The Mirror

by Millhiser, Marlys

  “Children?” He tried to peer over the gate and the yellow rim of the basket but she backed away. “There’s more than one?”

  “You are the grandfather of identical twins, Mr. Garrett.” She showed him two tiny heads, fine black hair fluffing around white faces, eyes screwed shut against bright sunlight, four little fists purposelessly flailing air. “Your daughter has two fine sons.” Her voice softened as she looked at them. “And I intend to keep them safe until she returns.”

  “She’s not returning, Brandy.”

  “Of course she will. She must.”

  “No. It looks like you’ll have to take care of them. I guess they’re yours now … and Marek’s.”

  Lottie and friend arrived to add to the confusion. And a few minutes later, Ansel St. John in a rattletrap truck.

  Jerry worked hard to convince him he meant the mother and twins no harm, that there had been a misunderstanding, that he wanted only to help them.

  “She’s of a legal age to do what she wants,” Ansel decreed. But then he admitted the three of them were getting to be a handful for an old man.

  Finally, Ansel shooed Lottie and Roger from the kitchen and made Jerry write on paper that he would not send his daughter to an institution.

  Jerry signed it knowing it had no legal value but hoping to placate Ansel. “You see, when she overheard us speak of institutions and such, we didn’t know she –”

  “Was Brandy McCabe?” Ansel St. John seemed to know the whole story and he’d swallowed it without blinking.

  The man had to be crazy and it made Jerry more determined to get his grandsons out of there … grandsons … he peeked into the clothes basket. The twins slept.

  He told Ansel he’d move them into his cabin in Nederland. “They’ll have everything they need there. I’ll see to it.”

  “Good. Boulder’s a little raw for an old-fashioned girl to start out with.” Ansel turned to the woman in Shay’s body. “And I’ll be up to check on you. He tries to pull anything and this paper goes right to THE POLICE!”

  Brandy still seemed nervous about the move. But, after writing the old man a generous check for his trouble and expenses, Jerry loaded her, the twins and a ton of swiftly folded diapers into the Oldsmobile and drove off.

  “The reason I can’t take you to the Gingerbread House is your mother … I mean … your daughter … Rachael has been hit hard by all this. We’re worried about her. I think she’ll have to take you on gradually.”

  He made a quick stop at the Gingerbread House, leaving them in the car, to pick up the diary and ask the nurse to stay late.

  “What are you going to do about Marek?” he asked as they started up the canyon.

  “That I will leave for Shay to decide when she returns.” Brandy fiddled with the diamond ring. “It’s not for me to –”

  “She’s not returning!” Jerry took a curve too hard and fought the Olds back off the shoulder. “Don’t make this any harder for me than it already is. Looking at you, knowing inside you’re not her –”

  “I must get home, Mr. Garrett. Then you can have your Shay back inside as well as out. Perhaps if I could have the mirror with me in –”

  “It’s gone. Stolen. Along with almost everything else. You’ll understand more when you’ve read the diary.”

  Brandy marveled at how the canyon had been cleared, at how quickly they reached Nederland along the wide sweeping road, at the dam built below the town. Ice covered the water behind it, spread over what she’d known as a vast mountain meadow.

  Nederland was in its proper place, but held nothing familiar to her. Pines covered the surrounding slopes now and smoke puffed into a leaden sky from chimneys hidden among them. Snow lay in grimy drifts along the edges of the streets.

  Shay’s father drove through the town and across a bridge, passing a railroad car sitting by itself in a field.

  “Did they finally bring the railroad to Nederland then?” Brandy looked back wistfully. Here at last was something familiar.

  “It came through someplace up closer to Caribou. That’s just a fancy antique shop. I don’t know how they got that old caboose in here.”

  “Antique, yes.” It was awful to be an antique oneself. “Caribou, I remember well. Is it –”

  “Hardly even a ghost town. Nothing left but the cemetery. And not much of that.”

  “Ghosts are all that’s left, if seems.” And I should be one of them. Brandy wouldn’t believe she must stay trapped here.

