The Reflection

            by Emma Schain

 

            The year was 1920. I was but nineteen years old, still unsure of my place in the world, still a bit scared of the nexus that was to bring with it marriage, a family, a home of my own. The turbulence had not yet intruded into our simple lives; we still reveled in summertime, even through the winters of rain and fog. The streets weren’t paved, and the train ran past the fields of an agricultural entity that few will ever realize existed where the roads and houses are now. The city of Berkeley was not anything at all like it is today; to begin with, it was moreso a town than a city. My grandchildren tell me about their lives, and I question whether the town that I grew up in, the one that they are now growing up in, deserves to even be referenced the same. They live in the high hilltops in one of the Julia Morgan-inspired homes, complete with classic views and vast, sun-stained rooms, and I still reside in the cottage on Virginia. It is small by construction and by virtue, and when my grandchildren complain about having to share one bathroom between the two of them, I remind them that I raised five children in the same three bedroom house that they visit me in on Sunday mornings—although in 1920, I didn’t even have that yet. I didn't live alone; my sister and I shared a room in the Acheson Hotel, a room overlooking the train tracks that embedded in the dusty dirt of Shattuck Avenue. We were young, still not used to the independence of new womanhood, though Molly was adjusting better than I was at that point. A schoolteacher at Berkeley High School by day and a seamstress by night, she was ambitious and motivated, with both a growing savings and reputation. All that I had was a young heart, an even younger mind, and Ira.

            It was in October that the sun began to set earlier and earlier. The room that we lived in at the Acheson Hotel faced the bay, and after school adjourned, Molly came home and join me on the window seat every day, she with her sewing projects, and I with a book of poetry I thought, at the time, to be profound. The carriages and cars crossed back and forth below our window, and every once in a while I averted my gaze from the pages of the book and looked down to the street below, shading my eyes from the harsh afternoon sunset, and watched the tops of people’s heads scurry along.  Sometimes someone would happen to glance up toward me, and I would wave gingerly. Usually, the stranger would prolong the look, then duck their head down back to the dust of Shattuck Avenue and continue on his or her way.

            I was reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the square of sunlight framed the words. I shaded my eyes and challenged the orange ball of stinging light until Molly scolded me for staring into the sun, and threatened me with claims that I would soon turn blind. But I didn’t pay her any attention most of the time, and when I finally looked away, the light still burned my eyes and I closed them, seeing red behind my eyelids. When I opened them again, he was standing in the middle of the road.

            He had dark hair and squinty eyes. I couldn’t tell from my angle if he was tall or short, though I would soon find his medium build and slight figure both boyish and comforting. He stood in the middle of the traffic, dust swirling around his ankles, his jacket draped over the crook of his elbow, and not a glance cast at the horses and automobiles that barreled toward him, drivers shouting and swearing at him to move out of the way. I held his gaze, intrigued by his forwardness, and didn’t even see the black Ford swerve and hit the carriage, tipping it slightly and causing it to spill two ladies and a gentleman to the hard ground. The horse reared, and another Model-T barely avoided crashing into a man on a bicycle. For a second, there was a pause. I didn’t look away from his dark eyes, he didn’t move from his position. And then, chaos.

            I heard Molly start and make a noise as she looked up from her sewing and saw the accident below. She dropped the skirt she was hemming, forgetting to pin the needle, and grabbed her shawl. “Elsa,” she looked at me. “Are you coming to see if they’re all right?” Her hand shook slightly as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. I turned and looked back down, and he was gone.

            “Elsa!” Molly stood in the doorway. I placed my book down on the seat and followed Molly out into the hall. Our neighbor across the hall, a young woman named Velta, stuck her head out of the door.

            “Vat ees going on?” she questioned in her thick accent.

            “There was an accident,” Molly called over her shoulder as she hurried down the hallway. Velta looked at me, questioning, and I just followed Molly.

            By the time I stepped onto the porch of the hotel, I could see Molly was already across the street, tending to the victims. I looked up and down the avenue, but I couldn’t see him. I walked to the other side of the wraparound porch, and looked up and down University, to the brick buildings of the campus that were scattered in the hills, and down to the flats, where fields of green extended all the way to the water’s edge. I saw no sign of him. The men from the barbershop across from the hotel were in a huddle, swatting flies and leaning casually in the doorway. Some expressed limited concern for the victims of the crash, others didn’t seem to care at all, and were telling jokes. Velta joined me at my side.

            “Vat do you sink happened?”

