The People in the Mirror (14 page)

  When we got in the hall, I asked Mitch my other burning questions. “How did you know the emerald ring was mine? How did you know it meant so much to me?
How
did you return it, when my mother had the locks replaced the next day, and never left the apartment all day?”

  “Those are the questions I’m about to answer, Nikki.”

   We stepped into his apartment. The foyer was very dark, with heavy damask and velvet draperies over the windows. The place looked like it hadn’t been touched with a new piece of fabric or stick of furniture in over a hundred years.

  “Where’s your Mom?” I whispered, and then wondered why I felt compelled to whisper.

  “She’s taking a nap,” Mitch whispered back. “She’s been doing a lot of sleeping since the police took my uncle away. She’s very depressed. It’s a good thing I came back today. It was weak of me to stay away so long, but I had to sort some things out.”

  “I’m sure your mother understands.”

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I looked around in awe.“Your apartment is
huge
! How many bedrooms are there?”

  “Five,” Mitch answered, taking my hand and leading me down a darkened hall  and through a door.

  Although the room was very dark, I could make out that there was considerable disarray. Things were piled to the ceiling along all four walls and there was barely room for a small single bed with a tumble of bed sheets on it. It smelled... not clean.

  I pulled back into the doorway. I didn’t like the feeling in this horrible, strange, dark place. “Is this your room?”

  Mitch hurriedly pushed me back out into the hall. “Heavens! No. I’m sorry, I should have given you some idea of what I’m doing. This is my uncle’s room. This room is on the other side of your bedroom. My dear Nikki, this is so difficult for me, but it has to be done. I’ve just got to get it over with it if I have any hope of being real true friends with you, because you said we had to be perfectly honest, and until I show you this, I’m not perfectly honest. Please help me do it.”

  Mitch was so obviously miserable that I swallowed my fear and followed him back into his uncle’s bedroom. He led me into his uncle’s closet. My closet was on the other side of the wall. But on the back wall, instead of a mirror like I had in my closet, I saw a huge sheet of strange-looking dark blue glass.  Somehow that shade of blue was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “You’re looking at a two-way mirror fixed into a secret door. That’s the sheet you put over your mirror.”

  “It’s... I... I don’t understand. I mean... I don’t understand.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Mitch pulled me out of the closet and out of the nasty, crowded, dark-looking, dark-feeling, dark-smelling room. Wordlessly, he led me across the apartment and down another dark hall, then opened a door to a flood of rosy light. The room was filled with so much light that I blinked and shielded my eyes.

  “Sorry.” Mitch went to the window and pulled a shade part way so the light was less blinding. I could see Elliott Bay
out the window, a stunning view unlike any we had in our apartment.

  “Oh! How lovely!” I exclaimed. “What an amazing view.”

  Mitch turned to me and smiled. The light played around him, and he fairly glowed. He looked like the Angel Gabriel. “It
is
remarkable.” He looked out the window and I went to stand by him.

  “Our apartment, being on the end across the whole building has windows on three sides of the building,” he said. “Your apartment has east and north exposure, while ours has east, south and west exposure. And to the west, this is the view.” There was something regal, proud and sure about him in this moment. Something that came through the ages in his heritage. He didn’t seem like a teenager at all, he seemed like a young man who was sorting out his destiny.

  I then looked around and saw that I stood in a wonderland of plants. The rosy light poured through a pink, red, yellow and green stained-glass window in the south wall. A narrow antique walnut bed was neatly made and covered with a simple pale green comforter. Built-in bookshelves of dark, rick walnut filled the wall around the bed, and the shelves were crammed with books. In the corner stood a beautiful antique walnut desk, a couple of walnut chairs, and, under the stained glass window sat an antique love seat. An oriental carpet depicting fantastic animals – unicorns, griffins and chimeras covered the hardwood floor.

  “So
this
is your room,” I said, in awe.

  “Yes,” Mitch answered simply.

  I could feel him watching me intently as I walked about, quietly studying everything in the room. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “It’s – grown up. My room is like a kid’s room, with my posters of rock stars. Here you have a poster of Einstein, and these other guys – I don’t even know who they are.”

  “They’re physicists. But I love your room. I love how it shows that you get to be the age you are. I’ve never been able to just be a kid. There’s always this... responsibility.” He turned from me and looked out the window as if he felt responsible for the very view.

  “ Yes,” he went on, “this room reflects what I care about. But I’d like it if I had the opportunity to know enough about contemporary musicians to have a poster of one of them on my wall. Maybe you can help me learn to be younger. I mean, my own age.”

  “I can try. But,” I said, coming back to the situation at hand, “first, please finish telling me about the mirror.”

  Mitch nodded. He lead me to the little love seat, surrounded by gigantic, gorgeous, exotic plants. We sat, and he took my hands in his. He inhaled deeply and held his breath so long, I wondered if he would ever exhale. Finally he let his breath out. “Here’s the question... that... I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time. Have you ever... I mean, has it ever seemed to you that you thought you saw people in your closet mirror?”

  I gasped. “Yes! I have. And it has caused me so many problems. It’s the people in the mirror, when I tried to talk with my mom about it, that made her take me to the counselor. And seeing those people in the mirror made me think that maybe I’m, you know, not quite all right.”

  A pained expression crossed Mitch’s features.

  “That has something to do with what you’re about to tell me, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, Nikki. And here’s the story.”

  I sat perched on the edge of the love seat, in the beautiful glowing rose and yellow light from the stained glass window, while Mitch told me a fantastic story.

