Postcard Story – Denise at Her Dressing Table – Mary Cassatt – 1908-1909 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Oldest Granddaughter – 07/22/21
… and mirrors do not lie, she thought, and … perhaps this looking glass is really a friend, and a faithful one at that, and yet… With a different pose, a different smile … does that change … the truth, that which she has always known … and … not feared, but just not yet ready to accept?
She put her mirror back down upon the table … and rose to her feet knowingly surrounded by all the flowing glory of the shimmering pinks and lavenders and whites of her gown, a dressing gown, always put on in anticipation of dressing in something else for anywhere, anything in-between an evening gown for a glorious night dazzling others with the beauty still there, yes, still there, to a … shroud … covering whatever remained gently and softly … waiting, not quietly, as laughter and gaiety will never resume, but in silence … a fitting homage to what will never resume, but in silence … a fitting homage to what awaited in the tomb.
She raised her eyes to the larger mirror – more direct, fuller – her face and form before her, not just the chosen detail she wished to behold for a moment that her hand controlled – yes, controlled what she beheld, what she wanted to see – but here, in the mirror, in the mirror over her dresser, her face, her visage, with the larger oval of the mirror upon the wall, not as in a halo, but rather … within the larger eyes of that mirror, eyes not unkind, but always with the steely hue of … truth, open, honest, and clear without hesitation.
For the looking glass and the mirror, mirror, on the wall, were friends of many years, once giddy like her, but now true friends, their smile now as hers, muted, better knowing and accepting, for vanity had never been upon their lips and lies did not reside within them now.
She got up from before her dresser and moved to the window overlooking the boulevard, and in the traffic, and upon the streets, she now saw more of herself than in the looking glasses big and small … This was good, for she did see the road from where she had come, and within the wide boulevard, glimpses of where she was still to go.
***
0 Comments