charlotte’s mirror
by Holly Redell-Witte
Charlotte was always surprised when she looked in a mirror. “Wow, I look a lot better when I’m not looking in a mirror,” she would think. She resisted the notion that she looked like her mother.
“Isn’t it interesting,” she speculated to no one except the reflection, “That for the most part, we are made up of two eyes, a nose, a mouth and the rest of what makes up a face and that there are so many variations that no two people look exactly alike? Well, except the identical twins. Or multiples, I guess is what I should say.”
Her reflection didn’t answer. What she was really talking about, and she knew this, was that the things that differentiate us, the turn of the nose, the color of the eyes, how eyebrows creep along the forehead, those things disappear as the marionette lines begin to appear and deepen, the skin gets crepey, and smile lines no longer are anything to laugh at and the things we want are different.
“Wisdom,” she thought, I want to understand and be wise.”
Other times, Charlotte stood in front of that mirror for a long enough time to try first one sweater, then another, these slacks, or that skirt, smoothing the clothing over her still slim hips and long torso. “Never mind, gravity,” she thought this time, standing there, and then remembered how, at her wedding, her about to be sister-in-law showed up wearing a gorgeous hot pink silk suit cinched at the waist. “You look fabulous,” Charlotte had said to her. “It’s the clothes,” Nancy had said, “underneath, the body has fallen apart,” letting out that huge laugh Charlotte would come to love over the years they knew each other.
It occurred to Charlotte that then Nancy had been five years younger than she, Charlotte, is now. “Well, never the mind the math,” she told mirror Charlotte, “you’re in good enough shape to still sashay if you feel like it.”
The mirror said nothing.
As soon as she turned away, the mirror laughed a little but without sound. It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes Charlotte did think she heard a small laugh but could never turn around fast enough to catch either the sound or even the trace of the smile that might hang in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s in Alice in Wonderland.
When Charlotte turned back, the mirror looked pensive. Charlotte always felt as if the mirror knew something she did not. “Maybe, she thought, “the mirror is thinking that so many of the people in that wedding party – her husband, his sister and two brothers, her mother – were gone. At least we can remember them in places other than their graves.”
“I wonder what it is about the Cheshire Cat’s smile,” she thought, “is it like a tease that we can never quite figure out? The Cheshire Cat must know what we want and if there is any sort of wisdom to be had, Alice would have to puzzle it out for herself.” The Cat, Charlotte knew, could help Alice along the way with pithy dialogue but couldn’t give her wisdom’s secret.
“Maybe” thought Charlotte, “the secret is different for everyone anyway. That might be the true wisdom. Not only do we have to find it ourselves, but my wisdom may also not be your wisdom.”
The mirror looked pleased.
Photo of Holly Redell-Witte
BIO: Holly Redell-Witte lives in La Conner, WA. She has been publishing nonfiction in newspapers and magazines for a long time, turning to fiction three years ago, some of which she crafted at the Yale Writer’s Workshop in 2023 and 2024. She also hosts guests on a local radio station, getting to meet a lot of really interesting people. She writes looking at the Swinomish Channel, which often makes her reflective.