Outside, the chime sounds are still playing somewhere, seeming to follow me. The light from the sun stings my eyes. Had to put on Mother’s black hat with the widest brim, her sunglasses with the frames big as a bug’s eyes. I’m walking on the shadow side of the street. The shady side, I mean. Sometimes the words I think aren’t quite the words I mean. Maybe just part of the fog I’m in this morning. When it comes to the words I mean, there might be a lag or a blank. Sometimes the blank stays blank no matter how long I wait for it to fill up with something. Like when I said goodbye to the goblin man just now. He had another name besides Goblin, I knew that, and I waited for it to come back to me so I could say goodbye in a nicer way. But when I looked at his face, the only word in my head and on my tongue was goblin. My reflection was even mouthing it beside me in one of Mother’s many mirrors. I could feel myself in the glass going, Goblin, goblin, goblin. So in the end, I just said, Farewell. I said it in French, which was funny. Adieu, meaning “to god.” Curtsied as I closed the door, to make it look like I meant to say it that way, to make it pretty. Pretty is a word that’s always there for me in the fog. And the French for it, which is my own name, Belle. That’s lucky.
Very belle, this town. I never really saw that before, or maybe I’m seeing it today in a new way. Palm trees. Curving streets. Shop fronts of glass like an endless maze of mirrors. Better hurry to work, don’t dawdle. But I can’t seem to stop smiling at her in all the reflected surfaces along the way. Myself, I mean. When I say her, I mean myself. In the shop glass, I’m not wearing the hat and sunglasses, funny. Don’t seem to need them on the other side, I guess. I guess that makes a sort of sense. I look good, don’t I? More than good. Glowing, lifted, eradicated. Eradicated is the word that comes most strongly to my mind, but it can’t be the word I mean. Doesn’t eradicate mean “destroy”? My face looks the opposite of destroyed. Well, but somehow it fits. Fits like the dress I’m wearing today, Mother’s dress, which I’d never seen before. It was tucked deep in her closet, buried among the black and white silks like a hot little secret, like it was just waiting for my hand to find it on the rack. When I saw it, I hesitated, but then I thought, Why not put it on? She won’t be wearing it anymore. And a funny thing happened then: in the closet mirror, I saw I was already putting on the dress. I was putting it on in the glass while my actual hand was still on the hanger, hesitating. I watched for a while and I thought how funny to see me getting a little ahead of myself like that. In the glass. Can that be right? Can we sometimes see ourselves just slightly ahead of ourselves? I thought of how I saw the goblin’s mouth in the mirror earlier, not quite syncing up with his words. How I saw my reflection smiling and nodding before I was actually smiling and nodding, laughing before I thought to laugh. Even mouthing my thoughts. So maybe it happens sometimes, a lapse or a kind of jump ahead, a glitch in the glass. Maybe I just forgot how mirrors worked because of this morning’s fog. It looked very pretty on me in the mirror, anyway. Mother’s dress. In fact, when I saw my reflection slipping her arms into the armholes, I quickly slipped into them too, catching up with myself so that we smiled and zipped up at the exact same time. A red dress, which is nice. Goes with the red shoes, which we’re wearing too. I do love red.
But I’m dawdling again. Got to get to work. My reflection in the shopwindows is actually jogging slightly ahead of me, I see, her heels clicking a beat faster than my heels, like she knows I’m late. Wait, I nearly say to myself. I’m coming. Which is a very funny thing to want to say to oneself. Surely I’m just not seeing things right. My phone buzzes. Heart jumps. A name and number I recognize, but not off the bat. Persephone. Goddess of the underworld. Why is she calling me?
“Hello?” I answer, a little nervous.
“Mirabelle, how are you?” Her voice sounds falsely mournful. And familiar. We seem to know each other, Persephone and I, but in what capacity?
“Been trying to get ahold of you for a while,” she says. Her voice insinuates power. Like it has some sort of dominion over my soul. In the shopwindows, I see I’m still clicking just a little ahead in my red shoes. I haven’t even answered the phone.
“Yes, well I’ve been busy. You know how it is.”
