I
Perfect! The white at the throat set off the purple beneath just right.
And now the face. There. A bit of pastel above the eyes, exactly the shade of the purple below, and again on the cheeks in a softer tone. And then on to the hair.
What to do with the hair? A comb? Too complicated. A rose? Too common. A scarf? Yes. A gold scarf, light as air, and it was, in a word, perfect.
Boy stepped back from the mirror and took in the full vision in the glass. The white scarf at the neck no longer so perfect now, suggesting purity where blood was needed.
“Off with the scarf!” he shouted, twirling from the mirror and coming face to face with the Witch.
“John,” she said, “what in God’s name are you doing?”
Abruptly the glory ended.
“John. What have you done?”
Boy realized then that she hadn’t even seen.
“John,” she said, “what am I going to do? I try to have the better things for us but you go and destroy them. Look how you’ve ripped this.”
“It’s OK,” she said then. “I can fix it.”
And she snatched the purple table cloth from around Boy’s shoulders and walked out of the room
II
Just a bit tighter here, a pin, a bit looser there, a pin, and it would have to do. Not quite what he’d had in mind, but there was little time and much to do.
Boy stepped back from the mirror and saw that it wouldn’t work. He hadn’t the skill in his hands to create what his mind so clearly saw.
“John. Take off that dress.”
The Witch had found her eyes and this eyeful brought a new tone to her voice, a new edge to her words.
“That is my dress, John. Take it off.”
In that moment, Boy knew that Cinderella would surely dance at the Ball. The Witch’s hands could perform miracles. Indeed, the Fairy God Mother she would be.
“All right,” he said. “It’s not right anyway.” He let the dress fall and for a moment stood there with it about his feet, and then he began to cry. At first it was just the tiniest, saddest sound, and then slowly it climbed in volume, and in sadness, until his body was choked and convulsed and broken and so small and so perfect and so Boy that any mother’s heart would have ached but certainly a Fairy God Mother could not stand by unmoved, and she said: “It’s not right for what, John?”
And he knew that he had won. Now there was time and time to spare. Already he was thinking of accessories; and shoes, whatever would he do for shoes, hardly a barefoot princess, he. But stop. The battle had really only just begun, even if the war were already won.
“For Saturday night, Mom.”
“Saturday night?”
“The Halloween party, Mom!” This last, he knew, was the winning card, but still it was hard to play. “Halloween,” so common I find it hard to believe Boy really said it, but say it he did.
III
The mirror stood in the middle of the living room now, Boy in front of it, Mom at his side.
“Almost,” she said. And then she made an adjustment here, a tuck there, and Boy saw his vision taking on the weight of fabric and thread.
“Here”, he said, touching his throat, “something is missing here.” And with that, Mom lifted a flower, red like none that ever soil had seen, and held it just so that Boy’s Adam’s apple disappeared, and he knew he would knock them dead.
Next there was the sewing and the altering and always Boy with Mom, and then, in only two days time, Saturday itself came upon Boy as fear comes upon one who has just glimpsed death.
“I can’t do it.” He didn’t quite say this but he knew it was true. He’d never leave the house. And then She came in, neither Mom nor the Fairy God Mother now but again the witch, the Witch of the Halloween Dress.
She gave Boy a box and Boy slowly opened it. And there they were: the bag, the shoes, the scarf. There they were just as if she’d lifted them from his imagination. She’d taken it all and she had made it real. She’d changed the dream to nightmare.
He’d never go out of the house. He couldn’t stay home.
Boy took the box to his room. He closed the door. He closed his eyes. And soon he rose again. He took back the dream, and the glory, and then he dressed, slowly, as if everything depended upon the mood with which he prepared. And then he began to apply the makeup, for of course there was that in the box too. Slowly he transformed himself from Boy to The Vision. He stood up from the table, blotted his lips and walked out of the room, prepared for everything that daring and courage and plain dumbness and innocence might blow his way.
She was stunned at what she’d helped to conjure up. What had she done? What had he become?
Boy was ready. It was Saturday night and the choice was simple: risk death at the Ball or stay home and die. “A no brainer”, he thought. “Why would one kill oneself with so many murderers about?”
” Let’s go,” he said.
IV
The key turned. The engine started. The car sat still.
“John. You can’t do this.”
“It’s decided already. Let’s go.”
“No, John. I was wrong to help you. It’s crazy.”
“Mom, it’s not crazy. It’s Halloween.”
“What will people say, John? What kind of mother will they think I am? I can’t do it.”
Boy wasn’t at all sure he could do it either, but then when you’ve come so far and invested so much, you can’t just turn back.
“Let’s go, Mom. Please. I don’t want to be the last one there.”
The car started to move.
Boy closed his eyes. He remembered to breathe and it came again. He was ready.
The car stopped. Boy opened his eyes. At first he didn’t recognize the place. They were not at the Ball. No, they had come to the very gates of the Dark Kingdom.
“I’m going to show your father what you’ve done.”
Boy had not expected this, but neither was he entirely unprepared. “You did it, Mom. He’ll say you did it.”
“I don’t care what he says. It’s just not right, John.”
Slowly they walked-though only after Boy had checked his face in the rear view mirror-toward the Great Door of the Castle of the King.
She, Boy hardly knew who she was right then, She pressed the little button and the chimes sounded, not so very unlike those you might hear at any suburban home in any suburb of this great and glorious land, and Boy began to giggle.
And then the door opened and there they stood: Mom (for so she’d become) in terror, Boy giggling, and Dad (for that is who he was) laughing as if he’d just seen the funniest thing he ever saw. And then it stopped. “Josephine, whatever have you done?” And then it started again and then again it stopped, and he turned to John.
“Boy,” he said, “I never thought you had the balls. Go for it!”
And that was it. They never went in. They never went to the dance. That night they just went home.
But Boy had won big!
V
Boy stood in front of the mirror, scrubbed from head to toe, tired, and happy. He looked down and saw on the floor a single purple sequin-perfect in color and shape-deficient only for having detached itself from the bag. Boy knelt, placed the sequin in the palm of his hand, and stared for a moment at the perfect circle. Then he stood, pressed the sequin to his tongue, and then to the center of his forehead.
As Boy watched in the mirror, that sequin let out all manner of things, great and small, and Boy saw for the first time but surely not the last that it was all like this. Illusive, imaginary, unreal. All of it. In this life, he really had nothing to fear.
He looked away from the mirror and then back again. She stood behind him now. They neither said a word.
Perhaps she’d seen it all, too. Perhaps not. But for a moment or an hour there rose up about them something extraordinary and warm. And then it faded and they were just the two of them again.
I don’t know if she began to laugh first or if it was he. But laugh they did. And when that was over, they had herbal tea. And then it was time for bed.