Mirror, Mirror

by Robb, J. D.

“Sweetheart!” her mother objected.

  Stephen looked up, startled at her tone. “No. These are the old parts they left. See, here’s the split pipe.”

  Cassandra exhaled, laid her hands on his forearm. “I’m sorry. Thank you for checking on that.”

  He shook his head mournfully at the broken pipe. “Bet it froze; there’s probably no insulation in these walls. It may only be September now, but the weather will be turning before you know it.”

  “You see, there was no need to jump down his throat about it,” her mother chided. “Aren’t you glad you have Stephen here to help you with that?”

  Cassandra blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m just on edge. I don’t know how in the world they’re going to get that moving truck down this street.”

  Stephen patted her hands, then glanced at her mother and they shared a look. “It’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of it. Now let me call these plumbers for you and ask them why the pipe split. If it did freeze we’d better get someone to check the insulation.”

  Stephen pulled his cell phone from his pocket, placed all but the one pipe on the mantel, and went out to the front stoop to make the call. Her mother raised a smug brow at her, said something about inspecting the bathroom, and left.

  Exhaling, Cassandra turned back to the room, biting her bottom lip. She sat in the window seat and gazed across the hardwood floors, trying to imagine her tattered, mismatched but well-loved furniture in the empty space. Her mother had probably been right about that; she should have bought new instead of moving the old stuff. She just didn’t want to get here, to this spectacular new place, and not feel like there was anything left of her old self.

  Something shimmered by the fireplace and she jerked her head to look directly at it, fearing something had caught fire. But whatever it had been was gone. Must have been something in her eye, a floater. But it did draw her attention to the hearth, and the pretty purple tiles that lined either side of the opening. They were the first thing she’d noticed on entering the house; she’d immediately pictured how they’d gleam and glow when a fire burned in the grate.

  The mantelpiece was also one of her favorite details in the house: carved, painted wood, with delicate rosettes on each corner. As she studied them, she noticed that one looked askew.

  She rose from her seat, approached the fireplace, and touched the flower, pushing it back into place. It slid easily, revealing vague scratch marks where it had drifted off to the side. She gazed at it a minute, then pushed the rosette aside again. It moved as if on a pin, slipping up and to the right. She pushed it farther and found a dark hollow beneath the ornament. A secret hiding place!

  Heart thrumming, she bent forward, looking close. There was dust but no spiders that she could see. She poked two fingers inside—about all that would fit—and could tell something was there. Gently, she pulled what felt like a thick piece of paper from the space.

  It wasn’t a note, or even a full sheet of paper. It was something with shape that had been rolled. As carefully as she could, she unrolled the piece, placed it flat on the top of the mantel, and gasped.

  Something shifted deep inside of her, recognition and memory coming together like two well-oiled pieces of machinery. It was The Night Prince. Somebody had painstakingly cut a picture of the prince from the storybook—her favorite picture, with the prince in his dress uniform, his blue eyes calm and smiling, epaulettes rich with gold glitter and his sword topped with a deep red tassel, one strong hand resting on the hilt—then rolled it up and put it into this hiding place.

  It was like running into a long-lost friend on the street, one you thought had died or disappeared. Suddenly Cassandra was transported back to the most magical time of her childhood.

  Smiling, she pressed its yellowed edges flat with her fingers. For some reason, tears stung the back of her eyes. The prince gazed up at her with his calm, confident expression, looking as if he were as happy and relieved to see her as she was him.

  “Hello,” she said softly.

  A mass of cold air blew by her side and she jumped. The picture snapped back into a roll and bounced off the mantel.

  Cassandra’s eyes scanned the room. It hadn’t really been a breeze, not this time. It was more like something cold had pressed up against her. And when she’d jumped it had leapt away.

  Great, she thought. The place is haunted.

  Then she sighed, smiling, and picked up the rolled prince. “Good thing you showed up when you did,” she said, feeling stupidly reassured by the prince’s presence.

