Shadows In The Mirror

Somewhere during the course of the evening it had started to rain. An appropriately cold rain which matched my mood slashed at the windows like knives.

I’d managed to muddle through the class with Johanna helping. I also apologized for running off like that, but offered no explanation. No one pressed for a reason. Johanna helped me lay out their initial efforts on tables in my back room. Everyone chatted while they gathered up their coats and purses. Next week at this same time they would be back to work on them. The class was a success. Everyone was happy. I was a mess.

The framed photo that I had talked to all these years was between us on the kitchen table. Johanna carefully removed the photo from the frame. “There might be something here,” she said. “Maybe on the back.”

“There’s nothing,” I told her. “Nothing on the back. Nowhere.” And I should know. I’d scrutinized this picture many, many times for clues, a name of a photographer.

She said, “Why don’t you get all the pictures of your parents together and then you can show them to all the people who come into the shop. You could even tack them up on some of the bulletin boards around town. There are so many things you could be doing, Marylee, if you want to find out who you’re related to out here.”

“All the pictures? This is the only picture I have.” I was aware then that she was my friend, yet I had shared with her only carefully selected pieces of my life.

Her eyes went wide. “Really? Well, then, this one then, you show everyone this picture. You make copies. I could help you. We could put it in the paper, even.”

“I can’t. I can’t explain it, I just can’t do that.” I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to my friend, this reticence I felt. I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to myself. It was all bound up in my aunt and her fears. When I was little, she hadn’t even wanted me showing the picture to my friends. When I would ask her why not, her standard response would be, “You don’t know who’s out there.”

I took a sip of my tea. My fingers were shaking so badly, I put the teacup down and stared into its depths. Johanna touched my hand. “How did your parents die?”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t have all the information. My aunt wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I’m here. It’s a long story.”

“We have a whole pot of tea, and more where that came from.”

So I told her. I told her I was born here in Burlington and after my parents died, my aunt Rose packed me up in her car and we drove clear across the country until we ended up in Portland, Oregon.

“Aunt Rose was the only mother I ever knew. She’s been gone about a year.” I bit my lip. “Ovarian cancer. I still miss her.”

“Oh, Marylee.”

I swallowed and continued. “But she kept warning me about Burlington. She told me not to come back here.”

Johanna’s eyes were wide. “And she never told you why?”

I took a swallow of tea and shook my head. “She was thrilled when I began going out with he-who-shall-not-be-named. I think she thought that was a surefire way to keep me from ever coming here to Burlington…”

I let my voice drift off and thought about that whole chapter of my life.

“He had stood with me throughout her six-month battle with cancer, he’d been the comfort I needed, my rock. The day after my aunt’s funeral, he proposed.” I said it quietly. “We ended up setting a date a year in the future. I lived that year in a kind of stupor, grieving for my aunt, my best friend and only living relative. I couldn’t seem to focus on wedding plans. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

“Three weeks before the wedding he bailed. I supposed it was only to be expected.”

“Oh, Marylee!” Johanna came over and hugged me.

I blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. A shiver danced across my skin and I wrapped my arms around myself. It didn’t help. I got up and turned up the thermostat. I glanced out the back window as I did so, and a truck rumbled down the back alley between the buildings on this rainy night.

Johanna took off her sweater. She was now down to a tank top in my warm kitchen, but bless her, she didn’t say anything about the place being too hot. Yet, I could not rid myself of the chill. I wondered if I would ever be warm again, whole again, like a real person.

I continued. “Since I’ve come here, I try to think back. I try to remember this place, but I can’t. I was too young. The first memory I have is of Aunt Rose driving. It was raining. I remember the sound of the windshield wipers, back and forth. For hours I watched them while my aunt kept driving and driving, not saying anything.”

Johanna pulled her legs up underneath her and was sitting yogi-style on my kitchen chair. She was listening intently.

“When I was growing up my aunt was always so jumpy, so jittery. Any time there was a phone call that hung up she’d go crazy, running around locking all the doors and windows. I think we were the first house in the entire country to get a home security system. She was so nervous, my aunt was.”

