A Shade in the Mirror

by Tracey Lander-Garrett

  What should I do? Call? And say what? That I’m looking for Rebecca? That we went to school together? If either of them asked to meet with me, that’d be the end of that. Maybe I could say I was Tamara’s daughter. Yeah, real smart there, Maddy. She was nineteen when she died. What if I said that Tamara had been my aunt? That could work, as long as she hadn’t been close with the family afterward. This could work. It had to work. Somehow I understood that it was up to me to fix it.

  I could try to catch Elizabeth Black-Pitt at her building, I supposed, but a phone call seemed less intrusive.

  I showered and ate quickly, nervously listening for weird noises the entire time. I checked the clock. I had to be at work in three hours. Time enough.

  Chapter Six

  Getting out at the 77th Street station, I found a kiosk and dialed the number I’d jotted down.

  A female voice on the other end said, “Hello?”

  “Hi. May I speak to Rebecca Black-Pitt?” I said, in a high, polite voice.

  There was a pause on the other end. “Who’s calling, please?” She had a clipped British accent.

  “My name is Madison. Um . . . she doesn’t know me.”

  “And what’s this regarding?”

  “Well . . . my aunt, actually.”

  “And who is your aunt?”

  “Tamara Meadows.”

  Another pause. “I see. Well, I’m sorry, but Rebecca isn’t available—”

  “Could you tell me when she’ll be in? It’s very important.”

  An ambulance went by, siren blaring.

  “Where are you calling from?” she asked.

  “77th and Lexington,” I said.

  “That’s just a few blocks from here.”

  I waited, biting my lip.

  “Perhaps you should come up,” she said.

  “That would be great!” I said. “Thank you.”

  The address she gave was the same as the one in the phone book, and she told me to ask the doorman for apartment 40-J. After hanging up, I checked my watch. I had two hours before work. Plenty of time.

  The doorman, in his gray uniform, told me I was expected and pointed down the hall. The foyer of the building was done up in marble and mirrors, with plush gray carpets matching the doorman’s suit and black leather couches. The elevators were sleek, quiet, and fast, with digital numbers counting the floors. As the floors flew by, I tried to get my story straight. I was Tamara’s niece. Her sister’s daughter. My mother . . . was dying? Too dramatic. Had been dreaming of Tamara? Maybe. Maybe my mom was sick. That was why she hadn’t come herself. Maybe she was dead already? Why hadn’t I decided any of this before I’d gotten here?

  I got out on the 40th floor and walked down the hallway, looking from door to door until I found the right one. There was a welcome mat outside with an ivy leaf design around the word for welcome in French, bienvenue. We didn’t have a doormat outside our apartment. I wondered if we should get one.

  I pressed the doorbell and heard a cascading melody of notes. Fancy. On second thought, maybe we weren’t fancy enough to have a doormat outside.

  A shadow crossed the peephole in the door, and then it opened. The thin woman in her sixties standing on the other side wore beige slacks with a cream-colored sweater. A pair of reading glasses hung from a long chain around her neck, and her gray hair had been twisted into an elegant bun.

  “You’re Madison?” she asked with the same British accent I’d heard on the phone. “Tamara’s . . . niece?” She seemed hesitant. I guessed I didn’t look much like Tamara.

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes, and you must be . . . Rebecca’s mother?” I asked.

  “Yes, call me Elizabeth. Come in, please.”

  The apartment matched the doorbell and mat. Fancy. It was the only word I could think of to describe it. A chandelier hung from the center of the large room she brought me into, a crystal construction that sparkled in the afternoon light coming in through the tall windows. We passed through a formal dining room into a living room with polished hardwood floors and a large, brightly colored oriental rug. A low-slung gray corner sofa was surrounded by built-in bookshelves full of hard covers, pottery vases and photographs, with a burnished wood and leather trunk serving as a coffee table in the center.

  Elegant. Elegant was a much better word than fancy.

