Girl in the Mirror

by Mary Alice Monroe

  That night, as the crickets sang outside her window, Michael stretched out on the creamy leather sofa they had purchased together from Gumps. Charlotte sat at the kitchen table. On the oak surface she laid out a sheet of her best Tiffany stationery, an enamel Waterman fountain pen and a cup of chamomile tea. She sat with her hands still on the table, listening to Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmuzik, trying to get in the mood, to find the right sentiment in her heart to be able to write this letter.

  “You realize you’ve been sitting there for half an hour, not moving a muscle,” Michael said from across the room.

  She startled, looking up and blinking heavily, as though waking from a deep sleep.

  “Where are your thoughts?” His smile was beguiling.

  “I’m just thinking,” she replied, looking at his face.

  “Of what?”

  “Of my mother.”

  He set down his book then, giving her his full attention. That gesture implied she was his top priority and meant a great deal to her.

  “I was thinking of what words I could say in a letter that would cross the miles between us and find some way to bridge that gap. Being in a Catholic church again brought to mind happier memories with my mother. We spent hours every Saturday cleaning the church together. We’d polish the heavy brass candlesticks on the altar, dust pews, air out the priest’s vestments, arrange flowers for the vestibule.”

  “Did you enjoy doing it?”

  “I enjoyed the attention from Mom. I remember her teaching me how to scrub far into the corners. She has these large-boned hands, curved and worn from years of hard work. I was fascinated by them, and by her long fingers, puckered from use. It was very important to her that I not leave a mote of dust in God’s house.” She sighed and twiddled with the fountain pen. “It seems to me we spent so much time cleaning dirt out from the church that we didn’t leave time enough to see to the mess in our own lives.”

  “Why don’t you write that? Tell her now.”

  She startled in alarm. “What?”

  “You’ve just told me what you really want to tell her. If you want to start cleaning out the mess, roll up your sleeves and begin now.”

  “She’d think I was blaming her.”

  “Are you?”

  She paused, examining her feelings. “No,” she replied honestly. “Not anymore. I just want to be close again. Our happiness has changed me. Talking of our future, our children.” She paused. “I miss my mother.”

  “You might try telling her that, too.”

  A week later, Michael and Luis rounded the corner of the cabin, hands gesturing in the air, engaged in a hot conversation. When they reached the front door they stopped short. Inside the house they saw Charlotte seated at the kitchen table, earphones on her head, books splayed out on the table before her. Her eyes were closed as she listened intently, then she responded to the tape, reciting Spanish aloud with a remarkably good accent.

  Michael was both surprised and touched that she would make this effort for him, for his family. It had to be mostly for their benefit, since he demanded that the family speak English around her.

  The two men stared at her with a look of puzzlement. Anyone looking at them would have thought they were studying a piece of art. Finally Luis reached up to an itch behind his ear, giving the spot a thorough scratching.

  “I admit she is not what I thought you’d bring home. A movie star. Humph.” He rocked on his heels and rubbed the bristle on his cheek. “And she is so scrawny a bird, so rangy. Not much meat on the bones. But she has a big heart. And she makes a good mole sauce.” He stopped to place his large, meaty hand on Michael’s shoulder. “She maybe will make a good wife.”

  Maria Elena and Charlotte were in Marta’s big, homey kitchen preparing for Maria Elena’s saint’s day dinner. The yellow, blue and green tile border gleamed in the morning sun that was pouring in from the glazed windows. Marta had laid out on the long, heavy wood table bowls of warm, wrapped dough for rolls, and on the stove, several saucepans were simmering with the sauces they’d made earlier that morning. The air was redolent with the scents of sweet dough, spicy sausages, and cornmeal.

  Marta was patting out the tortilla dough while Charlotte and Maria Elena cooked the fresh tortillas on the grill.

  “Take it off when you see the first bubble,” Marta reminded her.

  “Sí, yo sé!” Charlotte called back, smiling at Maria Elena.

