American Elsewhere (17 page)

Mona stays still, waiting for more. “Well, go on,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Hurry up.”

“Oh,” says Mona. “You want me to… oh, okay.” She angles the first mirror so that it is reflecting the ashtray. “Is this okay?”

“So long as you see the ashtray, it’s fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now place the other mirror behind it.”

Mona does so, sliding the second mirror behind the one reflecting the ashtray. They seem to click into place, as if magnetized.

“Now… concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly. “You must look at the reflection of the ashtray in the mirror, and do not look away. Stare at it, and concentrate on it. Remember what it looks like, and hold that image in your mind.” She is grim and serious again, but now Mona thinks it is not part of the act. The sickly-sweet smell of potpourri becomes intense and heady, and Mona feels a little ill. “Are you concentrating?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“Yeah,” says Mona. She is staring very hard at the mirror. It has no frame, she notices, nor is there any flaw or scratch on its surface. It gets hard to remember she is looking at a reflection. The mirror is so smooth that it is like a window, or perhaps a little bubble of light floating in her lap, and inside the bubble is a picture of an ashtray…

“Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now, just keep staring at the reflection on the top mirror. Keep concentrating on it. And as you do, I want you to slowly, slowly pull the other mirror out from underneath it. Don’t just yank it. Do you understand?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. Do you understand or not?”

“I do.”

“Then do it, please.”

This is the weirdest magic trick Mona’s ever taken part in, but she decides to keep indulging the old lady. She keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray, and begins to pull the mirrors apart. There is a
click
, like she’s just severed the magnetic attraction between them, and everything… changes.

It is impossible to say how things change. It is as if every object in the room is now a false version of itself, a cheap, manufactured copy of the real thing. The stink of potpourri gets so strong that the air seems to shimmer with it. But out of the corner of her eye Mona thinks she can see
light
seeping through objects she knows to be opaque: she can see the sunlight through the roof, through the chandelier, and even through the floor, as if it is all made of ice. And underneath that light are a thousand shadows…

“Concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly.

Mona remembers the task at hand, and she keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray in the top mirror.

And as the second mirror slowly emerges from underneath the first, she sees that the ashtray is there, too: the exact same ashtray is reflected in that second mirror. Even though she’s moved the second mirror enough that it’s not pointing toward the ashtray, or even toward the coffee table, but toward the dining room.

It’s not a reflection
, she thinks, irrationally.
The ashtray is trapped in the mirrors…

Mona tries to keep concentrating. And it is then that she begins to see that something very strange is happening.

For starters, the tchotchke ashtray is still sitting on the coffee table. She can see that. It’s also being reflected in the first mirror, which is totally fine, as the first mirror is pointing at it. But the ashtray is
also
being reflected in the second mirror, which makes no sense, as the second mirror is not facing toward the ashtray at all. And while this is troubling in its own right, what really gets to Mona is that the second mirror is showing the ashtray above the dining room table, ten feet away to her right, yet she can see the ashtray itself sitting on the coffee table right in front of her.

But is it her imagination, or can she see something floating in the
dining room out of the corner of her eye, just above the table, perhaps right where the second mirror is suggesting the ashtray should be?

That’s not possible, she thinks, because a) How can an object defy gravity? and b) How can an object occupy two different spaces
at the same time
? For she can see the ashtray sitting on the coffee table just before her, yet it is also in both of the mirrors, and unless she’s gone mad it’s also floating very slowly out of the dining room at the same rate at which she’s moving the second mirror. It’s as if since the ashtray is reflected in both mirrors, the world is working to accommodate them and ensure that what is being reflected is actually there, even though it shouldn’t be.

“Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice somewhere. “Very good…”

Mona is trying to work all this out when she sees there is something slight and insubstantial about the ashtray on the table. It too has turned a little translucent, and she can see light filtering through it. And then the ashtray begins to
shudder
, like a strobe light, and it starts to disappear…

Mona gasps. “No!” cries Mrs. Benjamin, but it is too late. Whatever was floating out of the dining room plummets to the ground, then vanishes without a sound. Immediately things revert back to how they were: there is only one ashtray, sitting on the coffee table, and the rest of the house is opaque and hard and real again.

