American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Discomfort flutters through them, the first time on this sunny afternoon. “You mean you were engaged, and it was… called off?”

  “No,” says Mona. “I was married. But we divorced,” she says, before they ask if her husband died, which is probably a more pleasant alternative to them.

  “Ah,” says Barbara. Some of the women grow very still. The others are exchanging glances. After a few beats of silence, the subject is forcefully changed and the flow of conversation resumes burbling cheerily along, though now far fewer questions are directed to Mona.

  Yet Mrs. Benjamin does not react at all to this news. In fact, she hasn’t done much all throughout the luncheon besides pass food around and watch Mona. Mona begins to find it very unsettling, for every time she looks up, Mrs. Benjamin is watching her with a small smile.

  It’s not until the luncheon’s over and everyone is leaving that Mrs. Benjamin speaks to her: “If you could please stay behind, dear, I would appreciate it. I feel like we have a little to discuss.”

  Mona obliges, loitering on her porch while Mrs. Benjamin sees the other guests out. When she returns, the small, clever smile is back on her face. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “It was certainly…” She trails off, wondering how to finish.

  “Awful?” suggests Mrs. Benjamin.

  Mona is not sure what to say, but Mrs. Benjamin just laughs. “Oh, don’t look so concerned, my girl. Anyone with sense can see they’re a bunch of empty-headed fools. That’s why I didn’t give them any of the good tea.” She winks.

  “Then why did you have them over at all?” asks Mona, irritated.

  “Oh, just to spite them, I suppose,” says Mrs. Benjamin vaguely. “Stir up trouble. They can’t stand one another’s company, you see. I have to get my amusement somehow.”

  “And you brought me in to stir up more trouble?”

  “No. I wanted to see how you’d handle them.”

  Mona stops. Takes a breath. She then says, “Ma’am, I admit I do not understand the intricacies of your social spheres here, and to be honest I really do not wish to. But one thing that I really, really do not want for you to do is involve me in them for what seems to be no damn reason at all. And, believe me, you do not want that either, though you will have to trust me on that.”

  “Oh, please hold on. I didn’t intend to be cruel. I just wanted to see how you’d be fitting in here.”

  “Well, I will guess that I will fit in quite shittily, but that’s my problem and none of yours. Now… you got me here under the pretense of answering a few questions about the town, and my mother,” says Mona. “Can I ask you those questions?”

  “Oh, certainly,” says Mrs. Benjamin, miffed. “Fire away, dear.”

  They sit down on the porch and she tells Mrs. Benjamin about how she inherited the house, and her very strange trip here. When she finishes her story Mrs. Benjamin stays quiet for a long, long time. “Hmm,” she says finally. “Well. I’ll say again that I have no memory of a Laura Alvarez living or working in Wink.”

  “I’ve got photos of her living in my house,” says Mona.

  “From when?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

  “I don’t know exactly… I guess sometime in the seventies.”

  “Hmm,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “My memory goes back far, but… not all the way back. So I could be wrong. She could have lived here before I ever came.”

  “I also have documents from Coburn saying she worked there,” says Mona. “Is there any remnant of their operation still in the area that I can go to? Any government agency? I just need to find something about her.”

  “Coburn…” says Mrs. Benjamin, a little contemptuous. “That damn lab. Who knows what their papers say? I wouldn’t trust anything I heard about up there. All of their facilities were located up on the mesa, and those were gutted and abandoned when the lab was shut down.”

  Mona makes a mental note of this. Because she intends to go up to that mountain, and damn soon. “What was it they did up there?” she asked. “I read they did government research, and something about… quantum states.”

  Mrs. Benjamin stares off into the distance for a while. “They did nothing that was worth doing,” she says finally. “They should have put more effort into commercial prospects. Usable ideas. Rather than conceptual research. It did not end well.”

  “Because they never came up with anything,” says Mona.

  “Hm?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Who told you that?”

  “Mr. Parson. He’s the man who runs the—”

  “I know Mr. Parson,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “We’re well acquainted. And Coburn, well… they only ever did one thing.” She thinks for a moment. Then she asks, “Here—would you like to see a magic trick?”

