The Mirror

by Millhiser, Marlys

  “They don’t bother me none. It’s the Chamber of Commerce that’s got me worried. We’re still county here, but this used to be peaceful farmland as far as you could see.”

  “Before that, prairie with scattered cattle grazing on it.” Brandy heard the wistful note in Shay’s voice.

  “And before that, the land of the Arapahoe and the buffalo.” He drew out the o’s until she saw buffalo instead of goats. Ansel St. John was almost as magical as the wedding mirror and didn’t even use pictures.

  “Come along. Haven’t met everybody yet.” He drew her on to a barn, unpainted and leaning away from the west wind. Where there should have been cows and horses, chickens ran wild, and more cats. At the far end, more goats.

  “That’s Hooligan and his wife Stina Mark. Watch out for Hooligan. He’s a mean one. Stina can handle him though. Swedes make awful good wives, you know.”

  “But Stina Mark is the black cat with the –”

  “THIS is Stina Mark.” His tone broached no argument and Brandy felt uneasy about him for the first time since she’d begun to recover.

  The goat had soft brown fur with eyes to match and streaks of white along her flanks. She butted Ansel’s hand gently, her stubby tail in constant brisk motion.

  Ansel led Brandy around the front of the house, where derelict automobiles sat on tireless hubs among the weeds. A dog was chained in front of the wide glass door that slid half back on itself to provide entrance to the kitchen.

  “Happy, I want you to meet our visitor.”

  Brandy had seen the dog through the door already and was confused as to his naming also. When she asked her host he merely replied, “Because he’s happy.”

  “He doesn’t look it.” The animal’s lips curled in a snarl. He was medium-sized and fairly stout.

  “That’s cause you’re lookin’ at the wrong end. See his tail?”

  Happy’s tail did indeed wag but the look in his eyes was cold and unloving. He sniffed her hand, then her skirt. Brandy shivered, remembering the silent dog at her side when she’d fled through the alleyways and streets of Boulder.

  As she turned to go into the house, Happy growled low in his throat.

  Rachael Garrett lay on the bed in which her Grandmother Sophie had given birth to her mother, where her Grandfather McCabe had died. Where she and Jerry conceived and later snuggled with the baby, Shay, sharing their delight at the good fortune that had finally befallen them.

  Now she watched her husband dress. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, one shoe on, holding the other, probably lost in the same remembering as she, unable to share it with her as once he would have.

  He cleared his throat, put on his shoe and stared at the wall.

  Another day. More false leads or nothing at all. Rachael no longer cared about the book she was writing. She spent more time listening for the phone than getting on with her work. Hoping it would be Shay come to her senses. Or at least word that she was alive and well. Afraid that it might be news of finding her body. She could be in another state by now, dead or alive, anywhere.

  Jerry’d hired a detective, broadcast a reward for news of their daughter. People called, some trying to help, others just being cruel.

  And again, as in every major aspect of Rachael’s life, her mother had been instrumental. Even in her last act of dying. The trouble with Shay began the night Brandy Maddon died. Brandy’s control of Rachael’s life was complete to the end.

  “Remember” – Jerry said his first word of the day – “when we took a picnic up to Fourth of July Campground that time and Shay fell into the stream? She kept yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy.’”

  “Even after you’d pulled her out and were holding her. And that fisherman came along and decided you were running off with somebody else’s kid.”

  Jerry turned, looked into Rachael’s eyes with feeling. “She couldn’t have been more than five.” He blinked away the feeling. “Maybe somebody really has run off with her now.”

  “Let’s at least have breakfast together. I’ll fix it quick.”

  “No. I’ll get something downtown.” The familiar sound of withdrawal. He stood and walked to the door.

  “Wait, I’ll get dressed and we’ll both go out for breakfast.”

  “Rachael, I don’t need –”

  “Well, maybe I do. Dammit, Shay isn’t the only one who needs you, you know. She was mine too. Whether you like it or not, we do share a common grief.”

