The Mirror

by Marlys Millhiser

  And now this boy had walked into her life.

  When she reached the road she woke him. “Jerry, which side of town do you live on?”

  He directed her to the first turnoff and then to the Strock cabin.

  “Who told you you could live here?”

  “A man a couple houses back. He let us in and said he’d tell the owners to rent it to us.”

  Tim Pemberthy. He lived in Samuel’s old cabin now and often saw to letting the Strock place to summer visitors for Thora K. He probably hadn’t had a chance to inform them of the new occupants.

  She hadn’t been back here for years. Memories of Corbin and little Penny pierced her and memories of a long-ago girl from a future time.…

  “Jerrold, is that you?” A woman stood in the doorway, the light behind her throwing her shadow across the porch. “Where have you been?”

  “Jerry, take the basket in and tell her I want to talk to her.” She braced herself to meet another of Shay’s grandparents – this one would be younger than herself.

  Later when she left the cabin it was on trembling legs. Driving down the hill and across the bridge, she turned onto Main Street, passing the few stores that had not closed or disappeared after the tungsten boom. Crystalline moonlight flickered across water ripples on the reservoir ahead. Several couples strolled along the shore.

  She parked in front of the frame house with the stained-glass door. I don’t want to do this. She was almost disappointed to see light behind the window shades.

  Marrying Hutch and settling down on the ranch had been a safe if hardworking interlude after the upheaval the wedding mirror had caused her. But a hungry little boy and his mother shredded in a few hours the protective cloak it had taken her years to weave. She could never be Shay again. Now she didn’t feel like Brandy either.

  She stepped out of the car and walked up to the house, startled by the sound of her own knock at the door, half-wishing it wouldn’t open. But it did.

  “Brandy? Is that you? What –”

  “I have to talk to you, May Bell.”

  “Well … sure. Come on in.” But May Bell couldn’t hide her reluctance.

  “Are you alone? This is private.” She walked into a dark Victorian room of worn furniture, hideous lamp shades with dusty fringe, and red-flowered wallpaper.

  “I’m alone. Has something happened, Brandy? Is it Lon? Hutch?”

  “No, they’re fine. May Bell …” She sat on a lumpy chair and closed her eyes on the garish room. “I … think we should have a drink.”

  “Didn’t know you drank.”

  “I do now.”

  May Bell left the room, returning with a bottle and two glasses, her many bracelets jangling. “Something awful’s happened out at the ranch, huh?”

  “No.” She took a slug of raw whiskey and had to wait for the fire to die down, to simmer, before she could go on. “But something’s happened. You better sit, May Bell. Or should I say, Christine?”

  Short curls dyed an un-uniform orange plopped about on May Bell’s head as she sank into a chair so hard she hit bottom. “Who told you about Christine? It’s a lie!” But she emptied her glass and poured herself another. “Who told you?”

  “Your daughter.”

  “Catherine?” May Bell’s eyes seemed smaller now that she’d added so much weight around them. “I don’t believe you.” She had to dislodge rolls of fat from between chair arms to stand. “You get out of here, Brandy McCabe –”

  “Maddon.”

  “Look, I know I owe you something for warning me to get my money out of the bank before it closed but –”

  “You don’t owe me anything. But you do owe Catherine something.”

  “You got no right prying into things that’ve been dead for years.” May Bell’s tentlike dress quivered and she put her hands out as if to ward off an attack. “You’re a witch. Else you wouldn’t know the things you do. Christine is dead.”

  “Well, Catherine isn’t. You can be May Bell to me and all of Nederland, but to your daughter you’re Christine Pintor – sometime, onetime mother.”

  “I was only sixteen when I left and –”

  “May Bell, she’s in town. Here. Now. And she’s looking for you. She wants to see you.”

  “You’re lying. After all this time … no, it’s somebody else … pretending.” May Bell’s lipstick and rouge looked as if they’d been applied on white alabaster. “You ain’t so smart, you know. And not always right either. You were a year off on the crash. I took your advice and lost a year’s interest.”

