Pictures in the Mirror
The moon sits plainly on the horizon, no excitement or beauty emitted by this usually stunning entity. Outisde the window, the streets are bare except for hurried children and teen-aged sisters, a rustling newspaper or magazine without her picture in it, and any number of rodents that nightly search for sustenance but never seem to find enough. She sees the bright white ball blocked by the bars, the window sill crooked leaving the window itself permanently ajar. A wind rushes through, out just as quickly as it came in, breathing life into her skirts.
She disappears. Her mind is filled with tabloid magazines, breakdowns, photographs that shouldn’t have been taken - but behind all that, a world that was once filled with fame in happiness. Inside, it coexists naturally with the desolate outside - coke binges, staying up all night, unintentional fasting and horrible miscarriages. Inside, she glimmers and shines in the moonlight. Her smile always sparkles and hands wave at her in delight - “come over here, look at me, I love you!” Oh, to be loved. In this world, she’s eternally loved. Often she’ll escape into this dream for nights on end and I won’t be able to find her.
“Wake up, Ma.” She’s not really my mother, but she wouldn’t let me call her Grandma. “Grandma” is for old widows who have no purpose in life, she said to me once. So I call her “Ma” and encourage her fantasies.
She slums, then looks at me like I’m disturbin the queen. Her first reaction is always this: “If it were past days, you wouldn’t even be allowed in my dressing room.” Or: “Why do you always insist on dragging me out to that world, that wretched world which has chewed up my talent and spit it out like old, undeveloped film? Have you no respect?” And I apologize and tell her she’s, once again, been in this room for several days waiting for something that will never come.
“You’re not a star,” I remind her. I want to say, “you never were,” but I made that mistake once and she threw me out for ignorance and lies. No fan of hers will ever be tolerated saying such things. And that’s all we were - family, what few friends she had left - we were fans. I think she probably thought everyone was just a fan, that the whole world wanted to be just like her.
But, of course, her fantasy self. Her daydreams.
“Not today,” she replies. “But everyone gets a second chance. You’ll see.”
The vanity mirror has only one light bulb left, the rest broken or shattered because - why? I don’t know. I imagine anger. My grandfather found this room once and he had a fit over it. It’s a one-bedroom apartment studio, no kitchen, tiny bathroom, in the worst part of town (and therefore affordable for her to fund it alone). There’s a bed stripped bare to a rotting mattress; a nightstand sits in the corner with a lamp probably bought around the time they invented electricity. Everything in this room is old except me. The mirror is laced with a fuzzy dark red feather boa and, clearly, my grandmother has decorated the drawers with unsightly undergarments. I always have to banish the thought that maybe she wears them for the men I imagine she brings back here.
Like the room itself she stinks of dust, and she always looks dusty. After she tells me that her agent hasn’t called only because there’s no phone in this room, I brush the tangles out of her hair and start to throw away the used cigarette butts. She stops me by the arm and looks deeply into my eyes.
“You know, you remind me of a young gentlemen who I once knew. He was so handsome that I fell in love immediately. It’s tragic what happened. He jumped off a bridge, you know. Terrible for publicity.” Whenever she starts this story I expect her, just once, to finish it the way other grandmothers do, telling me how she and my grandfather met, how they fell in love and had one of the greatest loves in the world, how she always felt like it was destiny…
Instead: “But he was so handsome. Not many others could compare, not even those names you know well: Brando when he was young, Dean, even that charming Carlton Heston. He just wasn’t meant for this life. He couldn’t handle my fame, my adoring fans. I’d smile at a man younger than him and he’d storm off in jealousy. Dramatic, he was, but no actor. If I had known he’d start the downfall of my career, well, I probably wouldn’t have given him a second bat of the eye. Oh, but he was devilishly handsome.”
I couldn’t stand this talk. Up until this point, I humored her, even tried to keep a smile, but as soon as the conversation turned to her imagined vision of my grandfather, I just wanted to leave her there. If no one came to look after her, she wouldn’t be fed, she wouldn’t bathe, she might not even wake up. I had to remind myself that my mother was her daughter, that my mother put her in my care when she couldn’t do it anymore.
“Grandma, it’s time to go home now. I’ll get you something nice to wear.”