“Maybe she had a reason to be,” Johanna said.

That statement clouded the air like smoke. I thought of the shadow that had moved across the coffee shop window tonight. Had I seen something? Or had it been a product of my overactive imagination? Was I becoming like my aunt Rose after all?

Johanna got up and tucked a quilt around my shoulders. She asked, “Have you been back to the house you lived in when you were here?”

“I don’t even know where it is.” I paused and looked at the droplets of rain clinging to my balcony window. “When I was about fourteen I went through a sort of rebellious period. I sneaked into my aunt’s desk. She always kept it locked, but I knew where the key was. I was looking for something, anything, a picture, an address, a news clipping about the accident. But I found nothing. I had all her papers all over the bed, and that’s when my aunt came through the door.

“I looked up expecting her to be furious. But she came and sat beside me and held me in her arms for a long time. She just held me and held me. And when I looked up I saw that she was crying, too. I think that was the beginning of us being close.”

“You must miss her very much,” Johanna said.

“We sat there for a while and then she said, ‘I’m only trying to keep you safe. I’ve devoted my life to keeping you safe.’ And then she said, ‘Let’s go make paper instead.’ That was her answer to everything: Let’s make paper.”

“Paper?” Johanna looked at me, nearly spilling her tea.

I smiled, just a little. My aunt used to make paper. She had a special blender set aside just for her papermaking. We used to tear up old pieces of paper and then they would go in this blender with water. We had huge sinks in our basement and screens where we would lay out our pulp until it dried. She sold it by the sheet at markets and craft fairs. I told Johanna this, how my aunt was always saving bits and pieces of paper. She was into recycling before anybody else in the world was. “We would save old magazines and cut pictures out of them.” I stopped, a strange idea niggling its way into my thinking. Had she somehow found that magazine in the trash, somehow took a picture of it, had it developed and then told me it was my parents? Is that how she had done it? But why? And if these two aren’t my parents, then who are they and do they have any connection with me?

I picked up the photo and looked down at it. I had to admit that part of the attraction of this photo was the happiness this couple seemed to possess, the two of them, the way my mother looked into my father’s eyes, the way he gazed down at her. Was this kind of love even possible? When I was a little girl I would make up elaborate scenarios about my parents. I put the photo facedown on the table.

Johanna picked up the photo, seemed to consider it, then said, “The place to begin with all of this is Evan, of course.”

Despite myself I smiled. “We begin with Evan?”

“He’s a photographer, Marylee. You know that.” She leaned back and picked up her mug.

“A photographer’s not going to know.”

She leaned forward. “Sometimes he works with the police on forensics. Sometimes they get him to help them.”

I hated to tell Johanna, but going to see Evan was not in the plans. He’d taken my friend out twice and dropped her. Plus, Evan had been engaged before. Whenever I thought about Evan, I couldn’t help but think of Mark, my own ex-fiancé who’d dumped me when the going got too rough for him.

“He used to be an accountant,” Johanna said. “Did you know that? He dropped that to pursue his art, his photography.”

To me that was another strike against him; he can’t commit to a woman and can’t commit to a career. No, my friend could do a whole lot better than Evan Baxter.

“You should go see him.”

I told her no, emphatically no.

THREE

I had the mirrors dream again that night. I’ve dreamed the mirrors dream, or a variation thereof for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m in a fun house and strange mirror faces taunt me. Sometimes I see mirror after mirror, the same reflection of myself going on and on forever and ever into infinity. Sometimes there are broken pieces of mirror and every time I pick them up I cut my fingers and they bleed. Sometimes I stand in front of a mirror and instead of seeing my reflection I see nothing. When I was little, I used to awaken screaming until Aunt Rose came in and prayed with me.

In tonight’s dream, I was walking down a narrow hallway holding a piece of broken mirror. It belonged to one of the ladies in my evening class and I needed to catch up with her, tell her I had it. The edge of it had cut my hand and the blood left a trail behind me. I didn’t care. I needed to find her. In my haste, I walked into a mirror. I turned to go back and was met with another mirror. I was lost and frantic as I tried to find my way out of the maze of my own reflections going in all directions.

