The People in the Mirror Page 2

  The therapist let me talk about Grammy as though she was still around, and he told me I could talk with Grammy just like I had before. Because, he pointed out, my grandmother would always be in my heart, and I didn’t have to let her go from my heart. It was the opposite of what my mom had been saying, that I had to let Grammy go. So, anyway, from that point I slowly “rejoined the land of the living” as my best friend, Meechie had said.

  Then in Grammy’s will she specifically gave me the emerald ring – along with a bunch of other stuff that had value but didn’t mean much to me. With that ring, I felt I had my Grammy again – and I didn’t have to share her with anyone.

  I sat on the edge of my bed looking into the comforting green stone. “I don’t know if I’m losing it or what, Grammy, but I really need you....

  “You’re the only one I can tell... there are people in the mirror.”

  * *

  Beethoven’s Fifth stopped and Mom came to my bedroom door. She paused in the doorway. “Talking to your grandmother again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hate to interrupt your meditation, but could you run down to the corner and get some fresh broccoli and milk?”

  “Okay.” I reverently replaced Grammy’s emerald in its little hidey hole in my jewelry box, and followed Mom into the kitchen.

  “There’s some money.” Mom pointed to a twenty on the counter.

  “Okay....”

  “And I think you’d better pick up one of those cheesecakes. Dad’s bringing someone home to dinner. He said not to make a fuss, but we have to have something....”

  “Okay.” I took the money, pulled on what I called my “duck jacket” because it was so waterproof, stepped into my boots, and grabbed an umbrella on my way out the door, then took the elevator down to street level.

  “Miss Francis!” Homer tipped his hat when I got to the entrance. “Taking a little jaunt in the rain?”

  “Only because I have to.”

  “Still don’t like this weather?” He held the door open.

  “Do you?” I stepped out and opened the umbrella, turning to Homer.

  He nodded, grinning. “Love it – as long as I’m on the heated side of the door!”

  I gave him an I-can-agree-with-that raise of my eyebrows. “I’ll be back in ten, or send the rescue squad!” I hurried to the corner grocer where just about everything was twice as expensive as it should be. Except the to-die-for cherry cheesecake, no argument. The grocer’s wife made it from scratch, and an entire big, fat, round cheesecake cost only ten dollars and fifty cents. I’d already formed quite an attachment to it.

  Dad probably invited this guy over tonight just hoping that Mom would get the cheesecake. I grinned at the thought.

  “Hi, Mr. Zingas,” I called to the short, round-faced, cheerful, store owner.

  “Hi, Nikki, I see a cheesecake glint in your eye.”

  “Am I that transparent? And lesser broccoli and milk glints. I’ll be right back.” I ran around the tiny store, picked out a couple pounds of broccoli and a gallon of 2% milk. By the time I got back to the front counter, the cheesecake was wrapped up in pink cellophane with green raffia, pretty as a present.

  “Here’s a preview of coming attractions.” Mr. Zingas cut off a sliver of cheesecake from the one in the showcase, placed it on a bakery tissue and handed it to me.

  “Oh yum, thanks.” I gave him the twenty dollars, then inhaled the cheesecake. “I needed that! I’ve had a stressful afternoon.”

  “Ahh – the roller coaster ride of being a teenager.” Mr. Zingas chuckled. He counted out my change, then gave me a serious look. “Anything strange going on at your apartment?”

  What kind of a question was that – right on the heels of seeing people in the mirror? It made my heart race. “Ahm – why do you ask. I mean, what....”

  Right at that moment a tired looking woman with five small children came in the store, each of the kids taking off in a different direction. Mr. Zingas nodded at the woman. “We’ll talk later, Nikki.”

  “Okay.” I gathered my booty. As I walked back to the apartment building, I wondered what Mr. Zingas was getting at. My imagination ran wild. I’d almost worked up enough courage to quiz Homer about it, but he was talking with a neighbor when I got to the door.

  I got off the elevator on my floor and walked down the hall in a preoccupied haze, when I almost literally ran into the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen in real life. Although he looked at me so steadily as he passed me, I thought I’d stop breathing, he seemed too, to be in his own state of preoccupation. Neither of us even said “hi” as we passed each another.

  I fumbled with my keys and finally got the right one in the keyhole just as I heard the elevator chime and its doors slide open. I went inside, closed the door and leaned against it. I felt like I’d swallowed the entire cheesecake – like some giant sweet sensation welled up inside me. I realized that he even smelled wonderful, as the scent of his cologne lingered on. I put the groceries on the floor and went out into the hall, following the faint scent back up the hallway to the doorway of the next apartment.

  Was it possible that the gorgeous stranger was my next door neighbor? Maybe this apartment living had its up side. I never knew when I might encounter him in the hall, That wasn’t even a possibility in a house!

  I went back to our own door just as Mom opened it.

  “Whatever are you doing? I heard the door open then close. Here’s the cheesecake, no Nikki.”

  “I... I... was curious to look down the hall. I’ve never, you know, gone past our door, and I was just – curious.”

  “Weird, Nikki,” Mom said. She was right.

  I shrugged. “I have an inquiring mind, and inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Do you suppose you and your inquiring mind could help me fix dinner?”