“Of course,” Persephone says. “I can only imagine. Well hopefully you’re at least getting some sun while you’re there?”
In the glass, I seem to be smiling right up into the sunlight, like it’s telling me a very pretty secret. Funny because I’m actually in the shade, shivering. “Some,” I say.
“Well listen, Mira, I just wanted to check in. First to see how you are, of course, and then also to confirm when you were coming back?”
“Coming back?”
“To work,” she says. Her voice is starting to sound tense, frustrated. The glove of power tightening on the hand. My boss. That’s why she sounds like she has a claim on me. “We’re expecting you at the shop tomorrow. For the afternoon shift.”
“Oh, well there must be some mistake. I’m actually coming in now.”
“You are?” I can feel Persephone raising her eyebrows on the other end of the line. I’ve shocked her.
“I should be there in the next few minutes. So it’s funny you called.”
“Few minutes? Well. That’s wonderful. We weren’t expecting that, but that’s wonderful. I didn’t realize you were already back home?”
“Home.” I look around me. Blue sky. Palm trees. Street that curves like a seashell, all the shop glass windows reflecting back my glowing self to infinity. I see I’m walking quite far ahead now. Quite far ahead of myself. But I can feel the smile on my mirror face. “Yes,” I say. “I’m home.”
* * *
As I approach the shop, I have to smile. I was worried about being late, but we’re right on time, look at that. I’m right on time, I mean. Even with all the dawdling and that phone call from the underworld. I’m here at Belle of the Ball, where I work. Where I’ve always worked, right? Worked with Mother until she died recently. A pretty dress shop right in the heart of… the area. Can’t miss it. Something’s different about the shop front though. Things that used to be here, pretty things, aren’t here anymore. Drawing a blank on what exactly, but I know they’re gone. Where did they go? Does Mother know about this? There I am in the window. Glowing, lifted, eradicated, which may or may not be the word I mean. I’m smiling in the glass though the window display itself upsets me a little, not going to lie. Who cut off the heads of these mannequins? Why are they wearing these sad gray sacks?
In the shop, no one’s on the floor. Well, maybe because my shift’s starting. I walk behind the counter. Place my hands on the glass jewelry case. When did the jewelry in here become so… not pretty? The first chance I get, I’ll have to do something about that. For now, though, I’d better stay here on the floor. Can’t leave the register, Mother would hate that. Yet she used to leave all the time. Loves to leave while I’m forced to stay and watch her float around and disappear into the back for god knows how long. Loved to leave, I mean. Be my eyes and ears, Belle, she’d call over her shoulder. And I was. I am. Her best saleswoman, she always said. My reflection has wandered off, I see. Wandering the shop floor just like Mother does. Like Mother did, what is it with me and tenses today? I’d call myself back but that seems like too strange a thing to do. Call oneself back. And anyway, maybe it’s just this glitch in the glass today. Following me from mirror to mirror like the chimes seem to be following me. They’re playing here now. Right here in the shop, right around my ears. It would make me maybe a little nervous if they didn’t sound so pretty. My reflection seems to be swaying a little to their music as she wanders away. Smiling, though we’re not loving what we see hanging on the racks. With my eyes, I try to follow her from mirror to mirror, Mother installed so many along the shop walls. Where is she going? Where am I going, I should say. Do reflections really wander off like this?
“Hello? Are we here?” Someone’s snapping their fingers in my face.
My eyes focus. A customer right in front of me. Tight, wet-looking curls that remind me of seaweed in a tide pool. A face that screams she’s chosen what Marva calls the Procedural Approach. I can’t tell if she’s angry or frightened or extremely surprised.
“Hello.” I smile at her. “How can I be of hell to you? Help to you.” Funny, these word slips I’m having today.
She looks at me, a little scared maybe. Again, very hard to tell with her face. “You work here?”
I smile like what a question. I’m behind the counter, aren’t I? But sometimes, in retail, one must state the obvious. “I work here, yes.”
She looks at my hands gripping the counter. “I’ve never seen you here before.” In my pocket, my phone buzzes.