WHITE RABBIT

Vanessa is cruising down the M1 with her two children Bunny and Alice. These are not their real names but Bunny no longer responds to her real name of Alice, insisting instead on Bunny, having renamed her sister Alice, who then stopped responding to her real name. It is discombobulating and mildly concerning, but Vanessa does not have the time nor the will to study the psychology of the situation. 

White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane is playing. The girls will not listen to anything else on their drives to or from school, nor today on their way to their friend’s birthday party, nor any other day. Even after these many years, the song continues to ignite the same reckless abandon in Vanessa as when she first heard it aired on the radio all those years ago. She was seventeen and had just passed her driving test. Her friend Karen was waxing her legs in the passenger seat as she swigged a bottle of Babycham, which moments later would be regurgitated into the glove compartment of Vanessa’s father’s Ford Fiesta. She would never quite manage to get rid of the smell. 

You are someone else right now, not a mum, or a wife, or an employee, Vanessa iterates to herself with the grim motivation of a coach preparing a sportsman for a fight; you are neither old, nor young, only someone who still does not know the lyrics to a song you’ve been singing for years. In the distance, the chime of an ice-cream van echoes with the distant incongruity of a memory. 

She checks herself in the rearview mirror. She does not recognise herself. What little make-up she has applied has been displaced to her under-eyes. Bunny and Alice watch her from the backseat with circumspect precision. They are waiting for her to do something drastic, something cataclysmic. Alice put your seat-belt on! Vanessa calls, regretting the wavering in her voice, as she reaches to buckle her daughter’s belt whilst commandeering the wheel one-handed. As she does so, Alice’s carton of Ribena spills across her cleavage, forming a dilating puddle on her white blouse. She stretches the fabric to make sense of the giant purple stain, realising then that her shirt is already stained with something else. That she has only stained a stain with a slightly larger, more noticeable stain. 

She reaches into the airbag compartment for some wipes. They have dried out. She spits on a wipe and smears it across her chest which only spreads the stain further. She sees a sign for The Chrysalis– The second largest shopping mall in the country. It has long been considered a semi-dead mall, surviving on a life-support of promotions and one time only offers that are not really offers nor one-time only. She knows that she should not have worn white. Wearing white is tantamount to suicide. She is going in to buy a new blouse. She takes the first turn off the motorway. Mummy’s going to buy a new blouse because her blouse is dirty. Can’t you wash it? No mummy can’t wash it, have you seen it? It’s stained; defiled, disgraced. 

It was your fault! The older child accuses Vanessa. You spilt the Ribena, the younger chimes in. The venom in their accusations snags a surprising nerve; as if her children, chubby-faced and michelin bodied, now wield pitchforks in place of dummies. With a violent jerk of the wrist, she jacks up the volume, feeling a hit of freedom like how she imagines shooting heroin might feel or fucking someone with a criminal record. Nothing too morally reprehensible, perhaps burglary of a trust fund kid or something like that. She drums the wheel with one hand, feeling the torrid motorway breeze resuscitating her thinning hair, turning it static. Mummy your hair! Look at Mummy’s hair! Alice laughs (the real Alice) with animal rapture. 

It has been a source of stubborn pride for Vanessa that since its inauguration five years ago, she has never visited The Chrysalis, not on its opening day nor its anniversary nor on any other day. The idea that you can find everything you could possibly need within a ton of metal and glass has remained a source of impregnable existential anxiety. No, I can safely say that I have never been to The Chrysalis, she assures herself, and only now am I going because it is absolutely necessary. One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. Today you will be the bigger woman, you will park your car and go in and buy the blouse and then you’ll go to the party. 

Vanessa parks the car. She promises the girls that she will be five minutes and no longer- in and out. But they do not appear too perturbed to see the back of her. They will only stay if she keeps White Rabbit playing for them. Goodbye Vanessa, Bunny says. Goodbye Nessa, Alice repeats, with desultory resignation, as if they are bidding her farewell forever. We will work on that too, Vanessa says, when I get back, this whole not calling me mum thing, though what’s the problem, really? Mum is so impersonal, there are billions of them out there, and before that too; far fewer Vanessas. She blows a kiss through the slice of window she has left open. Because though it is only 14 degrees, she has read far too many news stories about mothers shamed after their children are found suffocated in the backseat. 

She enters the mall through a set of swinging glass doors headed with a sign that says ‘Entrance’. An advert with a famous actress with her mouth pulled open seductively is pasted across the window. A sales clerk, her face pristinely arranged in tones of beige, greets Vanessa. Her smile is both magnanimous and manicured in equal measure; it has all the abundance of empty calories, all sweetness but no sooner will Vanessa find herself hungry again. Yet, in spite of herself, she is blushing. She cannot help but eavesdrop on the slightly fluffier version of the greeting that the clerk has perfected for the younger woman behind her and feels envious at the buoyancy of it. 

