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a Bad Influence
Down in the Dirt (v129) (the May/June 2015 Issue)




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Mirrors

Anne Britting Oleson

    “Alice,” my mother whispered over the phone, her voice urgent. “There’s someone here.”
    When my father had died, I’d moved my mother into the apartment behind the garage. At nearly 80, without Dad to take care of her, she really couldn’t stay by herself—becoming forgetful, hearing intruders. It was a compromise. When I’d suggested an assisted living facility, she’d reared back.
    “Don’t be bossy, Allie.”
    I didn’t realize until later that she’d called me Allie. She never called me that. Allie was dead. The other Alice.

    My mother’s identical twin had died when they were thirteen, a freak thing, spinal meningitis. I was named after her: Alice. I’d heard the story often enough as a child, how one day Alice had been fine, and the next day, dead. My mother would sometimes say, with a confused faraway look in her blue eyes, that she’d felt a piece of herself missing after that. Then she’d shake her head, her dark hair swinging behind the wide band she wore, and smile at me.
    “Until you came along,” she’d say, and go back to the dishes or the gardening. My mother’s hands were always busy.
    So the other Alice walked with me for all my childhood. A shadow. A mirror. They were identical, Alice and Eleanor. From the pictures, I knew I looked very much like them, could have been the third triplet—but for my green eyes. It was not uncomfortable: far from it. Other people had guardian angels, imaginary friends. I had the other Alice.
    I mused about her as I grew older. What would she have looked like now, at seventeen? Or now, at twenty-two? Thirty-five? There were pictures of my mother scattered through albums at those ages, and pictures of me. “You might be twins,” my friends, lighting on them, would exclaim.
    “We might be,” my mother would always say, looking up from making cookies or sewing on a button.
    “We’re not,” I’d say.

    Tonight, though her voice shook with the urgency I’d grown familiar with. “Shall I call the police?”
    “No,” I said quickly, snapping up out of sleep. She’d done that last time, embarrassingly, as there had proven to be no sign of an intruder. “No, I’ll come.”
    I didn’t bother with slippers or robe. Her door was in the entry between the kitchen and garage. I knocked: twice, then a moment’s pause, then two more raps, the knock that let her know it was I. The secret knock she’d shared with the other Alice as kids.
    The door opened a crack, and my mother drew me into her darkened kitchen. When I reached for the light switch, she stopped me. “No. She’ll know where we are.”
    She? I fought down the impatience. “Where did you hear her?”
    My mother’s hand shook on my arm. She really was frightened, and I had to remember that. She was an old frightened woman. “Bathroom,” she said. “I saw her.”
    This time my heart stopped.
    “You stay here.” I grabbed up the cast iron skillet from the stove top.
    “Be careful,” she whispered.
    Frying pan aloft, I stepped softly down the hallway, listening hard. I heard no sound. The bathroom door was ajar, and, with my back against the wall, I shoved it open quickly.
    Nothing.
    I waited, still holding my breath, then peered around. The window between the toilet and the bathtub glowed softly. The shower curtain was pulled open. There was no one there. I lowered the skillet and flicked on the light. The bathroom was empty. As I turned, I caught a fleeting glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink, dark hair, tired green eyes.
    “Allie?” she called from the kitchen.
    “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. I went back to her in the kitchen. “There’s no one.” I set the pan back down on the stove. “Can I make you some cocoa?”
    At first, confusion. Then relief.
    “I’ll make it,” she said after a pause, and did. For a moment I had my mother back, watching her get out the milk, the cocoa, the saucepan. Her hands moved as I remembered, quick, sure. Her fright had faded, and she was once more a competent—thought slightly stooped, silver-haired—elderly woman.
    We drank in silence, and as the clock struck one, I stood to rinse the mugs and pan. My mother moved down the hallway, and I heard the flick of the light switch just before her cry.
    She was shrunk back against the bathroom wall, staring at the mirror. When she saw me, she held out a shaking hand, pointing.
    “There!” she cried. “Who is she? What does she want with me?”
    In the mirror, an old woman with silver hair and wrinkled, liver-spotted skin stared back at her with wild blue eyes.
    “Who is she?”
    I reached for my mother, and she buried her face in my shoulder, leaving me looking into my own face in the mirror. The face which had once been hers. The one she still recognized. Allie’s. The other Alice.



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