  Marta grunted softly in appreciation. “Luis, he say you do good work at the nursery with Miguel. He is happy to see you in the family business. It is good for a woman to know the family business. To keep the accounts, no? A man might rule at the dinner table, but the woman—” She flipped the dough and pounded it with efficient strokes. “The woman rules the home. This she must do for her children. A man might gamble away the money, or drink.”

  “I doubt that Michael would gamble away his money. He works too hard at earning it.”

  “Miguel? No, but some, sí, it happens.” Her small hands kneaded the dough while she glanced discreetly at Maria Elena. Charlotte had heard about Manuel’s increasing drinking, and she nodded, remaining silent.

  “In my heart, Mexico is my home,” Marta continued.

  “It is the country of my family. My parents, my sisters and my brother. My culture, eh? But my children’s home is here in America, so in my mind, it must be my home, too. Luis, he does not feel this way but—” she shrugged and caught Charlotte’s eye, her own eyes twinkling “—the parents must suffer and endure so that the children can do better. It is the way it must be. I wanted my children to go to the schools taught by the nuns. On this I was firm. I didn’t want my children to drop out of school or end up in jail like so many other children that I knew in the old neighborhood. Like—” She fumbled with a word at the tip of her tongue. “What is the English word for when they have numbers for an opinion?”

  “Statistics?”

  “Sí,” she nodded, resuming her pounding. “Statistics. They were bad for Mexican children in Los Angeles. So many drop out of school. Gangs. Not good for the children. So we moved to the suburbs and Luis he worked like a mule en el labor for very little money while I hired out as a seamstress close to home. The nuns, they gave our children money for school…scholarships, eh? My children, they were smart. Sí. Very smart. My Miguel, he went to a college in Boston!”

  “Yes, I know,” Charlotte replied, thinking to herself that Harvard was hardly just some college in Boston.

  “I wonder now if maybe I made a mistake. That maybe Luis was right. Miguel, growing up he had his heart torn in two. For a long time he did not want anything Mexican. Not the language, the music, the food. Not even his family. He was very bitter about any prejudice against him, and maybe when he rejected his culture…” She shrugged. “He was prejudiced, too. He ran far from his family.”

  “Did Tío Miguel run away from home?” Maria Elena asked.

  The women laughed lightly, easing the tension. “No, my heart. No, but…” She tilted her head and acknowledged her granddaughter. “In many ways it felt to me, his mama, that he did. Yet I said nothing to him. It is better that your children come home because of respeto, no? And love, rather than duty. Sí, he came to California for duty, but he is staying because of love.”

  Charlotte watched Marta’s gaze travel from the sweet face of Maria Elena, as smooth and round as the ball of dough, to her own face.

  “Now he is in the business, he speaks español, and sometimes with you he goes to church. I see his heart becoming whole again. It makes my own heart happy.” Her eyes shimmered in water as she beamed up at Charlotte.

  “I think much of this is because of you. You are good for my son. For the family.”

  Charlotte pressed her lips tightly.

  “Charlotte, a bubble!” alerted Maria Elena.

  Charlotte turned quickly to flip a row of tortillas while Marta watched approvingly.

  “Sí!” Marta said, slapping another bowl of dough down on the
floured table with gusto. “It is good for the woman to keep the accounts. Maybe you try, eh?”

  Summer was coming to an end. Now she worked side by side with Michael in the nursery. Every day there were small tributes to the strong, binding relationship they were developing. A glance across the field as she tagged the young trees, a gentle kiss or pat on the rear when he passed her. The unspoken acceptance of them by the family and their co-workers delighted her, bringing smiles to her face and a lightness to her step. The past few months living with Michael and his family had been the happiest in her life.