A cream marble floor unfurls for metres ahead for as long as the eye can see, or at least her own, - 0.5 in the left and -0.75 in the right. No sooner has her foot crossed the precipice than she wonders if she has locked the car. She turns back, disappointed that the smoothness of her interaction with the lady who greeted her will be blighted by a second encounter. She notices that in a smaller font on the door headed with Entrance, is written: Entry only. 

Within the marble desert which forks into several near identical avenues, she is welcomed by an orgy of smells; perfumes, soaps and manufacturing materials. Beneath it lingers another musk, ineffable and faintly of urine, like wilting flowers. Luminescent white lights strobe the ceilings, anchored by department stores named eponymously after co-founders with names like Honey & Taylor and Emilie & Clark. Overhead, a tune plays almost inaudibly, a tune that evades Vanessa the moment she leans her ear into it. She plays eenie, meenie, miney, mo to select the path, only to ignore it and turn left. In the distance, the determined clicking of heels echoes against the marble, intensifying until a pair of bony ankles turns the corner. 

Vanessa spots a torso, and then an arm held rigidly outward, from which several luxury shopping bags swing. The shopper is of indeterminate age, her eyes shaded by an oversized pair of Versace sunglasses. She strides towards Vanessa purposefully, but vacantly as if her limbs are made of metal with one speed setting. Though she is not young, her skin is so pallid and translucent as to form a taut sheet over her bones. She is so close now, that Vanessa wonders if she will walk right into her, that perhaps she is blind. At the last second, Vanessa moves so that the woman can pass. In the parted air, the stench of perfume remains, underscored by a sweetish musk like rotting meat. 

Ma’am would you like to try a sample of our To-die-for peanut-butter cinnamon swirl? A chubby cook with stumpy legs and an almost-moustache, suspends a pair of silver tongs over a cinnabon dissected into bite-sized morsels. No thank you, I’m just looking for the Exit– Here, he insists, try that. Tell me what you think, his lip curled with an erotic antagonism–I dare you. Vanessa swallows the deadly peanut butter cinnamon concoction. And the caramel dream? she asks, adjusting her voice to contain her zeal. The man places the dream on her tongue. They have passed formalities, passed first base. She groans. He laughs. She watches the fat beneath his apron rippling, his belly button resembling a wide smiley face. 

What about that one, no, yes, that one. This is our cinnababy. Cina-what? She’s laughing hysterically now, her mouth coated in a viscid layer of sugar and butter, her own saliva having been washed away by a tide of chemicals and trans fats. He’s laughing too. Vanessa wants to kiss him, wants to kiss his belly button shaped like a smiley face. To reach her tongue into it. Vanessa leaves armed with a box of 12 cinnabons in every different flavour. As she chews on the final morsel, she hears a crack, spitting out a nugget of silver followed by a ribbon of blood. Automatically, her tongue slips into the jellied cavity. 

Hi Madame, can I tempt you with our hand-crafted patchouli and lavender vanishing cream? Vanessa shakes her head. She has never been Madame before. Mummy yes, Vanessa yes, but not Madame. No, I’m actually looking for a dentist, believe it or not. My filling– just try a wee bit, the girl says. Vanishing cream? So what will it take, one scrub and poof I turn to smoke? Not quite, the sales clerk concedes, but it is self-preserving. Vanessa shakes her head again, no thank you. I will take nothing short of vanishing into thin air. But her palm is already sandwiched between the commanding hands of the beautician who begins lathering her wrists, then her palms, the cream filling the gaps between fingers. Vanessa can hear it squelch and feels minutely embarrassed at the fallibility of her body to human sounds. Her ring falls to the floor, chiming sonorously against the cream tiles. She reaches down to collect it. The clerk intervenes, glancing at the purple stain across Vanessa’s breasts. Vanessa knows she has seen it, and she knows Vanessa knows. Don’t worry she reassures her, just relax. 

Vanessa wonders if the beautician thinks it is wine, but by now she is reclining further and further in a chair, her eyelids heavy and pink. The clerk works on Vanessa’s face, her temples–the stretch of pallid skin in which her angry head-vein squiggles like a determined brook. This will make you ten years younger. She’s working her way around– her chin, her cheekbones. Beneath this stranger’s fingers, Vanessa’s face feels foreign to herself; she’s starting me from scratch, Vanessa thinks, sculpting me anew. 

She wakes to a card machine suspended from the end of a smooth porcelain wrist. Would you like to add a gratuity, if so how much? Jesus, the children–. What time is it? It’s 12:23. How long was I out? You weren’t out. You were telling us about your bunnies, Alice and Alice, they sound like real characters, she giggles. My bunnies? No, my children, my children Bunny and Alice. And no, those are not their real names. Well, one is– 

Vanessa taps her card. The green signal button beeps: your payment has been approved. Vanessa cannot help but smile, as if this notification had been personally gratifying, a validation of her character, of the magnanimity of her bank account to whatever unknown quantity has been displaced to the girl’s dexterous fingers and then to her own face. The girl hands Vanessa a small business card, wrapping her hand around it like an envelope. If you’re not happy with anything, anything, then feel free to give us a call. While I’m here, do you know where I can find the exit? 