  “Can I offer you a glass of water?” she asked as she gestured toward the couches.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied, sitting down. My mouth felt dry.

  After she left the room, I let out a breathy sigh, and imagined myself saying, “My mother’s name is . . .” Pick a name, any name. “. . . Michelle. She and Tamara didn’t get along. She felt guilty for not doing more after Tamara’s death. She was hoping to get in touch with Rebecca.”

  No, maybe she was the younger sister, and hadn’t understood what was going on because she was too young? Ugh, no. Simplify. Don’t tell anything you don’t have to.

  Among the photographs on the bookshelves, I noticed several images of a girl with short, curly red hair at different ages. In one, she was laughing, maybe eight or nine years old, dangling a fishing rod over some body of water. In another, she was twelve or so, dance recital, ballet. Then she was in her teens, posed with a blonde with braces, both dressed in ski gear amid snow and blue sky. Finally, she was a young woman, dressed in black and playing a piano on stage.

  Rebecca’s mother returned, handing me a glass of water. I took a drink from it and set it down on a coaster on the trunk as she sat across from me.

  “I found your name in the phonebook,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, of course not. Why have it there unless it’s to be found?” she said.

  Right. “So—” I began, at the same time she said, “Tell me—” and we both paused.

  I felt a smile of embarrassment appear on my face that was echoed on hers.

  “Please, go ahead,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Please,” she said, assuming a listening pose: leg crossed at the ankle, hands in her lap, alert expression.

  “Will Rebecca be here soon?” I asked.

  Something like a shadow flickered through her eyes. “I’m sorry to say that Rebecca doesn’t actually live here with me. She lives . . . on Roosevelt Island.” A pause. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Roosevelt Island. It was a tiny islet in the middle of the East River, with a tramway going to it from the Upper East Side.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been there,” I said. “Is it nice?”

  She pressed her lips together thinly and spoke in a well-modulated voice. “Rebecca is an inpatient at Holmwood Hospital.”

  I’d heard of Holmwood, a private facility for substance abuse and the mentally ill, while I was at Spring House. It had a good rep among the crazy crowd.

  “She has been in treatment for over twenty years now,” Elizabeth continued. The words were spoken carefully, without emotion or affect. “I don’t like to talk about it over the phone,” she finished with a slight shake of her head.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. What else are you supposed to say when a woman basically tells you that her daughter is locked away from everyone because she’s a danger to herself or others?

  “Thank you,” she replied. “So, you see, it’s not particularly easy to get in touch with her. She has a particular schedule,” she pronounced it shed-yule, “and it’s best for her if we keep it that way.” Beneath her surface pleasantries, she seemed inflexible and unemotional.

  “Then . . . I guess I can’t really talk to her?” I asked. Come on, Maddy, look pathetic. I opened my eyes a little wider and tried to look worried.

  “I suppose that would depend on what you wanted to talk to her about. It was Tamara’s death that drove her there in the first place, after all.” She frowned, as if she blamed Tamara for dying.

  I bowed my head a moment. “It’s just . . .” I bit my lip. Here goes. “My mother died last year. I didn’t
even know I had an aunt until I was going through her things.”

  Her expression changed abruptly. “Oh, you poor dear. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  I swallowed hard and pressed my lips together, looking down once more. I’d seen Kara get this way when she talked about her mother a couple of times, and as long as she kept looking down, she usually didn’t cry.

  “I guess I just wanted to meet someone who knew her. Tamara, I mean.” I paused, thinking. “Did you ever meet her?” I asked, looking up.

  “Just the once, when Rebecca was moving into that awful apartment in Brooklyn.” Awful? Well, comparatively, I supposed. It was no Buckingham Palace. And Tamara had been murdered there. I guessed it was awful enough.

  “What was she like?” I asked.