  “Don’t say ‘was’!” Weight had mellowed the lonely eyes. The longer hair style, salted with gray, softened the bony lines of his face. “You’ve got your historic house and your career. You never needed me except as another piece of furniture to fill out –”

  “Jerry, you still love me. I know that.”

  But her husband was gone. Rachael waited to hear the front door slam before she rolled over to cry. She decided to try again that evening after he’d had his scotch.

  But Jerry Garrett didn’t come home that night. Rachael knew he was up at the cabin in Nederland and probably not alone. When he hadn’t returned by the next morning, she called the police and asked them to relay any messages about Shay to Marek Weir.

  Then Rachael packed a bag and walked out of the Gingerbread House.

  Marek Weir doubled his jogging distance that morning, looking for a platinum-blond head he knew he wouldn’t see. The sting of sweat seeped into his eyes by the time he reached the door of the apartment. He fought the pain of ragged breathing and overpumping heart as he stripped out of his sweatsuit and stepped into the shower.

  Marek listened without hope to the morning news during his bachelor breakfast. Shay’s mother would have called him about any development, even if Jerry Garrett did hate his guts.

  The extra mug of coffee and the double exercise couldn’t dispel the listlessness left by a night of nightmare and yearning on the controlled warmth of the king-size water bed that’d once lulled away disturbing thoughts.

  He grabbed the notes he should have worked on the night before and left the apartment. As he locked the door, the girls living next to him did the same. One was interesting, the other not. Both invited him with their eyes.

  “Fucking world,” he snarled, to their apparent delight, and stalked off down the hall, leaving them giggling behind him.

  The rumble of the Porsche didn’t satisfy him this morning. The rush-hour traffic the length of Boulder set his teeth on edge. Gone was the last yellowness of the bruise Shay’s father’d left on his face. The stitches were cut from the back of his head and much of the hair grown out where it had been shaved away from the wound.

  But the wound inside Marek had grown. His mother’d visited his dreams, asking, “Where is your wife, son? Where is your child, Marek?”

  The weird part of the whole damn dilemma was he liked Shay better crazy. He couldn’t account for this unreasonable instability in his emotions.

  “Emotions, Jesus,” he said to the Porsche as he whirled it up the mesa road to NCAR. He thought he’d learned to control them better at his age.

  Marek breathed deeply of the fresh air as he headed for the building Shay had called a castle. Martin Black had invited him on a hard-rock jaunt for Saturday. Marek decided to accept. That was the way to exhaust and exhilarate himself out of this agony, this mood that kept him driving streets and back-country roads till all hours in a hopeless search.

  “Hell, she’s probably dead or in Alaska by now,” he said to the elevator button, and jabbed it.

  Shay was right. The place was odorless.

  No more whispered talk about the strange disappearance of his fiancée that would end suddenly when colleagues and secretaries discovered he was near. Fads in gossip were over quickly in this busy world.

  No one teased him any longer about getting rid of the Porsche and joining the station-wagon set.

  He nodded to a few people, hated the sympathy still in their eyes, was glad to get to the open air of the catwalk.

  Old girlfri
ends called him again. He received invitations to parties. But he didn’t go. The good times had paled.

  Throwing his notes on the desk, he stared at the city from his tower office.

  Then Marek turned to the scrolled writing on the blackboard, the haunting message circled so the janitor wouldn’t wash it away. I am Brandy.

  10

  Brandy McCabe stood before a line of graves bordering one edge of Ansel St. John’s junk-filled yard.

  Weeds had been cleared away here and the mounds ringed with milky quartz pebbles. Five tiny graves and four large ones. At the head of each a white cross with lettering carved in the wood and painted gold.

  The same words on all nine crosses. STINA MARK.

  Wind billowed her long skirt. Metal clanged on metal where her host worked on some rusting machine on the other side of the house.

  Were these the graves of other goats and cats with the name so common in this place? This odd burial ground increased her anxiety about Mr. St. John.

  An automobile traveled too slowly along the road. Brandy crouched behind a windowless hulk, raising her head just enough to peer through a portal that’d once held glass. The torn seats gave off a smell like that of moldy blankets.

