The People in the Mirror (2 page)

  Mom and Dad had forbidden me to “put any permanent or semi-permanent chemistry” on my hair “for the time being,” whatever that meant – because Mom had read some article about how hair color damaged your brain, or something. That didn’t mean I didn’t fantasize about having hair that was lighter or darker. The mirror clinched it – I’d definitely go darker!

  “Enough primping, your highness,” I told my reflection. “Time to get at your home work.” Since nothing else was going on in my life, I might as well get good grades. Look to the future, Dad always said. Yeah, especially when nothing was happening in the present.

  But – and here’s where the weird stuff began – Just as I turned from the mirror, I saw movement in it.

  I turned back to the mirror and peered into it....

  Then I shrieked and jumped. There were a man and a woman
in the mirror
talking to each other in a faded light. I could not make out exactly what they looked like,
but they were definitely there!
I wondered if I could hear what they were saying if Mom’s piano playing would only,
please!
, stop. Which was why Mom hadn’t heard me shriek, thank goodness. But before the music stopped, the light in the mirror shifted and the people in the mirror disappeared.

  I continued standing there, looking into the mirror, sort of stupefied. I finally left the walk-in closet, pulled the closet door shut behind me and went to stand by one of the long, skinny windows on either side of my four-poster bed. I looked down the seven stories through the gray fog – it was like living in the clouds – and tried to puzzle out an explanation of seeing people in the mirror.

  Then I tried to imagine telling Mom what I’d just seen and realized I couldn’t. Mom and Dad knew I was unhappy with being here, with living in an apartment, with the new school where no one talked to me, and pretty much everything. It was certain-sure that Mom would cart me off to a shrink before I could finish the sentence, “I’m seeing people in my mirror.”

  But what if my mind
didn’t
make up those people. What if they were, somehow,
there
? Whoa – that was scary, too!

  I tried to get myself to go look in the mirror again, but I could not screw up the courage. In fact, the thought of going in there every day to get my clothes gave me the willies.

  I went to my jewelry box and took out the huge antique emerald dinner ring Grandmother had willed to me, which is what I do whenever I have a problem. And that means, I talk to this ring quite a lot.

  Mom and Dad were always telling me I ought to put the ring in the bank safe with their other valuables because I was too young to wear it. But I flatly refused.

  “What’s the point of having something beautiful if you can’t ever look at it?” I’d say, and Mom would say, “Beautiful? Dear, it’s ostentatious.” Then Mom would turn to Dad and say, “She’s got more of your Mother in her than just her hands and her nose.” And Dad would say nothing, but nod proudly.

  I could have passed on having my grammy’s silly little pug nose, and I would rather have Mom’s slender, long-fingered, piano-playing hands, more than anything. But I was super-pleased to have any part of Grammy’s character. And I couldn’t imagine parting with her emerald. Before Grammy left forever, I’d tell her the fairy tales that seemed to rise up from the depths of the deep green stone.

  When Grammy passed away two years ago, I could not be consoled. In fact, I still missed her so much sometimes that I couldn’t think straight. The thing was, Grammy understood me like nobody else – ever. She absolutely kept every single one of my secrets. Not that I had so many, and not that they were so important. But she honored them just the same.

  Like the time my Dad brought me a no-doubt expensive clown doll from some business trip. I was only seven at the time and something about that clown face scared me. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, so I told Grammy about how the doll kept me awake, and she made a beautiful tiny little beaded mask that just covered the clown’s spooky, too-alive eyes. My Dad thought it was the most wonderful thing his mom had ever done in her life.

  “I can’t believe you even noticed I gave that doll to Nikki, let alone actually taking the time to make this gorgeous mask,” he said. Grammy just nodded and said, “ it seemed like that’s the only thing he was missing,” and winked at me.

  Or like the time I had a crush on Jimmy at school when I was nine. One day, for no apparent reason, he came up on the playground and slapped me,
hard!
I was so shocked, but even worse, he broke my heart. When I told Grammy, she said, “people hurt people when they are hurting. Don’t let the way he feels touch your life.”

