"Okay, okay. I get it—what if I didn't want to look like me anymore?”
Kaye paused for a moment, looking up from smudging her eyelid. She heard a longing in his voice that troubled her. She wondered what he would do with a power like hers, wondered if he wondered about it.
Ellen came out of the bathroom with a comb, scissors, a small set of clippers, and a water-stained paper box. "How about some hair dye? I found a box that Robert was going to use before he decided to bleach. Black. Would look cute on you.”
"Who's Robert?" Kaye asked.
Corny glanced at his reflection in the greasy door of the microwave. He turned his face to the side. "I guess I couldn't look any worse.”
Ellen blew out a thin stream of blue smoke, tapped off the ash, and set her cigarette firmly on her lip. "Okay, sit on the chair.”
Corny sat down awkwardly. Kaye pulled herself up onto the counter and finished off her mother's beer. Ellen handed her the cord for the clippers.
"Plug that in, sweetheart." Draping a bleach-stained towel around Corny's shoulders, Ellen began to buzz off the back of his hair. "Better already.”
"Hey, Mom," Kaye said. "Can I ask you something?”
"Must be bad," Ellen said.
"Why do you say that?”
"Well, you don't usually call me 'Mom.'" She abandoned the clippers, took a deep drag on her cigarette, and started chopping at the top of Corny's hair with manicuring scissors. "Go ahead. You can ask me anything, kiddo.”
The smoke burned Kaye's eyes. "Have you ever thought about me not being your daughter? Like if I was switched at birth." As the words came out of her mouth, her hand came up involuntarily, fingers curving as if she could snatch the words out of the air.
"Wow. Weird question.”
Kaye said nothing. She just waited. She wasn't sure she could bring herself to say anything else.
"It's funny. There was this one time." Running her fingers through Corny's hair, Ellen found stray pieces and cut them. "God, you were not even two, toddling around. I'd stacked up a bunch of books on a chair so you could sit at the table at your grandmother's house. It wasn't real safe, but I wasn't real smart, either. Anyway, I go out to the kitchen, and when I come back, you're on the floor and the pile of books is all over the place. I mean, clearly you fell and clearly I am a terrible mother. But you're not crying. Instead, you have one of the books open and you're reading out of it—clear as a bell. And I thought: My child is a genius. And then I thought: This is not my child.”
"Huh," Kaye said.
"And you were so honest—nothing like me as a kid. You'd bend the truth, sure, but you'd never outright lie.”
My life is a lie. It was such a relief not to say it. It was a relief to just let the moments slide by until the subject got changed and the awful galloping of her heart slowed again.
"So did you ever imagine what things would be like if you were secretly adopted?" Ellen asked.
Kaye froze.
Ellen mixed the black dye in a chipped cereal bowl with a round metal spoon.
"When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I was a gypsy baby and the gypsies would come back for me and I'd have my own caravan and I'd tell people their fortunes.”
"If you weren't my mother, who would give my friends fabulous makeovers?" As she said the words, Kaye knew she was a coward. No, not a coward. She was greedy. She was that cuckoo chick unwilling to give up the comforts of a stolen nest.
It was amazing how deceptive she could be without lying outright.
Corny reached up to touch the sudden spiky shortness of his hair. "I used to pretend that I was from another dimension. You know, like the mirror-universe Spock with the goatee. I figured, in that other dimension my mom was really the monarch of a vast empire or a wizard in exile or something. The downside was that she probably had a goatee.”
Kaye snickered. The cigarette smoke combined with the chemical stink of the hair dye turned her laughter to choking.
Ellen spooned a glop of black goop onto Corny's head and smeared it with a comb. Flecks stained the back of her hand, and her bracelets jangled together.
Dizzily, Kaye crossed the tiny room and pushed open the window. She could hear the paint crack as it came unstuck. Gulping in lungfuls of cold air, she looked out at the street. Her eyes stung.
"It's just going to be another minute," Ellen said. "Then I'll plastic-wrap his head and toss this shit out.”
