Mirror, Mirror

by Judy Baer

  “Didn’t she drive herself? I thought you were taping today.”

  “Something has come up. Pull up at the side door. I’ll have her out there in five minutes.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She will be if you get over here.” I snapped my phone shut and turned back to Maggie.

  “I’m taking you out of here.”

  “The interview…”

  “Is off. Come on.” I pulled her to her feet and steered her toward the nearest door and made sure no one else saw us.

  After I’d stuffed her, weeping again, into Pete’s car and given him instructions to take her home and stay with her until I got there, I went back into the studio. Sam and Eddie were looking worried. Frank flapped his arms like a big black raven when he realized Maggie was missing.

  “The taping is off. We’ll have to try again tomorrow. Maggie isn’t up to it. I just sent her home.”

  “You sent her home,” Frank blustered. “Who gave you authority to do that?”

  “She’s not well, Frank. She couldn’t string two sentences together. You don’t want that on camera, do you?”

  He gave a helpless little flutter with his hands. “What about tomorrow?”

  “We have other things we can do if she’s not able,” Sam said.

  Frank started to protest but closed his mouth again. Sam was the go-to guy in this operation. If Sam could work it out, things would be okay. “You’d better go look after Maggie.”

  By the time I got home, Maggie was in the shower and Pete was striding back and forth across the floor. Dash weaved in and out around him as Pete paced, tripping him up with every other step.

  “What went on over there? I’m going to call Eddie and—”

  “No need. Eddie and Frank didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “What then?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I found her curled up in a ball, sobbing like a baby, so I called you and got her out of there. I told them she wasn’t up to the interview and walked out.”

  “She shouldn’t be doing this,” Pete muttered. “She’s probably come to that conclusion herself. She told me that the plastic surgeons she consulted with won’t have anything to do with her.”

  “Good. It restores my faith in medicine. But that shouldn’t make her fall apart like this.”

  “What would?”

  We heard a small scuffling at the door and turned to see Maggie wrapped in fuzzy white terry cloth from head to toe. Her eyes looked like burnt patches in her ashen face.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “I’ve done something stupid. I’ve fallen in love.”

  Of all the things she could have said, that was the last one I expected.

  “I don’t want to be in love with this man. I shouldn’t be. It makes no sense.”

  Pete and Dash flopped onto the couch. Maggie and I sat down in the chairs across from them.

  “So it’s not about the show?”

  Maggie passed a hand across her eyes. “The show is the single most stupid thing I could do. I just felt so hurt and awful about Randy and losing the health-club job.”

  “Don’t forget the gray hair,” Pete said helpfully.

  “I had to do the very dumbest thing I could in order to realize that I was being ridiculous. All this time I’ve allowed the childhood tape of my sisters’ voices tell me I wasn’t pretty enough or thin enough. They’ve grown up and gone on with their lives but I keep opening all the old wounds.”

  “They were jealous kids, Maggie.”

  “I had no idea how much I had internalized their hurtful words.” She looked agonized. “I’ve been living my life as if everything they said is true and it’s not…it’s not.”

  “What do your sisters have to do with being in love?” Leave it to Pete to bring the conversation back into focus. “And what’s so bad about being in love?” He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Unless the person you love acts like you are invisible.”

  Dash, seeing that Pete was unhappy, tried to crawl into his lap.

  “Who is it and why didn’t you tell us?”

  “And does he know about it?”

  Maggie buried her nose in the neck of her robe.

  “So this mysterious guy doesn’t even know you’re attracted to him?”

  “I hardly know him and he has no idea how I feel about him. It wouldn’t work…we aren’t anything alike…I never thought I could imagine myself with someone like him….” And she burst into tears. “I’m a shallow, vain, hypocritical snob!”

  That sounded like the start of a very long conversation. Silently I stood up and began to make coffee.

  We sat staring into the bottoms of the mugs until Maggie spoke again. “I saw Randy yesterday. I met his new girlfriend.”

  Pete groaned and covered his face.

  “She’s very nice. Not what I’d expected, though.”

  I recalled Pete’s description of her.

  “She even suggested that Randy and I take a few minutes alone to talk.” Maggie scrubbed at her hair with the towel before pulling it away, letting her dark locks fall in a fan across the white shoulders of her robe. “He apologized for hurting me.”

  “As well he should.”

  “Then I asked him why he broke up with me.” Her eyes started to shine with tears again. “He said he didn’t think we’d work as a couple because my looks got in the way.”

  I saw red. “That’s why you thought you weren’t pretty enough? Because Randy didn’t like your looks? The man has to be blind.”

  “Oh, he loves how I look. What he didn’t love was how much time I spent obsessing about myself. He said he was uncomfortable about the way I put myself down and was so focused on my appearance that it ruined our time together. His new girlfriend makes him laugh and she doesn’t care if her hair is messy or her nose is sunburned when they go out on his boat,” Maggie marveled. “She accepts herself the way she is and he does, too.

  “I spent so much time trying to look like I thought he wanted me to look that I ruined the relationship we had. He was right. I was a narcissistic nincompoop. Now my confidence is shot and I can’t face the most wonderful man in the world!”

