Mirror, Mirror

by Linda Randall Wisdom

  The four-poster bed had been replaced by a sterile-looking hospital bed. The only homey touch was a pale blue afghan draped across the end of the bed. The antique furniture had been moved out, and medical monitoring equipment moved in.

  The drapes had been drawn to keep out the afternoon light. Gone was the soft classical music that used to play; only soft beeps from the monitors broke the silence. Dana silently reminded herself to ask the nurse to play her mother’s favorite CDs. She hoped the gentle music could bring her mother back to her, even if, for some reason, Dana couldn’t.

  The soft-spoken woman Dana knew as her mother lay still as a statue. Her normally pink coloring was paper-white and her lips bloodless. Any makeup applied to her skin either sank in or looked garish. The only thing familiar was the Swiss cotton nightgown she wore. Dana didn’t feel her mother needed to wear a hospital gown, and the doctor agreed.

  Dana sat by the bed, holding her mother’s hand. The skin felt dry even though Dana had personally rubbed in a rich hand lotion only moments before. Instead of the rich fragrance of Chanel she always associated with her mother, she could only detect the sharp scents of rubbing alcohol and medicine.

  The older woman’s eyes were closed and her breathing slightly labored.

  “I need you so much, Moms,” Dana whispered, calling her the pet name she’d used as a child. “I want you to come back to me.”

  Alice Madison stirred and muttered in her sleep, but her eyes didn’t open to indicate she heard her daughter’s plea.

  “Honey, she isn’t going to wake up any time soon,” Harriet murmured in Dana’s ear. “For some reason she always sleeps best this time of day.”

  “I had to see her. Talk to her.” She blinked rapidly but it didn’t keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks. “I’m greedy, Harriet. I want my mother back.”

  “I know you do, sweetheart. I know you do.” Harriet guided her to her feet and walked with her out of the room. “The doctor said she’ll need lots of rest, and once she recovers there will be rehabilitation therapy. Don’t you worry. Your mother and I know you can’t be here all the time. But I’m here for her. It’s not as if she’s been left with strangers all the time. That’s what counts.”

  Dana slipped an arm around the housekeeper’s waist and hugged her tightly. “I know that and I’m so grateful you stayed here after Daddy’s death. I just wish he were here. He’d know what to do.”

  Harriet stopped short. She grasped Dana’s shoulders and turned her to face her.

  “What’s wrong, Dana?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong.”

  Dana forced herself to smile. “Nothing is wrong,” she assured Harriet, purposely lightening her voice. “I just feel lonely and sorry for myself.”

  Harriet didn’t say a word as she peered into Dana’s eyes. Then she uttered a word Dana had never heard come from the older woman’s lips.

  “Harriet!”

  “Don’t you ‘Harriet’ me, young lady. I’ve lived a lot more years than you and I can tell when you’re lying to me,” she said flatly. “Something’s happened that’s upset you. What’s going on?”

  Dana continued her pretense. “I told you, I feel lonely. I miss Moms.”

  She walked out of the room, her steps slow as she moved down the hallway. She stopped at one door and cupped the knob, turned it and pushed the door open.

  She looked into the room that had been her bedroom until she left home to attend college. Nothing had been changed. Not the peach and cream decor or the stuffed animals that still lined the shelves high on the wall. It portrayed a former life.

  She took great care in pulling the door shut.

  “If you’re feeling lonely, go out there and find a man. Once you find one, do what comes naturally when you’re with a member of the opposite sex. That’s what you really need,” the older woman said bluntly.

  Dana felt her face burn. She thought about Mac. She seemed to think way too much about him lately.

  “I don’t have time for a man,” she muttered, keeping her face averted from the housekeeper’s sharp eyes. “I have a business to run.”

  “Honey, there’s always time for a man. I let mine know it, too,” she proudly announced. “Frank might not look like much, but, honey, he has what it takes. If you know what I mean.” A twinkle appeared in her eye.

  Dana groaned and walked swiftly down the hallway. “I’m not sure I want to know any more.”

  As she descended the staircase, she looked around the large expanse. She thought of the times she had walked into the family house and found her mother busy arranging flowers with the same care an artist used in creating a masterpiece. She knew no one could have designed anything more beautiful than the floral centerpieces her mother did.

  Dana didn’t want to think of her mother lying so still in the bed upstairs. She wanted to walk into the house and see her mother turn and greet her with a smile the way she always had. She didn’t want to think that the flowers were now provided by a florist.

  Illness tended to frighten people into staying away. Phone calls from Alice’s friends had dwindled.

  Dana jealously hoarded the memories of what had once been, and more, for fear there would never be new ones.

  Harriet led Dana toward the rear of the house and into the kitchen. The housekeeper poured an ice-filled glass with orange juice and warmed a cinnamon-apple muffin in the microwave oven. She placed both before Dana.

  Dana tore off a small piece of the warm muffin and popped it into her mouth. She almost groaned with bliss as the flavors exploded in her mouth.

  “Please tell me I can take some of these home with me.” She gave the woman a look filled with theatrical pleading.

  Harriet smiled and held up a bag filled with muffins. She laid them down. “The price for these muffins is you telling me what’s going on.”

