* * *
In the fitting room, I find her standing in the ill-fitting dress without her shoes on, staring at me. Her arms are out slightly as if the dress has arrested her.
“Well mirror, mirror,” she says, locking eyes with me in the reflection. “Tell me. Is this worth the absurd amount of money you people are charging for this?”
I look into the full-length mirror. There I am, standing behind the seaweed woman just as I’m really standing behind the seaweed woman. Wearing Mother’s red dress. Still glowing, lifted, eradicated. So good to be synced up with myself again finally. I feel such relief seeing myself there in the glass. Smiling as I’m smiling. Ready to be of service, another pair of eyes. Everything nicely aligned in time and space, no more weird glitch. The chimes are still playing, maybe a little more loudly, but they’re pretty. I’m Mother’s best saleswoman.
“So are you going to tell me or what?”
“Definitely.” I smile at her in the glass. And it’s the funniest thing: the seaweed woman’s suddenly a bit blurry in there. Right when I go to really look in the mirror. I turn to my own glowing reflection. I’m perfectly clear. Sharp even, against the customer’s blur. Huh.
“Well?”
“It’s not entirely clear.”
“Not entirely clear?” She lets out a guffaw. “That’s a new one.”
And then I see in the glass, I’m staring at her coldly. Very coldly. Am I shaking my head? How can that be when here in the actual dressing room, I’m nodding and smiling?
“What does that mean exactly?” she presses. Annoyed, but also curious. Deeply wanting the words I’m supposed to give. I always have the perfidious words to give. Perfect, I mean of course. I meet my eyes in the mirror. Eyes that are supposed to be the other pair of eyes for this suddenly blurry customer. So bright and entrancing my mirror eyes are. But are they mocking? Surely not. Not when I’m smiling and nodding like this, being so nice and polite. Nodding so hard, my neck hurts, really. And yet mirror me is doing more of a grin. A wicked grin.
“Just tell me, do I look good or not?”
I watch my reflection lean over the woman’s blurry shoulder, my mirror eyes still on my eyes. A chill down my back from our cold, mocking stare. My red mirror lips hover by this woman’s out-of-focus ear. Lips so very red in the glass, did I even put on lipstick today? I’m mouthing a word right into the black hole of her ear. No.
“What was that?” she whispers.
Awful, chants my mouth in the mirror. Awful, awful, awful, right into the woman’s ear with my very red mirror lips. But on this side of the glass, my own lips are sealed. Literally pressed together as tight as can be. I’m shaking my head. “No,” I whisper. Yes.
“No?”
“I can’t say that. I won’t say that,” I whisper to mirror me in the glass.
“Won’t say what?” the blurry woman snaps. She grabs me by the shoulders and turns me away from the glass so I’m looking right at her. “Just tell me what you see!”
I stare into the woman’s face. Not blurry anymore. All too clear. The awful dress. Her awful soul. I hear an ocean roar suddenly all around us. Like crashing waves right here in the dressing room. Does the woman hear it too? No. Her mouth still seems to be saying, Tell me, tell me. So I do my best to tell through the roar. Words I can’t hear in the wave sounds, though I feel my mouth making their smiling shapes. I only hope they’re the perfid—perfect words. The ones I can always give. The ones she’s so desperately looking for. The woman just stares at me, her dark eyes going wide. Finally the roar around us quiets. I fall silent. The mirror is empty now. Shining like nothing. Once again, my reflection seems to have slipped away.
The seaweed woman shakes her head at me like I’m monstrous.
“I can’t believe,” she whispers, “what you just fucking said to me.”
Oh god, what words did I give?
“All right in there?” Sylvia says on the other side of the door, knocking. Her voice is smiling, but I hear the panic and rage beneath.
“Fine,” the seaweed woman snaps. She slowly turns to me, her dark, wet ringlets trembling before her eyes. I think she’s about to hit me. I wait for it, bracing myself. Then she sinks to her knees as if felled. I drop to my knees too, like a good reflection. She looks at me. “Is it really true?”
What did I say? “I should really let Sylvia or Esther help you now,” I tell her quietly.