The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser Page A

cheering as a bald-headed man backed a team of horses and a wagon up next to the root-beer tent. He crawled over boxes to set a keg up-right at the back of the wagon.
    He was soon dispensing foamy beer in glasses taken from the boxes. The ladies in front of the tent were all but trampled by the crowd that pressed around him.
    One woman raised a fist and shouted something at the bald man with the keg. She was so angry she made little jumping steps sideways like a startled cat.
    Corbin chuckled. "Mrs. Tyler does get riled."
    "Why? Because he's cutting into her root-beer business?"
    "More than that. The Independent Champions of the Red Cross is a temperance organization. Don't they have one in Boulder?"
    "Uh ... I think they call it something else."
    "Well, I'm going to get some beer. Let me have your glass and I'll get you some more root beer."
    "Whoopee-twang."
    "What?"
    "Uh . . . thank you, Corbin." The drink was half-warm and decidedly flat. "I'd love some more."
    He held onto her hand instead of taking the glass from it. "Brandy, you've not been yourself since your brother left. We'll talk your mother into letting us have the mirror, somehow, if it means that much to you. Stop fretting and enjoy yourself. Holidays are few and far between."
    She watched him walk away and then saw May Bell watching him too. May Bell turned to look at her, again without recognition. But Shay was too busy considering what he'd said to mind. Don't get so down. There's always hope, and if he's willing to help . . .
    A group of women crossing the meadow made an unnecessarily wide circle around May Bell and her friends. There was something different about the women on the blanket. Their way of dress was fussier, their faces less washed-out looking . . . makeup. Shay detected now the color added lightly to lips and cheeks and around the eyes.
    The population had swelled with ranchers, farmers and miners from the countryside and summer visitors who'd come for vacation or health reasons. Shay studied the other women on the meadow.
    A great many straight dark skirts and white blouses, summer-thin dresses with high collars like the one Shay wore, the subdued colors of tiny flowers or plaids. The summer visitors tended to congregate and their younger women wore all white and carried parasols, their hair more cleverly and smoothly coiled. They made Shay feel like a dowdy hick. She sat straighter, her hand automatically moving to Brandy's hair.
    Even with the sense of displacement, the feeling she was outside of time--a mere observer of a parody of life--Shay was affected subtly by these people, drawn in by the age-old forces of vanity and fashion-consciousness. Would she become so submerged as to forget who she really was? Thora K. and Corbin were already moving from the unreal to the real.
    Shay removed a piece of pasty from the hole in Brandy's mouth.
    Her dress, the new one Sophie'd sent instead of a mirror, fit too tightly without a corset.
    Real clouds formed above western ridges in a real sky. The actual but distant sound of thunder from that direction. A high resonant snapping of cicadas ... a normal summer sound. The Maddon twins carried glasses of beer to May Bell's group. Their sandy mustaches were identical. Odd to observe one's own grandfather in his twenties . . . and in duplicate.
    The briny scent of horse. A clatter of utensils against dishes. No paper plates or beer cans or plastic cups to be left to litter the meadow. Corbin stood in the beer line now with a glass of root beer, his back looking very broad. Thora K. tossed her head and laughed as she talked to a friend near the corral. Shay was suddenly in shadow.
    The Maddon twin with the vest stood over her, a fried drumstick in one hand, his hat in the other.
    Shay brought Brandy to her feet before she realized she was preparing them for flight.
    "May Bell wondered if you would like this." He held out the drumstick. There was no gap between his teeth.
    She reached to accept it, her eyes