  “Over a hundred years ago, my great-great-grandfather built this building. The truth of the matter is that my family amassed a great deal of wealth by theft. This theft was considered two things: one, it was an acceptable way of life, and two, it was considered a mark of intelligence, to be “clever” enough to live off of people who didn’t bother to figure out how not to have their possessions stolen.

  “It’s a mind-set that if something could be taken, it
needed
to be taken. My great- great-grandfather thought it was the height of cleverness to put a two-way mirror in a concealed door into the room that interfaced with his apartment. In other words, your bedroom. Then he would rent that apartment to the wealthiest people he could convince to live there, and go through that door to pilfer things off of them as much as he could get away with. Many an innocent servant and cleaning women have been dismissed for stealing while they lived with or worked for people who rented that apartment.

  “Then my grandfather made a rule that every other tenant in your apartment was not to be plundered. I don’t know if he was trying to be more moral or if he feared that one day someone would get caught – as, indeed, has now happened. Anyway, the Rionews have lived there for sixteen years, and as they are the tenants who are not to be robbed. My uncle has become angrier and more frustrated. In particular, because, as you know, they have some very valuable works of art.

  “When my mother and I came to live with my uncle, she insisted that he stop all illegal activity. She loved my father deeply, intensely, but she never embraced those ‘values’ of his family. She insisted that I be raised in an environment of good and moral behavior. Of late, though, my uncle planned to continue as before. He said that I had grown up enough to make my own decisions regarding which path I would follow. Simply put, to him it’s immoral to be moral. He and my mother began to quarrel quite often.

  “He loved to perpetuate the rumor that the building was haunted. That rumor started after a fire in eighteen ninety-five, where several people lost their lives in the ballroom that used to be on the floor below us, the sixth floor, which has since been turned into apartments.

  “Anyway, getting back to the present, when the Rionews went to Europe my uncle was going to strip the apartment while no one was there, but my mother put her foot down. She reminded him that my father left us well off enough that, living modestly, we don’t have to worry about income. But my uncle becomes miserable if he’s not stealing.

  “My mother argued with him that plundering the Rionews was breaking his father’s decree. Just because the Rionews weren’t here didn’t change the fact that they were the owners of the possessions in the apartment. Then, when you put that sheet over the mirror, my uncle became furious. I had suspected you could see my him and mother arguing in the closet, but my uncle ignored me when I tried to explain that to him.

  “ The Rionews never used your bedroom, but they had put in new, bright, light fixtures a couple years ago. They packed away the original antique fixtures in the attic, saying we could reinstall them if they moved out, but that they wanted safer and brighter lighting in their home. Anyway, the brighter lights changed the whole effect in the closet. In other words, a person could see this side of the two-way mirror, faintly, if the light was on.”

  I took in everything Mitch said, more and more clearly understanding what had been going on since I moved into my room. “And so that’s how you knew the ring was mine, because you saw me holding it and talking with my grandmother.” I looked down, my mind racing, imagining what – or how much – Mitch had seen of me. “So I guess you spied on me too.”

  “No. I didn’t. Like I said, my uncle’s room gives me the creeps, so I stay out of it as much as possible. I just went in there one day to get something, and there you were, sitting on the floor, talking with your grandmother, looking into the emerald.

  “I believe in the power of crystals and gemstones. Your relationship with the emerald made a strong impression on me. So when I saw the ring in my uncle’s ‘goods’ as he calls what he steals, I knew that no matter what, I would make sure that your ring, at least, was returned.” He paused, then continued softly, “I also made sure that everything else was returned, too. I followed my uncle and secretly called the police with the location of every single thing he fenced.”

  “You did that? But... that was incredibly brave. If your uncle had seen you, or had put it together that you were following him and ratting on him to the police – I hate to think what he might have done.”

  Mitch grinned a shy, crooked grin and said very softly, “Well, thanks. But I still wish I’d just faced him.”

  “I think you handled everything amazingly. I can’t imagine what I would do if I’d been in your place. Now that I know the whole story, I admire you so much.”

  I leaned over to him and, under the stained glass window we shared the most wonderful yellow-red-rosy warm kiss. I relaxed into his arms as he put them around me, feeling incredibly relieved. “So, you’re telling me there are no ghosts.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t say that,” Mitch answered, burying his face in my hair.

Chapter XV

  The next Monday Mitch enrolled in my school, and although I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about how all the girls stopped in their tracks to look at the “new boy,” it was fantastic to see him occasionally between classes. He was placed in my biology class because the principle said the school could not compromise his science foundation, but the rest of his classes were at senior level, and he was so happy, it made me happy too.

  It was a beautiful sunshiny day, for once, when school let out, and we had a pleasant walk home.

  “Wait,” I said as we passed Mr. Zingas’ store, “I want to stop in for a moment and say hi.”

  “Okay,” Mitch said.

  The little bell jingled as we walked through the doorway, and Mr. Zingas, alone in the store, looked up at us. “Well, good afternoon Nikki, Mitch. How’s it going?”

  “Mitch is just coming home from his first day of regular high school, and I feel great!”

  “I’m happy for you. Have a seat you two, sit. Just a sec.”

  Mitch and I sat. Mr. Zingas came over with three fat slices of cheesecake. “Eat, eat.” He sat down with us. “Now then, I have something to say. Once I said an unforgivable thing to Nikki. A prejudiced thing. And I was wrong. I must apologize and I have to say that whether a person is a Gypsy or Polish, or Romanian, or American or whatever, it’s wrong to say that they are all something bad. Everyone determines for themselves their morals. I was wrong to carry that prejudice, and to feel it against you my boy, when I could have, and
ought to have
given you support and understanding for the last five years since you came to live here. I apologize profusely. And I thank you, too.”