The People in the Mirror (7 page)

  “Come on, Nikki, we’re ready, let’s go.” Mom called. I reluctantly joined them in the living room. Mom was wearing one of her “quiet black dresses,” as she called them,  and Dad had put on a suit exactly like the one he left in that morning.

  “Oh, Nikki, good choice.” Mom smiled. “You look darling.”

  Darling. Well, at least she didn’t say “cute.”

  “You look great too, Mom.” Sophisticated, I wanted to say. And sure of herself. How did she know how to do all of that? I’d never be so together.

  On the ride to the restaurant I tried to imagine what it would be like if, for instance, I was an adult, with Mitch, off to some adult function.

  “You’re awful quiet,” Mom said. “Thinking about the neighbor boy?”

  “No, I’m not thinking about the neighbor boy,” I half-lied. After all, I was really mostly thinking about Mom.

  “What neighbor boy?” Dad looked at me in the rear view mirror, which I always found very disconcerting. It was like Dad
really did
have eyes in the back of his head.

  “Nikki came home with a boy appended tonight,” Mom said, “I embarrassed her to death because I could hear her talking in the hall and when she didn’t come in, I opened the door to ask her what she was doing, and there was this dangerously good-looking boy listening to her with undivided attention. Nikki says he’s our immediate neighbor. He only said a few words, but he has this very subtle eastern European accent. Very charming, lilting. Sexy, to be quite frank.”

  “Well, jeez Mom, you want me to ask him if he wants to go out with you?”

  “No thanks, sweetie, I’ve got all the man I can handle,” Mom pinched Dad’s cheek. “I don’t need any little boys.”

  “So, how long have you known this ‘dangerously good looking, sexy’ package of trouble?”

  “Well, let’s see, it’s seven-thirty, so I guess about two hours.”

  “He lives next door, but you just met him?”

  “Umm-hum. I’ve seen him a couple of times, but tonight he came into Mr. Zingas’ store when I was there and introduced himself to me, because he’d seen me and knew we were neighbors, and we walked back together. End of report. Shall I sign in blood? And how often am I required to file an update?”

  “My, my, we hit a nerve,” Dad observed.

  “Well, it’s a bit much, isn’t it, that I can’t have a civilized conversation with a neighbor without said neighbor being accused of being dangerous? Can’t a person be good-looking without being treated like it’s some sort of handicap? He’s very polite and interesting, so it seems to me the least one could do is be polite in return. By the way, his great-great-grandfather built the building we live in. For what that’s worth.”

  “Really? Very interesting. Well, Puss-Boots, you’re absolutely right, and I stand corrected. I look forward to meeting our interesting, polite neighbor, who happens, by total coincidence, and without fatherly prejudice and concern, to be good-looking.” Dad pulled into a driveway leading to a restaurant with a subdued nautical motif. “Here we are. Hey, this place looks great!”

  “Where’s the daughter?” I asked as we walked up to three people smiling at us.

  “I assume that’s her, on the right.”

  “Well, how old
is
she?”

  “Eighteen, I think, I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Oh, great,” I said under my breath. There was no time for further conversation as the introductions were made. The girl’s name was Stephanie.

  Stephanie had absolutely nothing to say to me. She had just started at the University of Washington – a college woman. It was much worse than trying to hang out with someone younger than me. Here I am, with all these attractive women, in my little white collar and
knee sox
. Jeez. The final humiliation.

  I salvaged the evening by enjoying the fabulous view and thinking about how much my fortune had turned for the better. I had met two interesting young men in one evening. And I had gotten Grammy’s ring back. Despite my internal awkward feelings around the beautiful and svelte Stephanie, I rejoiced in getting Grammy’s ring back. A myriad lights reflected in the rippling water. I turned over in my mind what Mom had so off-handedly said about Mitch’s accent being eastern European. Wasn’t that just entirely
romantic
?

Chapter VIII

  Somehow I survived the humiliation of the dinner. Anyway, Dad was apparently elated by whatever it was he’d accomplished with Mr. Turner, who was his supervisor at work. Dad sang show tunes all the way home, no matter how much Mom and I, his captive audience, protested and begged him to stop.