  Her eyes got that faraway look that people get when they are trying to remember something. “She was small, and dark-haired. Cheerful. I remember her eyes were a striking color—more gold than brown.” That explained the looks she’d given me. Small, dark-haired aunt, with a tall, blond niece. I thought quickly. Should I say I resembled my father? “She and my mom looked a lot alike in the pictures I saw. I look more like my dad.” I gave her half a smile.

  “Is your father . . . ?”

  “Alive? Oh, yes.” Borrowing from Kara again, I said, “He’s in construction. In New Jersey.”

  “Did you come here today all the way from New Jersey?” She made it sound like Timbuktu.

  “Train into Penn Station,” I said. “Just an hour or so.” As far as I knew, I’d never been to Jersey. Once again Kara’s background came to the rescue.

  “Ah, that’s not too bad then, is it?” she asked. I said that it wasn’t. She seemed to be weighing something, trying to make a decision, and then sighed. “Well, I suppose it was a long time ago. I don’t know what Rebecca would remember about Tamara. She has good days and bad days. As a result, I can’t promise you anything, but I can set up a visitor’s pass for you this weekend if you’d like.”

  “That would be . . . I’d be very grateful,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “How shall I let you know?”

  “Let me know?”

  “The time. The visitor’s hours are a bit strict, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh,” I said, thinking. “Um, my dad doesn’t know that I’m doing this, so . . . do you have email?”

  She hesitated, then said she did. I gave her my email address and she said she’d be in touch. I got up to leave. “Your father does know that you’re in New York City today, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. I’m . . . heading over to the Met next,” I said. “He’s meeting me there later.” One lie stacked on top of the other. Maybe that was in my favor. She might think I was lying about meeting my father, but probably not about who I was, or why I wanted to talk to her daughter. Was I actually getting good at this? And should I feel good about that?

  On my way into work, it began to rain. I pulled my umbrella from my trusty backpack. The rest of the night passed. Work was boring. Not many people came in because of the rain, which grew heavier with intermittent thunderstorms. On the subway home, I skimmed through the ghost book again. I remembered seeing something about what to do to make ghosts leave you alone and thought that now might be the time to try it out.

  Of the various pieces of advice given, there were three suggestions that sounded like things I could do. The first was “smudging”: burning a bundle of dried sage leaves to “purify” your home. The problem was I had no idea where to get dried sage leaves. I could always buy fresh ones and dry them out myself, but how long would that take?

  The next one, making lines of sea salt in doorways to keep ghosts out of specific rooms, sounded pretty easy too, though they recommended getting the salt blessed by a priest. That seemed unlikely at 1a.m. on a weeknight. I thought we had some sea salt in the kitchen cabinet. Maybe a non-holy salting would work just as well.

  The third suggestion was speaking to the ghost and telling it “firmly in an unemotional voice” to leave me alone. “Some ghosts are unaware that they are dead,” the text read, “and thus must be told that they are interfering with the business of the living and should desist from such activities.” Great. I was supposed to tell a pissed-off ghost that it was dead? I didn’t think so. But I could tell it to leave me alone. Theresa had said the guy who lived there before had done something like that too.

  There were more suggestions, from putting up mirrors or scattering rice or some other small grain across the floor in every room, to painting the doors of the house red, among others. I didn’t think Mr. Delgado would go for a red door after all of his complaining about changing the locks.

  Shaking the rain from my umbrella in the hallway, I flipped the entryway light on. The tall floor lamp that had been lying on the floor when I brought Derek over was lying on its side again when I walked inside.

  Thunder rattled the windows ominously and I jumped. I walked slowly into the apartment, heading toward the kitchen. And then I heard it: a sweet, musical tinkling sound coming from Kara’s room that made the hair on my arms stand up.

  The lights in the room were off, but the tinkling continued. I took a deep breath and switched on the light. It was the jewelry box on Kara’s bureau, the one she said didn’t work anymore. Yet there was the tiny porcelain ballerina, turning slowly in a circle accompanied by the slow, out-of-tune notes of what might have been “Swan Lake.” It was the creepiest thing I’d ever experienced.