  “We’d love to.”

  I was grateful that we had company that night. The three adults had a lot to talk about, which suited me just fine because now I could finally think about the incredible boy. Why hadn’t I seen him before? Why hadn’t I seen him at school? Even if there were a million guys, I’d notice him! He came straight from my dreams. Thin, almost too thin for some girls maybe, but I liked thin guys. Black wavy hair, and dark eyes. Big, penetrating, dark, sensual eyes.

  But there was something else in his eyes – and I realized now that that was what I’d wanted to have a moment to stop and think about. What was that other thing in his eyes?

  “How do you like it here, Dominique?” Dad’s coworker asked me.

  I tried to remember his name, but it had made absolutely no stop on its way in one ear and out the other.

  “Oh, I, ah....”

  “I don’t think she’s crazy about the weather, she’s a child of the sun,” Mom answered for me.

  “I can sympathize with that. I came here from Kansas two years ago, and I’m still trying to to get used to it.”

  “Well, it’s not all bad,” I said.

  “REALLY?” Mom and Dad exclaimed together.

  “Really.” I munched my broccoli.

  “Young people! They adjust so fast,” Mom said.

  Yeah, I thought, especially when the ‘young person’ has an interesting neighbor with mysterious, sad, dark eyes.

  That was it! There was a sadness in his eyes, as if he’d been carrying it around – the sadness – for a long, long time.

  “...even the mirrors are antique.” Mom’s words broke into my thoughts.

  The mirror! I’d completely forgotten about the people in the mirror. Who were they? What were they? Were they ghosts? Or a weird phenomena of some sort that could be explained rationally? Were they beings from another dimension? Like Mom just said, all of the mirrors i
n the place were antique. What kind of experiences, in so many years, might a mirror go through?

  “Arg!” I jumped up from the table and ran into my bedroom and then the closet. The thought just hit me that the people in the mirror saw me in my closet where I dressed! But when I got in there, I realized that I dressed in a little cubby in the closet, at an angle that was out of line of sight for the people in the mirror. Just in case they could see me.

  And then I thought, if they were ghosts, they maybe couldn’t see me anyway.

  “Are you all right?” Mom stood in the closet doorway with a worried expression.

  “Oh! Yeah. Jeez, I’m sorry. I just had to check on something.”

  “Check on something?” Mom’s face went from bemused to worried. “Check on what?”

  “Well, the mirror. You were talking about the mirrors being antique and I wanted to check mine out again. ’Cause I was thinking the other day, that there was something kinda funny looking about the mirror, and the idea of it being antique makes good sense, now that you mention it. Do you think it is, really?” I was fully aware of babbling.

  Mom’s worried look deepened. She reached out and felt my forehead. “You must be coming down with something, you’ve been acting awfully strange today.”

  “I’m okay – like you’d say, don’t be such a worry wart. Let’s go back to dinner.”

  We walked down the hall to the dining room. “I wonder if ghosts can see the present,” I mused.

  “There are no such things as ghosts.”

  “But have they been empirically disproven?”

  “That’s a question for your father, Nikki. But, please, not tonight.”

  “Okay, Mom. Not tonight. Tonight we’re all cheesecake and chatter.”

  Chapter III

  The next day when I got home from school, Mom stopped playing the piano the minute I came through the door. She didn’t usually do that, she usually hammered on, smiling and holding her cheek out to be kissed. So I knew something was up when she left off right in the midst of the climatic frenzy of The Hall of the Mountain King, and sat, poised, ready to say something, as I walked into the room.

  “Da-da-da-da – da, da, da! da-da-da, DA-DA-DA!” I sang the next couple of bars. I was in a good mood. One look at Mom’s face, though, and I knew I soon would not be in as good a mood.

  She pointed to the coffee table. “There’s the note about your appointment with Dr. Carcionne. She comes highly recommended and we’re very fortunate that she had a cancellation tomorrow afternoon.”

  “We?” The smile fell off my face. “I guess Dr. Carcionne is a shrink.”

  “Family therapist specializing in teenagers.”

  “When will people give up and realize that there is no cure for the dreaded teenage disease? Except growing out of it. Or not make it through it.” I slumped onto the couch. Great, someone new poking at my mind, when I just wanted my mind to myself.

  “And it’s precisely that morbid sort of talk I want the doctor to address. Among other things.”

  “You’re mad at me.”

  Mom came over, sat on the sofa and put her arm around me. “Of course not, Nikki. I’m worried about you. And I’m not trained to fix you.”

  “But, Mom, I’m not broken. And besides, you’re a great advice giver and... stuff.”

  “Thanks, Nikki, but you’re still going to see Dr. Carcionne. You’ll feel better after you do.”

  “Which, when averaged with how lousy I feel before I go, comes out to about the same thing as not going at all, except not going costs less. Even if she does make me feel ‘better adjusted.’ Eugh-ick. Don’t forget Dr. Jean, Mom.”

  “Let’s not bring him up. That’s in the past. He was a sick man, which is why I worked so hard all day to find a highly reputable woman.”