I woke up, hot and miserable in the middle of the night. I’d left my heat up and the place was as close as a sauna. I turned down the thermostat. Outside it was still raining and I stood by the front window for a while.

I live on Main Street in Burlington, a busy street of shops and old New England–style three-and four-story houses. Across the street from me is a mystery bookshop in the lower level of a four-story dwelling that once was someone’s grand residence, but was chopped into apartments and shops. Next to that is a consignment shop that features children’s clothing. Right beside me is a coffee shop, and on the other side is a high-end bicycle and ski shop, this area of the country being known for two things, teddy bears and snow.

I focused on the bookstore and the huge cat that always sits in the window. He was there now, a dark mound on the window seat. The cat stretched and I watched its shadow move across the glass. I looked at it. Had it been the cat I’d seen earlier? I sighed and was about to get back to my bedroom when a movement on the street below caught my attention. I went to my bedroom and retrieved my glasses from my nightstand. There was a bobbing pinpoint of orange down below. It took me a moment to realize that this was the end of a cigarette. And the cigarette was attached to a person who was leaning against the back of a bus shelter. I watched him for a few moments, wondering that someone would be outside in the rain in the middle of the night. It took me several minutes to realize that this person was looking up at me. I stood very still, then backed away from the window. I felt rattled, unsettled. Before I went back to bed, I went to the door and made sure it was locked, the security system fully armed. Once the latch was pulled across the French doors I’d be secure. And then, feeling much like my aunt, I made a cup of chamomile tea—her favorite—and drank it in the kitchen.

The photo was still on my kitchen table, propped against the sugar bowl. I thought about what Johanna had said. See Evan? I sighed and looked down at the woman’s face, that hint of a smile not for the photographer, but for the man—my father?—who I’ve always thought was just about the handsomest man I’d ever seen.

I slept again after that, and dreamed that Aunt Rose was my real mother and that I had no father, and she’d forged my birth certificate and made up the story about my parents being in an accident just because she didn’t want anyone to know that I was illegitimate. I got up, peeked around the side of the blind in the half light of early morning, but the cigarette smoker had gone. So had the cat.

Still tired, I went back to bed but tossed and turned until close to dawn, and when I finally did wake up, I had overslept. Since I’d forgotten to set the alarm, I ended up racing to get ready. I couldn’t get my contacts in, so had to opt for a pair of thick glasses with black frames. I had purchased them a few years ago when I’d been in an artsy period, but now in the mirror all I saw were glasses. But my eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

By the time I ran to the café for my coffee, my winking coffee stranger had already been and gone. I had no idea where he worked. I assumed it was somewhere around here, maybe even the mystery bookshop, although I’d never seen him in there when I’d gone in for some reading material.

Where he came from and where he went each morning were a mystery. The only thing I knew about him was that he came in each morning at the same time for a dark roast coffee, which he took black. And, that he winked at me.

I was too late today, but with the way I looked this morning, it was just as well.

It was strange how I missed him, how disappointed I felt. If I believed in omens—which I didn’t—I would have thought that not seeing him meant that this already bad day was going to get a whole lot worse. I walked into my shop, and today for the first time it seemed a desolate place. The rows upon rows of needlecraft kits and yarn and scrapbook supplies and watercolor kits and mirror pieces and mosaic tiles just looked like organized rows of so much junk. I went to the back and looked at Beryl’s mirror tiles picture again. My parents. Or maybe not. But if they weren’t my parents, who were they and how were they connected to me? If they were?

Before she left last night I told Johanna not to tell anyone about this picture. I knew she would respect my wishes. I didn’t need to share the patheticness of my life with anyone else. Johanna had also carefully placed the photo between two sheets of cardboard and put it in a large envelope, still convinced that I would see Evan. I laid that next to my coat. When Barbara came in after lunch, I’d head over to the photography studio and force myself to deal with the infamous Evan Baxter.