  “A what?”

  “A magic trick. The party bored me stiff, dear, so a trick should be entertaining. Come inside. I’ll show you.”

  “I thought you said you were going to help me,” says Mona as she follows Mrs. Benjamin into her house.

  “I am,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Just indulge me, please.”

  She sits Mona down on the couch while she wanders off to the back. The inside of Mrs. Benjamin’s house is much less attractive than the exterior: everything is done in awful flowery wallpaper, except the living room, which has a bright red pattern depicting a foxhunt. There are also several stuffed owls, which Mona assumes were brought home from work. Somewhere there must be a room full of clocks, for she can hear a constant chorus of ticking. Everything smells of bad potpourri.

  “Here we are,” trills Mrs. Benjamin as she returns. She sets a wooden case down on the coffee table in front of Mona, and stops. Her smile vanishes, and she looks up at Mona with a dark expression. She opens the case. Inside is a silver hand mirror. “An ancient swami gave me these mirrors,” she says in a theatrically hushed tone. At first Mona is confused, for she can see only one mirror, but then she looks again and sees there are actually two, stacked on top of each other. “They came from far away, in the Orient.”

  “They did?” asks Mona.

  Mrs. Benjamin’s solemn demeanor breaks. “Of course not, silly girl,” she says. “It’s all part of the trick.” She resumes glowering. “He gave them to me, and told me they were entrusted with ancient…” Her expression wavers. “Wait, I already said ‘ancient,’ didn’t I? Oh, forget this part… let’s get to the fun stuff.” She takes out the mirrors and hands them to Mona. “Here. Take them.”

  “I have to hold them?”

  “Yes, obviously,” and Mrs. Benjamin sounds genuinely impatient now. “Take them. Hurry up.”

  Mona takes one mirror in each hand. They are surprisingly light, and almost paper-thin. She expected something gaudy and decadent—this is a magic trick, after all—but these mirrors have almost no ornamentation. They are silver surfaces and silver handles, and nothing more.

  “The mirrors are actually halves of one,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Like one mirror was split down the middle, shaved in two. The thing is, when the mirror was split, it never noticed. It still thinks it’s whole, even though it’s not. But this confusion has given it some interesting consequences. Let me tell you how the mirror trick works.

  “First, hold one mirror in front of you at an angle so it reflects an object nearby. Say, this ashtray.” She points to a horrible brass tchotchke on the coffee table. “Then slide the other mirror behind this one, so they touch and are whole.”

  Mona stays still, waiting for more. “Well, go on,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Hurry up.”

  “Oh,” says Mona. “You want me to… oh, okay.” She angles the first mirror so that it is reflecting the ashtray. “Is this okay?”

  “So long as you see the ashtray, it’s fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now place the other mirror behind it.”

  Mona does so, sliding the second mirror behind the one reflecting the ashtray. They seem to click into place, as if magnetized.

  “Now… concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly. “You must look at the reflec
tion of the ashtray in the mirror, and do not look away. Stare at it, and concentrate on it. Remember what it looks like, and hold that image in your mind.” She is grim and serious again, but now Mona thinks it is not part of the act. The sickly-sweet smell of potpourri becomes intense and heady, and Mona feels a little ill. “Are you concentrating?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

  “Yeah,” says Mona. She is staring very hard at the mirror. It has no frame, she notices, nor is there any flaw or scratch on its surface. It gets hard to remember she is looking at a reflection. The mirror is so smooth that it is like a window, or perhaps a little bubble of light floating in her lap, and inside the bubble is a picture of an ashtray…

  “Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now, just keep staring at the reflection on the top mirror. Keep concentrating on it. And as you do, I want you to slowly, slowly pull the other mirror out from underneath it. Don’t just yank it. Do you understand?”

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess. Do you understand or not?”

  “I do.”

  “Then do it, please.”

  This is the weirdest magic trick Mona’s ever taken part in, but she decides to keep indulging the old lady. She keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray, and begins to pull the mirrors apart. There is a click, like she’s just severed the magnetic attraction between them, and everything… changes.