            “I don’t know...” I began. “I saw a man standing in the street, looking up toward my window, and then the next thing you know... this happened.”

            “Zere vas a man?”

            “I... I think so. I’m not even sure now.”

            “I see.” Velta turned away from me and went back inside. I watched her for a moment, her skirts brushing up dust and her hem getting dirtied with every step she took, and noticed that the buttons on the back of her dress had been slipped through the wrong holes and were all mismatched.

            “Elsa!” Molly called me from the other side of the street. “Call a doctor.”

            As I turned to go inside to use the hotel’s telephone, one of the men from the barbershop approached me.

            “Hey girl,” he said into my face. “You got a cigarette?”

            “No,” I answered forcefully. “I don’t. I’m sorry.” I tried to push past him, but he blocked my path with his huge belly. It hung beneath his belt, and his vest was crooked. Half of the buttons from his shirt were missing, and his nose hairs stuck out like little antennas from large, cavernous nostrils.

            “A pretty girl like you don’t have a smoke? Now, I don’t know if I believe that.”

            “Excuse me! Sir, let me pass.” His eyes stared into mine, and I looked into them with determination.

            “Don’t make this into something it’s not,” he said.

            “Sir, I don’t know what you are talking about, and I must use the telephone to contact the police.”

            “Don’t make this into something it’s not, girl.” His eyes narrowed, and I saw dust cling to the gray nose hairs with every labored breath.

            “I do not know what you are saying.” I quickly darted around him and practically sprinted into the hotel.

            “Yes, Miss Elsa?” The man behind the main desk looked at me over half-moon glasses.

            “I need to call the police.” I was sure that he had seen my entire interaction with the nose-haired , but I didn’t dare look behind me.

            “It has been done, Miss Elsa.”

            “Thank you.” I smoothed down the front of my gingham dress with as much dignity as I could muster. Not wanting to go back to the outside, I started back up the stairs, going over the events in my head. Velta met me at the top.

            “Vas zere blood?”

            “I don’t know, Velta.” I tried to get around her but she followed me down the hallway.

            “Who vas hurt? You know?”

            “No, Velta. I don’t.”

            “But vas it a man? Vas he ze one dat got hurt? Vas dere blood? You know?”

            “No. Ask Molly. She was closer to it all than I was.” I closed the door behind me, but instead of going to the window seat, I sat down on the bed. I could still hear voices from outside, the sad moans of a woman, the heavy laughter of the men outside the barbershop, the clink of glasses and chatter of those in the dining room of the hotel, located directly below our room.

            A few minutes later I heard the sirens of police cars, and a few minutes after that I heard Molly come up the stairs, warding off Velta’s peppering questions.

            “No Velta, just one man was hurt. The one in the carriage. Yes, yes I know, Velta. I know. It is terrible. Yes, yes, you sleep well, too.” Molly hurriedly entered our room and shut the door behind her. “Well,” she sighed. “That was interesting.”

            “Is everyone okay?” I asked, unsure if I really wanted to hear her answer.

            “Yes, I think so. One man had a broken arm, but I think that’s the worst of it.”

            “Good,” I breathed a sigh of relief and went back to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the sun finally set.

 

 

            It soon began that poetry didn’t sustain my interest for very long, and Molly was busy with her jobs, so I often requested Velta’s presence during my frequent excursions to go for walks in the  hills surrounding the university, or to the Stein Bakery on Vine Street. But despite Velta’s eagerness for interaction after the accident, she often turned down my requests, and shut the door in my face before I had a chance to say anything further.

            The  October sky turned into November sun, uncanny anywhere else in the United States, but typical of the mild Berkeley winters. I was hired for a secretarial job at the Mason-McDuffie Company, and Molly kept up her double occupation as teacher and seamstress. To my content, I had no more interactions with the barber. In fact, I didn’t see him at all.

            It was on one Sunday morning when I sat on the window seat again, curled into a murder mystery, my shawl wrapped tightly around my shoulders, when it began to rain, first softly, barely noticeable, and then harder, until it sounded like hundreds of pebbles were being hurled at the window. I looked up from my book and placed my forehead against the pane, feeling the cold pelts through the glass. The steam train that ran right through Shattuck Avenue whistled, and the window vibrated against my skin. I felt the clacking of the train wheels over the tracks and then it was gone, and he was there. I jolted back, taking my forehead off of the window. He stood in the rain and held his jacket above his head for protection. His shirt was soaked, and I could tell by the way that his chest rose and fell that he was breathing heavily. Again, he didn’t make way for the traffic, and cars and horses and bicyclists swerved and narrowly avoided hitting him and each other. I rapped my knuckles on the window.