  His mood was contagious, and by the time we pulled into the parking garage, Mom and I had decided that if you couldn’t beat him, you’d have to join him, and we were at the top of their lungs with the grand finale of “There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame” when Dad shut the engine off. The requirement to become civilized and quiet had us all giggling by the time we arrived at the front door. There was one of the non-Homer doormen at the door, and he looked at us as if he suspected us of indulging in too much of something.

  We tip-toed down the hall after getting off the elevator, and once inside the apartment, permitted one grand guffaw to get it out of out systems.

  “Okay, munchkin,” Dad said, “School in the morning, off to bed.”

  “Munchkin! Yeah, that’s me. By the way, Dad, a girl who’s eighteen and a freshman in college is
really
not about my age, you know?”

  “What?... You mean Stephanie? I guess the two of you didn’t have much in common, did you? But you seem so mature to me, I thought for sure someone a bit older than you wouldn’t matter.”

  “Two years, Dad. I mean, thanks for the vote of confidence, or whatever it is, but I hope to think that when I’m a freshman in college I’ll... I’ll be a lot more, you know, more... more like Stephanie. I hope.”

  “But you behaved like an adult tonight, and I’m completely proud of you. Especially if you were uncomfortable. I didn’t see it, which proves my point. And you were there for your old Dad. Thanks and go to sleep.”

  “You’re welcome and I’m gone.”

  I followed my dreams into a land where I danced with a prawn on the rippling surface of the ocean, until Mitch cut in and danced with me inside a dusky mirror. I looked up and saw myself watching me dance with Mitch in an ancient hall, with piano music swelling to the walls and pouring out through the mirror into my closet.

*     *

  The next morning, when I dragged myself into the kitchen, Mom was all atwitter because the police had called and said they’d found a couple of small pieces of furniture at a pawn shop, and that once a couple things turned up, more usually followed.

  “That’s great, Mom. This barren place was starting to get on my nerves.”

  “You and me both, but the worst of it for me has been the horror of facing the Rionews. Dad talked with Mr. Rionews, and he said he took the disaster very well, but I just want to get their things back, if at all possible.”

  “Me too. It’d be great to come home from school to a furnished apartment.”

  The news about the furniture was fantastic, but I was still more preoccupied with wondering when I’d get to see Mitch again. Did I have to rely on accidental, coincidental meetings in the hall or in the corner grocery? I already knew I could go for days without seeing him, if that were the case. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine gathering the courage to walk down the hall and knock on his door. 

  But there he was, talking with Homer at the door when I came home from school in the afternoon. He fell into step beside me, and rode up in the elevator with me, just as if we’d planned it.

  “How was school?”

  “Okay,” I answered. I couldn’t resist asking one of my biggest questions. “Where do you go to school?”

  “I don’t. I’ve done home study since my father died. I live with my mother and my Uncle – my dad’s brother. We moved in with him when my father died and he sort of rules us with an iron hand. He told my mother he didn’t want a cookie cutter kid for a nephew, which is how he feels about public school. He never went to school at all. He has the idea that it’s something awful.”

  “Wow,” I said, for lack of anything more profound. I had no idea how to respond. “How do you feel about it?”

  “Sometimes it’s okay because both my uncle and my mom teach me, and they both know quite a lot. But sometimes I’d like to be with people my own age. My family is Romanian and they have a long heritage of sticking with family, no matter what. I mean, whether they’re right or wrong. It goes back generations, so who am I to even consider breaking the chain? But sometimes chains get old and rusty and they don’t serve anymore.”

  We were now in front of my apartment, talking in the hall again, and I hoped Mom wouldn’t pop her head out the door like she did yesterday.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I want to go to college, I want to break family tradition and become a lawyer.”

  “What does your uncle want you to become?”

  “Oh, ah, well, it’s kind of hard to explain. I’ll... we’ll get into that some other time.”

  I sensed that same discomfort from Mitch that I picked up on yesterday when mom asked him if his apartment was hit by the thieves. “Do you want to come in and, I don’t know, talk some more?”

  Right then Mom started playing the piano and the round tones of scales muffled their way through the door.

