Mirror, mirror on the wall.
And please don't come after me. Be the new center of attention. Be a big success, be beautiful and loved and everything else I wanted to be. I'm over that now. I just want to be invisible. Maybe I'll become a belly dancer in my veils. Become a nun and work in a leper colony where nobody is complete. I'll be an ice hockey goalie and wear a mask. Those big amusement parks will only hire women to wear the cartoon character costumes, since folks don't want to chance a strange molester guy hugging their kid. Maybe I'll be a big cartoon mouse. Or a dog. Or a duck. I don't know, but I'm sure I'll find out. There's no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night, the future just keeps coming at you.
I stroke Shane's pale hand.
I'm giving you my life to prove to myself I can, I really can love somebody. Even when I'm not getting paid, I can give love and happiness and charm. You see, I can handle the baby food and the not talking and being homeless and invisible, but I have to know that I can love somebody. Completely and totally, permanently and without hope of reward, just as an act of will, I will love somebody.
I lean in, as if I could kiss my brother's face.
I leave my purse and any idea of who I am tucked under Shane's hand. And I leave behind the story that I was ever this beautiful, that I could walk into a room deep fried in a tight dress and everybody would turn and look at me. A million reporters would take my picture. And I leave behind the idea that this attention was worth what I did to get it.
What I need is a new story.
What the Rhea sisters did for Brandy Alexander.
What Brandy's been doing for me.
What I need to learn to do for myself. To write my own story.
Let my brother be Shannon McFarland.
I don't need that kind of attention. Not anymore.
"Lip liner!" Sofonda says.
"Lip gloss!" she says.
She says, "We've got a bleeder!"
And Vivienne leans in with a tissue to blot the extra Plumbago off Shane's chin.
Sister Katherine brings me what I asked for, please, and it's the pictures, the eight-by-ten glossies of me in my white sheet. They aren't good or bad, ugly or beautiful. They're just the way I look. The truth. My future. Just regular reality. And I take off my veils, the cut-work and muslin and lace, and leave them for Shane to find at his feet.
I don't need them at this moment, or the next, or the next, forever.
Sofonda sets the make-up with powder and then Shane's gone. My brother, thin and pale, sticks and bird bones and miserable, is gone.
The Rhea sisters slowly peel off their surgical masks.
"Brandy Alexander," says Kitty, "queen supreme."
"Total quality girl," Vivienne says.
"Forever and ever," says Sofonda, "and that's enough."
Completely and totally, permanently and without hope, forever and ever I love Brandy Alexander. And that's enough.