  “You did face Randy,” Pete pointed out. “Kristy will barely speak to me.”

  “It’s not Randy I’m worried about, anymore,” she said obliquely.

  Maggie took a tissue from the box on the table nearby and blew her nose, eyes watering and looking miserable. But before she could speak, the doorbell rang.

  When I opened it, I was in for another surprise. Jack Harmon stood on the other side of the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “My head hurts,” I announced to no one in particular as I waved Jack into the room.

  “Don’t mind us.” I poured him a cup of coffee. “We’re in the midst of trying to figure out what’s happening in Maggie’s love life and so far it’s not going well.”

  To his credit, Jack nodded, took the coffee and sat down at the table, out of Maggie’s line of sight. A man who can listen. Dash immediately went to check him out and, to my surprise, settled across Jack’s feet and went to sleep. From Dash, that’s unqualified approval.

  “Now that you’ve taken this conversation to a whole new dimension, no, an entirely new universe, you’d better explain,” Pete demanded.

  Follow along and you’ll catch up, I mouthed to Jack.

  Maggie curled up on the edge of the couch, looking fragile and miserable.

  “I thought I was smarter than this.”

  “You’re plenty smart, Mags.”

  “Yeah? Then why didn’t I get it when you two kept talking about being beautiful ‘from the inside out’? Why did I think that my whole life would improve if I were different?

  “It wasn’t until I met the other contestants on Chrysalis and heard them running themselves down that it occurred to me that I had things turned around. Those women are fabulous. They are kind, funny, caring and compassionate. I’v
e made great friends. In my eyes they couldn’t be prettier.

  “Quinn said it all along but I refused to listen. If you’re not good with yourself on the inside, you will never be truly beautiful. Instead, you’ll be like an empty snail shell with its lovely curves and alluring colors but no life inside.”

  She turned to look at Jack. “And your little boy taught me a thing or two. When he showed me his room the day we were at your house, he started telling me how it was to have arthritis. He showed me his hands. The knuckles were red and swollen and he told me they were sore that day. Then he said something that opened my eyes. He told me he was lucky because he didn’t hurt everyday, because he’d had a ‘really great mom’ until he was eight and because his dad loved him so much.

  “I felt so shallow that I could hardly face myself after I met Ben. I lost a boyfriend and a job, not my health! Ben made me realize how egotistic and self-absorbed I’ve been.”

  “Ben has opened my eyes a time or two, as well,” Jack assured her.

  “But that’s not the worst of it,” she went on. “I’d quit praying because I’d decided even God wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I gave up the one thing I’ve had to rely on my entire life, the assurance that He’d get me through.”

  She threw her head backward against the couch and groaned. “Well, He got me good for that one.”

  The three of us leaned forward in our chairs. “What do you mean ‘got you’?”

  “Me, the woman who thought no one would love me if I wasn’t perfect? The person who thought beauty was everything? When I finally got down on my knees and did ask God to help me, what did He do?”

  “What?” we said in unison.

  “He gave me Sam Waters.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  I’ve been so blind that I’m furious with myself.

  “I’ve fallen in love with him!”

  Jack stood up and moved into our circle and sat down beside me. “What’s so special about this Sam guy?”

  Pete burst out laughing. “Nothing! Nothing is special about Sam! He is ordinary, kind, generous, gentle, plain-spoken and salt of the earth. He says himself he’s got a face like a mud fence, he loves to work behind the scenes instead of in the limelight and he’s perfectly content with his life.”

  Now Jack looked thoroughly confused.

  “Don’t you see? Maggie didn’t think anyone could fall in love with her if she didn’t have makeup on. And here she is, crazy about a guy who wouldn’t change a thing about himself, broken nose and all. She’s in love with the man he is, not his outside shell. It’s a God ‘gotcha’!”

  Pete looked at Maggie with affection. “It’s the lesson that you had to learn for yourself, isn’t it, Mags? That if a person’s heart is good, how he looks doesn’t matter.”

  She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose so hard she honked.

  Maggie brought an entire entourage with her to the taping of our interview—Pete, Jack, Ben and Dash. Sam just grinned and shook his head as he saw the crowd gathering around us.

  “Sit over there,” he instructed. “And keep the dog quiet.”

  “Maggie’s a little freaked today and Dash is her doggy tranquilizer,” I explained.

  “He’s good then. I’m a believer in natural medicine.” Sam glanced in Maggie’s direction. “Will she be okay?”

  “She told me she’s looking forward to telling the Chrysalis audience about her experience.”

  She just isn’t so fine with having fallen in love with you, Sam. That’s rocked her world.

  Dash began to squirm and whine at my feet. “I think he has to go out, Pete.”

  Pete looked at the dog askance. “If I take him out now they won’t let me in while they are taping. I want to see you and Maggie.”

  Dash did the doggy shuffle and butted his head against Pete’s leg, a blatant request for a walk.

  “Can’t you just wait, buddy? Half an hour? I’ll give you a treat if—”

  “You’re talking to a dog, Peter.” A soft, slightly disgruntled voice interrupted him. “You may think you can bargain with people, but dogs don’t negotiate.”

