She still has to make the salad, too, she remembers: artichoke hearts are what she’d forgotten, they’d be on the middle shelf of the fridge. What else, listing mundane. Standing naked in front of the mirror, which is nude itself, motherwide and as tall as all fathers, it’s hard, she thinks, even in this shadow, to feel, what’s the word? resplendent, to even ape resplendence, what’s that; she exhales her belly cheek, tracing the elastic waves made by the panty waistband, those raggedtoothed, scarry wavelets breaking cuts into a flurry of small widening rivers, stretchmark tributaries veined swirly and tidal from her thirteen pregnancies now, is it that many, has it been; cutting a fingernail through the watery grain of her vanity, cedar topped by tile, its dust if you can believe despite Wanda (where’s the nail broken, she looks but can’t find it, not really, forget it, that’s not what I do). Is it still there, though, and if so will it fit? and, then, what is It? all, the marriagebedclothes, the one or two items of clothing she owns for a life lived between the swellings of kinder, the workout apparel she’d bought for that one month fitness jag back a year ago now, the lingerie he’d once bought her, a year or so before their first, so long ago she thinks at the mirror, at herself in the mirror, thinking of resilvering, too; the intrusion on intimacy of practical life, the practicable, dusts: on this great expanse of wood taking up an entire wall — if there’s light enough naturally and not that of those bulbs above kept glareless and silent from hum, upon whose turns she doesn’t want to break her eyes in her forgetting of them over the Sabbath — a few hairbrushes, combs toothsome, tangled up with the week’s losses, mostly grays from her true hair, some six variously styled wigs beneath, shaytels you say, she says sheytels, one for each day and then the Shabbos’ kept under the kerchief of sky, snooded with a tichel, worn tight: straight, wavy, curly corkscrewy, crowned and banged, nipped in the nape, tapered and layered, the Asiatic silky and the synthetics, hitech faux, the Maxi, the Micros and Euros, the Rachel Gold, Leah Plus; these wigs over wigs under wigs she wears, auburning over a chocolate base over her own unadulterated hair, that natural brilliance, all lightening shades of the One True Shade: the naturally lightened if still a little dyed henna of aged dusk, of the olden night dawning in strands, to pluckout if too light to gray or white or to tuck behind the ears, the fall of horizon; then, an odd handful of pins: bobbies, safeties, and straights to prick her with the impractibility of it all, the girlishness; what a fool to fumble among the drawers open and quickly shut again upon another nail, finger, slit hand, for her old tiara, a souvenir from an occasion forgotten, a kitschy wedding or barmitzvah, given away as a favor to another’s celebration — she’d saved it for home, plastic and glittery littering why in its own plasticbag in its own bottom drawer. She rises from her knees to the mirror to try the thing on, sits it askew on her head then turns to look vain over a shoulder, profiling its shadow, holds herself steady at the lip of the vanity while feeling shakes from her belly, from the floor’s carpet a rattle and without her slippers or shoes, fingers for a hold the holes for her earrings removed — hears life coming up from the diningroom below, holds a smile.
Safeguard and Remember. In a single utterance.
And soon, she’s talking with the mirror.
Queen or Bride? she asks, she hasn’t yet chosen, it’s the source of such confusion: who was I last week? her left brow rising, littling slightly her pose, impatience in its patient oncoming.
As silent as a mirror is, and is judging — I think the queen, and so this week the bride.
It’s so simple to forget, isn’t it? like receipts, recipes…tonight, though, the mirror’s agreeable.
To forget like I forget hair things in my purse with the tiny round mirror — to reflect with it my reflection: the Bride, it must be the Bride — how could I forget. Write it down or you’ll forget, I always say. A gumstick, a sucker. It must be, another list…check the Bride, strike through the Queen with a line. Her mouth talks back to her and her eyes, she’s crying — you want an argument? He wouldn’t know, or is it a she, the mirror? her husband would’ve forgotten. Should I wait for him? she asks as she polishes, lowing her shoulder as if trying to palm herself flatter, so less light’s scattered into incoherence, less muddle more flattened slim, dark: licking a fingertip, then rubbing at the mirror as if trying to wipe away its blemish, betrayal.