  “Nobody’s perfect. Can we get back on the subject?”

  Fumbling in her pocket for her cigarettes, May Bell lit one and puffed while she paced. “I was fourteen when I had her. I’m not old enough to be her mother. She must be a grown woman now.”

  “Try meeting your own grandmother when she’s twenty years younger than you sometime. I need another drink.” Brandy/Shay reached for the brown bottle. Who the hell am I?

  May Bell took the glass from her hand. “I’ll add some water to it. You ain’t used to this.”

  “You mean we aren’t used to this.” But her hostess had left the room.

  “Why haven’t we seen more of each other these last years?” she asked when May Bell returned. “You’re one of the few people I feel free enough to put up my feet with.”

  “Because the minute your daughter was born you got all holy.” She held out the watered whiskey. “And you can’t put your feet up. You got to go.”

  “What is it about mothers and daughters?” She took a drink and let the feeling of it wash over her. “May Bell, who am I?”

  “You’re Brandy McCabe, Strock, Maddon. And you’re crazy.”

  “You’re right. I’m Brandy. Because there’s no one else to be.” Shay hasn’t been born yet. And you, fat lady, are going to be Shay’s great-grandmother. She moved a footstool under her feet and sat back. “I am Brandy and you are May Bell and we have a problem. Sit down.”

  “And you are a crazy witch. Every Halloween I get my outhouse turned over and I’m only a whore.” May Bell lit another cigarette off the one she was smoking. “The Bar Double M ain’t that far out of town. How come no one picks on you?”

  “There are two sets of Maddon twins to beat the shit out of anyone who tries it. That’s why. Now, back to our problem.”

  “Where is she?” May Bell sat across from her finally, nervous gestures stilled. “Is she really here, or just in your crazy head?”

  “She’s here, renting the Strock cabin. Only been here a few days.” Brandy recrossed her ankles and drank deeply. The stuff burned even with water in it.

  “I was pushed into marriage as a kid. She was only two when I –”

  “Well, you’re old enough now to be a grandmother.”

  “I am not!” May Bell swung orange curls wildly, looking about her as if for a place to hide. When she could meet Brandy’s eyes again, she croaked, “She has a baby? My baby has a baby?”

  “Yeah. A nine-year-old baby. Wake up, May Bell. I didn’t have the twins till I was thirty-one. And they just turned twenty.”

  “But your hair’s gray.”

  “Because I don’t dye it. I’m younger than you are.”

  May Bell unwedged her fat rolls and went back to pacing “What happened to little Willie? He was only a year when I last saw him.”

  “She’s lost track of her brother. Catherine married a man who moved around a lot looking for work. He gave her a son and left them some years ago in a migrant labor camp in California.”

  “What happened to the farm?”

  “Seems it was entailed to a younger brother instead of the children. Willie ran away a few years before Jeremiah, your husband, died. Your daughter got kicked off the farm and married a man by the name of Garrett.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “May Bell, that woman, your daughter, is destitute and she’s ill. She needs help. She has a child. And you are her only hope.”
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  “I was just a kid –”

  “And you brought one into the world and so did she. You do have some responsibility for both of them, you know. I need another drink.”

  “How did she find me?” May Bell poured it absently. “How could she know where to look?”

  “Your husband had you traced, first to Denver and then here. Catherine didn’t find out about it until she went through his papers after he died.”

  “Jeremiah knew all along,” May Bell whispered. “For years I lived in fear he’d find me and make me go back. And he knew.”

  “Apparently he didn’t want you when he discovered your new profession. Wonder why he bothered to keep track of you.”

  “He was a strange man, Brandy. And I’ve met all kinds since.” She wrapped ponderous arms across her chest as if she were cold. “But none like Jeremiah.”

  “Anyway, the last she knew, you were in Nederland. She either didn’t know you were using another name or didn’t know what it was. She didn’t try to find you until she was desperate.”

  But what Catherine did know of her mother coupled with what Brandy knew of May Bell had made it fairly easy to recognize who Christine Pintor was.

