Millennia of Mirrors

It had been a long time since her old friend had visited her. Usually, it was Blessing that did the visiting. The emphysema had stopped that quick enough. These days, Blessing only saw Pleasant Drive from outside the curtain-framed window: its pedestrians on sunny days, usually hearses at least once a week. Still, life could be worse at Saint Cyprian’s Hospice; Thursdays meant Zuzanna’s shift, which inevitably lead to illicit cookies, and Sundays brought her weekly visits from Father Peter with his air-light voice and his treasured ukulele. It wasn’t a lonely life. It hadn’t been a lonely life.

Still, she was surprised when she heard a gentle but distinctive rapping at the door to her room, a pattern she hadn’t heard in over a decade. Awfully sunny day, no? She tried to speak, coughed, then tried again:

“You may enter.”

It was a raspy voice now, not the one of her youth, but it was still hers, and her old friend recognized it. The woman entered silently, wordlessly, eyes fixed on Blessing’s bed. Closing the door as soundlessly as she had opened it, she scanned the room briefly before Blessing pointed to a chair in the corner, smiling at the familiar face. With gentle footfalls, like a lynx on snow, she took the wicker chair from its place and set it down on Blessing’s right side. She sat, dropping her large black backpack on the ground beside her, and reached out a thin hand to stroke Blessing’s wiry, white curls. The skin of her hand was cool against her forehead, chill seeping through her scalp and giving her pleasant shivers.

“It’s been a while, Selina.”

Selina took Blessing’s closest hand into her own, a knowing caress betraying the emotion masked by her stony expression. Her free hand still stroked the much older woman’s hair.

“I didn’t think you’d remember. It’s been such a long time …”

“I’ve never forgotten a loved one. Not one.”

Selina’s voice was hard to describe. The timbre was that of a young woman, but the words carried a weight to them that didn’t match the tone. It was a violin playing a cello’s part.

Pausing in her attention to Blessing, Selina carefully opened her backpack and pulled out a simple four-by-four canvas. She placed it on her lap, then proceeded to unpack tubes of acrylic paint and a small, folded, wooden apparatus. Brushes followed, along with sketching pencils. The wooden tool unfolded into a portable easel, and soon the area around Selina was a small studio lit by the fading afternoon.

“It’s my turn?” Blessing murmured, stretching in a stray sunbeam and sinking into a more comfortable position in the bed.

Selina nodded, pencil at the ready. Blessing sighed, then gazed once more upon that familiar, unchanging face.

“Is there an order people usually go in?” Blessing asked.

“It’s always different,” Selina replied. “Just tell me what you see.”

Blessing smiled. Where to start? It wasn’t a question of difficulty, but rather of endless choice.

“Well for starters, the hoodie covers your face in shadows. Makes you actually look your age.”

A smirk. Blessing laughed, the sound more of a wheeze transitioning into a cough. It was worth it though for Selina’s mask to crack even a little. Recovering from the fit, Blessing continued:

“Your hair doesn’t, though. It’s thick, long – looks like the curls have a life of their own. You remember that vacation in Switzerland? It was the summer … who goes to Switzerland in the summer anyway? The sheep – the cute ones with the black faces – the ones that picked you as their shepherd,” at this she had to pause and laugh again at the memory of Selina’s total helplessness when the stray herd started to follow them on their alpine hike, “your hair reminds me of them. Endearing. Lively.”

Selina’s pencils began to glide across the canvas in broad strokes. The leads jittered slightly against the rough surface, but her face gave – as usual – no hint of frustration. Unable to see the forms her friend was drawing on the canvas, Blessing returned her eyes to Selina’s face.

“You have your ancestors’ bones,” she continued. “Strong, square jawline and proud cheeks. Good brows, too. Rough in the nineties, but good now. Proper caterpillars. They bring out your eyes. You know you have good eyes. Girls, boys, men, women … everyone’s always loved your eyes, no matter where we went or when. Do people usually spend a long time on your eyes?”

Selina nodded, gaze following her pencils’ movements. She was still in the sketching phase – quick strokes, long strokes, all shaping the features Blessing described: the hoodie, the curls, the sharp lines of her own face.

“Well, I won’t then. They’re brown. Moving on. Your skin’s pretty dark for around here, a lot darker than I’d expect, honestly. Not dark enough to hide the freckles, though. You remember Mariko? The exchange student when I was at LSE. She loved your freckles – thought she would lose her mind when we took her to Scotland and she saw actual red hair. Different times, but your freckles are still the same, a Jackson Pollock over your nose like the kids do with brown eyeliner these days.”

At this point, she had to stop talking to take a coughing break. Selina kept drawing. This wasn’t the first time she had watched someone die slowly, nor would it be the last. The portrait had to take precedence, at least for now. Sometimes she took notes in the margins, quotes from Blessing that she couldn’t add in yet with her pencils. The paint would come.

“Not to go back to the eyes again, but you’ve always had a dark circles problem. Comes with the whole not sleeping thing. I know you’re not at colours yet, but your skin’s … unhealthy. No sun will do that, I guess, but you’d still have an easier time buying a concealer than I would. Funny, that.”

Blessing chuckled to herself, suppressing a gurgle of mucous. Damn lungs aren’t going to hold on much longer. I wonder if she knows? She must have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. No indication either way – just pencil on canvas, scratching sounds filling the otherwise empty air. The window was closed, so there was no breeze, no sound from outside … just pencil on canvas.