Kaye nodded, although she wasn't sure her mother was looking. Out on the street, small clusters of people stood together in the snowy landscape, their breath spiraling up like smoke.
The streetlight reflected off strands of long pale hair and for a moment, before one of the figures turned, she thought of Roiben. It wasn't him, of course, but she had to stop herself from calling down anyway.
"Honey, I'm done here," Ellen said. "Look around and see if you can find this boy another shirt. I ruined his, and anyway, he's too skinny to be drowning in that thing.”
Kaye turned. Corny's neck was red and splotchy. "Mom, you're embarrassing him!”
"If this was a television show, I would be the one doing the makeovers," Corny said darkly.
Ellen put out her cigarette on a plate. "God help us.”
Kaye rummaged around in the stacks of clothing until she came up with a dark brown T-shirt with the black silhouette of a man riding a rabbit and holding a lance.
She held it up for Corny's inspection. He laughed nervously. "It looks tight.”
Ellen shrugged. "It's from a book signing at a bar. Kelly something. Chain? Kelly Chain? It'll look good on you. Your jeans are okay and so's the jacket, but those sneakers aren't working. Double up your socks and you can wear Trent's Chucks. I think he left a pair over by the closet.”
Corny glanced up at Kaye. Black dye ran in rivulets down the back of his neck, staining the collar of his T-shirt. "I'm going to retreat to the bathroom now.”
As the water in the shower started, filling the tiny apartment with vapor, Ellen sat down on the bed. "While we're primping, how about you do my eyes? I can't manage that smoky thing you do.”
Kaye smiled. "Sure.”
Ellen lay back on the bed, while Kaye leaned over, carefully painting her mother's lids in shining silver, shadowing and outlining the edge of her lashes in black. This close, Kaye saw the gentle crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes, the enlarged pores in her nose, the slight purplish discoloration below her lashes. When she brushed her mother's hair out of the way, the shimmer of some strands revealed where the red dye covered gray. Kaye's fingers shook.
Mortal. This is what it means to be mortal.
"I think I'm done," Kaye said.
Ellen pushed herself into a sitting position and kissed Kaye on the cheek. Kaye could smell the cigarettes on her mother's breath, could smell the decay of teeth and the faint traces of sugary gum. "Thank you, baby. You're a real lifesaver.”I'm going to tell her, Kaye told herself. I'm going to tell her tonight.
Corny emerged from the bathroom in a gust of steam. It was odd to see him in the new clothes with the shorter and darker hair. It shouldn't have made as much of a difference as it did, but the hair made his eyes shine and the tight shirt turned his scrawniness into slenderness.
"You look good," Kaye said.
He plucked self-consciously at the fabric and rubbed at his neck as though he could feel the stain of the dye.
"What do you think?" Ellen asked.
Corny looked back toward the bathroom, as though remembering his reflection. "It's like I'm hiding in my own skin."
Chapter 4
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
—Pablo Neruda, "Love Sonnet XI"
The ride on the subway was awful. Kaye felt the iron all around her, felt the weight of it and the stink pressing down, suffocating her. She gripped the aluminum pole and tried not to breathe.
"You look kind of pale," Corny said as they climbed the concrete steps to the street.
She could feel her glamour being eaten away, weakening with each moment.
"Why don't you kids walk around awhile?" Ellen's lips shone with gloss and her hair was sprayed so thickly that it didn't move when the breeze hit it. "It'd be boring watching us set up.”
Kaye nodded. "Also, if I would just see how cool New York was, I would move up here instead of wasting my time cooling my heels in Jersey?”
Ellen smiled. "And that.”
Kaye and Corny walked a little ways through the streets on the edge of the West Village. They passed clothing shops displaying ruffled hats and plaid shorts, tiny record stores promising imports, and a fetish shop featuring a vinyl ball/gag mask with cat ears against a backdrop of holiday red-and-white velvet. A guy in a torn army jacket stood near a corner playing Christmas carols on a nose flute.