  “Ignoring the past is not growth, Mom. And ignoring the fact that I had to have a year of therapy just because of a shrink doesn’t seem....”

  “Enough arguing, Nikki. You’re going to see Dr. Carcionne, at least once. Our insurance covers it eighty percent.”

  “Whoopee!” I went to my room and closed the door. Mom seemed so different from who she used to be. I threw my books on the bed. Maybe it is me. Then I threw myself on the bed. Maybe I’m just all kinds of a misfit.

  I remembered when Mom and I had sort of grown apart. I was eleven. It was a really rough time. First, that awful Dr. Jean, then Dad had been sent to England for three months and Mom lost the baby who was to be my longed-for little brother. That’s the first time Mom decided I had to be in therapy, even though a couple therapists dismissed me after one or two visits, just like the kind therapist who let me have my Grammy back, in my mind. I had learned enough, though, from the shrinking sessions to wonder if Mom wasn’t “ projecting” her problems onto me.

  I saw my closet door standing open. Mom must have been putting away clean clothes. I could see the mirror from where I’d flung myself on the bed, and, even across the bedroom and through the closet, I was certain I saw movement. Sort of scared, but also, wanting to solve the mystery, I got up and flipped on the closet light. Nothing. Just my own reflection.

  I felt irritated. In fact, everything seemed pretty gritty-annoying. Another shrink. Just completely ick. I wasn’t adjusted to the apartment or school, or anything, I didn’t want to have to adjust to having my interior self poked at, too.

  In addition, and what was particularly irritating, I hadn’t ever seen the gorgeous boy again since the first time. But, quite frankly, the last straw was this creepy-weird something about my mirror.

  I went to the hall linen closet, pulled out a dark blue sheet, brought it back into my room and hung it over the mirror.

  I stepped back and looked at it. Okay. The mirror was covered. Contemplating the sheet over the mirror I thought, you know Nikki, there really is something not-quite-right with you. It’s weird to put a sheet over a mirror.

  So I decided that maybe this new shrink could be helpful, if she’d just not be too nosy. If I didn’t want to talk about something, I wouldn’t. I had no intention of giving up my very private stuff to just any old body.

  * *

  The next day, Mom insisted on taking me to Dr. Carcionne’s office, when I could have, and would have preferred to, take the bus. It wasn’t that far from school, and I was not nine years old. I carried on this argument in my head as Mom drove me to the appointment. It went something like: I’m sixteen. I can certainly take a bus to an appointment. In some cultures I’d be married and have a kid by now.

  Well, I didn’t want to be married with a kid. But I did feel I’d be okay without the humiliation of her picking me up after school and hauling me off to the shrink. However, when we got there – with hardly a word between us the whole way – she at least had the decency to stay in the waiting room.

  When Dr. Carcionne’s personal assistant ushered me into her office, I sat in a straight-backed chair. I avoided the two beautiful and comfortable-looking wing-back chairs, thinking my chair choice would give a clear message that I did not want to be here.

  Dr. Carcionne sat across from me, a plain, trim woman, with black hair pulled back in a tight knot, big glasses, almost no make-up, and wearing a plain brown suit.

  “Hi, Dominique,” she said. I could feel her studying me studying her office.

  “ Nikki, please.” No sandbox – good. No little kids books, no puppets, good, good. In fact, the office wasn’t bad at all. Some books, some really interesting art, pale brick-colored walls, an interesting flower arrangement with big orangeish, exotic-looking flowers that I didn’t know what they were.

  So! It looked like an office for adults, not a kid’s therapist’s office. All good.

  “Your mother gave me a list of your previous therapists – I
got a couple of faxes today from Dr. Smith and Dr. Candy.”

  I giggled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, Dr. Candy. Mom thought that with a name like that he’d be a good child psychologist, but he was so lousy. He didn’t have the least clue how people work. In fact, he quit being a therapist while I was seeing him.”

  “Because of you?”

  I thought she was making a joke and expected to see her crack a smile. But she didn’t.

  “No,” I answered, realizing the session had started, and even if she had’t put pen to paper, she was already taking mental notes – “delusions of grandeur.” “Not because of me. That would be weird. It was, like I said, he didn’t know how people worked, and I guess he finally realized it. Then I got Dr. Smith. I suppose Dr. Smith had the ex-Dr. Candy’s records, since they were in the same office.”

  “Um-hum,” Dr. Carcionne said, studying the file she’d started on me. “Your mother mentioned you’ve not been happy with moving to Seattle.”

  “I’m adjusting.”

  “And that you’ve been talking about ghosts.”

  “Hypothetically.”

  “Hypothetically. What are your hypothetical thoughts about ghosts?”

  “I don’t know. All I said to Mom is that they haven’t been empirically disproved. Next thing I know, I’m being hauled into your office.” I had just decided I didn’t like Dr. Carcionne and I was not about to get into anything private with her.

  She put down the file and gave me her undivided attention. “I feel we’re not off to a good start.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I thought talking about your discussion of ghosts with your mother and seeing if there’s an objective reason for you to bring up that subject with her might be a good jumping off point. I’m kind of wondering now, though, if your bringing up ghosts with your mother wasn’t a bid for attention.”