  Charlotte wasn’t sure when or how she started becoming involved with the business. It was subtle at first. She helped out in the store, working the cash register, stocking the shelves. Studying the names of plants, both the Latin and the derivatives, paid off, and once again she thanked God for her excellent memory. When Luis, who liked to try and trip her up on occasion just for sport, begrudgingly accepted her as a member of the Mondragon team, the rest fell in line. Even Paco, the small, wizened foreman who’d been part of the team for as long as Michael could remember, tipped his hat when she passed him.

  One evening, when she and Michael were too tired for passion and it was enough just to sit together on the porch, she asked to be allowed to do his books for him. “To keep the accounts,” she told him. When he raised his brows, she bristled.

  “I used to be a certified accountant, thank you very much,” she said archly. In this area she felt confident that she was his equal. No, she decided, lifting her chin in a challenge. Even superior.

  “You see? This is just what I was talking about,” he replied with a smile of astonishment. “This is one of those interesting details about you that I never knew before. A pretty big detail, now that I think of it. You? An accountant?”

  “I can add and subtract pretty good—for a girl,” she replied with a wry smile. “Don’t break down all my illusions and tell me you’re like Luis and believe all a woman is good for is cookin’ an’ cleanin’ and birthin’?” Her eyes were flashing.

  “No, not that I find fault with that,” he replied. “Okay, I concede.” He laughed, palms up in defense against her jabs. “The books are yours. I bow to your professionalism. Gratefully.”

  “You’d be surprised just how much your mother does in this department, too.”

  “Nothing my mother does would surprise me. And since you’re so keen to do the paperwork, you can do our taxes, too. We’ll be filing joint returns very shortly, don’t forget.”

  So Charlotte became involved in the financial details of the Mondragon businesses as well. She learned how his father had inherited the land from an uncle and clung to it tenaciously while others in the valley had sold off. The one hundred acres were extremely valuable now. If they sold off now, they’d all be rich beyond their dreams. She also learned how Luis had slaved in the squared-off yards of the California suburbs building up his lawn maintenance business. Rosa and Manuel managed it now, efficiently as far as she could tell, if not imaginatively.

  Doing the books, she also knew exactly how much the growth of the lawn maintenance business was due to the flair and hard work of Michael Mondragon. He was more like his father than she dared suggest to him. He wooed new clients with gentle persuasion, knowing what and how to suggest, unlike Manuel, who waited for business to come to him and spent far more than his budget allowed. Already, Michael was talking about bringing young Cisco along next summer to learn new skills in the business.

  When Michael talked about the spring that bubbled beneath their nursery land, his eyes became dreamy. “Fresh mountain springwater,” he told her, with the emotion of a visionary. “An unlimited supply, just waiting to be tapped. That,” he’d told her, drawing her near, “is where our futures lay.”

  She loved it when he talked about “their” future. It was as though he were paving the road ahead with gold.

  On an unusually cool late August evening, as they sat rocking on the front porch of the cabin, listening to the cicadas singing their farewell songs, he explained to her about his father’s desire for him to remain on the land, to inherit everything, to produce Mondragon heirs.

  “To be honest, I never thought it possible that I’d want to stay. This was always someplace I couldn’t wait to escape from. I hated it. The hard work, the coarse language of the men, the sharp orders from my father. But now—” he shook his head and looked at her, more perplexed than she “—it’s changed. I’m building something here. The business, sure. But it’s you that’s made the difference,” he explained, taking her hand and looking at her as she’d always dreamed a man would look at her someday. Not her face, not her body, but her. “You’ve made all the difference.”

  Charlotte felt the thrill of belonging to someone, to something bigger than herself. She imagined having a life here, on this mountain, with Michael. Having his children here, Mondragon babies on Mondragon land.

  She’d cuddled on his lap and wept, not able to explain what this meant to her. Here, she had a real family at last. She was part of a bigger circle, sharing, being included. It was like being a little child again, and finally, someone was asking her to play.

  Later that same night, he brought up the subject that had been troubling him all day. She’d had another telephone call with Freddy Walen, and it, like all his other calls, left her nervous and agitated. He watched as she stood before the bathroom mirror, brushing her long blond hair with brisk strokes.