I met the morning customers with cheery hellos. I helped two older women from my seniors’ class pick out ribbons for their scrapbooks. I helped a young pregnant woman with yarn and doll faces. She kept going on about her new baby and decorating the room, and that made me feel blue. If my ex-fiancé hadn’t jumped ship I would be married now. Quite possibly I’d even be pregnant. We’d talked about that. We’d wanted children right away. Mark, my ex-fiancé, worked as a computer programmer for a cable company. Everyone in church loved him where he was one of the leaders. He just couldn’t stick it out with me when the going got tough. I sold the young mother-to-be some yellow yarn, a doll form and a pattern, and wished the new family well with a cheerful smile.

A gentlemanly old man named Marty Smythe and his friend Dot, both from my seniors’ scrapbooking class came in and bought two children’s needlepoint sets for Dot’s grandchildren. When I first met Marty and Dot, I figured them for an old married couple. Then one afternoon in the shop when Dot was talking to Barbara about ribbons, Marty whispered to me that he was going to ask Dot to marry him, he was just waiting for the right moment. I thought it was sweet. Barbara told me later that both Marty and Dot had lost their spouses a long time ago.

He looked at me and his eyebrows came together. “You okay?”

I nodded. “I must look horrible. I think I’m coming down with something.” Coming down with something. Right, like a miserable life.

“Well, you take care, sweets,” he said as I rang up the order.

I promised him I would and I watched him leave, the back of him, white hair bunching out under his black woolen cap. Something about the back of his hair under his cap made me start for a moment. I looked, but couldn’t put a finger on it. I shook my head and went back to work.

Just after noon, Barbara came in cheerful and breezy the way she always does.

“How was the class?” she asked, unzipping her raincoat and hanging it in the back. “Oh, I can see how the class was. How lovely!” Barbara’s one of those wonderfully warm maternal types who talk nonstop. I knew she’d have lots of good advice for me if I told her about my parents and the picture questions. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not yet. She stopped her chattering and looked at me. “Are you okay, Marylee?”

I attempted a laugh. “Everyone keeps asking me that. I think it’s my glasses. I don’t usually wear them, so when I do, everyone looks at me strangely.”

“I think they’re very charming. They make you look quite studious.”

I told her that I hadn’t slept well, and that when I’d gotten up in the night someone had been standing down across the street smoking in the bus shelter. “It unnerved me,” I said. “I didn’t sleep much after that.”

“Well I don’t blame you!” Her eyes were wide. “Did you call the police?”

“Last I heard it wasn’t a crime to stand in a bus shelter and smoke in the middle of the night.”

“Still, it would be kind of spooky, I’d say, someone looking up at your window like that.”

I looked down at my hands. “It was just somebody smoking.” But it wasn’t, was it? I had seen a face upturned in my direction.

A little while later, I told her I had an errand to run and left her in charge of the store. I walked the three blocks through a gray drizzle to Evan Baxter Photography. I wasn’t sure this was the wisest thing I’d ever done. After what he had done to Johanna, not to mention to his fiancée, I knew I should probably just steer clear of him.

I was surprised that his store was so close to my own. I had done a bit of walking in the neighborhood, but never in this direction. Usually when I head out I go down Main Street, and then turn right at the ferry terminal and into the waterfront park. Most of the time, when I get to the coast guard building, I turn around and go home.

Evan Baxter Photography is located in an upscale brick building just up from the railroad yard. In the same building is a design studio and a law office. Inside it was quiet and no one seemed to be around. There was a ring-for-service bell on the counter, but I hate those things, even though I have one myself. They sound so impatient and demanding to me. After standing at the counter for a few moments and having no one appear, however, I pressed it tentatively and looked around.

The photos on the wall were arranged as if in a gallery. There were insects on branches, close-ups of flowers and faces. There were lots of faces; old people with expressive smiles, children on swings, wedding pictures, graduation pictures, photos of quilts that caught my attention for a while. I could name some of the patterns: log cabin, cross weave and tessellating flowers. Aunt Rose was also a master quilter and in my apartment I have a small quilting frame, a graduation gift from her. I’m attempting to finish the quilt she started before she got sick.