  Dana’s smile disappeared. She plucked bits of her muffin with her fingertips and dropped them onto the plate. “There’s nothing going on.”

  “Sweetheart—”

  Dana refused to look up. Maybe if Harriet didn’t look at her face, she wouldn’t find out her secrets. “There’s nothing wrong, Harriet.”

  Harriet didn’t budge. “Honey, whatever is bothering you will only get worse unless you share it. Let me help you.”

  Tears started trickling down Dana’s cheeks, dropping onto the muffin. She sniffed and swiped at her eyes with her hand. “Harriet, do you know if there’s any mental illness in my family history?” she asked in a voice so soft the other woman almost couldn’t hear her words.

  “Mental illness?” Harriet sounded incredulous. “Why in the world are you thinking about that nonsense?”

  Dana lifted her tear-streaked face, knowing it portrayed a misery that seemed to rise up out of her soul. “Things are happening to me,” she admitted in a whisper. “Things I can’t explain.”

  Harriet sank down on the stool next to her. She covered Dana’s ice-cold hands with her own, then began rubbing them between her palms.

  “Tell me.”

  Dana took several deep shuddering breaths before the words started to spill out. Once she began, she found herself unable to stop as she related everything that had happened to her. She even admitted her visit to the psychiatrist and the fact that she feared she was losing her mind.

  Harriet uttered a soft cry and enfolded Dana in her arms. “Oh, my darling girl. To think you have been going through this horror by yourself.”

  Dana’s tears flowed faster. “You have enough to worry about with Moms.”

  The older woman sighed heavily. “Yes, I worry about Alice, but I worry about you, too. I sensed something had been bothering you for some time, but I thought you were having problems at the office. What about this private investigator? He must be good or you wouldn’t have hired him. Has he found anything so far?”

  Dana made a face. “Mr. McKenna has discovered some things that prompted me to seek psychiatric help.” She leaned against
Harriet, absorbing her strength the way a sponge absorbs water. “I’m so scared, Harriet,” she whispered. “I go to sleep scared. I wake up scared. What if a part of my brain has gone haywire and causes me to do these things without my being aware of it?”

  Harriet grabbed her by the arms and gently shook her. “I swear, you can be the most stubborn child,” she scolded lovingly. “Dana Marie, you are the child I never had. When you hurt, I hurt. I just wish you’d come to me sooner and told me what was going on.” She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at Dana’s eyes. “You don’t need to shoulder such problems all by yourself.”

  “Daddy always said a person needs to solve their own problems,” Dana replied with a watery sniff. “I thought I could do it.”

  Harriet shook her head. “I’m sure your father didn’t mean something like this. Then he’d expect all of us to get together and do whatever we can to help. There’s times when a body needs help.

  “First off, I cannot believe you are doing this to yourself. You were never a sleepwalker, you’ve never suffered any type of depression other than normal grief because of your father’s death. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never exhibited any kind of mental instability. I’m sure that doctor you’re seeing will soon tell you the same thing.”

  “But if it isn’t mental or physical,” Dana asked miserably, “what is doing this? Or who?”

  “Thought you’d like to know I got Gary Carter’s wife off your back before she did something really stupid,” Mac announced when Dana entered his office.

  “I thought you’d taken care of that the night you talked to that private investigator,” she said.

  “I thought so, too, but my new buddy Norman, who’s Mrs. Carter’s private investigator, gave me a call and said Mrs. Carter wanted blood. Namely, yours. When I went over to her house, she was talking about going to your office and making a big scene. I had a talk with her and explained her husband had concocted the whole deal to make her jealous,” he explained. “Norman backed me up.” He clasped his hands behind his head and rocked himself back and forth on the chair.

  “And she believed your story?” she asked in a deceptively mild voice.

  Clearly pleased with himself, he nodded. “She said she should have known he’d try something stupid like that. She was calling her divorce lawyer when we left.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she said. “I wanted to know exactly who this man was, so I did some checking of my own. His wife won’t be ending up with very much. Gary Carter was forced to file for bankruptcy because he’s run his business into the ground and the creditors are hot on his heels,” she said. “The reason his wife wants a piece of him is that the money he sunk into the business was hers. He’d assured her it was a sweet deal. Instead, he used the money to pay for prostitutes he listed under Entertainment. To top it off, three former employees have filed sexual harassment charges against him,” she finished.

  “All three were settled out of court,” Mac added. His gaze softened. “He’s not your nightmare, Dana. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and shrugged as if the news wasn’t disheartening. “I can always hope.”

  “How are your sessions with Abby going?”

  “There’re times I convince myself it’s me and other times I know deep down it isn’t,” she replied. “I visited my mother yesterday and I asked our housekeeper if she knew of any mental illness in my family’s background. She said there was none.”

  “That should have relieved your mind,” he said, studying her. Damn, she looked good to his tired eyes. Her coral silk pants and matching short-sleeved shirt were accented by a braided belt in shades of turquoise, bright green and coral. Her hair was tousled by the windy afternoon, which had also added color to her cheeks.