  Kristy Bessett walked up to Dash and stroked his head. Dash lost all interest in Pete and glommed onto Kristy as his new best opportunity for a walk.

  “I’ll take you, big boy,” Kristy said soothingly. “I can see a taping anytime.” She picked up the leash attached to Dash’s collar and walked him calmly toward the door.

  “Wait!” Pete yelped, but Kristy kept moving. As she went through the door that led to the parking lot, he went after her. A stagehand, shaking his head, locked the door behind them.

  The Chrysalis set reminds me of a stop on the migration pattern of monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico. They’d gone all out with the butterfly theme. Even the chairs where Maggie and I would sit for the interview had a split back shaped into two soft arches like butterfly wings. Somehow it looked more elegant that kitschy. That was no doubt thanks to Sam’s keen eye.

  As they did a final touch-up on our makeup, Maggie and I stared at each other. Finally I would hear what had been going on in Maggie’s life and head these past days.

  “Everybody quiet on the set. Ten, nine, eight…”

  As the lights around us dimmed, we were suffused in a pool of bright light, an island in the darkened room.

  Of all the women I’d interviewed on the show so far, Maggie was the easiest—and the most difficult. The others were benefiting from the makeover they were receiving, but although she wasn’t wearing any makeup, there was no way to hide her innate beauty. With her hair pulled back from her face and in a dark turtleneck sweater, she looked more like a cross between Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn than a candidate for a makeover.

  Much to my surprise, she said as much.

  “Why, Maggie, did you decide that you would be a good contestant for Chrysalis? It’s apparent to our audience that you are a beautiful woman. Many of them are no doubt wondering what you are doing here.” I could imagine Frank snarling as I asked the question.

  Maggie leaned forward and looked past me at the camera hovering near my shoulder that was filming her face. “I decided for all the wrong reasons.”

  “The wrong reasons?” I echoed, surprised.

  “I’d just broken up with my boyfriend and I was feeling really low. Even though I’m a model, I thought he wasn’t interested in me any longer because of my looks. I’d convinced myself that in order to be loved I had to be beautiful. Therefore, if he didn’t love me anymore, I must no longer be beautiful. Then I lost two modeling jobs that were very important to me. That only confirmed that something was going terribly wrong.

  “I’ve hung my self-esteem on how I look my entire life.” Her face was intent, her eyes focused and I knew that she was talking not to me but to the audience who would tune in to see the show. “Even though I grew up hearing ‘God loves you’ and ‘You’re perfect in His sight,’ I didn’t buy it. I dieted until I passed out. I exercised for hours every day. I pored over books about hair, clothes and makeup. I decided the way to prove to myself that I was pretty was to be a model. Every decision I’ve ever made had something to do with making me feel better in here.” She thumped on her chest with her fist. “And I thought the way to do that was—” she ran a graceful finger along the side of her face “—was to change something out here.”

  “How does Chrysalis play into all of this?”

  I was completely extraneous to whatever message Maggie was trying to get across. Standing at the edge of the circle of light, I could see Frank frowning and chewing on his fingernails. This was not what he’d wanted to happen.

  “I was still in the I-can-fix-this-from-the-outside mode when I auditioned. I’m not sure why I was chosen, but I’m glad I was.”

  “What have the rounds of interviews with stylists, surgeons and trainers taught you?”

  “That I’m just fine the way I am.”

  A buzz broke out in the back of the ro
om and I saw Eddie restraining Frank, who wanted to stop taping.

  “That doesn’t mean this show hasn’t been special to me,” she hurried to add, “because it has. I did come out of my chrysalis. I was hidden in an ugly cocoon of low self-esteem. I’m emotionally and spiritually new and without this program I don’t know if I ever would have been.

  “This show taught me that I needed to get over myself and to see the shallowness of physical beauty without a soul to match. Because of this show and the prayers of my friends and God’s grace, now I have beauty in my spirit. That’s what I want people to know now.”

  Tears ran down my cheeks and the cameraman moved in for a close-up.

  Maggie, still not out of surprises, stared past me into the darkness where Sam stood. “I’ll never judge someone by their appearance again. I lived in an emotional wasteland. I actually believed I was humble because I thought so little of myself. I realize now that that is the most egocentric, vain attitude of all.”

  “Maggie,” I said impulsively. “Is there anything you’d like to say to the producers of Chrysalis?”

  “Just thank you. I didn’t change on the outside like you expected, but there’s a whole new person in here.” She put her hand over her heart and the lights came up in the room. It was so silent that the room felt as though it were holding its breath. Then the crew erupted in cheers.

  I listened to snippets of conversation as they ping-ponged around the room. The reaction was positive all around. He did it, I thought. He did it! God came to reality television!

  I turned to talk to Maggie but she was gone. It was Jack walking toward me with a huge grin on his face.

  “Looks like you may have invented a new genre here,” he commented. “Internal makeover shows.”

  “Not me, Maggie. She blew me away. I had no idea what she was planning.”

  “I could tell. You were beaming at her like a floodlight. Your producers are ecstatic. The one who looks like Count Chocula was actually smiling. This will be a good shocker for the show.”

  “I want to tell Maggie how amazing she was.”