The children. Gosh, my little bunnies. Excuse me, Sir, Sir! Do you happen to know where the exit is? Well that’s just plain rude. A tall man with silver hair strides past Vanessa with a similarly somnambulant air to the woman with the Versace sunglasses. His arms are held rigidly before him, with several bags suspended from his limp wrists as if the luxurious fabrics were guiding him and not his own body. The click of his soles reverberates across the marble floor, up to the ceilings, which, in the vast desert of the mall, chimes with a funereal echo. She feels she is the Greek legend Ariadne, ordained to solve an unsolvable physical maze by all possible means. She cannot remember how the tale ends. 

Aha! Cinnabon. Vanessa returns to the shop, grinning fanatically at the assistant. Hi ma’am, can I offer you–You served me earlier. I don't think so ma’am, I'd remember a face like that. No, you did. You let me try the caramel special…anyway, can you tell me where the exit is? Yes, just that way, straight ahead. You can’t miss it. 

Vanessa looks down, horrified to find a thin white band on her ring finger. While she was busy preserving her face, she completely forgot to retrieve her wedding ring, which is now gathering dust on an anonymous marble tile. She marches ahead, keep your eyes on the game, Ness. Keep walking, the mall can’t be that big. Someone had to build it, human hands, people. If I just follow this path… 

She finally finds the emergency dental treatment; a big luminous cartoon tooth with a smiley face. A lady appears in white. She tells Vanessa she has a lovely smile. 

Like Julia Roberts. 

Really? Vanessa blushes, I suppose she does have a lovely smile, Julia Roberts. The only trouble is–oh nevermind. 

Go on. 

Julia Roberts does not have fluorosis. 

Fluorosis? 

Stains. 

You drink black coffee? Smoke? Enjoy a tipple of merlot from time to time? Well… 

There is a solution– 

There is? 

A new procedure… 

Vanessa’s eyes light up. 

An excavation of the dental site… 

An excavation? 

We remove all your teeth. 

All of them? 

With this package, a whole new set of teeth can grow back of their own accord, milky white and just like new. Vanessa does not move, does not say a word. She repeats ‘just like new’ in her head a few times, the repetition alone has an analgesic property. The stains will be gone, the dentist tells her. Stains– the disdain, the defilement, the disgrace. A machine starts up. She tips her head back. Her feet dangle inches from the ground, which suddenly appears so far away. The whirring fills her ears. Vanessa opens her eyes to a ping. It is not a good ping, if it had a colour it would be red. She receives a notification from her mobile phone. She has entered an overdraft and must pay into her bank account within the hour to avoid facing a penalty. She feels dizzy again. She can think very little, only that she feels a tugging inside her– hunger, or sleepiness, or thirst, or all of them at once? She needs something, but she cannot put her finger on it. She is looking for something, only she has forgotten what. 

She cannot believe her eyes. The mall had promised everything she could possibly need, yet above and beyond that, here it is, in vivid red letters. EXIT. She takes one lunge towards it, her mind as unadulterated as a hard drive wiped clean, her skin as supple as a teenager's. Neil Armstrong’s famous words echo in her silly head. 

I've been looking for this all afternoon, Vanessa pants. 

But it is exactly the same door you entered through, the sales clerk says. And sure enough it is, and sure enough this is the same girl, but there is something changed in her, something–can Vanessa say– older, taller? 

If you have a moment, would you mind filling out this survey? 

Vanessa tries to speak but her teeth haven’t come through yet. 

Your first name? 

Nessa, she lisps, her eyes glassy. 

Nessa? That’s a beautiful name. 

And did you manage to find everything you were looking for Nessa? The girl asks, her finger poised over the ipad. She knows how arresting, how massaging it is for the ego to call one by one’s name–deep-tissue, luxurious. Vanessa purrs. She glances down at the many bags in her hand, her reflection in the door. Then at her blouse, at the gaping red stain smeared across her breasts. Come to think of it, Vanessa says, laughing, I’m looking for a white-blouse. Would you be so kind as to point me in the right direction? She smiles, and Vanessa smiles back. And then she turns on her heels and heads back into the Mall. 

by Daniela Esposito

Daniela Esposito has recently completed her studies in Screenwriting in Prague. She has been published in The Pomegranate London, Guts, La Piccioletta Barca, Litro, Mono, Lotus-eater, Bandit Fiction, Dream Noir, Writer's Block magazine and The Stand. She has been long-listed for the Bridport and Brick Lane Short Story Prize.