  I closed the top and the music stopped. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and then heard a tick to my right. I stood frozen, not sure what to do. I heard another tick, then another. I had that odd sense you get when you feel like someone is watching you.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the heavy antique mirror on the wall to my right, hanging at an odd angle. I couldn’t bring myself to look into it. Instead I backed out of the room and closed the door. I flinched as lightning flashed, making the living room windows go white for a moment. The crack of thunder was louder and seemed much closer than before.

  I stood in the hall facing the living room and heard a repetitive, skipping sort of noise coming from the other side of the room.

  It was the remote control for the TV, spinning in place. Just spinning on its own.

  Then it flew across the coffee table and into the air.

  I shrieked and ducked, and the remote hit the wall just inches above my head.

  I tried to remember what I’d read in the book. Talk to the ghost firmly in an unemotional voice. I spoke loudly into the living room. “Excuse me, please? Tamara? You need to stop messing with our stuff.” My voice came out higher and squeakier than I wanted, so I made a conscious effort to lower it as I continued.

  “I don’t know who you think I am, or who you think the other women living here are, but we don’t know you, and you don’t know us. You need to leave us alone.” I pulled the cord on the light in the kitchen and it flickered on. I felt ridiculous. Then the light flickered again.

  There is something comforting about speaking aloud to someone, anyone, when you’re nervous or scared, even if it’s just yourself, someone who isn’t there, or something you don’t want to believe in. Opening kitchen cabinets, looking for sea salt, I kept talking.

  “I don’t know what happened to you, or why you’re doing what you’re doing, but you need to stop. Scaring people isn’t helping anyone.”

  Inside the cabinet, I began moving boxes and canisters around. On the bottom shelf was pasta, flour, sugar, pancake mix, a bag of rice. The middle shelf held lots of canned soup and vegetables, jars of pasta sauce and peanut butter. The top shelf had spices and seasoning. Bingo!

  “Listen,” I said to the empty air, “I’m just going to go to my room. Please leave our things alone.” I paused a moment. “I’m going to try to help you. I hope you believe and understand that. But I need you to be patient. And peaceful. Can you do that?”

&nbs
p; I listened a moment, with another weird feeling like someone was watching me. I shivered and heard the familiar creak of one of the cabinet doors opening behind me and all of the hair on the back of my neck raised. Again, I couldn’t bring myself to look and just stood stock-still for a moment, scared half to death.

  Eerily, the kitchen light flickered, dim, then bright, and back to normal again, as if the ghost was responding. That was enough for me. I grabbed the sea salt and fled to my room.

  To say that I slept that night wouldn’t be inaccurate, though the sleep wasn’t particularly restful. In the morning, the thick line of salt I’d poured across my doorway was undisturbed. Other than the floor lamp, the remote, and two open kitchen cabinets, nothing seemed to be out of place.

  The line of salt across the bathroom’s threshold was also undisturbed. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Ghostly footprints?

  After my shower, I checked my email. There was one new message from Elizabeth Black-Pitt. I had an appointment to see Rebecca at Holmwood Hospital the next day at noon. Perfect, especially considering that I had the day off.

  I put on a green button-up shirt with my jeans and Converse sneakers. I really liked pairing those jeans with those sneakers. Those two items, aside from the sweater, tank top, and underthings I’d been wearing when I “came to” on Madison Avenue, were the only clothes I had from my former life. They felt like they were “mine” in a way that clothes I’d gotten since didn’t. Unfortunately, nothing about the clothes were clues to my identity. The tags were all from generic clothing stores you’d find at any mall in North America.

  If anything, the only noticeable thing about them was that the jeans and sneakers were actually vintage, as opposed to the fake retro gear that plenty of hipsters were wearing these days. I tried to tell myself that I should be reassured. Apparently, I was not only fashionable, but also no stranger to wearing other people’s old clothes. It was a “real” me detail. The real me, whoever I was, liked secondhand clothing and shoes.