  Jerry stopped before an odd building in the trees. It was shaped like a capital A, its front of glass, its frame and full-length porch stained reddish-brown. Stacks of chopped wood lined one end of the porch.

  He leaned over to stare across her. “This is the spot where the Strock cabin used to stand. I lived in it once when I was a kid.”

  “Where I shall live when I return. But not in so grand a building, I’m sure.” Corbin Strock seemed a remote phantom.

  Jerry drove up a steep incline beside the cabin and parked behind it. A rusted lift pump stood on a platform of broken concrete, reminding her of the one at the trough for the carriage horse at home.

  “Well, this’ll be your home. For a while at least.” He carried the diapers in and she the twins.

  The air was sharp on the mountainside and chilly in the cabin. “I’ll light a fire in the fireplace and turn up the thermostat. There’s not much here. I’d better run down to the store.”

  Brandy sat before the fire and hurried to nurse Shay’s infant sons before his return, feeling the prickly relief as Shay’s breasts emptied.

  This structure would hardly have passed as a cabin in her time. Cushioned furniture sat deep in rugs thicker than those in the Gingerbread House. One vast room, with kitchen and parlor combined, a railed balcony at one end on which she’d seen a bed. Jerry Garrett did seem intent on making them comfortable rather than causing trouble. The place had a soft pillowlike atmosphere, protective, enclosed.

  When Jerry came back he made several trips to the car for paper sacks filled with food. And meat. All cut to size on paper plates and wrapped in that clear filmy substance she saw so often in this world.

  “You’re going to fry T-bones?” he said when she began to prepare supper. “Whoopee-twang … as Shay would have said.”

  He seemed to sober at his own words, stood for a long moment staring into the air, jingling coins in his pocket. Finally he shook his head and poured himself a glass of Scotch whiskey. When the supper was ready he did full justice to the meat and the potatoes fried in its grease.

  “Mr. St. John didn’t approve of eating flesh. He was very fond of animals. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted meat.”

  “I’ll look the other way if you want to nibble off the bone.” He managed a smile. “You can call the local store for anything you need and put it on my account. Mrs. Tyler said she’d find some school kid to deliver it. I’ll bring Shay’s clothes up tomorrow.”

  He showed her another bedroom in the cellar and a clothes-washing machine and dryer.

  As he slipped into his coat, he bent over the basket from which much cooing and gurgling emanated. “Have you named them?”

  “I’m sure their real mother will wish to do that, but for now I’m calling them Joshua and Elton after my brothers.”

  “Read the diary,” was his only answer.

  Brandy watched him drive away through the front wall of window. Snowflakes fell across the lights of the automobile’s lanterns.

  She washed the dishes, bathed Shay’s babies at the kitchen sink and treated herself to a steamy shower in the bathroom off the kitchen.

  After building up the fire, Brandy reached for the green leather book she’d seen the night of her abortive visit home.

  Wind sighed a timeless winter lament without, making all seem snug within.

  Elton twitched comfortably. Joshua snored an infant sound.

  Brandy laid the diary aside unopened and curled up on the deep sofa to sleep until the next feed
ing.

  19

  “They got the Maddon eyes, that’s for sure.” Remy knelt stiffly beside the clothes basket and let Joshua clasp his forefinger.

  “Yes, and Marek’s hair.” Elinore Maddon bent to touch Elton’s cheek.

  “Your Uncle Dan knew you weren’t dead, Shay.” Dan set a large flat box against the wall. “Nation full of quitters, that’s what we are.” He glanced at Jerry Garrett in a grouchy fashion and stood beside his brother to admire Shay’s babies.

  “You and Marek fix it up fast. Kids need a name,” Dan Maddon continued. He had the decency to blush. “I don’t hold with these one-parent families.” His wife, Ruth, tried to hush him up with an elbow in his ribs. Her stiff-curled hair had a bluish tinge to it.

  Dan ignored her. “These boys raise half as much hell as two sets of Maddon twins did, you’re going to need a man to knock heads together.”

