“Yes.”
“Well, I think I know what it is. Are you done with your dessert? Would you come upstairs so I can show you something?”
Domingo nodded twice by way of answer, but as we cleared the last dishes away, he looked down at Blanco’s hopeful face.
“But I think Blanco needs to go out into the garden. I will carry the chicken bones out into the trash, but that will not keep him from looking.”
I brought out another dog biscuit. “Consolation prize, then.”
Blanco went outside happily enough, and I couldn’t blame him. The evening was lovely. The air in the garden scented with roses. I would have rather sat out there myself, but what I had in mind needed light.
When Domingo returned, we filled our coffee mugs and went upstairs.
“I want to show you something I found in my mother’s suite,” I said. “I could have brought it down, but I want you to see exactly what I found.”
Mother’s room was as immaculate as the silent women could make it, but nothing could make it inviting to me. I still felt like a trespasser. One of these days, I was going to have to make some redecorating decisions. Domingo followed me, his manners so perfect that I didn’t even feel uncomfortable with the fact that I was taking him into a bedroom—well, maybe I felt a little overaware.
The better I knew Domingo, the more I was sure that if things had been different I would have already developed a massive crush on him. As it was, I couldn’t decide whether or not I was glad that he was the one person in whom I could confide all this weirdness. On the one hand, it brought us closer, but on the other the peculiar intimacy made it impossible for me to tell whether any other kind of intimacy was possible.
Or something like that. All I knew was that I was very glad that my mother’s room and the towering canopied bed where she had taken so many lovers did not seem at all tantalizing to either Domingo or myself.
“Over here,” I said, taking him over to the vanity. “Drag a chair over. I want you to see things basically like I found them.”
First I opened the drawer where the kaleidoscopes were hidden. Domingo was satisfyingly impressed both with the secret drawer and the treasure it concealed. He had too refined an eye for beauty to dismiss these as mere toys.
I handed him one to look through, deliberately not picking from the cabalistic seven. For all I knew, each of these was symbolically linked in some way, but of those I was certain. The one I had handed Domingo had an octagonal barrel adorned with stained glass patterned like a bouquet of purple iris. The object case at the end contained shifting pieces of jewel-toned glass in many of the same tones. I wondered if they were scraps left over from making the barrel. It seemed likely.
After making appreciative sounds at the patterns, and looking with a trace of innocent longing at the rest of the collection, Domingo tilted his head thoughtfully.
“Beautiful, yes, but I don’t think that this is all you have to show. Nor do I think you are just showing them to me because you think they might be worth something to collectors.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m not going to put everything back in yet, but let me close that drawer for a moment, and open the one on the left.”
I did so, and Domingo shifted his chair around to view the array of teleidoscopes.
“Similar, but not the same,” he said. “What’s this? One is missing.”
I’d put back the teleidoscope with which I’d been playing earlier that day, and now the drawer looked pretty much as it had when I’d first opened it.
“That’s right,” I said. “One is missing, and what I saw in Colette’s hand in my vision looked remarkably like the missing piece.”
Domingo nodded, “So, you think that what Colette was holding in the vision was a kaleidoscope?”
“A teleidoscope, actually,” I said. “Take a look through this one, and you’ll immediately see what I mean.”
Domingo did so, holding the end toward the light and exclaiming in delight.
“Wonderful!” he said. “That is amazing. The lamp shade, the wallpaper, even a bit of the rug.”
He moved the teleidoscope, casting the end here and there, chuckling almost involuntarily at the array of images. When he lowered it, he was smiling.
“The kaleidoscope, that was lovely, but this is a marvel. The whole world becomes a picture—a bit art deco in style, perhaps, through this one, but marvelous.”
“I like it, too,” I said. “I’ve had that one in my room and have been viewing the room through it. Try the carpet. The pattern broken into patterns is really something else.”
Domingo did so, then tried a few other things. When he caught Colette’s portrait in the lens at the end, he lowered the teleidoscope and studied the portrait instead.
“But why would she take a teleidoscope with her on a carriage ride? Was she going to wait for someone and wanted something with which to amuse herself?”
“In my vision, I saw her driving the gig and looking through the teleidoscope,” I said. “Now that I think about it, she reminded me of a sea captain looking through a telescope.”
Domingo was neither slow nor stupid. “This is related to what you were telling me about liminal space, isn’t it? The teleidoscopes take our normal world and shape it into patterns. You think she had some way of using those patterns to find something?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Mother had a thing about mirrors.”
“Really?” Domingo said, looking around the room. “I would never have guessed this.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and continued shaping my thought. “Mirrors are integral to how both kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes work. I think it’s all related somehow. I don’t know exactly how, but I thought I might experiment.”
“Experiment with the teleidoscopes, using them to locate liminal space, see what visions they bring?”
“Exactly. Would you be willing to stand by?” I said. “Last time I had a vision I nearly fell off a ladder. I don’t think anything like that is going to happen here, but I want to be careful.”
“I will stand by,” Domingo said. “Only, if it is at all possible, can you speak aloud what you see? I understand this may be too distracting, but I would like to know.”
I shrugged. “I can only try. If it’s too distracting, I’ll tell you.”
“Fair,” Domingo said, leaning back in his chair and extending the teleidoscope to me. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I took the teleidoscope and tried to get comfortable in the vanity’s delicate little chair. It took a little shifting, but I managed. Then I held the teleidoscope to one eye and closed the other. Not wanting to complicate this with images of Colette, I focused instead on the carpet. The patterns were lovely, but I didn’t see anything unusual. Belatedly, I realized I’d forgotten my promise to Domingo and started talking.