“Let’s see, what haven’t I described yet ...” Blessing continued, more softly this time, “your nose is all Song of Songs – like Solomon’s big ‘ole tower. You’ve got lips like mine, so you can just look at me to see those. Yours are pinkier, but the shape and size are pretty much the same. Lucky you – they were Darryl’s favourite part of me, you know?”

Selina had met Darryl, had attended his funeral when he died unexpectedly some twenty years ago. Blessing had never remarried, even though she could have – always said she would see him again anyway, so no need to add on to her husband collection.

“Anything else?”

“My shoulders and neck: what do they look like to you?”

“Hmmm … pretty broad, I’d say. The shoulders, I mean – your neck just looks like a neck. Not too vain-y, not too muscular, not especially thin … just a neck. Can’t see your ears behind the hair and the hood.”

Description finished, Blessing turned her head to look out the window. The sun was beginning to set, golden light now filtering through the trees alongside the pavement and into her room. It was late autumn, but there were still plenty of coloured leaves to make her world a bit more beautiful. But they were fading, much like she was.

“When you do this,” Blessing began, voice even quieter than before as her energy began to wane, “is it for us, or for you?”

This question caused Selina to pause in her otherwise unceasing art.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re always dying, right? And we’ve all loved you. You’re a living memory lane we get to travel down at the end, when there aren’t many loved ones left.”

Noticing the dying light, Selina resumed rummaging through her pack for her paints. She needed to finish while the colours were still true.

“It started out for me,” she replied, her English lightly accented, “but I don’t know anymore. I cannot see myself, so I wanted to see through the most flattering eyes. Now …”

She paused again, lost in the colours she was now brushing across the canvas. Blessing could feel her eyes deadening at the placid swoosh of bristles. It had been a long day, a long life, neither of which left her with many regrets.

“Now it’s still for me,” Selina continued, “but not to see my face.”

Blessing hadn’t given her as many colour indications as she usually got, but that was alright; Selina could fill in the missing details. Memories of a face she had never seen flooded her mind as she painted, quicker than she might like, fighting against the dying of the light. Blessing was too, in her own way.

“You never asked to become like me.”

Blessing’s eyes fluttered open at the unexpected sound. Her body was so, so heavy.

“Usually people ask, but you never did.”

Blessing smiled.

“And not meet my Lord and Saviour? Miss out on eternity with Darryl? I’m more surprised you never asked to become like me.”

“A Catholic?”

“At least I know where I’m going.”

“So do I.”

“It’s not too late, you know. The prayer of the righteous is a powerful thing.”

Selina laughed despite herself. Very little struck her funny in her long life, but this was the most Blessing ending to Blessing’s life she could have imagined. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation; a sixty-year friendship with Blessing Douglas wouldn’t have been possible without a minimum of a yearly conversion attempt. Still, it had always been kind, always warm. Blessing believed in free will as much as she believed in her right decisions.

“Can I see it?”

“Not yet, nearly done.”

“Me too.”

The light was all but gone at this point, and not even the sounds of the rest of the hospice leaked through the door. Highlights and shadows were all that was left of this latest in Selina’s paintings.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Blessing asked, eyes closed again, breathing shallower than before.

Selina put the finishing touches on what she imagined the light in her eyes might look like.

“Usually I ask if you’re scared,” she said, packing her supplies back up, “but I think I already know with you.”

Blessing smiled again, sinking into sleep. Not the dreamless sleep she anticipated just yet, but a form of sleep nonetheless. Selina shrugged on her backpack, returned the chair to its place, and placing the still-wet painting against the wall, she leaned over the bed and wordlessly kissed Blessing’s forehead for the last time. She was warm, so warm, and Selina was cold as ever.

~*~

It was midnight by the time Selina made it home, painting almost dry in the back of her sedan. The night wasn’t as quiet as Blessing’s hospice; crickets and frogs and her fellow creatures of the night greeted her upon her return, keys jangling as she closed the car door, painting in hand. No matter how much she had travelled the world – anything to avert boredom, at this stage – she still never really felt comfortable until she was home. It was an unassuming bungalow on the outside, much like Selina herself.

As she entered, her eyes adjusted to the light and she turned toward the door to the basement. To an outsider, the steps may have seemed unusually long, the descent into the earth particularly deep. For Selina, it was a descent into rare comfort, into her sanctum.

Reaching the bottom at last, she pulled on a rope hanging from the ceiling. Lightbulbs flickered on in sequence, displaying her collection. Thousands of portraits lined the walls, all of her, each one slightly different depending on the eyes she had used, each building in detail as she improved at her craft. She could remember the deathbed of each person so clearly, could still feel the ache of each loss when she saw herself in this, her own personal Versailles. She wouldn’t see any of them again, even those that had asked to be turned, for she had refused each one. No one deserved this, not even her.

She gazed down at the portrait she had produced that day, and as she did with each painting, she walked it back to the very first and compared it. She knew her face hadn’t changed, couldn’t. Still, she looked different. She saw the Valais sheep of Switzerland now when she looked at her hair, saw Blessing’s hope for a new life reflected in her own pupils, saw Mariko discover traces of Anne of Green Gables in her skin. The first painting was filled with different memories, memories of silk sheets and lipstick stains, memories of trying to find life in what was doomed to endlessness. Still, Blessing had been right – each one had loved her, in their own way, and she had loved and lost them in turn.

Long since unable to cry, Selina reverently placed Blessing’s self-portrait – for it was as much a memory of her as it was a capture of this moment in time – in the blank space beside her last lost love. With a final gaze, she spoke her silent goodbye and turned off the lights, off to make new memories she would lose again. But this time, she found herself humming a hymn.