Shadows In The Mirror. Linda Hall

sold it by the sheet at markets and craft fairs. I told Johanna this, how my aunt was always saving bits and pieces of paper. She was into recycling before anybody else in the world was. “We would save old magazines and cut pictures out of them.” I stopped, a strange idea niggling its way into my thinking. Had she somehow found that magazine in the trash, somehow took a picture of it, had it developed and then told me it was my parents? Is that how she had done it? But why? And if these two aren’t my parents, then who are they and do they have any connection with me?

      I picked up the photo and looked down at it. I had to admit that part of the attraction of this photo was the happiness this couple seemed to possess, the two of them, the way my mother looked into my father’s eyes, the way he gazed down at her. Was this kind of love even possible? When I was a little girl I would make up elaborate scenarios about my parents. I put the photo facedown on the table.

      Johanna picked up the photo, seemed to consider it, then said, “The place to begin with all of this is Evan, of course.”

      Despite myself I smiled. “We begin with Evan?”

      “He’s a photographer, Marylee. You know that.” She leaned back and picked up her mug.

      “A photographer’s not going to know.”

      She leaned forward. “Sometimes he works with the police on forensics. Sometimes they get him to help them.”

      I hated to tell Johanna, but going to see Evan was not in the plans. He’d taken my friend out twice and dropped her. Plus, Evan had been engaged before. Whenever I thought about Evan, I couldn’t help but think of Mark, my own ex-fiancé who’d dumped me when the going got too rough for him.

      “He used to be an accountant,” Johanna said. “Did you know that? He dropped that to pursue his art, his photography.”

      To me that was another strike against him; he can’t commit to a woman and can’t commit to a career. No, my friend could do a whole lot better than Evan Baxter.

      “You should go see him.”

      I told her no, emphatically no.

      THREE

      I had the mirrors dream again that night. I’ve dreamed the mirrors dream, or a variation thereof for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m in a fun house and strange mirror faces taunt me. Sometimes I see mirror after mirror, the same reflection of myself going on and on forever and ever into infinity. Sometimes there are broken pieces of mirror and every time I pick them up I cut my fingers and they bleed. Sometimes I stand in front of a mirror and instead of seeing my reflection I see nothing. When I was little, I used to awaken screaming until Aunt Rose came in and prayed with me.

      In tonight’s dream, I was walking down a narrow hallway holding a piece of broken mirror. It belonged to one of the ladies in my evening class and I needed to catch up with her, tell her I had it. The edge of it had cut my hand and the blood left a trail behind me. I didn’t care. I needed to find her. In my haste, I walked into a mirror. I turned to go back and was met with another mirror. I was lost and frantic as I tried to find my way out of the maze of my own reflections going in all directions.

      I woke up, hot and miserable in the middle of the night. I’d left my heat up and the place was as close as a sauna. I turned down the thermostat. Outside it was still raining and I stood by the front window for a while.

      I live on Main Street in Burlington, a busy street of shops and old New England–style three-and four-story houses. Across the street from me is a mystery bookshop in the lower level of a four-story dwelling that once was someone’s grand residence, but was chopped into apartments and shops. Next to that is a consignment shop that features children’s clothing. Right beside me is a coffee shop, and on the other side is a high-end bicycle and ski shop, this area of the country being known for two things, teddy bears and snow.

      I focused on the bookstore and the huge cat that always sits in the window. He was there now, a dark mound on the window seat. The cat stretched and I watched its shadow move across the glass. I looked at it. Had it been the cat I’d seen earlier? I sighed and was about to get back to my bedroom when a movement on the street below caught my attention. I went to my bedroom and retrieved my glasses from my nightstand. There was a bobbing pinpoint of orange down below. It took me a moment to realize that this was the end of a cigarette. And the cigarette was attached to a person who was leaning against the back of a bus shelter. I watched him for a few moments, wondering that someone would be outside in the rain in the middle of the night. It took me several minutes to realize that this person was looking up at me. I stood very still, then backed away from the window. I felt rattled, unsettled. Before I went back to bed, I went to the door and made sure it was locked, the security system fully armed. Once the latch was pulled across the French doors I’d be secure. And then, feeling much like my aunt, I made a cup of chamomile tea—her favorite—and drank it in the kitchen.

      The photo was still on my kitchen table, propped against the sugar bowl. I thought about what Johanna had said. See Evan? I sighed and looked down at the woman’s face, that hint of a smile not for the photographer, but for the man—my father?—who I’ve always thought was just about the handsomest man I’d ever seen.

      I slept again after that, and dreamed that Aunt Rose was my real mother and that I had no father, and she’d forged my birth certificate and made up the story about my parents being in an accident just because she didn’t want anyone to know that I was illegitimate. I got up, peeked around the side of the blind in the half light of early morning, but the cigarette smoker had gone. So had the cat.

      Still tired, I went back to bed but tossed and turned until close to dawn, and when I finally did wake up, I had overslept. Since I’d forgotten to set the alarm, I ended up racing to get ready. I couldn’t get my contacts in, so had to opt for a pair of thick glasses with black frames. I had purchased them a few years ago when I’d been in an artsy period, but now in the mirror all I saw were glasses. But my eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

      By the time I ran to the café for my coffee, my winking coffee stranger had already been and gone. I had no idea where he worked. I assumed it was somewhere around here, maybe even the mystery bookshop, although I’d never seen him in there when I’d gone in for some reading material.

      Where he came from and where he went each morning were a mystery. The only thing I knew about him was that he came in each morning at the same time for a dark roast coffee, which he took black. And, that he winked at me.

      I was too late today, but with the way I looked this morning, it was just as well.

      It was strange how I missed him, how disappointed I felt. If I believed in omens—which I didn’t—I would have thought that not seeing him meant that this already bad day was going to get a whole lot worse. I walked into my shop, and today for the first time it seemed a desolate place. The rows upon rows of needlecraft kits and yarn and scrapbook supplies and watercolor kits and mirror pieces and mosaic tiles just looked like organized rows of so much junk. I went to the back and looked at Beryl’s mirror tiles picture again. My parents. Or maybe not. But if they weren’t my parents, who were they and how were they connected to me? If they were?

      Before she left last night I told Johanna not to tell anyone about this picture. I knew she would respect my wishes. I didn’t need to share the patheticness of my life with anyone else. Johanna had also carefully placed the photo between two sheets of cardboard and put it in a large envelope, still convinced that I would see Evan. I laid that next to my coat. When Barbara came in after lunch, I’d head over to the photography studio and force myself to deal with the infamous Evan Baxter.

      I met the morning customers with cheery hellos. I helped two older women from my seniors’ class pick out ribbons for their scrapbooks. I helped a young pregnant woman with yarn and doll faces. She kept going on about her new baby and decorating the room, and that made me feel blue. If my ex-fiancé hadn’t jumped ship I would be married now. Quite possibly I’d even be pregnant. We’d talked about that. We’d wanted children right away. Mark, my ex-fiancé, worked as a computer programmer for a cable