“You’re right about the patterns being almost art deco. I wonder if any of those designers actually used teleidoscopes for inspiration. I think I’ve read about their doing that.”
I found that speaking aloud actually helped me to concentrate. It kept me focused on what I was doing, rather than letting my mind wander through possibilities. I went on.
“The carpet doesn’t seem to have anything hidden in it, so I’m shifting to the wall. Amazing the variations available in even an apparently monotone scheme. The least bit of color gets picked up and becomes the focal point for the design. Interesting.
“Trying the closet door. Amazing. The natural irregularities in the wood makes it look like a parquet pattern. That hint of gold from the bedspread becomes an intersticial note.”
Domingo’s voice spoke, so close that I jumped. “Do you see anything different. Anything you can’t account for?”
I moved the teleidoscope around, occasionally checking to make sure my memory of what was there and what was not was correct. Things were distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, but I never found anything I couldn’t find the original for somewhere in the room.
“Try another teleidoscope,” Domingo suggested, “one you haven’t looked through for a while.”
I agreed readily, lifting one from the end of the row that I was pretty sure I hadn’t looked through since my initial day of discovery. Except for the patterns being varied from the one I had been using—this one seemed to be a four mirror design—I found nothing new.
Even when I fell quiet and tried to let my mind slip into the cracks between the areas of the mandala figures, I didn’t see anything unusual. Nor did I see anything other than the expected mandala patterns when I tried several others. Eventually, my head began to ache a little, and I set the teleidoscope aside.
“Maybe you didn’t see anything unusual,” Domingo suggested, “because there was nothing unusual to see. Remember, Colette took the teleidoscope away from Phineas House to use it—and you don’t remember her roaming around the House peering through one, do you?”
I giggled at the idea, and some of my headache eased.
Tension
, I thought.
I’m trying too hard.
“No. You’re right. She didn’t, at least that I remember. Of course, there was a lot of time she spent away from me.”
“Still,” Domingo persisted. “That the teleidoscopes would have been most useful away from the House makes sense in a way. You told me that you think both the teleidoscopes and the kaleidoscopes are in some way related to Colette’s obsession with mirrors, right?”
“Right.” I set the teleidoscope down and tried to join into Domingo’s reasoning, finding enthusiasm as I did so. “And from what I can tell—at least in folklore—images in mirrors, other types of reflections, and shadows are all treated similarly—as versions of reality, tantalizing because they are alike yet not alike.”
“Good,” Domingo said. “Now, this liminal space, it exists between, right?”
“Right.”
“Between anything?”
I nodded. “It’s the ‘between’ in and of itself that’s important It can be a matter of spirit—like the state of an initiate between childhood and adulthood, but it can be physical, too. Thresholds are liminal. Windowsills are. Ladders, too. Certain types of terrain. I think mirrors create liminal space almost automatically. I keep think of
Alice Through the Looking Glass
, where the looking glass was a door to Wonderland.”
“So,” Domingo said eagerly. “Colette filled this house with mirrors—can we assume this was her doing?”
“Why not?” I agreed. “I should look to find some old photos for confirmation, but it makes sense.”
“Colette filled the House with mirrors, creating perhaps, a great deal of liminal space, but when she went away from Phineas House she could not do this, so she used the teleidoscope.”
“Possible,” I said, “but I don’t think that could be all of it. There’s something else about mirrors, a trait they don’t share with shadows.”
“Oh?”
“Mirrors are associated with divination, with scrying … with fortunetelling … .”
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” Domingo chanted.
“Exactly my first thought,” I agreed. “But when you start looking in folklore compendiums, it’s amazing how many types of fortunetelling or clairvoyance rely on reflections. Pools of water are really popular, but so are polished shields, bowls of blood, or oil.”
I pointed to the righthand drawer again. “See that line of kaleidoscopes, where each one has a different planetary symbol on the case? I did some checking and, although I can’t be sure without taking them apart, I think they’re weird versions of the seven fortunetelling mirrors mentioned in cabalistic magic.”
Domingo looking interested, but he shook himself away from temptation. “You must tell me more, maybe quite soon, but for now I will take your word on this. So you think that Colette was using the mirrors for divination rather than something to do with liminal space?”
“I think,” I said, shaping my thought as I spoke, “that she was doing both. Have you ever really thought about Phineas House?”
“All the time,” Domingo said simply. “Until recently, when I had a new distraction.”
Was he flirting with me?
As with cabalistic magic, I didn’t think this was the time to explore that matter.
“Well, I think that Phineas House is somehow designed to exploit properties of liminal space. Think about it It’s got rooms going off at odd angles, thresholds all over the place, windows galore. Moreover, think about where it’s built. Las Vegas, New Mexico, is set in liminal space itself. It’s where the mountains meet the plains. It has had, for heaven’s sake, two separate governments within a few miles of each other. It has two major languages: Spanish and English. Two populations that won’t blend. It has a madhouse: sanity and insanity. There’s got to be more, but I can’t believe it’s coincidence. From what Paula Angel said to me, my ancestors had a reputation as sorcerers. I think they chose this place because it was conducive to whatever form of magic it is that they do.”
“Interesting,” Domingo said. “There are other dualities you haven’t mentioned. One is greatly related to another thing you have mentioned … water. Las Vegas has a very confused relationship with water—even for the American Southwest, which is notoriously confused.”