love them enough to pull over your car and take a closer look?”

  She grabbed my hand and squeezed. Shook her head, no.

  “How about a rose, then? Imagine the biggest, most beautiful rose you’ve ever seen. What does it make you want to do?”

  “Stop and look?” Mom said.

  “More than that. Do you feel the urge to take it home and put it in a vase?”

  We both nodded. Nothing existed beyond this room.

  “To possess it.”

  We nodded again.

  “And we do so without caring what the rose desires. Have you ever wondered why nature created the cactus?” Dr. Xavier said, and we both shook our heads. The candle smelled like autumn spices. “I like to think it’s to grow and protect a flower no one can possess.”

  Dr. Xavier added some final detail to his drawing, then ripped the page from his sketchpad and stuffed it in an envelope he pulled from his desk. Handed it to Mom. I tried to picture what he looked like before he became a lizard and came up blank.

  “Your decision, then. The wildflower, the rose, or the cactus.”

  “Can’t you just fix my overbite?” Mom said, using her hand to cover her crooked smile.

  “Any doctor can do that.” He walked us to the door, and reached for the handle. “Become something more.”

  I hesitated at the threshold. It felt like I’d smoked the world’s largest joint. “What’s with the candle?” I asked.

  Dr. Xavier narrowed his elliptical eyes. “That is an enchantment,” he said, sniffing the air with his two slits. “The markings describe a spell that has been etched into the wax and is cast as it burns.”

  “No way! What kind of spell?”

  “An incantation of transformation,” he said. “Don’t worry, I only conjure positive change.”

  The Tibetan singing bowl chimed as we exited onto the dark alley. A streetwalker glanced at my mom and scurried away.

  We didn’t talk much for a while. Our world had changed and we needed time to acclimate. Mom spent much of this time in her room, contemplating. I spent much of this time going on Tinder dates. Bringing home boys that reeked of bar scum and Axe body spray. I get loud, even with Mom at home. So loud it embarrasses the boys, which is partly why I do it. I want them to feel the shame I think I should feel, but don’t. I just feel frightened, and alone. When they hit me I feel less afraid because the worst is happening and I handle it. With no one to defend me, I survive.

  Mom used a teeny tiny fraction of the large settlement we received from Darkstar Energy to pay for her first surgery. The defense team was quick to offer terms when they heard the call recording. Somehow it still got leaked to CNN. Oops! I hadn’t seen the sketch Dr. Xavier provided, so I had no idea what aesthetic she was going for.

  “The face I was given is gone,” she told me. “Now I want to design my own.”

  Designer face! My mom is rad.

  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared. Watching my mom mutilate herself in this way. Wondering if she had lost her mind. The dorsal fins came first and I thought she was trying to become the Statue of Liberty. A woman of justice, or something. Then we had the talk.

  She asked me to wash my make up off. I guess the Kat Von D concealer wasn’t as effective as I’d thought. I’d pushed one of my Tinder dates too far and he’d blackened my eye and bloodied my nose. Men are so easily upset. It’s no sport at all.

  Mom winced when she saw the extent of my injuries. “What happened, sweetie?”

  “It’s nothing. Honestly, Mom. You know how easily I bruise.” She wasn’t the only one skilled at sculpting the truth.

  Her eyes lingered. “You deserve someone who will treat you with respect.”

  “What, like Dad?”

  “Wait a minute. Your father . . . ” had ditched soon after I was born for the next pretty face. Called me his beautiful angel from afar.

  Here came the tears, right on time. “They’re all the same,” I said.

  I heard Dr. Xavier’s pleasant hiss: The world is a mirror.

  “Or you keep attracting the same kind of guy.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  Mom waited, silently. I never could endure the quiet for long.

  “Nobody gives a shit about who I am,” I said. Where this was coming from, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure I felt this way. “They just like the way I look. And when they can’t have that, it’s like they want to destroy it.” But it was more lik
e I hated the way they looked atme. That ravenous desire. Just cut my neck like the stem of a rose and mount the head in a trophy room, already.

  Mom traced the outline of my Blood Shadow with a finger that’s become tenderer with age. “They hurt you because they feel like you could hurt them, and they’re too weak to take it,” she said. “You’re beautiful. It’s a blessing and a curse. Like the most powerful magnet and the most destructive bomb.”