  The very next week he came to school with a black eye and a big red welt on his arm. Our teacher looked like she was going to cry. She took him to Miss Sharon, our principle. A little while later, from where I sat at my desk I saw a state car pull up. And then a few minutes after
that
, Jimmy walked out with two women. They all got in the state car and I never saw Jimmy again.

  Anyway, Grammy never said, “you need to be different in such and such a way,” like it seemed my parents always did. And when I couldn’t make sense of a problem, I’d take it to Grammy – she’d ask me a couple questions and I’d suddenly know the answers to my own problems. I
always
felt better. Plus Grammy had great stories about herself when she was young. She said she was kind of wild “in her day.”

  So when Grammy very suddenly and unexpectedly dropped of a heart attack, my world stopped making sense. I hadn’t realized how often I had conversations in my mind with her that helped me sort things out. I got so crazy angry when she died that Mom took me to a shrink, who saw me exactly twice. He told Mom there was nothing wrong with me, and that I was processing grief in a healthy way.

  The therapist let me talk about Grammy as though she was still around, and he told me I could talk with Grammy just like I had before. Because, he pointed out, my grandmother would always be in my heart, and I didn’t have to let her go from my heart. It was the opposite of what my mom had been saying, that I had to let Grammy go. So, anyway, from that point I slowly “rejoined the land of the living” as my best friend, Meechie had said.

  Then in Grammy’s will she specifically gave me the emerald ring – along with a bunch of other stuff that had value but didn’t mean much to me. With that ring, I felt I had my Grammy again – and I didn’t have to share her with anyone.

  I sat on the edge of my bed looking into the comforting green stone. “I don’t know if I’m losing it or what, Grammy, but I really need you....

  “You’re the only one I can tell... there are
people in the mirror.
”

*     *

  Beethoven’s
Fifth
stopped and Mom came to my bedroom door. She paused in the doorway. “Talking to your grandmother again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hate to interrupt your meditation, but could you run down to the corner and get some fresh broccoli and milk?”

  “Okay.” I reverently replaced Grammy’s emerald in its little hidey hole in my jewelry box, and followed Mom into the kitchen.

  “There’s some money.” Mom pointed to a twenty on the counter.

  “Okay....”

  “And I think you’d better pick up one of those cheesecakes. Dad’s bringing someone home to dinner. He said not to make a fuss, but we have to have
something
....”

  “Okay.” I took the money, pulled on what I called my “duck jacket” because it was so waterproof, stepped into my boots, and grabbed an umbrella on my way out the door, then took the elevator down to street level.

  “Miss Francis!” Homer tipped his hat when I got to the entrance. “Taking a little jaunt in the rain?”

  “Only because I have to.”

  “Still don’t like this weather?” He held the door open.

  “Do you?” I stepped out and opened the umbrella, turning to Homer.

  He nodded, grinning. “Love it – as long as I’m on the heated side of the door!”

  I gave him an I-can-agree-with-that raise of my eyebrows. “I’ll be back in ten, or send the rescue squad!” I hurried to the corner grocer where just about everything was twice as expensive as it should be. Except the to-die-for cherry cheesecake, no argument. The grocer’s wife made it from scratch, and an entire big, fat, round cheesecake cost only ten dollars and fifty cents. I’d already formed quite an attachment to it.

  Dad probably invited this guy over tonight just hoping that Mom would get the cheesecake. I grinned at the thought.

  “Hi, Mr. Zingas,” I called to the short, round-faced, cheerful, store owner.

  “Hi, Nikki, I see a cheesecake glint in your eye.”

  “Am I that transparent? And lesser broccoli and milk glints. I’ll be right back.” I ran around the tiny store, picked out a couple pounds of broccoli and a gallon of 2% milk. By the time I got back to the front counter, the cheesecake was wrapped up in pink cellophane with green raffia, pretty as a present.

  “Here’s a preview of coming attractions.” Mr. Zingas cut off a sliver of cheesecake from the one in the showcase, placed it on a bakery tissue and handed it to me.

  “Oh yum, thanks.” I gave him the twenty dollars, then inhaled the cheesecake. “I needed that! I’ve had a stressful afternoon.”