  It is impossible to say how things change. It is as if every object in the room is now a false version of itself, a cheap, manufactured copy of the real thing. The stink of potpourri gets so strong that the air seems to shimmer with it. But out of the corner of her eye Mona thinks she can see light seeping through objects she knows to be opaque: she can see the sunlight through the roof, through the chandelier, and even through the floor, as if it is all made of ice. And underneath that light are a thousand shadows…

  “Concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly.

  Mona remembers the task at hand, and she keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray in the top mirror.

  And as the second mirror slowly emerges from underneath the first, she sees that the ashtray is there, too: the exact same ashtray is reflected in that second mirror. Even though she’s moved the second mirror enough that it’s not pointing toward the ashtray, or even toward the coffee table, but toward the dining room.

  It’s not a reflection, she thinks, irrationally. The ashtray is trapped in the mirrors…

  Mona tries to keep concentrating. And it is then that she begins to see that something very strange is happening.

  For starters, the tchotchke ashtray is still sitting on the coffee table. She can see that. It’s also being reflected in the first mirror, which is totally fine, as the first mirror is pointing at it. But the ashtray is also being reflected in the second mirror, which makes no sense, as the second mirror is not facing toward the ashtray at all. And while this is troubling in its own right, what really gets to Mona is that the second mirror is showing the ashtray above the dining room table, ten feet away to her right, yet she can see the ashtray itself sitting on the coffee table right in front of her.

  But is it her imagination, or can she see something floating in the dining room out of the corner of her eye, just above the table, perhaps right where the second mirror is suggesting the ashtray should be?

  That’s not possible, she thinks, because a) How can an object defy gravity? and b) How can an object occupy two different spaces at the same time? For she can see the ashtray sitting on the coffee table just before her, yet it is also in both of the mirrors, and unless she’s gone mad it’s also floating very slowly out of the dining room at the same rate at which she’s moving the second mirror. It’s as if since the ashtray is reflected in both mirrors, the world is working to accommodate them and ensure that what is being reflected is actually there, even though it shouldn’t be.

  “Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice somewhere. “Very good…”

  Mona is trying to work all this out when she sees there is something slight and insubstantial about the ashtray on the table. It too has turned a little translucent, and she can see light filtering through it. And then the ashtray begins to shudder, like a strobe light, and it starts to disappear…

  Mona gasps. “No!” cries Mrs. Benjamin, but it is too late. Whatever was floating out of the dining room plummets to the ground, then vanishes without a sound. Immediately things revert back to how they were: there is only one ashtray, sitting on the coffee table, and the rest of the house is opaque and hard and real again.

  “What was that?” asks Mona. She hastily puts the mirrors back in their case. “What the hell kind of magic trick was that?”

  But Mrs. Benjamin seems even more disturbed than Mona. Her face is gray as she stares at the ashtray on the table. Finally she clears her throat and says, “Perhaps I was wrong, my girl. Perhaps you do belong here in Wink after all.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Mona.

  Before Mrs. Benjamin can answer there is a knock at the front door. Both of them jump a little, and Mrs. Benjamin stares at the door, not comprehending. “Oh,” she says when the knock sounds again. “I suppose I ought to answer that…” She stands up and hobbles to the door.

  As she does, Mona looks back down at the mirrors in the case. There does not seem to be anything strange or extraordinary about them now; they are merely two small mirrors, each reflecting the ceiling. But still she shivers a little.

  She hears the door open. Mrs. Benjamin says, “Oh,” again, though this time she sounds far less pleased.

  “Hello, Myrtle,” says a man’s voice softly. “I—”

  “Oh, hello, Eustace,” says Mrs. Benjamin, quickly and loudly. “Please do come in. I have company.” She stands aside, and Mona sees it is the little old man who sold her her mattress, Mr. Macey. But he is not flirty or wry this time, but terribly grave.

  “Company?” he asks.

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She ushers him inside. “This is Miss Bright. She’s new in town. Miss Bright, this is Eustace Macey. He works at the general store.”

  “We’ve met,” says Mona.

  “Oh, I’m so glad. What brings you here, Eustace? I was just showing Miss Bright a little magic trick of mine.”