  A familiar silver-green vehicle dazzled in the sunlight and turned into the drive.

  Happy barked and lunged at the end of his chain.

  Marek Weir stepped out and stood looking about him from behind darkened spectacles.

  Brandy experienced a glut of emotions at the sight of him. Relief that he’d not been killed by Shay’s father. Horror that he’d tracked her down. Longing to feel just once more before she returned to her own world the heat of his breath as when he’d kissed her in that saloon with the hanging plants. Shame at the betrayal of these thoughts. The urge to flee before he could take her back to the Gingerbread House.

  But she slumped to the weeds and covered Shay’s face instead. The diamond had slipped around and lay cold against her skin. She began to pray fervently but was interrupted by Mr. St. John’s curt command to Happy. The incessant barking stopped.

  Brandy crawled up to peek again. Ansel walked toward Marek, wiping his hands on a rag. Ansel nodded, gestured, shrugged. Marek stood with hands on slim hips, head lowered to watch the old man’s face.

  Finally they shook hands. Marek slid into his automobile and drove away.

  Brandy watched Ansel stroll toward the machine he’d been working on, as if nothing of importance had occurred.

  She skirted around the back of the house. “Mr. St. John, what happened? What did he say?”

  “Said his name was Marek Something-to-ruther.” Ansel leaned his weight on a long metal handle and grunted. “Said he was looking for you.”

  “You mean he doesn’t know I’m here?”

  “Hand me that there hammer.” He beat the handle with the hammer and yelled over the noise, “Told him I hadn’t seen you. Ain’t nobody can lie as good as me. Here, you lean on this and we’ll both try.”

  Brandy moved to help him and she could hear his joints crack as they tried to force the handle.

  “Eh … dang thing. Take a blowtorch to get it off. Never mind. Don’t hurt the little one.” He stood back and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “That young buck give you this?” He touched Shay’s engagement ring. “And the baby you’re growing?”

  Brandy felt a hot blush on Shay’s cheeks. “Yes.” I assume so.

  “Ought to be some baby then. Why’d he want it killed, I wonder.”

  “It’s not him. It’s her … my parents. They mustn’t find me.”

  “They won’t. Thought you was pickin’ corn for supper. Hunt up some eggs to go with it while you’re at it.”

  She’d seen no sign of a chicken house. “Where do the hens lay their eggs?”

  “All over. That’s why you have to hunt ’em.”

  Ansel St. John didn’t approve of eating meat and although Brandy missed it she found the fresh eggs and vegetables, lightly salted and buttered, more satisfying than the highly seasoned food Rachael cooked.

  They sat now over such a meal and Brandy obediently fed Shay and her baby some goat’s milk.

  “That Marek fella sure sounded torn up about losing you.” Her host stroked mashed food from his beard. “Could hear the TEARS in his voice.”

  “What kind of man gets his fiancée with child before he weds her?”

  “Any kind that can get away with it. I ain’t for judgin’ neither of you. But that boy’s hurtin’ deep.”

  “I don’t wish to discuss Mr. Weir.”

  “Sure did when you was sick. Kept callin’ his name over and over.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Did so.” He buttered a slice of dark bread and dunked it in his tea to soften it. “Told me a lot of things. You was awful sick for a while. Said you was Brandy McCabe and looked in a mirror and then you was Shay Garrett.”

  Brandy set down her ear of corn and stared. “What else did I say?”

  His lips pursed out and then retreated around toothless gums. “Spoke of some people I used to know of when I was a kid. Sophie and Elton McCabe. Nora Labsap. Them McCabes was big news way back then. My pappy used to haul coal to the Gingerbread House, you know. ’Course I never knew John. He died before I was born but the stories about him outlasted his dying for many a year. Raised more hell than ten men put together in his day. Owned half of Water Street too.”

  “He did not!”

  “Did so. Biggest joke in town when old Sophie led the crusade to shut it down after he was dead. Then she couldn’t figure why her income shrunk so. Real religious, that Sophie. Livin’ off whores and gambling and booze and not knowing it.”

