Described by friends with whom S. drinks tea–
A: “She dresses immaculately. It is absurd really. She could wear that dress seventeen upon a hundred times and still walk in with hardly a wrinkle or a stain. Nothing but a perfectly pressed outfit. I always thought cleanliness said a lot about a person, in a good way too. She never follows the fashions and almost comes to tea in simple outfits, flat planes of color. Her skin is so pale and fine. I tell her that she could use some pattern, some excitement. But she never does.”

B: “I had always thought that she hated pets. Whenever I went to her house, she was always so picky about Bubbles, that’s my Pomeranian. I suppose her husband felt the same way about pets as he did about children. One time as I was getting out of the car on the way to someone’s house, a kid on a messenger bike hit Bubbles in the leg. I was just an awful mess, the maid did not know what to do, and all the other ladies just stood in the doorway gasping and fanning themselves. Then S. comes out, looks at Bubbles, and calmly tears her shawl to pieces. After bundling up the Bubble’s leg, she lifts him into my arms, just like that, plop, like a sack of sugar. ‘Take him to the veterinarian,’ she says, looking at me straight in the eye. Then, leaving us all there dumbfounded, she goes back in and drinks some tea.”

Ordering at the restaurant –
Her husband refuses to look the waiter in the eye. He smoothes his suit and fingers the blue silk tie.

“I’ll have the roasted duck with orange.”

“Very good, sir, and the lady, what—”

“She’ll have game hen, with rosemary.”

S. gives an encouraging little smile to the young man. He does not make much of a reaction, and suddenly she is worried might be taken the wrong way. Did she show too much teeth? Where there too many crinkles around her eyes? She touches her fingertips to the cold water glass and steels herself.

The diamond pin on her husband’s tie catches her eye and fractures in the light.

S. breaks the mirror –A nightly ritual occurs in front of the mirror in her room. She takes her time, mulling over a close inspection of her face, noting new wrinkles, imperfections, gray hairs. Preserving herself in youth helps her to remember a life before this one.

She refuses to disrobe, and instead undoes her hair. The ivory engraved brush combs through the strands with infinite care.

Her husband is calling her from the other room, but she is not done brushing her hair. She tries to ignore him. He calls louder, and she wants to tell him to be quiet. She wants to tell him to be quiet for someone’s sake. But there isn’t anyone. She hears his footsteps up the stairs. His voice moves closer.

Before she knows it, the brush has flown out of her hand and into the mirror.