  “Your mother is a wonderful pianist.”

  “Scales?”

  “Anything. She’s got the touch of an artist. I’ll tell you, I’d rather listen to your mother play scales for an hour than have any of the Rionews attempt to play for five minutes. There’s no escaping hearing your piano in our apartment, but with your mother playing, I never want to escape it.”

  “I can’t imagine any way more directly to my Mom’s heart than for her to hear
that
kind of praise. Come on in, I’ll sit you down on the sofa and you can listen to Mom play without the walls between. I’ll even bring you some milk and cookies, not-cookie-cutter boy.”

  Well, of course Mom was crazy flattered when Mitch told her how much he enjoyed her playing.

  “What would you like to hear?” she asked, fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “I love all the classic composers,” Mitch said, getting himself ever deeper into Mom’s heart. Then he made the last parry by saying,   “But Beethoven is my favorite.”

  Mom’s too.

  I was happy to wait on Mitch and share his enjoyment of the piano concert. After half-an-hour, Mom quit and stretched, smiling at the both of us. She pointed at the far wall. “Didn’t you notice, Nikki?”

  “Oh! Look, some of the antiques are back. And that painting! That’s wonderful. I guess the police are really on top of things.”

  I saw Mitch nervously look at his watch out of the corner of my eye. He leapt up. “Goodness, I didn’t realize it was so late, I’ve got to get home. Thank you for letting me listen to you play, Mrs. Francis, I enjoyed it more than I can express.”  And he bolted from the apartment.

  Mom and I exchanged a that-was-sort-of-strange look. I felt disappointment creeping over me that I didn’t get to talk with him more. I mean, we just listened to Mom play. Why didn’t he say, “I’ll see you tomorrow after school,” or “do you want to do something this weekend?” Or something. Or anything. But then, if his peer group socialization was curtailed as much as he’d said, how would he know what the girl next door might hope for him to do or say? I suddenly realized that he seemed more at ease talking with Mom than with me.

  “Charming young man, really,” Mom mused. “Do you know any more about him than you did before?”

  “His family is Romanian, so you were right about the accent. His father died five years ago, and now he and his mother live with his uncle. Oh, and his uncle keeps him out of public school because he doesn’t want Mitch to be a “cookie-cutter boy” like everyone who goes to public school. Mitch wants to be a lawyer, but his uncle doesn’t want him to become that, either. He said his uncle never went to school at all.”

  “Hmmm,” Mom said, cautiously. “The uncle sounds sort of like a tyrant.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

  “By-the-by, Nikki, don’t forget your appointment with Dr. Carcionne tomorrow.”

  “What a segue! How could I ‘forget’ something I didn’t even know about? I’m doing great, Mom, why should I see her?”

  “It can’t hurt to go a few times. There must be things you could use a sounding board to help you sort out.”

  “I’ve got you and Dad, Mom. My over-protective parents.”

  “I’m glad you feel that you can talk with us,” she answered, ignoring the “overprotective” part. “And I have to admit I’m very happy to see you making some positive adjustments to your new environment. But this whole business of being robbed, and the trauma you went through when you thought your ring was missing – I just don’t want you to be scarred.”

  “I’m not scarred, Mom. I’ve got my ring, and I’m fine.”

  “That’s good. I hope you share all of that with Dr. Carcionne. Dad is going to pick you up after school to take you to your appointment.”

  “He’s leaving work early?”

  “I had planned to take you, but he said he had some errands to run and he’d just take off an hour early and get both birds with one stone, so that’s all organized.”

  “Ah. I’m just a stoned little bird, am I?” I went to my bedroom and changed into jeans and a sweat shirt. Then I realized that I wouldn’t be coming home at my usual time tomorrow, if, by any chance, Mitch was watching for me.  Yet another downer.

  On the other hand, I decided, I really
could
use a good talk with someone who didn’t have it all decided in her mind what I think, and what I mean, and what I need, like Mom did. If only Dr. Carcionne would be that person! It still felt like Mom was putting
her
fears onto me. It was Mom who felt violated and invaded and threatened and afraid since the theft. And, honestly, I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t have the visitation from Grammy that I had that made everything all right.