  Brandy jumped from her chair much like he did when preparing for an oration. “You’re lying.”

  “SIT DOWN!”

  Stina Mark started up from her box of kittens, but Brandy sat. “You think I’m mad too.”

  Ansel pointed his fork at her. “I can outfib a politician if I want to. But I ain’t now. You eat some food for that baby and I’ll talk. Else I won’t say another word. Ain’t you a bit curious as to what happened after you left?”

  Brandy took a bite of egg. “What happens to Nora? I know about the others.”

  “Nora Labsap? Married some bartender at Werely’s Saloon. Your ma and her friends put him out of business. Moved to Cheyenne, as I remember. Don’t know what came of them. Your brother Elton died of the great influenza. Like the plague it was.”

  “He never marries.” Don’t listen to him, Brandy. He may be your savior now but he’s got a tile loose somewhere.

  “Never did. Today you’d call him gay. Back then the words was harder. Got affianced once but discovered his field of interest laid in other directions. Old Sophie did her best to cover it up.”

  “Gay? Elton is a very solemn young man. He –”

  “Real joke was after Sophie lost her money she kept the Gingerbread House goin’ off her daughter’s husband. He was a Maddon. Big a hell-raiser as old John McCabe till he met Brandy. Had a ranch out of Nederland. His brother run booze during prohibition. They was twins. Stories about them two’d burn a lady’s ears. That Brandy tamed ’em though. She was a woman and a half. Little thing. Surprised everybody. Rumor had it she was crazy too, but if she was, she sure knew how to use it.”

  “But I am Brandy.”

  “No, you’re Shay Garrett. Better get used to it. Won’t be easy, but you’re a scrapper. Never saw nothin’ fight for life and breath as you did when you was sick.” His eyebrows moved up into grizzled hair. “Now, if it was me, I’d do some worrying about that mirror. Don’t seem right to let it loose in the world.” He scratched his chin under his beard. “That Maddon twin Brandy married, his old man was hung for murder and his mother was a whore.”

  Brandy covered Shay’s ears, but it didn’t help.

  “That boy was a legend, and so was his brother. Them Maddon twins could outcurse, outride and outbastardize –”


  “Mr. St John!”

  “Sorry. Keep forgetting you’re from a different time than Lottie, even if you’re much of an age.”

  “You … believe me then? What I said when I was ill? That I’m –”

  “Never heard of a mirror could do what that one did to you. But there’s a lot of crazy talk in this world. Old Ansel’s learned to filter out the RING OF TRUTH when he hears it. Anybody your age who’d treat somebody mine with respect, callin’ me Mr. St. John … I mean you ain’t from this world. Ain’t seen anybody scrub a floor like you do since …”

  He patted her shoulder. “Think we need some ice cream or dessert. Lottie don’t believe in sugar but when the cat’s away …” He opened the icebox, produced a colored paper box and spooned ice cream onto her plate. “Get much more addled and I’ll start buying coffee again.”

  “I do miss coffee.”

  “You too? Lottie talked me off coffee and sugar. She’s into stuff you wouldn’t believe, my granddaughter. Had a TV once. Good company for an old man. Lottie stuck a shovel through the screen. She was right about the stupid stuff it said but I was old enough to know better. But then she raised the money against the taxes to keep my place from the bulldozer. Passed the hat amongst her friends and they don’t have scratch.”

  “Where’s Lottie now?”

  “She’s like the hens. All over. Last I knew she was raisin’ money to save a prairie-dog colony and living in a shack with three men. She has appetites, does Lottie.”

  “Living with … alone? You mean –”

  “Sleepin’ with ’em. Hurts your lady ears, I know. But that Lottie’d made a fortune on Water Street in your day, even paying cumshaw to your dad. Now they only get board and room and call it liberated instead of business. But Lottie makes out. She ain’t no fool.”

  “How can you permit her? Are her parents dead?”

  “Mother’s out East somewheres, a social worker. Never met the father. Beth’s married and divorced so often I lost track. So did Lottie.”

  “What does a social worker do?”