  Stock in Kleenex must be skyrocketing. “I just wish people were different.”

  What kind of world do you want to see?

  “Sorry, sweetheart. The only person you can change is yourself.”

  She got the spine holes inserted three weeks later. My mom is a cactus and I’m her desert flower.

  I hit the streets. Walking with a rage I didn’t feel. Pinballing off shoulders and getting shoved against walls. I don’t have friends. I make fun of everyone. Have a reputation for being both stuck-up and a slut. I reached the end of the block and turned around. Composed myself, fluffed my hair, smiled. Sunspots flared off ivory teeth. A lane opened down the middle of the sidewalk. I could have powered streetlamps with the wattage of goodwill. This was all too exhausting, too confusing. I veered down a dark alley. Smeared road grime onto my face and into my hair. I don’t want to have to act. I just want to be.

  At first, Mom forgot about the spines and kept pricking her hands when she went to touch her face. Kissing is out of the question. She takes the thorns out at night, but not always. Wakes up with feathers strewn about the room. Now she goes to hospitals and parks and stands or sits in silence as people gaze upon her with hushed reverence. She’s not just my guardian. She’s a breathing work of art.

  I don’t think she knows I saw Dr. Xavier’s sketch. She kept it in her safe, but the combination is my birthdate. He didn’t just draw Mom. He drew me, too. And I traced that drawing onto another sheet of paper I keep in my room. Pull it out and study it while I contemplate his words: The world is a mirror.What do you want to see?

  I wonder if imagining it is enough to effect the transformation. The intricate grooves running down from my eyes, curlicued across my cheeks. The tears glistening as they flow through the channels, like the glittering trenches in Dr. Xavier’s candle, or the spark of a fuse. If beauty is a weapon, like Mom says, should I detonate or disarm?

  THE BAKER OF MILLEPOIX

  Hal Bodner

  “The chateau is very beautiful,” Henri said.

  “You mean that it was beautiful,” Marc laughed. “The Marron family lived here for generations. When my father succumbed to his affection for dark-eyed women and roulette, the government took it away. Now, like so many things the government puts its hand to, it has fallen into ruin.”

  Henri’s eyes roved over the gorse and bramble choked gardens, and the clinging vines patching the walls where the masonry had long ago crumbled away. He rolled over and fetched the second bottle of Merlot to refill their glasses. Though the lawn upon which they had decided to hold their picnic was badly neglected, patches of intrepid wildflowers still managed to poke their faces above the weeds and flaunt their vibrancy in contrast to the muted eiderdowns and taupes that colored most of the shops and houses in the picturesque village of Millepoix below.

  “Still,” Marc added, with melancholy, “my fondest memories are of growing up in this place. One day, I think I should like to be buried here.”

  Three years, seven months and four days later, he was.

  “What a blessing that it was over so quickly,” Louise said. “How fortunate that he did not suffer.”

  As the unchallenged diva of L’opéra Palais de Grandier, Louise Semillion was not expected to remove her attention from such vital matters as selecting her costumes for Strauss’ Elektra. That she devoted herself to the bereavement of Henri, who was not merely her dear friend but her favorite conductor as well, was a mark of her affection for the couple and showed how truly desolated she was by Marc’s death.

  Though Henri knew her words were meant to offer him comfort, they gave him little peace. What difference did it make whether Marc had perished slowly or had been taken tout de suite by a crash of the afternoon train? What matter if his liver had failed him gradually, or if he had succumbed to the poison of a treacherous mushroom? The strike of a serpent. A bolt of lightning from the heavens. A sudden fever, or a thief in the night with a blade. In the end, it amounted to the same thing. Marc was gone; and Henri was alone.

  He took leave from the opéra so he could accompany Marc’s body to the funeral. He remembered the first time they had come to Millepoix, and had stayed for several weeks during the opéra’s summer hiatus. Marc’s excitement at returning to his childhood home had been so infectious that Henri had crept back into the village within the month to surreptitiously take out a mortgage on a small, two-story cottage. It was located just off the Avenue des Grandes Idées which, in reality, was not much grander of an idée than a cobblestone lane lined with a few quaint, tawny-colored shops and cafes. It was full of charm, the cottage was, with poured glass mullions and eaves draped in purple wisteria. The estate agent optimistically described the large puddle on the property as a “pond.” Nonetheless, it was sufficient to support a single family of ducks and Henri was quite taken with it. There was also a hulking vegetable patch that had shamefully been allowed to go fallow, and a cunning little well in the side yard from which, at any moment, a horde of pixies or elves might emerge.