But the photo that drew me, the picture that caused me to stand there unmoving, was one of a small girl standing beside a campfire. She was young, maybe ten, and wore scuffy pink sneakers and a hooded zippered sweatshirt that was opened to reveal a pink T-shirt. She was pointing at the flames.

I marveled that Evan was able to capture the vivid hues of the fire and how they were reflected in the solemn face of the girl as she pointed.

Close behind, very close behind me was a sound.

“You didn’t get your medium nonfat latte today.” I jumped, turned and found myself face-to-face with my winking coffee stranger. I muffled a gasp, put a hand to my mouth.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay. I…uh…” I felt my face flush. “I didn’t hear you. I was looking at the picture.” I was conscious of the fact that I couldn’t look any worse if I tried; glasses, flat hair tied back, red eyes and any makeup I did have on, being long ago smeared off by my sniffles. I hoped desperately that I didn’t have mascara lines running down my cheeks. And then I wondered, what in the world was he doing here, anyway? Maybe he was here buying film on his lunch hour.

“Are you, uh, are you a photographer?” I asked him stupidly. I was backing away slightly, aware, so aware of him standing close to me. I caught a whiff of a kind of musky aftershave.

“Do you like that one?” He pointed at the picture of the girl.

I nodded. “It’s very, um, vivid. The colors. The girl. She sort of, um, reminds me of myself when I was a girl. She looks so sad, somehow.” My voice trailed off. Why for goodness’ sake was I going on about this to a complete stranger? And why did I think he would care?

He said, “That one is sort of special to me.”

It was special to him? How could it be special to him? Someone had started a blender in my stomach.

“You asked if I was a photographer. I try to be,” he said.

I nodded some more. I felt like a bobble-head doll. He was even better looking close-up than across the crowded coffee shop. And what was I thinking with these thoughts, anyway? I needed to find Evan Baxter and get out of here.

“Are you in the market for a camera? Digital, perhaps?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, um…” I swallowed. “I’ll just wait here for the owner. I need to speak to Evan Baxter about something.”

He raised one eyebrow, and then did the wink thing again. “Well, you’re looking at him.”

It took me a moment to figure out what he said. “I’m looking at him?”

He nodded.

“You’re Evan Baxter?”

“In the flesh.” He was smiling broadly.

“You can’t be!”

“Was last time I looked at my driver’s license.”

“But, but…” I sputtered. “I didn’t know you were Evan Baxter.” My hand flew to my mouth. “You really are Evan Baxter?”

He grinned. “I really am.”

“Oh…Oh…”

“I’m glad you like the campfire photo,” he said.

I kept sniffing and feeling foolish. I felt around in my pocket for a Kleenex, but of course I didn’t have one when I needed one. I kept nodding. I still hadn’t managed to say anything. I could almost hear what he was thinking: Why won’t this stupid, simpering woman get to the point?

Time to do just that. I took a breath. “I came in because, well, I need some help identifying a photograph. I’ve been told you might be able to help me. I would pay you, of course. Whatever you think is fair.” I tried to keep my voice businesslike. “I would like to know where a photo was taken, and who took it. This photo I have complemented a short story in a women’s magazine.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got.” He led me back to the counter where I opened up the manila envelope and took the photo out from between the two sheets of taped cardboard. He glanced at it. “You want to know who these people are?”

“No…I…I already know who they are.” I put my hand to my mouth, forced myself to breathe, breathe, and get back to my all-business self. “Yes. Maybe I would like to know that. And I need to know, um, who took this picture and maybe what magazine it was in. This is the original. I want to know…I don’t know.” My voice broke. And at that point I realized that I really didn’t know what I wanted to know at all. Why was I here? What I wanted to know was if anyone in this entire city of Burlington could tell me about my parents, but I couldn’t tell him that. He was a stranger.