  “I came to discuss something with you,” says Mr. Macey. He does not even look at Mona. “Alone.”

  “Would it be possible to discuss this later, Eustace?”

  “No,” he says. “No, it wouldn’t, Myrtle.”

  Mrs. Benjamin eyes him angrily and looks back at Mona. “Are you sure, Eustace?” she asks, her voice brimming with false politeness.

  He nods.

  “It can’t wait at all?”

  He shakes his head, expression unchanging. Mrs. Benjamin is smiling so hard Mona is worried her cheeks will crack. “Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “Mona, could you please excuse us for a moment? I know… weren’t you interested in getting some of my tea?”

  Mona was most fucking certainly not interested in getting any of Mrs. Benjamin’s tea, but the old woman is in such a fearsome mood that she doesn’t object.

  “Excellent!” says Mrs. Benjamin. “My tea rack is in the kitchen. Feel free to help yourself to anything you’d like.”

  Mona thanks her and withdraws to the kitchen as Mrs. Benjamin and Mr. Macey begin bickering in hushed tones. She wonders if she’s just been made privy to a lovers’ tiff (an idea that disgusts her) before she remembers the awkward way Mrs. Benjamin greeted Mr. Macey at the door, as if she wanted to stop him from talking as fast as possible. She wonders why this could be until she comes to Mrs. Benjamin’s tea rack, which, she discovers, is not a tea rack but a tea vault, an entire room with walls covered in shelves of little tins and vials and glass containers. Each has been carefully labeled: she sees one section of rooibos tea (of the lemon-and-honeybush variety), then several containers of oolong, white, and green tea leaves (each label paired with a Latin name for a different type of camellia, which Mona guesses is in the tea), then seve
ral pots of something called “brick tea,” and then there’s a section whose labels are all in Asian-looking writing.

  It’s the section after this one that really catches her eye. These are the glass vials and beakers with old, yellowed labels, and what they contain is not tea leaves, or tea pearls, or anything so orthodox. These are teas Mrs. Benjamin seems to have made herself, and they have a distinctly fungal look to them. In one vial Mona can see thick yellow globs of pine pitch, and there is something green and loose sprouting from the top. Its label reads OLD PINEFEVER. Mona guesses this is what Mrs. Benjamin was drinking the other day.

  There are many more. In one stoppered flask are half a dozen pink, fleshy roots suspended in something that looks a lot like Lucite. This is labeled ASTER’S CURL. In another a mass of white moss floats in greenish fluid, and this is labeled MAMMON’S TEARS. There is an Erlenmeyer flask with a powdery, cloudy fungus growing on the bottom that is paired with the name AL BHEEZRA’S REMORSE. And then there are three vials whose contents look like herbs ground up with white or yellow soap crystals. These are labeled AGONY, then WRATH, and finally GUILT.

  Mona reads these a second time. She names her teas after emotions? she thinks. But a small part of her, one that has to be a little bit nuts, says, Or maybe she makes teas out of emotions.

  Unbelievably, the tea racks get weirder. (And the farther Mona goes into the closet the darker it feels, though there is plenty of light.) The names become utterly unpronounceable: EL-ABYHEELTH AI’AIN, HYUIN TA’AL, and CHYZCHURA DAM-UUAL are just a few. What they contain is difficult to make out: the jars appear smoked, like someone left them in a barbecue pit. After this, the labels use an alphabet Mona has never seen before. She can’t imagine the country that uses this alphabet, either: it is such a harsh series of slashes and strokes, and so many of the letters stand at strange angles to one another, like they are not meant to be read left to right, but up and down, or right to left…

  Where the hell did she get these from? Mona wonders. Did she make all these herself? Around here?

  Mona picks up one jar and turns it over. Like the others, this one is smoked, but there are places that are a bit clearer. The contents look like a bunch of small grapes hanging from the jar’s lid, but they’re oddly yellowish, and they jiggle strangely. They keep jiggling even when she stops turning the jar over. It takes her a minute to realize they are turning, and on each grape is a dark spot that seems queerly reflective, and each grape turns until the side with the spot is facing her…