  “Well, what can I do? This is no place for a kid.”

  “May Bell, you’re not still working. At your age?”

  “Sometimes. And the few people that come to visit … the talk. I just can’t take ’em in, Brandy.” Her breath made little humming sounds. “The boy’s not to know about me. I’ve liked my life just fine and I ain’t ashamed of it. But he would be. That’s not right for him. Maybe if I gave you some money and you gave it to them, they’d go away.”

  “And you’d always wonder if I made this up to get your money. She wants to see you, May Bell. She hash … has the right. I’ll talk Thora K. into letting them stay in the cabin for nothing. You keep them in food and fuel. And tomorrow when Jerry goes to school you and I’ll sneak his mother down to Boulder to a doctor.” Brandy was interrupted by a hiccup. “Doc Seaton’s too old, and she’s too sick to take chances.”

  “You know if I’d stayed on the farm I’d of ended up just like my ma,” May Bell said defensively. “One baby after another till the last one killed me.”

  “You have to help them. I would, but there’s the ranch and taxes on the Ginsherbread … excuse me, the Gingerbread House and Sophie and Thora K., the kids. I know I couldn’t talk Hutch into taking on any more.” Her chair began to revolve.

  “Sophie McCabe? Didn’t you warn your ma about the crash and everything?”

  “She wouldn’t listen. Losht almosht everything but the house.” Brandy set down her glass and grabbed the arms of the chair. “I don’t think … I’m going to be able to drive … drive home, May Bell.”

  “Lon’s coming soon. He’ll take you back.”

  “He ish? What for?”

  “Looks like to take home a drunk sister-in-law. Hutch’s going to kill you.”

  “I know.” She blinked as May Bell’s gaudy makeup and hair blurred above her. “But I just met my father, and he’s a little boy, and thash a funny feeling.”

  “Brandy, what am I going to say to her? Don’t go crazy on me now. Help me.”

  “Don’t want Rashael to see me like this. Must tell Lon to be sure shesh asleep.”

  3

  Rachael found her mother grouchy the next morning and wondered if they were in for one of the scary times. Brandy would become cold and tense toward her, then change abruptly and smother her with attention. That was almost worse than her coldness.

  Rachael hated these times. Everything in her world would be unsure, unsafe. She’d have that floating feeling in her stomach until she could gauge the direction of the day by the expression on Brandy’s face. The scary times usually happened in winter when snow piled too high in the valley for Brandy to go out riding with the men.

  Uncle Lon looked like he wanted to laugh. Things that worried others often tickled him. He pretended to choke on his coffee, his eyes dancing between her parents.

  When her dad cleared his throat it sounded angry. Maybe he’d had an argument with her mother. He did have that hardness on his face.

  Brandy was pale and tight-lipped.

  “Can I make ’ee a wee bit of kiddley broth, Brandy? ’Ee look to be taking sick this morning.”

  Hutch Maddon dropped his spoon in his oatmeal, leaned back in his chair and laughed. Uncle Lon joined in until he had to wipe his eyes.

  Brandy grimaced. “Please don’t –”

  “Wot be so funny, you? ’Er be sick.”

  “Sick!” And Rachael’s father laughed harder. Uncle Lon left the house and Rachael could hear his rough guffawing out on the porch.

  “Then you’re not mad?” Brandy watched through squinted eyes as Hutch finished his coffee and stood.

  “Mad? Hell yes, I’m mad. Don’t you ever pull that again, woman.” He grabbed his hat off the peg. “But if you do, I want to be there, understand? Sick, oh, God …” And he was laughing again as he closed the door behind him.

  “Might be a spoon of me tonic would ’elp ’ee now, Brandy.”

  “Thora K., your tonic is the very last thing I need. Hurry and eat, Puss. I’m taking you into town this morning.”

  Brandy handed Rachael two lunch pails when they got into the car. “The other one is for your new friend, Jerry. I’m driving his mother down to Boulder today to see a doctor. She’s ill and probably couldn’t pack a lunch. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No.” Rachael was bewildered. Her father rarely laughed during the scary times.