  By the time Henri was ready to hang up his conductor’s baton and retire, the cottage would be paid for. He eagerly anticipated the look of delight on Marc’s face when the surprise was finally revealed but first, there were many repairs and improvements to be made. Before his husband first laid eyes upon it, the cottage must be absolument parfait, just perfect! But he had not reckoned on the age of the place, or the state of its disrepair. Each time he snuck away to check on the progress, the workmen had found something new that must be attended to: a leak in the roof, a small termite infestation, an omission relating to a permis de construire which Henri had overlooked when he decided to have the kitchen updated.

  All of these things conspired against him and time continued to plod along. And now, he would never see the light in his beloved’s eyes when he handed him the key and, for the first time, ushered him across the threshold.

  Once the townspeople discovered that he had married into La Famille Marron, their innate aversion to strangers departed and they went out of their way to be pleasant to him whenever he was in town to argue with the carpenters or to pay the gardeners. After all, for centuries the Marrons had lived in the chateau and provided the village with both protection and profitable custom. This did not, of course, prevent Madam Duran from overcharging when Henri breakfasted at Le Coq Calicot, nor did it stop Monsieur Bouvard from leaving a heavy finger on the scale when he weighed out Henri’s cutlets. But that was simply good business. At least, they assured themselves, they smiled warmly and engaged Henri in conversation while they collected their extra francs and centimes, so that he would feel welcome among them.

  Even when they realized that Henri’s relationship was with Marc Marron, and not la Marron filles, their cordiality did not diminish. Marc’s sister had been known to put on airs, even before she moved away to Roubaix where, it was generally assumed, she sold her favors to unemployed textile workers; the townspeople of Millepoix did not miss her presence at all! Besides, according to Pierre Roubeau, who had in his youth once given up reading law for Lent and never resumed it, the unusual marriage had occurred in England. It had been validated in the eyes of the Church and before God, both of whom apparently looked at things quite differently on the other side of the Channel. The people of Millepoix simply shrugged. After all, they reasoned that no one was truly free of idiosyncrasies—just look at Mademoiselle Cachouète and her cats! Besides, as the local old saying went, “A chestnut is a chestnut is a chestnut” and the Marron family had always been held in high regard in spite of their hereditar
y eccentricities.

  As a result, Marc’s funeral was widely attended, not just by friends and colleagues from the opéra, but by the citizens of Millepoix themselves. Even Étienne the Drunkard was there, clutching a bottle of inexpensive vin ordinaire given to him by Father Phillipe in return for digging the grave and looking forward to a second bottle promised to him if he would forgo relieving his bladder upon the tombstones within sight of the mourners until the eulogy was complete. So many people, in fact, crowded into the churchyard that, but for the somber tones of their costumes and the propensity among the distaff of a certain age for black veils, a passer-by might have mistaken the occasion for a festival.

  For Henri, it was anything but. His heart broke just a little more when the pallbearers lowered the casket into the ground, and the force of his weeping unsettled the sparrows where they nested in the trees above the marble monuments. Afterward, the entire company returned to the cottage. The city folk came to help ease Henri through his grief; the locals brought their curiosity to see what the conductor had done to the interior of the place.

  Most of the changes were met with grudging approval; the modernized loo in the downstairs powder room was particularly admired. The people of Millepoix were even more impressed that Henri—who was after all a relative stranger to the town—had not scrimped on the wake. Though some of the local shopkeepers felt it was a trifle self-centered, perhaps even pretentious, for Henri to have hired a caterer from Paris, no one could complain about the quality of the victuals. Moreover, unlike the parties held by Madam Pamplemousse of the ambitiously named Hôtel Superbe, the food tables were kept piled high and the liquor never ran dry—not that anyone expected generosity from Madam who, it was rumored, was secretly a Protestant.

  For days, the lavishness of the buffet was the talk of the village. Every hors d’oeuvre was reviewed and analyzed. The seasoning of the casseroles was the subject of intense discussion. The tenderness of the roast and the succulence of the fowl were debated with the gravity of Descartes until, by the end of the following week, it was generally acknowledged that Marc Marron’s funeral had been a resounding success, both respectful and generous.