  Eyes scanning the empty room, she gently straightened the picture once again and went out onto the front stoop to show Stephen. But he was not as amazed as she was at the prince’s sudden appearance.

  “Huh,” he said, then pointed. “Look, here comes the truck. And just like I said, there’s plenty of room. I better go tell them where to stop.”

  As Cassandra turned away she noticed that inside the house the lights brightened, a long glowing surge, then went back to normal.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She felt me. She nearly saw me. I know she did. I was standing by the fireplace and her eyes nearly met mine.

  She is the one who’s important.

  It’s lucky I’m here today, because terrifyingly I feel as if I drifted away somewhere for a time. When I first saw Cassandra she said she had weeks before the move, but now suddenly today’s the day and where the hell have I been in the meantime?

  Never mind. I’m here now, and she very nearly saw me. There’s hope! I can sense it, and the urgency I feel is overwhelming.

  It’s hard to describe how I move, what I can do, so I’ll put it in terms that’ll sound right to you and it’ll be close enough. Yeah, I do kind of float, but I still act like I walk and have limbs, and all that.

  Just in case anyone’s watching.

  Something like that.

  Once on TV, always on TV, right, Mickey?

  No, not like that. I mean, yeah, I want to be seen. Jesus, I want to be seen like I’ve never wanted anything else in my life. But not for fame, Asta. Give me a break, who the hell cares about fame anymore? You have no idea what it’s like to be nonexistent. No idea. It’s hell, Asta. This is hell. I can’t do anything—I can’t—dammit.

  [She’s lifting her flipping eyebrow, pompous freaking fairy.]

  All right. Proceed.

  A raft of curse words bubble in my consciousness but with a Herculean effort I hold them back. It’ll do no good to turn her against me. But still. I hate it when she winds me up like that. And if I could do something about it . . .

  Anyway, I go up to the attic and start looking around. There’s stuff up here from long ago. Maybe some of it was my mother’s but there have been several families in the house since she lived there and they’ve all left behind some detritus. Just little stuff, things nobody felt like moving out of an attic four stories up and one narrow staircase away from a broken neck.

  So there’s a bassinet, a broken rocker, a large old wooden crate with the words “McNally’s Extra Aged, McNally Ltd., Cheshire, England” burned into the sides. What McNally’s was and why it was “extra aged” is a mystery, but the box is cool. And it’s filled with long rolls of thick paper, some of which have building plans on them, some hand-drawn maps, some unidentifiable sketches of geographic patterns.

  I tear a corner off of one blank page and dig down deep where I know some old grease pencils live. I was a passable artist in my day, often sketching people or scenes when I needed a break at work. It was a form of meditation for me, I guess, and it was also a great way to pick up women. If you could sketch a woman’s face on a bar napkin you could pretty much get laid.

  I sit down on the floor and start drawing. I haven’t looked in a mirror in two decades—well, I have, but I haven’t seen anything—but I remember what I look like well enough and the desire to have her see me, even in grease-pencil form, is overwhelming. All of a sudden I sense a path to communication.

  So I draw myself
in the uniform of that cutout soldier—no, she called him a prince, the Night Prince, when she told Stephen about it—and I have to say it looks not only like me, but like the original drawing. Then, next to me, I draw her.

  She’s fun to draw, with her big doe eyes and long braid, her willowy body and those funny overalls. We look silly, disjointed, next to one another, but there we are, and for a long moment I can’t look away from my own drawing.

  There’s something about it, about the two of us together . . . as if I’ve seen it before, lived it before. I’m mesmerized, spellbound, and struggling to retrieve what feels like a memory that’s just out of reach.

  Then I have to break away. The feeling borders on painful.

  Though I can’t cut our figures out like the picture she found, I tear the paper as close to the edges of the figures as I can, then roll us up and place us in the hole behind the rosette.

  Will she look there again? I move the rosette off center the way it had been.

  This is important. She is important. Even though Asta tipped me off, I’m pretty sure I’d have known it anyway. And now it feels imperative that she know I’m here.

