The Mirror

Marlys Millhiser - The Mirror

Also by Marlys Millhiser

WILLING HOSTAGE

NELLA WAITS

MICHAEL'S WIFE

Copyright
(c)
1978 by Marlys Millhiser

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Longman Canada Limited, Toronto.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I would like to thank Jane Barker, Forest Crossen, Sanford Gladden, Dr. John B. Schooland, and the late Muriel Sibell Wolle for their books and articles on Boulder County history. Also the historical societies of Boulder and Nederland for the tidbits they've gathered and keep safe for us all. And more generally, A. L. Rowse for
The Cousin Jacks, The Cornish in America.

There is no winning in life, and no losing--not really--only continuance in a state of obedience to forces that don't know a thing about us.

--Ira Wolfert,
An Endemic of Genius

BACKWARD

The mirror was old. It had been old when Captain Bennet of the
Merry Dolphin
found it in the hold after his passengers disembarked in San Francisco Bay. The glass was grainy even then and reflected the light of the ship's lantern in coarse undulations.

Captain Bennet brought it to his cabin in case the owner should inquire for it, thinking that if the owner did not he'd have it pitched overboard. The stench of the oriental horde that overran his vessel on the return voyage still clung to his nostrils and he saw little possible value in any of their belongings.

That night, after a particularly violent electrical storm, certain members of the crew returned from carousing on the waterfront to find the good captain dead on the floor of his cabin.

A busy and perplexed doctor termed the cause of death apoplexy because of the profusion of blood under the skin of the face and the protrusion of the eyeballs.

The distressed widow did not share her husband's distaste for things oriental and took the mirror into her home as a memento of the captain's last voyage. She soon succumbed, however, to a strange malaise of the mind that convinced her she was not herself but someone else, and she had to be removed to a place where she could be properly looked after and restrained.

The mirror, a full-length looking glass that stood on its own base, remained for some years in her dark and shuttered parlor, until the house was sold. It was then to be found among other items of questionable origin in the dingy shop of one Edwin C. Pennypacker.

The night after Mr. Pennypacker, for unknown reasons, hanged himself from the rafters of his storeroom, hoodlums broke into the shop and the mirror along with the rest of the inventory disappeared

It was next seen in the back of a wagon filled with a consignment of wares headed for the goldfields, and eventually stood beside the bar in a tent saloon.

Rumor has placed the mirror over the next years in deserted mine shacks, Indian tepees, a Mormon farmhouse in Utah and in a palatial bawdy house in Cripple Creek, Colorado. But the next authenticated location was the home of Charles Pemberthy, a Cornish miner, in Central City, also in Colorado, in the year 1898. It was apparently not a treasured item in the household, for when the Pemberthys left their rented residence, they left the mirror also.

John C. McCabe, the owner of this property, upon inspecting the house to discover why his renters had vacated so abruptly, espied the mirror. Having always been a man of unpredictable tastes, Mr. McCabe determined to transport it some miles over the mountains to his home in Boulder as a wedding gift for his daughter, Brandy.

Thus the mirror continued its journey. . . .

Part I

Shay

1

The Gingerbread House sat sullenly in the downpour. Water gurgled in its eaves troughs, cascaded from its peaks and false turrets, dripped from trim bordering porches and railings and overhands.

The streetlight pinpointed wet speartips on the ornate fence, made dancing leaves sweep shadows across the gate swinging in the wind. A hollow clang sounded over the noise of the storm as the gate returned to strike uselessly at its latch.

In the grassy depression between the black fence and the city sidewalk, a puddle gathered, its spillover creeping under the gate.

The Gingerbread House stood aloof from the surrounding city and from the rearing wall of mountains that crouched but a few blocks to the west, insulated by the storm, by its ancient trees, by its history in a neighborhood gone neon and brash.

Storm sewers could not cope with this rare deluge and a car moved cautiously up the hill to the stop sign opposite, headlights piercing the spaces in the fence, reaching to the porches and windows of the house set far back in the protection of its lot. . . .

Shay Garrett, sitting on the window seat in the upstairs hall, leaned into the curving window as the car turned the corner. Headlights twisted through the distortion of old glass and wind-driven rain to bring fire to the solitaire on her finger.

She turned the ring so the diamond faced her palm, heard the mutter of voices downstairs, imagined a prickly tension waiting in the dark silence of the hall at her back.

As she rubbed the stiffened muscles of her neck, she felt the diamond cold against her skin and wished that it could rain inside the house, wash away the dust of decades, generations, decay, boredom.

Tomorrow a wedding band would be added to the solitaire. Tomorrow Shay would shake the dust of this house from her heels. Why then this uneasy feeling, this ennui so morbid and weighted it constricted her breathing?

"Shay? her mother's voice came up the stairwell, sounding a bit frayed. "It's time to take Grandma Bran up. Can you help?"

Shay let her breath out slowly. "I'm coming."

"Why, the light's not even on," Rachael said below and Shay heard the switch click downstairs.

Instant light glared on new flowered carpeting and wallpaper meant to look old. The imagined, energized tension in the air seemed heavier as Shay passed the door of her room.