"Hey," Corny said. "Coffee shop. We can sit down and warm up.”
They walked up the stairs and through the gold-stenciled door.
Café des Artistes was a series of rooms leading one into another through large passageways. Kaye walked past the counter and through a doorway into a chamber that featured a mantel covered in melted white candles, like a monstrous sand castle eroded by waves. Dimly lit by black chandeliers that hung from a black tin ceiling and reflected in the glass of the aged prints and gilt mirrors, the rooms felt shadowy and cool. A faint and reassuring smell of tea and coffee in the air made her sigh.
They sat down in ornate gilt armchairs, worn so that white molded plastic showed on the hand rests. Corny picked at a golden swirl, and a small piece chipped off with his fingernail. Kaye idly opened the drawer of the small cream-colored table in front of her. Inside, she was surprised to find a collection of paper—notes, postcards, letters.
A waitress walked over and Kaye pushed the drawer shut. The woman's hair was blond on top and a glossy black underneath. "What can I get you?”
Corny picked up a menu off the middle of the table and read from it, as though he were picking things at random. "An omelet with green peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms, a cheese plate, and a cup of coffee.”
"Coffee for me, too." Kaye grabbed the paper out of his hands and ordered the first thing she saw. "And a piece of lemon pie.”
"Real well-balanced diet," Corny said. "Sugar and caffeine.”
"There might be meringue," Kaye said. "That's eggs. Protein.”
He rolled his eyes.
As the waitress walked away, Kaye opened the drawer again and picked through the cards.
"Look at these." Girlish handwriting described a trip to Italy: I couldn't stop thinking about Lawrence's prediction that I would meet someone in Rome. A card with a hastily drawn mug in one corner had words written in blocky print with a pencil: I spit into my coffee and then switched with Laura's boyfriend so that he would taste me in his mouth. Kaye read the words out loud and then asked, "Where do you think these came from?”
"Garage sales?" Corny said. "Or maybe these are notes people never mailed anywhere. You know, like if you want to write something down, but don't want to let the person it was intended for read it. You leave it here.”
"Let's leave something," Kaye said. She fumbled with her bag and pulled out two scraps of paper and an eyeliner pencil. "Be careful. It's soft and it smears.”
"So, what, you want me to write down a secret? Like, how about I always wanted a comic book villain for a boyfriend, and after Nephamael, I'm not sure a nice guy is ever going to do it for me.”
A couple at another table looked up as though they had caught a few of the words, but not enough to make any sense of what he'd said.
Kaye rolled her eyes. "Yeah, why would one sadistic lunatic put you off sadistic lunatics in general?”
Smirking, Corny took the piece of paper and wrote on it, pressing hard enough that the letters were fat and smudgy. He spun the slip in her direction. "'Cause I know you're going to read it anyway.”
"I won't if you say not to.”
"Just read it.”
Kaye picked up the paper and saw the words: I would do anything not to be human.
She took the eye pencil and wrote hers: I stole someone else's life. She turned it toward Corny.
He slid them both into the drawer without comment. The waitress came with silverware, coffee, and cream. Kaye busied herself making her coffee as light and sweet as she could.
"You thinking about the quest?" Corny asked.
She'd been thinking about what he'd written, but she said, "I just wish I could talk to Roiben one more time. Just hear him say that he doesn't want me. It feels like I got broken up with in a dream.”
"You could send him a letter or something, couldn't you? That's not technically seeing him.”
"Sure," Kaye said. "If he got mail that wasn't, like, acorn-based.”
"There's stuff you still don't understand about faerie customs. Everything that happened—it might not mean what you think it means.”
Kaye shook her head, shaking off Corny's words. "Maybe it's good that we split up. I mean, as boyfriends go, he was always busy working. Running an evil court takes a lot of time.”
"And he's too old for you," Corny said.
"And moping around all the time," Kaye said. "Too emo.”
"No car, either. What's the point of an older boyfriend with no car?”