“What was that?” asks Mona. She hastily puts the mirrors back in their case. “What the hell kind of magic trick was that?”

But Mrs. Benjamin seems even more disturbed than Mona. Her face is gray as she stares at the ashtray on the table. Finally she clears her throat and says, “Perhaps I was wrong, my girl. Perhaps you do belong here in Wink after all.”

“What do you mean?” asks Mona.

Before Mrs. Benjamin can answer there is a knock at the front door. Both of them jump a little, and Mrs. Benjamin stares at the door, not comprehending. “Oh,” she says when the knock sounds again. “I suppose I ought to answer that…” She stands up and hobbles to the door.

As she does, Mona looks back down at the mirrors in the case.
There does not seem to be anything strange or extraordinary about them now; they are merely two small mirrors, each reflecting the ceiling. But still she shivers a little.

She hears the door open. Mrs. Benjamin says, “Oh,” again, though this time she sounds far less pleased.

“Hello, Myrtle,” says a man’s voice softly. “I—”

“Oh, hello, Eustace,” says Mrs. Benjamin, quickly and loudly. “Please do come in. I have company.” She stands aside, and Mona sees it is the little old man who sold her her mattress, Mr. Macey. But he is not flirty or wry this time, but terribly grave.

“Company?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She ushers him inside. “This is Miss Bright. She’s new in town. Miss Bright, this is Eustace Macey. He works at the general store.”

“We’ve met,” says Mona.

“Oh, I’m so glad. What brings you here, Eustace? I was just showing Miss Bright a little magic trick of mine.”

“I came to discuss something with you,” says Mr. Macey. He does not even look at Mona. “Alone.”

“Would it be possible to discuss this later, Eustace?”

“No,” he says. “No, it wouldn’t, Myrtle.”

Mrs. Benjamin eyes him angrily and looks back at Mona. “Are you sure, Eustace?” she asks, her voice brimming with false politeness.

He nods.

“It can’t wait at all?”

He shakes his head, expression unchanging. Mrs. Benjamin is smiling so hard Mona is worried her cheeks will crack. “Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “Mona, could you please excuse us for a moment? I know… weren’t you interested in getting some of my tea?”

Mona was most fucking certainly
not
interested in getting any of Mrs. Benjamin’s tea, but the old woman is in such a fearsome mood that she doesn’t object.

“Excellent!” says Mrs. Benjamin. “My tea rack is in the kitchen. Feel free to help yourself to anything you’d like.”

Mona thanks her and withdraws to the kitchen as Mrs. Benjamin
and Mr. Macey begin bickering in hushed tones. She wonders if she’s just been made privy to a lovers’ tiff (an idea that disgusts her) before she remembers the awkward way Mrs. Benjamin greeted Mr. Macey at the door, as if she wanted to stop him from talking as fast as possible. She wonders why this could be until she comes to Mrs. Benjamin’s tea rack, which, she discovers, is not a tea rack but a tea
vault
, an entire room with walls covered in shelves of little tins and vials and glass containers. Each has been carefully labeled: she sees one section of rooibos tea (of the lemon-and-honeybush variety), then several containers of oolong, white, and green tea leaves (each label paired with a Latin name for a different type of camellia, which Mona guesses is in the tea), then several pots of something called “brick tea,” and then there’s a section whose labels are all in Asian-looking writing.

It’s the section after this one that really catches her eye. These are the glass vials and beakers with old, yellowed labels, and what they contain is not tea leaves, or tea pearls, or anything so orthodox. These are teas Mrs. Benjamin seems to have made herself, and they have a distinctly fungal look to them. In one vial Mona can see thick yellow globs of pine pitch, and there is something green and loose sprouting from the top. Its label reads
OLD PINEFEVER
. Mona guesses this is what Mrs. Benjamin was drinking the other day.