  “Give it to him on the way from his house to school so the other children won’t know.”

  “Mommy, you don’t have to do all these things for him because of me.” Rachael thought her mother looked too tired to take anyone to Boulder and she was beginning to wish she’d never seen that old Jerry Garrett. “I don’t like him that much. It was just –”

  “Well, you’d better learn to,” Brandy snapped. “You’re going to marry him someday and will you stop banging those lunch pails together?”

  “I am not either. I’m never going to get married and if I do it’ll be a man like Daddy. Don’t you say things like that.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Puss. I just have this headache and …” She reached over to squeeze Rachael’s knee. “Of course you’re going to marry a man like Daddy. Forget I even said that.”

  But Rachael couldn’t forget. That was the kind of statement that caused the town to talk about her mother.

  “This is Thora K.’s house,” Rachael said when the car stopped.

  “Tim rented it to them. He just hasn’t gotten around to telling us about it yet.”

  Rachael carried an extra lunch the next day too. She didn’t see why her mother had to make such a fuss over Jerry Garrett.

  After school, while she waited by the store for one of her brothers, Mr. Binder stuck his head out the door. “Rachael, your mother stopped in to say she and Thora K. would be up to the old Strock house and you’re to go on up there.”

  As Rachael crossed the bridge she banged both lunch pails against the wooden railing and stopped to stare angrily at Middle Boulder Creek. It was bad enough having to share her mother with all the people crowding the ranch house. Why did the Garretts have to move to Nederland anyway?

  But, upon reaching the cabin, she felt a twinge of guilt when she saw the haggard look on Mrs. Garrett’s face. Brandy and Thora K. were busy cleaning and cooking. They sent her out to play with Jerry and to stay out of the way.

  A cool mountain breeze ruffled her hair. Grass and weeds choked the clearing behind the cabin and a pump stood on a low concrete base.

  Rachael didn’t see any sign of Jerry as she walked past the tilty outhouse to an old path where a thick layer of pine needles kept the weeds from growing. She searched the tree branches for squirrels.

  A door stood flat against the hillside. Thora K. had warned her to stay away from it the few times she’d broug
ht Rachael here. “All dirt ’n cobwebs and damp in there. Just a cave us used ter keep food in afore us ’ad a hicebox,” the old woman explained.

  Rachael looked over her shoulder and up the path. No one around. She’d been in caves before, but never one with a door. That gave it an Aladdin-like quality. Its paint worn and chipped, shaggy juniper bushes encroaching on its frame …

  Rachael touched the door. The wood was slivery as she ran her hand down it to the handle under the rusty latch and waited with a pleasing tingle to imagine just the right frightening thing to be hiding inside. Wide cracks caused intriguing slits between the warped boards and a round hole yawned where a knot had fallen out. Her hand still on the coolness of the handle, Rachael bent down to put an eye to that hole.

  All she saw was dark, a dark so thick it had a smell to it.

  A dragon? A witch? An evil sorcerer? She couldn’t decide, but as she straightened, her hand jarred the handle and the door in the hillside made a slight movement toward her.

  Rachael stepped back. The tingle now was not so pleasurable. A chilly, musty smell of cave dirt forever buried, never cleansed by sunlight, seeped out toward her.

  The padlock meant to keep the latch from lifting over its iron hook lay on the ground.

  Rachael chewed on her tongue. If that door opened some more by itself she’d hightail it back to her mother so fast …

  But it didn’t. It stayed where it was, daring her to open it some more. A squirrel chattered above her but she didn’t even look up. Why was the padlock on the ground when this cave was never used now?

  Did she have the nerve or didn’t she?

  No, she didn’t. Rachael turned back toward the path, feeling stiff as if she’d stood there for hours instead of minutes.

  Yes, I do, too. Rachael swiveled around, pulling again at the handle.

  The door opened a big enough space to walk through.

  It was quiet, as if there wasn’t anyone in the world but Rachael and that door.

  The whole mountain waited for her to go in there. Warmness flooded her skin.