  Jerry brought in another flat box and the men began to assemble baby beds by the fireplace. The aunts helped Brandy hang Shay’s clothes in a closet on the balcony and then sat at the table drinking coffee while their husbands bickered over the meaning of the printed instructions that came with the cribs.

  “You’re breast-feeding twins?” Elinore Maddon said when Brandy explained why she didn’t need more baby bottles. Her eyes widened until the creases in her plump face came together. “I suppose you delivered without anesthetic and the doctor laid them on your tummy and everything. Ruth, are you listening to this?”

  “I think this back-to-nature kick can be carried too far.” Ruth Maddon made a clucking noise like Nora used to. “All those years of developing painless, safe ways of doing things and then shucking them to the winds. Shay, tell us the doctor put you out.”

  “There was no doctor,” Brandy said. Jerry’d warned her that only Remy knew the trick the wedding mirror had played on them all. “But Mr. St. John did lay them on my … bosom until he could attend to them.”

  The sisters-in-law glanced at each other and turned shocked faces to Brandy as if they were puppets attached to the same string.

  “No doctor,” Ruth repeated.

  “Mr. St. John … the old man you stayed with?” Elinore sat back in her chair as if she needed it to brace her. “He delivered the twins?”

  “Yes, and as you can see they’re –”

  “Jerry” – Elinore set down her cup with exaggerated care – “did you know those kids were born in that … that farmhouse?”

  But Jerry and the uncles had stopped quarreling and were already gaping at Brandy.

  There followed a heated discussion on birth certificates, eyedrops, inoculations, and “pediatricians.”

  “Shay, I’m surprised at you,” Ruth said. “After all you’ve done to Marek and your poor mother. And now this.”

  Brandy was relieved when the Maddons departed.

  “I haven’t called Marek yet,” Jerry said uncomfortably. “He knows … knows you aren’t Shay. I suppose he does have some rights here though.” He stared into the cribs as if his grandsons were incriminating evidence.

  He insisted on making an appointment with a doctor to examine the twins and his daughter’s body.

  When he’d gone Brandy saw to the infants, watched the television box and tried not to think.

  The green diary sat on the low parlor table in front of the sofa.

  The twins looked tiny, each in his own bed. Sometimes she resented them for the pain they’d caused her and for all they demanded of her days and nights. Brandy shocked herself with these unnatural feelings.

  She prayed to God for forgiveness. She was beginning to resent him too. And that made her feel even worse. Brandy had pork chops for dinner, built up the fire and opened the diary.

  She stopped reading only to nurse the twins and to cry.

  When she finished, the fire had burned down.

  Brandy huddled on the sofa, stared at the embers and saw memories.

  The picnic beneath the Flatirons. Pa chasing a squealing Joshua across the mesa top where Marek’s devil castle now stood. Joshua captured. His plump little body brought back over Pa’s shoulder, dumped on a blanket and tickled till it could laugh and squirm no more …

  Grandfather McCabe and Grandmother Euler sitting on the shaded porch of the Gingerbread House, discussing days long gone in the quivering voices of the old. Aunt Harriet sitting between them, translating because Grandmother Euler spoke no English …

  Sitting on the back step with Ma, their aprons filled with string beans to snap, peas to shell or apples to peel … chatting pleasantly of nothing much while they worked …

  Canoeing on Weisenhorn Lake with Elton. Sunday train excursions to Mount Alto to pick wildflowers. Giggling over naughty phrases in the Latin grammar with Violet and Bessie in the cloakroom at preparatory school. Even Nora’s scolding seemed dear to her now.

  Brandy looked into the cribs. Joshua, Elton and a few gravestones seemed the only continuity left in her life.

  She removed the gleaming diamond from her granddaughter’s finger and placed it on the diary.

  The next morning, while forcing down a breakfast she couldn’t taste, Brandy heard a familiar sound.

  She opened the back door to see Ansel St. John’s truck come to a stop by the lift pump. He carried a box filled with bottles of goat’s milk.

  “Better for a nursing mother than cow’s milk,” he said by way of greeting and tracked snow across the rug to the baby cribs. “Sure look comfortable here. Appears Mr. Garrett’s keeping his promises. With that money he gave me for caring for you I can pay my taxes and put up a new barn.”