  He never tired of looking at her. She had a vulnerability about her that made him feel like a caveman bearing a stick, ready to fight the enemy on her behalf. He’d never felt this for anyone else before. And to his mind, Freddy Walen was the T-rex of adversaries.

  “What did Walen want?” he asked as they climbed into bed.

  Charlotte tucked the comforter under her chin and wriggled over beside him, rubbing her feet together in the cool, crisp sheets. Freddy was getting increasingly difficult to stave off. She’d told him that she went to visit her mother after her stay at the spa. That she needed time alone to settle family affairs and tend to her health. Freddy was antsy at first, but tolerant. Now he was chomping at the bit.

  “He has a couple of projects he wants to discuss with me. In person.” She sighed, bringing a knuckle up to her mouth. After a while she added softly, “I can’t put him off forever.”

  Michael let out an exasperated sigh. “Why not give up the career?”

  “Which one?” she asked, striving for levity. “My career as an actress or as an accountant?”

  “I should think an accountant’s job would suit our life here very well,” he said, pulling her up on his shoulder.

  “You could keep on as you are, running the books, expanding the operation. Yes, I can see it now,” he added, stroking her arm. “Your first job would be to look after me, of course. I’d demand my share of time alone with you. But I suppose I could share you with the eight or ten little bebés we’d have.”

  Her laughter pealed through the air and she slapped his shoulder with feigned scorn. “We’ll just see about that, Mr. Michael Mondragon.”

  “We’d have to add a few rooms on to the cabin, no doubt. Ten years hence we’ll be lying here in our bed, on our well worn mattress, while the children crawl over us like puppies.” He looked over at her, smiling innocently.

  She wagged a finger at him, entertained by the fantasy. He was, despite all of his protestations, exceedingly traditional.

  “I want children. Yours and mine,” he said. “Now?”

  She lifted her eyes to his and saw the sincerity. Such charm he had, she thought, stroking his chin. His dark eyes bright, his expression so fervent. Their life here together was charmed, like a fairy tale come to life. She couldn’t bring the reality of children into this world until other decisions had been made.

  “My career is important to me. I’m not ready to simply chuck it all. And Freddy is beside himself. He accepts that I’m taking a leave of absence to get my health back and settle
my affairs, but he expects me back well before Camille opens for the holidays. So much is happening now.”

  The mention of the name Freddy Walen was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. He colored and sat straighter. “You’re right. So much is happening. And I’m not talking about your film career.”

  “I know,” she replied, smoothing a long strand of black hair from his troubled face. “Don’t rush me, Michael. I don’t know what I’ll do about my career any more than you know what you’ll do with yours. But I like to think you and I will follow the old Buddhist proverb. We’ll be like two young trees with strong roots. And rather than stand rigid against the wind and crack, we’ll bend.”

  Her soothing tone worked. With a low mumble he settled back onto the pillows, drawing her close.

  Eighteen

  When Bobby came to the cabin for another painting lesson one bright September day, he was horrified to see her ashen face. She was sitting on the front steps, holding her head. The circles under her eyes were like black-and-purple thunderclouds.

  “Good God.” He stepped back and leaned on the door frame. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “Spread that rumor around and I’ll really be a scandal to your mother.”

  “Well, are you? Don’t keep me in suspense, darling. I adore babies. Other people’s babies, that is.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no. I’m definitely not pregnant.”

  “Pity. Michael’s prancing about here like a rooster. Well, whatever is the matter with you? You look like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. I expect you’ll be twisting your head around in a few more moments, speaking in seven languages.”

  “I feel like it.” She crossed her arms over her belly and moaned. “Oh, Lord, Bobby, I wish it was something I could exorcise.”

  “Is it something you ate?”

  “I wish it were so simple. But you don’t want to hear me moan about my aches and pains. Never mind.”