  “It should have, but it didn’t,” she admitted. “Maybe I’m the first crazy person in the past hundred years.” Instead of sitting down in the chair he waved her to, she walked around the office until she reached the window. She wrinkled her nose at the grime covering the glass. She had started to turn away, when a flash across the street caught her eye. It only took her a second to realize the flash came from a pair of sunglasses worn by a woman.

  As she looked down she suddenly felt pain explode inside her head. She closed her eyes and prayed it wasn’t a migraine. The last thing she wanted was to suffer when she was away from her bed. Except, this pain wasn’t like the warnings of a migraine. Instead of a stabbing behind her eyes, she felt it against her temple. She swallowed a moan and just concentrated on riding out the pain.

  “What’s wrong?” Mac asked, noticing her frozen expression.

  “Headache,” she murmured, blindly reaching for her bag. If she could reach her pill bottle she could swallow a couple of pills dry, and maybe, just maybe, the headache would go away.

  Mac stared. Her face had lost all color and there was a glazed look in her eyes. “Hell, this is more than some run-of-the-mill headache,” he said flatly.

  She shook her head, instantly regretting the motion that set off fireworks inside her brain.

  “What do you see out there?” she whispered.

  He frowned. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, please just tell me.”

  Mac turned back to the window. “I see Mr. Rodriguez kicking a bunch of kids out of his store. Probably for reading the magazines. Mrs. Patton’s in front of her used furniture store—she’s smoking a cigarette. I see a couple men walking down the street. Now they’re stopping to drool over some hot-looking brunette walking by. Another woman is stopping to look in Mrs. Patton’s front window. Someone ought to tell her that a lot of the furniture in there is what Mrs. Patton finds at garage sales and it’s usually what no one else would want. Other than that, nothing all that unusual. The woman is walking away. So’s the brunette. Those guys are busy picking their eyeballs off the sidewalk.”

  Dana was fumbling with the cap to her pill bottle when she realized the pain had left as abruptly as it had appeared. She dropped the bottle back into her bag. The only sign of her headache was a faint throb, which was infinitely easier to handle than the earlier bone-racking pain.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Mac demanded.

  “Yes.” Now she was beginning to feel downright testy. How many times did she need to answer that question?

  “Sure couldn’t tell it by me. A moment ago you looked white as a sheet. I thought you were going to pass out.”

  “I forgot to each lunch.”

  Mac shook his head and muttered something about women and their “diets.” He reached for his jacket. “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.” He whistled to Duffy, who immediately rose to his feet and headed for the door. Mac swung his key ring around his forefinger as he guided Dana out of the office and downstairs to the truck.

  He stopped long enough to drop Duffy off at Barney’s, then directed the truck toward the freeway.

  He kept Dana in suspense as he expertly wove through the heavy traffic. When she later saw a strip of blue in the distance, she turned to him.

  “The beach?”

  “Just the view,” he said cryptically.

  Mac parked behind a large building and climbed out of the Explorer. He walked around the vehicle to open Dana’s door.

  “Why have you brought me to the beach?” She looked skeptical.

  “Sea air is the best cure for a headache.” He helped her out of the truck.

  Dana looked at a huge No Parking sign attached to the back of the building.

  “Aren’t you afraid of your truck getting towed?” she asked.

  “I helped the owner out with some ongoing vandalism,” he replied. “His way of thanking me was permanent beach parking. Around here, a parking space is like gold. The vehicles allowed to park back here are registered with the local police department. I come down here when I need to leave the real world behind.”

  “How does coming down here allow you to
leave the real world behind?”

  Her jaw dropped once they walked around the side of the building and entered the colorful beach boardwalk area. The building was advertised as one of the largest arcades on the West Coast. Judging by the loud sounds spilling out, she’d hazard a guess it was also the noisiest.

  Mac smiled as he watched her study her surroundings. He had had a feeling she’d never been down here, and judging by the awe on her face, he’d been right.

  “I should have gone back to the office,” she said, looking a little guilty.

  “Hey, a little time away from real life is good for you,” he told her, halting when she stopped in front of a canvas-sided booth that featured brightly colored bead necklaces and bracelets. He picked up her hand and gently tugged on it.

  That didn’t stop her from pausing at a cart where a man displayed handmade leatherwork. Or another where a wide variety of candles were available for sale.

  Dana held one particular candle up and looked at Mac. She arched an eyebrow.

  He winced at the candle created to be a perfect replica of a part of a man’s anatomy. “Some people have overactive imaginations,” he muttered, gingerly taking it out of her hands and putting it back on the counter.

  With each step she took, Dana seemed to slough off more of her tension. She stayed close to Mac when several bikini-clad in-line skaters rolled past them, and almost crawled up his chest when a man walked by with a python draped around his shoulders.

  “Hey Harry,” Mac called out.

  The man raised a hand in greeting.

  “Harry likes big snakes?” Dana asked.

  “Actually, Harry prefers mice. Lyle’s the one who likes big snakes,” he replied. “He’s got a couple boas and another python at home.”

  Mac then said hello to a sultry-looking woman standing in the doorway of a store that boasted a psychic who could answer all of life’s questions.

  “You know some unusual people,” Dana commented, not missing the woman’s come-hither smile directed toward Mac.