“Oh, the red dress please! I always did like that red dress.” There was no red dress.
***
A week later, same old routine. I found her face down in her hands, leaning on the desk with the mirror. The brush was by her elbow and I wondered why she kept it at all. I paused and watched her in the doorway. She wasn’t sobbing like she usually was; she didn’t seem so distressed, but I couldn’t determine any expression. The moon was high and its light penetrated the ugliness of the bedroom. For a moment, just a moment, she almost looked beautiful. I had only seen a few photographs of her young, but in that lighting at that moment, she looked eternal.
A shadow descended over the room. I supposed a cloud covered the moon, but it wasn’t a cloudy night. My mind wasn’t on the lightness or the darkness.
“Wake up, Ma.” No response at first. “Ma, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to go.” Finally, that death-glare again.
“Where are we going?”
“Out to eat. Let me get your dress.”
“Dear, come here. Let me look at you.” This again. “Let me see you. I am so proud of you, my boy. Well, don’t look so surprised! You have plenty to be proud of. Your mother told me about your little boy, and your beautiful wife. I wonder sometimes why I never got to meet them. Now, don’t look away. I know you all think there’s something wrong with me, talking all the time of my past, but I’m nothing to be ashamed of. I miss my Harold. I miss my fans. I just don’t belong in this world of yours.”
I was stunned, perhaps understandably so. I welcomed the change. Next time, I thought hopefully, next time I’ll bring grandpa. Maybe then she’ll see her delusions for what they are.
But she was way ahead of me.
“Harold?” She looked behind me. “Harold, is that you?” There was nothing there. “Oh, Harold!” She stood up, composed herself. “Forgive me, it’s been so long since I’ve been presentable. They do take good care of me, but it’s hard to find a beautiful dress these days.”
I stood in shock and watched her. She smiled again and hobbled slowly to the doorway.
Her death was quick. It almost seemed like she fainted at first. I rushed to her side. “Grandma! Ma! Are you okay? Wake up!”
***
The last time I entered that room, it was with a police officer to collect the few belongings she had worth saving. He handed me a plastic bag full of photographs. (I told them to toss the lingerie.) The boa was still on the vanity mirror, now lying on the bed ready to be thrown out along with the rest of her trash.
I walked out of the room, stopping to open the bag in the hallway. A photograph showed me as a baby, my mother holding me close and smiling, her arms gently rocking me as I slept. Another, my grandfather as a young man, smiling in front of a school building. Another of him waving good-bye to an old truck as it sped off down a dusty path. There were a few of my aunts and uncles, none of which I’ve ever met, and one of my son - the same one I’d given to my mother two years ago, and the only color photo in the bunch. Another of my mother. She was smiling, but sadly, and in her arms was a bouquet of dark roses.
Inside the plastic bag, under the photos, there was an envelope. I looked inside and found more photographs, but surprising ones. My grandmother, young and shining. She’s wearing a glamorous dress and an equally glamorous smile. She’s turned toward the camera, but walking away from it, and waving. Another, she’s sitting on a bench holding a man’s hand. He seems bothered and annoyed by the camera, but she is absolutely brilliant. Another, she’s loving the camera, flirting with it. There are several photos like this - blowing a kiss or glaring with a smile. Finally, the two that I still wonder about this day.
She’s walking across what looks like a stage in front of a large dinner party. The photo is taken from the viewing end, so immediately in front there are several people sitting down, several of them looking toward the stage and several only looking at the meal in front of them. I imagined they were calling her name, chanting, begging for just one look or one smile, because in this picture she looked like the most beautiful person in the room. The picture isn’t colored, but I saw the red dress. I saw it in all its vibrance.
It was in the last picture, too. It looked like she was signing an autograph and she was beaming. It’s as though that was the very life she’d always dreamt of but never thought would happen. Her face is aglow like the moonlight, like how she looked that moment I saw her in the bedroom. So beautiful.
She glowed like a star, because she was one.
I rushed back into the room. “Where did you find them? The ones in the envelope - where where they?”
The police officer looked at the photographs I held out in my hands. “Oh, they fell out from behind the mirror when we lifted it off the desk. Why?”
I suppose I’ll never know the truth, but I like to tell my son that she was a movie star.
