Last Thursday at
seven a.m. Bette Luckington woke up with the wrong eyes. She made this
startling discovery looking in the bathroom mirror while sleepily flossing her
teeth. Ordinarily, her eyes are blue, with powder pale lashes, and uneven
margins (this last, the result of excessive use of eyeliner pencils). The eyes
reflected in the mirror were brown, with dark lashes, and perfect margins. At
first, Bette thought there might be something wrong with the bathroom lighting
but as she continued to look into the mirror, she continued to see brown,
definitely brown eyes. She grabbed the stand-alone magnifying mirror she used
to tweeze her eyebrows and search for chin hairs. What she saw confirmed her
earlier reflection. Filled with a true sense of terror, she checked to see if
the rest of her was still her. The mole on her left check was there. Her tiny
hands (her ex-husband rather unkindly called “mouse hands”) were also the same.
The only things that were different were those brown eyes.
Strange things had
been happening since Bette turned fifty. Her natural blond hair turned white,
almost overnight, the way it often happens to characters in scary movies about
ghosts. Her Russian Blue cat disappeared for two weeks then returned home with
a flea-infested red tabby. Opening the front door to pick up her morning paper,
Bette saw the silvery-coated descendant of the royal cats of the czars with a
scruffy little street cat beside him, both standing there in that satisfied and
expectant manner so common to felines. She took the striped stranger to the
groomer, the vet, and her heart as the little cat was likeable. And there was
that terrible business of finding a piece of a tooth in her English muffin. An
ongoing mix of the wonderful and the horrid kept happening ever since her
birthday. The change of her eyes, however, was the most bizarre and frightening
occurrence of all. Bette brushed her teeth vigorously as if having an
exceptionally clean mouth might somehow clarify her thoughts. She then brushed
her short white hair that she had quite recently begun to like. The soft white
accentuated her blue eyes. Well, it had. Bette analyzed her eyes again and
tried to find some reasonable explanation. Abandoning logic, her thoughts
changed direction. Perhaps there really is a parallel universe and at this very
moment one of its inhabitants, a dark-complected brunette, sat before her own
magnifying mirror looking into Bette Luckington’s blue eyes.
Still wearing her
bathrobe, Bette measured coffee into a filter and remembered the documentary
she had watched on public television the night before about the horrific
treatment of Latinos by whites in America. Not long ago, she watched
a documentary about the horrific treatment of blacks by whites in America.
Both of these documentaries had been preceded by other similar ones presenting
the horrific treatment of Asians and Native American Indians by whites. There
were shining exceptions to racism and bigotry, champions of social justice in
the white community, notably Abe Lincoln and Bobby Kennedy. While she herself
was not a racist, it was also true that except for Granny Luckington’s Jamaican
companion, Bette did not know a single person of color. She did have two
Catholic friends but, of course, that is not the same. The accumulated effect
of the documentaries made Bette feel deeply ashamed of the way so many people
of color in this country have been treated by so many of its white citizens.
For a moment, Bette wished she was not a fair-faced, Anglo-American. She wished
she was a person of color – any color but white. Could this ephemeral wish have
had something to do with the bizarre eye change? Had Bette become a human and
modified version of The Velveteen Rabbit?
Had wanting something so made it happen? And was it happening by degrees? Would
Bette Luckington wake tomorrow morning to find she had become a middle-aged
version of one of the Sharks in West Side
Story? Perhaps there was nothing supernatural at all going on. Perhaps the
change in eye color and lash length had a physiological explanation. Who knows
what unspecified chemicals are sprayed on those shiny supermarket fruits and
vegetables.
Much of the day
was spent staring at her eyes in an antique hand mirror, drinking Chablis, and
wondering how she would explain her new eyes to family and friends. She did not
have many friends so that did not seem too intimidating a prospect. And, as she
did freelance editing at home, there were no officemates to be concerned about.