  “Ahh – the roller coaster ride of being a teenager.” Mr. Zingas chuckled. He counted out my change, then gave me a serious look. “Anything strange going on at your apartment?”

  What kind of a question was that – right on the heels of seeing people in the mirror? It made my heart race. “Ahm – why do you ask. I mean, what....”

  Right at that moment a tired looking woman with five small children came in the store, each of the kids taking off in a different direction. Mr. Zingas nodded at the woman. “We’ll talk later, Nikki.”

  “Okay.”
I
gathered my booty. As I walked back to the apartment building, I wondered what Mr. Zingas was getting at. My imagination ran wild. I’d almost worked up enough courage to quiz Homer about it, but he was talking with a neighbor when I got to the door.

  I got off the elevator on my floor and walked down the hall in a preoccupied haze, when I almost literally ran into the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen in real life. Although he looked at me so steadily as he passed me, I thought I’d stop breathing, he seemed too, to be in his own state of preoccupation. Neither of us even said “hi” as we passed each another.

  I fumbled with my keys and finally got the right one in the keyhole just as I heard the elevator chime and its doors slide open. I went inside, closed the door and leaned against it. I felt like I’d swallowed the entire cheesecake – like some giant sweet sensation welled up inside me. I realized that he even smelled wonderful, as the scent of his cologne lingered on. I put the groceries on the floor and went out into the hall, following the faint scent back up the hallway to the doorway of the next apartment.

  Was it possible that th
e
gorgeous stranger was my next door neighbor? Maybe this apartment living had its up side. I never knew when I might encounter him in the hall, That wasn’t even a possibility in a house!

  I went back to our own door just as Mom opened it. 

  “What
ever
are you doing? I heard the door open then close. Here’s the cheesecake, no Nikki.”

  “I... I... was curious to look down the hall. I’ve never, you know, gone past our door, and I was just – curious.”

  “Weird, Nikki,” Mom said. She was right.

  I shrugged. “I have an inquiring mind, and inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Do you suppose you and your inquiring mind could help me fix dinner?”

  “We’d love to.”

  I was grateful that we had company that night. The three adults had a lot to talk about, which suited me just fine because now I could finally think about the incredible boy. Why hadn’t I seen him before? Why hadn’t I seen him at school? Even if there were a million guys, I’d notice
him!
He came straight from my dreams. Thin, almost too thin for some girls maybe, but I liked thin guys. Black wavy hair, and dark eyes. Big, penetrating, dark, sensual eyes.

  But there was something else in his eyes – and I realized now that
that
was what I’d wanted to have a moment to stop and think about. What was that other thing in his eyes?

  “How do you like it here, Dominique?” Dad’s coworker asked me.

  I tried to remember his name, but it had made absolutely no stop on its way in one ear and out the other.

  “Oh, I, ah....”

  “I don’t think she’s crazy about the weather, she’s a child of the sun,” Mom answered for me.

  “I can sympathize with that. I came here from Kansas two years ago, and I’m still trying to to get used to it.”

  “Well, it’s not
all
bad,” I said.

  “REALLY?” Mom and Dad exclaimed together.

  “Really.” I munched my broccoli.

  “Young people! They adjust so fast,” Mom said.

  Yeah, I thought, especially when the ‘young person’ has an interesting neighbor with mysterious, sad, dark eyes.

  That was it! There was a sadness in his eyes, as if he’d been carrying it around – the sadness – for a long, long time.

  “...even the mirrors are antique.” Mom’s words broke into my thoughts.

  The mirror! I’d completely forgotten about the people in the mirror. Who were they?
What
were they? Were they ghosts? Or a weird phenomena of some sort that could be explained rationally? Were they beings from another dimension?  Like Mom just said, all of the mirrors in the place were antique. What kind of experiences, in so many years, might a mirror go through?

  “Arg!” I jumped up from the table and ran into my bedroom and then the closet. The thought just hit me that the people in the mirror saw me in my
closet
where I
dressed
! But when I got in there, I realized that I dressed in a little cubby in the closet, at an angle that was out of line of sight for the people in the mirror. Just in case they could see me.