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However, one evening as I was walking towards the portico of the main hall, where I lived, I saw another woman whose face was like a third reflection of the swimming vision in a mirror that doesn't really work, but—more like desire than a mirror—finds and assembles materials that approximate reflections. This face was heavier, but there it was: the mouth's same candor, here quiescent; the same strong jaw, and clear eyes with the same prominent beauty of the lower lid; the broad, palm-softened forehead was very much the same. The skin was coarser-grained, though, and she was frowning—at her mother, in whose face the face was yet again reflected. The lilacs were out and it was parents' weekend; as I approached I heard the mother's edgy pleas for her to join the family where they'd gathered, maybe at a restaurant in the town. It seemed to me that the daughter was behaving strangely. Once I'd seen a student in a similar situation take her mother in a headlock, and while her startled burden sputtered and skittered and backpedaled on the linoleum she walked those precious lengths of hallway to her dorm room to have private words. But the young woman on the porch did nothing more to defend herself than stare away into the darkness, frowning with slack eyes, searching. back / next |