She could say she was wearing colored contact lenses, the way models and
actresses do. Or, she could wear her tinted, designer eyeglasses all the time
though this might make her appear to have a drug addiction. Bette realized she
would have to find a new ophthalmologist and this fact made here a little sad
as Dr. Kovic, her present ophthalmologist was a nice man. Every ophthalmologist
she had ever gone to seemed caring and nice. If the eyes really are “the mirror
of the soul,” it was possible all that intense soul-gazing into the eyes of
their patients gentled their spirits. Dr. Kovic was from one of those countries
in Eastern Europe that have no vowels in their
name. At the end of each office visit, he was in the habit of asking, “Are you
pleased?” It seemed an odd query between a doctor and patient but Bette knew
English was not his first language and thought he may have confused the wording
with “Goodbye” or “Have a nice day.” In any event, she would miss him and his
concern. If she stayed Dr. Kovic’s patient it was possible he would write a
brilliant article for a prominent medical journal about her new eyes and become
world renowned. She imagined him in a large amphitheater filled with his peers.
He looked somewhat proud as he introduced her to the gathering. She wondered
what she would wear for such an occasion. No, this would not work for her. Best
to simply go to a new ophthalmologist.
Before the eye
incident, Bette started reading Seneca’s “On Tranquility of Mind.” Earlier that
week she reread Plato’s Doctrine of the Two Worlds. This is the kind of reading
she enjoyed and may well have contributed to her small number of friends. She
considered resuming reading but the combination of wine and anxiety made
focusing on stoicism undoable. By evening, nervous, somewhat sozzled, and too
exhausted to continue worrying, she fell asleep on her large and comfortable
sofa.
In the morning, to
Bette’s immense relief, she was still herself except for those dark eyes. She
also experienced one of those unexpected epiphanies menopausal women are prone
to. A vision of an enormous and beautiful mandala composed of variations of
Bette’s three favorite colors – green, yellow, and blue appeared. This circle
of vibrant colors was followed by the following maxim in elegant, silver script
floating before her. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no
matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Arthur Conan Doyle Bette had no idea what any of this actually
meant but she did feel a sudden and genuine sense of well-being.
After breakfast,
Bette decided to do a quick review of her life, much like a computer scan for
viruses, in order to find something in her past that might connect to her very
peculiar present circumstance. There was her happy childhood as a pampered and
cherished only child. She had singing lessons, piano lessons, riding lessons –
her favorite pony was a Chestnut Welsh pony inexplicably named Scooter.
Memories of her college years were rather blurry as they seemed to have been
spent studying for exams, smoking marijuana, and having a crush on her
philosophy professor. Soon after graduating from college, her unhappy marriage
to Frederick Penn began. The longer she was married to Frederick, the less she ate. Her loss of
appetite became so extreme that eating a whole slice of toast was out of the
question; she could manage half a granola bar but just barely. The day their
divorce decree was finalized, Bette celebrated in a nearby restaurant by
enjoying a filet mignon, baked potato, and asparagus, accompanied by a lovely
cabernet and, for dessert, two slices of lemon meringue pie. Dear Scooter,
philosophy class, and Frederick? Finding no clues in her past, she decided to
resume reading Seneca. When, out of habit, she put on her reading glasses, she
was surprised at the thick blurriness she saw and removed the eyeglasses to
find she could read without them. She fell into her usual routine of pleasure
reading in the morning and doing several hours of editing after lunch, the reading,
eating, and editing interrupted by frequent eye checks in her compact mirror.
Saturday passed in much the same partially pleasant and partially concerned way.
Late afternoon, looking in the living room wall mirror to adjust a stray strand
of hair Bette noticed how the soft white accentuated her brown eyes. It was at
that moment the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Elizabeth dear, is that you?”
“Yes mother, who
else would it be?”
“Well, you don’t
sound like you. Your voice sounds so different. For a second I thought I had
the wrong number.”
Image: © Milos Havrda | Dreamstime.com
Image: © Milos Havrda | Dreamstime.com
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