There are many more. In one stoppered flask are half a dozen pink, fleshy roots suspended in something that looks a lot like Lucite. This is labeled
ASTER’S CURL
. In another a mass of white moss floats in greenish fluid, and this is labeled
MAMMON’S TEARS
. There is an Erlenmeyer flask with a powdery, cloudy fungus growing on the bottom that is paired with the name
AL BHEEZRA’S REMORSE
. And then there are three vials whose contents look like herbs ground up with white or yellow soap crystals. These are labeled
AGONY
, then
WRATH
, and finally
GUILT
.

Mona reads these a second time.
She names her teas after emotions?
she thinks. But a small part of her, one that has to be a little bit nuts, says,
Or maybe she makes teas out of emotions
.

Unbelievably, the tea racks get weirder. (And the farther Mona goes into the closet the darker it feels, though there is plenty of light.)
The names become utterly unpronounceable:
EL-ABYHEELTH AI’AIN
,
HYUIN TA’AL
, and
CHYZCHURA DAM-UUAL
are just a few. What they contain is difficult to make out: the jars appear smoked, like someone left them in a barbecue pit. After this, the labels use an alphabet Mona has never seen before. She can’t imagine the country that uses this alphabet, either: it is such a harsh series of slashes and strokes, and so many of the letters stand at strange angles to one another, like they are not meant to be read left to right, but up and down, or right to left…

Where the hell did she get these from? Mona wonders. Did she make all these herself? Around
here
?

Mona picks up one jar and turns it over. Like the others, this one is smoked, but there are places that are a bit clearer. The contents look like a bunch of small grapes hanging from the jar’s lid, but they’re oddly yellowish, and they jiggle strangely. They keep jiggling even when she stops turning the jar over. It takes her a minute to realize they are turning, and on each grape is a dark spot that seems queerly reflective, and each grape turns until the side with the spot is facing her…

Almost as if it is an eye, Mona thinks. As if there’s a bunch of tiny eyes hanging from the inside of the jar, and they are all staring at her.

She gasps and nearly falls back, but a pair of hands helps steady her.

“Goodness, dear, whatever is the matter?” asks Mrs. Benjamin’s voice.

Mona jumps back the other way, for what she’s found in the tea racks makes her just as frightened of Mrs. Benjamin as she is of the thing in her hand. Then she looks around at the tea racks, and sees that all the strange jars are gone: she sees no smoked beakers with labels in an alien language, nor does she see any teas that resemble bizarre scientific experiments. Even the jar in her hand has changed: it does not contain eyes, but jasmine blossoms.

She looks back at Mrs. Benjamin, and there does not seem to be anything that frightening about her, either. She’s just a worried old lady standing at the door to the tea closet.

“Did I startle you?” she asks.

“I… I think I need to sit down,” says Mona.

“Did you lose your balance?” asks Mrs. Benjamin. She helps Mona to a chair. “It happens to me all the time. One moment everything is crystal-clear, the next the world is wheeling around me. One of the defects of this old body of mine, I suppose.”

She gives Mona a glass of water. Mona drinks it quickly while glancing back at the tea closet. She is half convinced that at any moment it might change into that room of disturbing specimens again, yet nothing happens.

“Did Mr. Macey leave already?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He just stopped by to tell me some news. Or what he thought was news. It’s not news if you already know it, is it?”

“What was the news?”

“Oh,” says Mrs. Benjamin vaguely. “You know us old ones. We do enjoy getting into little competitions and skirmishes. Fighting over rose blooms and dead tree limbs and pets and such. And whenever someone hears of a new crime, they rush all over town telling everyone. Even if it is rather petty, once you look at it with some perspective. I suppose we have to find a way to distract ourselves.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Mona asks.

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He’ll be fine, I’m sure. We’ll all be fine.” And she turns to stare out the window at the forest and the mesa beyond, but there is something in her eye that makes Mona think she’s trying to convince herself as much as Mona.

“Something the matter?” Mona asks.

“Why?” asks Mrs. Benjamin. “Do you think there’s something wrong?”

The answer to this is a resounding
yes
, of course. Mona feels that magic trick with the mirrors did something to her, like it broke something inside her (with the same little
click
as that of the two mirrors sliding apart), or perhaps it reached in and opened all the windows in her head. Perhaps that’s why she had that strange moment back in the tea closet.