  Brandy spent the morning telling him the contents of the diary.

  “She’s lived your life, now you got to live hers. It’s done, happened. Nothing you can do. Least you won’t be cursed with knowin’ things ahead of time like she was.”

  “But don’t you see, Mr. St. John? It’s all my fault. All these lives confused because I let the mirror –”

  “All you can do now’s to get rid of the mirror so it don’t do this to somebody else. If your granddaughter’s suspicions are right, it’s even chalked up a score of killings.”

  “It was stolen when thieves broke into the Gingerbread House.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to take good care of this little family here then. And I wouldn’t worry over that bloody-hand business she writes about. Probably me delivering twins.”

  He refused to stay for lunch, saying he wanted to stop by and see Lottie while he was in town. “Surprised that Marek fellow hasn’t stormed in here yet.” The faint smell of goat lingered after he left.

  Brandy drew thick curtains across the window wall to shut out a foreign world. But it invaded the cabin that afternoon in the form of Shay’s parents.

  Brandy was startled by the grim change in Rachael Garrett. She’d grown plump but the added flesh wasn’t firm. Her skin was sallow. Thick hair had gone lifeless with patches of gray at the roots.

  Dull eyes searched her daughter’s face to find only Brandy, then turned to her grandchildren. “I’m glad they’re not girls,” she said listlessly. “Daughters are so … so much heartbreak.”

  Rachael held first one twin and then the other in shaky arms, Jerry hovering over her as if he feared she’d drop them.

  “Maybe you could start a book about twins,” he said hopefully.

  She looked up from the babe in her arms, her cheeks wet but a sudden spark in her eyes. “Jerry, we’ve got to find the wedding mirror.”

  “What good would it do now? Shay’s gone, and where would we look?”

  “We owe it to Shay and to Joshua and Elton.”

  “We might drive around to the antique stores in the area on weekends and at least ask about it.” His sudden interest had more to do with that spark in his wife’s eyes, Brandy suspected, than any hope of finding the mirror.

  “We could look for furniture for the Gingerbread House while we’re at it, Rachael. Would you like that?”

  Brandy d
onned Shay’s puffy, slippery mackintosh and fur-lined boots. She left them with their plans and their grandsons, knowing the sight of her must be torture to them.

  Standing on the concrete platform of the lift pump she stared at the A-shaped cabin, trying to visualize another cabin almost eighty years ago and the life her granddaughter must have lived there.

  But the odd-angled roof and the narrow strip of cloud that crossed the sky from horizon to horizon now made any association with then difficult. Ansel’d explained such cloud trails were left by flying machines soaring too high above the earth to be seen.

  How would it feel to be that far up looking down?”

  She turned to the trees across the clearing. The smell of pine would be the same forever.

  A break between tall trees shaped the path where Shay’d walked to the spring on Brandy’s legs. Scattered young pine, chest height or shorter, tried to fill in the disused walkway.

  She followed it to a heap of weather-gray boards that poked through a low drift. Kicking aside snow, Brandy found a rotting plank with a smooth-edged hole. It broke along an old crack at the touch of her boot. The seat to an outdoor privy.

  Wind fingered her skirt as she lifted it to traverse a drift. Snow trickled cold into the tops of her granddaughter’s boots.

  What use was there in seeking connection to a past she’d never reach? But Brandy continued to the cave in the mountainside where the couple in the cabin had discovered the wedding mirror and a grisly result of its deeds.

  Snow and juniper bush covered the lower half of the entrance. The door Shay’d spoken of in the diary was gone but a piece of its frame hung across a hole that looked like black pitch against the snow.

  There’d apparently been no more glimpses between the two lives after the birth of the twins. Did it mean the Garretts would succeed in finding and destroying the mirror? Or merely that it would be removed too far to have power over those lives it had tampered with?

  When she returned to the clearing the Garretts’ automobile was gone, in its place a familiar silver-green vehicle.

  Marek Weir bent over Joshua’s crib with his hands clasped behind him as if afraid to touch his tiny son.