  I settle down and wait for her to find me.

  ASTA, WHERE DO I GO?

  What do you mean?

  I mean, where do I go, when I’m not here?

  You’re always here.

  No I’m not. The seasons have changed since I was last here. And that girl, Cassandra, she must have come and looked at the house at some point. She said she had an inspector come. She didn’t just buy the place sight unseen. But I’ve never seen her before. So where was I when she came looking? I thought I couldn’t leave the house.

  It’s complicated.

  Try me.

  [sighs] Remember that dream you had?

  I sleep?

  That memory, then. You were remembering your prom. With Jody Williamson? You remembered the whole night, almost as if you were reliving it.

  It’s creepy that you know that. But go on.

  You were reliving it. You were there. It was happening.

  The prom was happening.

  Right.

  You’re saying I was at my high school prom when Cassandra Carlisle looked at the house.

  Right.

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  It’s a space-time continuum thing.

  But it already happened. If I was reliving it, it had to be a memory. So I was immersed in a memory to the point where I didn’t notice people coming and going in the house? I was—what?—comatose or something? A ghost in a coma. That’s rich.

  No, it wasn’t that you were sitting here indulging a memory; that’s not how it works. Everything is happening all the time, just not always in the same plane. And because you’re a ghost you have access to a bunch of different planes.

  You’re saying I caught a plane to the past. [snort]

  Funny.

  I thought so.

  You know that old adage about living in the moment, because that’s all you have? The present moment? Well, it turns out that’s true. They’re all present moments, and if your present moment is thinking about the future, then that’s the present moment that’s going to live on for eternity, you thinking about the future. In the present. Doesn’t have anything at all to do with any future. Which naturally doesn’t exist.

  It doesn’t? All that planning?

  No. There is no future. There’s only now. There’s only ever now. So you visited a now on another plane.

  Another now? So there’s no future—and I’m assuming no past—but a whole bunch of nows? Is that why I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any older, even though I’ve been here for God knows how long?

  You haven’t gotten any older. You’re still thirty, just like the day you died.

  I didn’t die, Asta, and you know it.

  Whatever.

  This whole thing’s ridiculous.

  Not my idea.

  So what was the me on this plane doing while I was in the now on the other plane?

  Whatever it is you’re doing right now. Because that’s happening now, Cassandra Carlisle looking at the house, you being at your prom, even as you’re here now, talking to me. See?

  No, I don’t see. None of that makes sense.

  Yes it does, you just can’t understand it.

  You’re giving me a headache.

  Technically you don’t have a head.

  Then I’m reliving a headache.

  IT’S NO GOOD. AS YOU CAN SEE, TALKING TO ASTA IS LIKE, well, talking to Asta from The Thin Man movies. Fairies, like dogs, have a different sense of time and reality. Fairies have a bunch of nows, evidently, and that works for them. Dogs pee on things they like, and that works for them. Asking them to explain these things to non-dogs, or non-fairies, won’t make us like them any better.

  But see, it’s not enough to throw up my ghostly hands and say, “That’s just Asta!” anymore. I can’t maintain my near-human perspective and sense of humor in the face of the fact that I could disappear at any moment.

  What if Cassandra finds the drawing of us and I’m not here? I won’t be able to see her reaction. I won’t be able to make myself real to her. What if I’m off reliving, I don’t know, my driving test at the DMV when she lays eyes on me for the first time? How will that help me?

  The panic rising in my incorporeal chest is the most human I’ve felt since I was phantomized. I have to reach her. I have to make myself known.

  I pace the bare wooden floors in the front room even as she directs movers and peers in boxes and steals a bite or two from her fried chicken. I run behind her as she trots upstairs and down, shoves books onto bookcases, unearths sheets and towels from Hefty bags and tosses them on the bed Stephen assembles.

  I want him to leave. Almost more than I’ve ever wanted anything else in my life I want him gone. His presence is like a loud piercing noise, scrambling my senses. The sister, Pamela, is all right, though she watches Cassandra and Stephen like a psychologist on the other side of a two-way mirror.