At the head of the stairs the wedding portrait was crooked and she paused to straighten it. The age-darkened photograph of Grandma Bran and her stiff-mustachioed husband. How could the woman in the picture be the same as the woman below, sprung from her eternal nursing home for the wedding tomorrow? Aging made no sense to Shay.

She moved down the curving stairs, half-strangled with the oppression of family relics and forebears.

"What were you doing up there with the lights off?" Rachael Garrett pushed the wheelchair to the bottom of the stairs and slid a hand under the old lady's arm to lift her.

Jerrold Garrett set his drink beside the telephone on the ancient buffet. "Probably leaning against a wall being winsomely bored."

A momentary tableau of the faces in front of Shay . . . her parents' looks of helplessness, a touch of longing . . . the rather sweet vacancy of her grandmother's stare. Shay forced a reassuring smile. "The gate's off the latch, Daddy. It's banging in the wind." She took Grandma Bran's other arm and it trembled at her touch.

"I'll get it." He grabbed a raincoat from the hall tree and the smell of soaked wood rushed in at them as he slammed the door.

Rachael smiled over the nodding white head between them, but through a mist of tears. "Well, what did you think of it?"

"Think of what?"

"Your wedding present... in your room. You couldn't have missed it."

"I didn't go in my room. What is it?"

"The mirror from the attic. The one you were so intrigued with, remember? We've always called it the wedding mirror because it came into the family as a wedding present. It's very old and I suspect valuable. I thought you should have something ... of the family."

As Shay tried to remember a particular mirror from an attic stuffed with the discards of generations, Grandma Bran lurched forward.

Her mother caught herself on the banister. But her grandmother clutched at Shay, pale lips forming soundless words, sudden intentness replacing the emptiness of her stare.

"You don't think she's having another stroke?" Fear caught in Rachael's whisper as they pushed the old woman back into the chair.

A bony hand yanked at her wrist and Shay found herself on her knees in front of the wheelchair. "Mother, she's trying to talk. It's all right, Grandma." But she couldn't free her wrist. Nor believe how strong this tiny creature had become. Nor ward off the panic that seemed to pass from the frail body to her own.

"Damn gate's broken again." Her father and the rain smell entered the hall together. "Why the hell you insist upon hanging onto every piece of junk your family ever--what's the matter with her?"

"I don't know. I thought she might be having a stroke, but she seems to be trying to talk. Her color's high, though, Jerry."

The pinks of the delicate flowers on the wallpaper swam into the reds. The darkness of the buffet levitated in the blurred periphery of Shay's vision. She felt lost in her grandmother's eyes, as if she were being pulled out of herself, merging with the agony of the old woman's struggle as withered lips fought to form around something and sagging throat worked to give it voice.

"What is it, Grandma?"

"Mirror," Grandma Bran answered clearly. It was the first word she'd spoken in twenty years.

2

Shay leaned the folded canvas and metal of the wheelchair against the wall in the guestroom. Her father set Grandma Bran on the edge of the bed.

Rachael grasped her husband's arm as he straightened. "That's the first thing she's said since her stroke. Jerry, you don't think there's hope . . . after all this time?"

"I think you never give up on anything." He gestured toward the woman on the bed, whose vacant smile belied the brief lapse into reality they'd witnessed downstairs. "She's probably happier where she is, wherever she's gone. Leave her alone."

Shay still felt the impact of that emotional exchange. Her grandmother, after forcing out one word, had shuddered, looked confused and then lost all interest in further communication. "But why did she look so frightened when she said 'mirror'?"

"Oh, honey, she wasn't frightened. She just can't control her expressions that well." Rachael touched the parchment cheek and the old lady patted her hand as if to offer comfort. "I just wish it'd lasted longer. There's so much I want to say to her, ask her."

"Well, I still think it's a mistake having Bran here for the wedding." Jerry forced a creaking window open a few inches at the top. "She's not going to know the difference and she might do something to wreck it."

"She's never been any trouble. I'll watch her." When he was gone Rachael turned to Shay. "You understand, don't you? You're the only one of her grandchildren she responds to anymore. I'm not sure she recognizes her own sons. I thought she should be here."

"Mother, it's fine. I'm glad Grandma will be at my wedding. And Marek won't mind."

Rachael stared at Grandma Bran as if willing her to speak again, but the old lady was absorbed in folding her suit jacket. Sitting erect, she fumbled at the blouse's buttons. She could do so much for herself. At the table she rarely spilled her food. Her walk was halting, a barely perceptible dragging of one foot. Only in the last few years had the doctor insisted a wheelchair be kept handy so she wouldn't tire.

Shay hovered near the bed with a nightgown and hoped she'd never live to grow this old.

When Rachael returned with Grandma Bran from a trip to the bathroom, Shay helped to tuck the covers around the wasted body.

"Honey, about tomorrow. It isn't too late."

"Mother, don't--"

"Please, let me finish. I have to say this and I promise to say it only once. If you . . ." Rachael pushed back thick hair where any trace of gray had been camouflaged. "I'm not accusing you of anything, darling. Oh, I don't know how to say this. But... if you--"

"Mother, I can see you're never going to get it right and we don't have all night. Let me say it for you. Shay," she tried to imitate her mother's low voice, "if you're pregnant your father and I will pay for you to have the baby at some home or even to have an abortion, but you do
not
have to marry that man tomorrow. How's that?"