            “Watch out!” I yelled to him. “Move!” But he couldn’t seem to hear me, or he didn’t want to hear me. I ran out of my room, down the stairs, and out the front door. The second I stepped outside, the rain blew and swirled around my head, and I was immediately stung by the sharp droplets. I looked over to where he still stood, still staring up at the window, and walked over to him, careful not to get hit by a moving vehicle.

            As I approached him, he finally saw me out of the corner of his eye, and he faced me.

            “You shouldn’t be out in the rain,” he said to me. His voice was soft.

            “You shouldn’t be in the middle of the road,” I answered. He didn’t say anything, just transferred his jacket so that instead of covering his head, it covered mine.

            “My name is Ira.”

 

            Over the following weeks, Ira and I saw each other almost every other day. Some refer to this period as the time when two people fall in love, but it seemed that Ira had already passed that stage. He treated me as if we had known each other for decades, as if we were about to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. I enjoyed the companionship, I liked it when he held my hand as we crossed the street, and when he picked me lilacs from Creed’s Farm between Rose and Cedar Streets. He dropped by while I worked at Mason-McDuffie, slapped Mr. Mason on the back as if they were old friends, and offered Mr. McDuffie cigars on a frequent basis. He treated Molly as though she wasn’t my sister, just three years older than me and his same age exactly. He laughed and joked with her, and then always asked her permission before taking me out on dates. She was charmed, and laughed along with us, but I could see that she wasn’t happy. It became rare that she came home to find me sitting on the window seat, waiting. Instead, it was the reverse, and I often returned from a stroll with Ira to find Molly at the window, straining her eyes to see the smaller stitches and to keep the lonely tears from falling.

            It was in February that Ira proposed. I was elated, as all newly-engaged women should be. Molly and I celebrated with cigarettes. We sat on the window seat and giggled together, and it was when I was on my third cigarette, and Molly on her fourth, that I looked down and saw Ira in the middle of the street, his feet planted in the exact same place where I had first seen him. I waved, but he didn’t wave back. He didn’t even seem to see me. I waved again with more animation, but still his eyes didn’t move from a spot fixed right above my head. Molly, sensing the strangeness of Ira’s behavior, tried rapping on the window, but to no avail.

            “What do you think is wrong with him?” I said to Molly.

            “I don’t know,” Molly answered. “I wonder if he’s all right. It’s strange, but I don’t even think he’s looking at us.” She followed his gaze and turned to look to the other side of the room, where a vanity sat next to the doorway and Molly’s dresses and bodices were piled over the back of a chair. We sat and watched him for what seemed like eternity. He didn’t blink, his gaze fixed. There weren’t too many people or cars in the street, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because nothing would have distracted Ira from his point of interest. To this day, I don’t know if he heard the steam train coming. The cigarette that I held between my index and middle fingers was glowing amber. The train ran right through, and the cigarette burned a hole in my white organdy dress after I dropped it.

 

            The Acheson Hotel was torn down in 1925 to build retail stores on that corner. Today, on the corner of University and Shattuck Avenues, there is a taqueria called El Sombrero, and across the street is a McDonald’s. Had the accident been caused seventy years in the future, two ladies and a gentleman would have been thrown through the window and crashed into the laps of a couple devouring Big Macs and slurping Super-Sized Coca-Colas. The train no longer runs along Shattuck Avenue, but has been replaced by three lanes each way of cars, SUVs, and buses.

            When I heard that the Acheson Hotel was going to be turned into stores, I went back for one last time. I hadn’t been able to return since my broken engagement, but it was my last chance, and at twenty-four, I was ready to finally say goodbye. I stepped into the road, paying no attention to the warning calls of drivers and bicyclists. I stood in his spot,  planted my feet on the rocky, packed dirt, and looked up. I saw into the room that Molly and I had occupied so briefly, the vanity next to the door that was propped open, and the window seat where I had spent hours on end. And then I saw something else. In the vanity mirror was a reflection. It took me awhile to figure out what it was. But then, I realized. The mirror was at such an angle that I could see into the barbershop across the street, where, behind the white curtain, a woman was slowly getting undressed. I saw the straps fall, the brassiere unhook, and the face of the barber suddenly came into view. I turned abruptly and found him behind me, nose hairs still visible, and his head peeking out from the gap in the white curtains that hung in the window of the barbershop. He wagged his finger in my direction and closed the curtains shut with a forceful snap.