  And thank God the mother left before the heavy lifting began. If she’d praised that know-it-all Stephen one more time I was going to hurl a ghostly snowball in her face. She obviously doesn’t know it, but every word out of her mouth puts another dent in her daughter’s self-esteem.

  Finally, finally, the movers leave and the bucket of KFC is finished. The beer is drunk and the bed is made and Pamela is yawning.

  “I can’t thank you both enough for helping me,” Cassandra says. “I don’t know how I would have done this without you. Truly.” She reaches out her hands, one to each of them, and squeezes their forearms. They sit at a dainty kitchen table in the middle of my cavernous dining room, the chandelier overhead dimmed to a candle-flame glow.

  “Cass, the place is wonderful. You’re going to be so happy here.” Pamela lays a hand on hers and smiles sleepily.

  Stephen wears a face that could grace the sourest elementary school teacher. “This is a lot of house to handle. There’s no way you could have done it yourself, so I was happy to help.”

  Prick. She could have done it without leaving her seat if she’d wanted to. The movers did the hard stuff. All Stephen did was complain about them scratching the floors and bumping the walls as they hauled items as awkward as pregnant livestock up a nineteenth-century staircase. I’d like to have seen him do it.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow, if you want,” the blowhard continues, “and touch up those places they hit in the hallway with the headboard. They also chipped one of the doorknobs. There’s a salvage place on Sixteenth Street; I can check to see if they have another one like it.”

  He casts beady eyes around the room, probably looking for marks on these walls as examples.

  “No, Stephen,” Cassandra says firmly. He looks at her. “You’ve done enough. Now it’s up to me to get settled.”

  “But there’s stuff still sitting in the middle of the floor!” He waves a hand, as if the furniture’s havin
g an unsanctioned party in the unattended rooms. “You can’t move that by yourself. How are you going to settle in if you can’t move that stuff?”

  Cassandra and Pamela glance at each other—Cassandra annoyed, Pamela concerned.

  “If I run into trouble I’ll call you, but for now you’ve done enough.” She smiles grimly. “Now go home, both of you, and get some sleep.”

  Pamela’s eyes look momentarily wistful. “Stephen, could you give me a ride home? I took the Metro here but I’m so tired . . .”

  Cassandra shoots her a grateful glance as I have an a-ha moment. Pamela, I think . . . she’s the answer to getting rid of Stephen once and for all.

  Meantime, though, Stephen’s cornered into leaving and that makes me happy. No kiss good-night for you, buckaroo.

  The chandelier brightens incrementally.

  I watch Cassandra clean up. Her expression goes from tense and guarded to soft and sure. And I feel something almost physical. Like a heartbeat, which I haven’t felt for a score; or a breath, deep and satisfying. Funny, I’d forgotten all about breathing.

  She cleans up after them, taking the dishes into the kitchen and washing them by hand, but it doesn’t look like she’s going back into the front room. She isn’t going to look behind that rosette tonight—why would she? In fact, why would she ever? She’s already looked in there. Even if she sees the rosette off center she’ll just center it again, won’t she?

  My calm diminishes and I feel myself once again nearly vibrating with anxiety. I have to reach her. Somehow I have to let her know I’m here.

  “Hey!” I jump up and down, waving my arms, more to release a sudden excess of energy than with any hope that she’ll see or hear me. Nothing happens but some plaster dust falls from the ceiling and the lights flicker.

  I fully expect Asta to appear by my side with a snarky comment and a sarcastic face, but she stays away, maybe to save us both embarrassment. I begin hopping on one foot and turning in circles.

  Cassandra starts to hum.

  The song stops me. I know it, from somewhere long ago. There are no words, I don’t think, just da-dah . . . da-dah, more of a rhythm. Then Dah-da-da-da daDAH . . . I sing it along with her for a full minute before realizing it’s the theme song from that old TV show Bewitched.