A Shawl That Had Never Been Worn

Evelyn Richardson swayed peacefully in her rocking chair, watching the sun set over Lake Chapala. She stroked her cat wistfully as David Bisbal’s Se Nos Rompió el Amor played on the radio. It had been 14 months since her husband’s death. Evelyn hardly ever left her house, that old mansion with a hint of abandonment, one of those with wide corridors, Moorish arches and tiled roofs that watches over the malecón like a tired old general. The air didn’t smell of jasmine, but of the sweet, murky saltiness of the lake and the despair of retired expats.

Her only habit was to go and look at herself every afternoon in the giant mahogany-framed mirror in the main hall, which drank up all the light coming in through the window. Every afternoon, Bob and Evelyn would look at themselves in that mirror before going for a walk on the malecón, to check that they were dressed with that simple elegance that can only be bought with a lot of money. Bob and Evelyn would take long walks and end up sitting in front of a bar where they would drink several cantaritos until they were a little dizzy and then return home holding hands to make love until they fell asleep.

The first time she saw her, Evelyn was looking for a tiny pearl earring that had slipped from her ear. As she bent down, her reflection, dressed in austere beige linen, bent down too, of course. But the other Evelyn, the one in the glass, wore a scarlet silk shawl that screamed in the silence and fanned herself with delicious insolence. And the cruelest thing: the other Evelyn wasn’t looking for anything. She was whistling.

The whistle was a sailor’s tune, vulgar and cheerful; a scandalous commotion in the dusty dignity of the salon. Evelyn stood up with her heart leaping so sharply that she felt it tearing her skin. The reflection looked at her with eyes that did not have the gray pallor of her own, but were amber, the color of old tequila that had seen too much sun. They were the eyes of a girl who would never have been in Chapala if she hadn’t had to escape from something.

“Oh, what a waste of fabric, sweetheart,” said the other Evelyn, her lips not moving, but her voice, a thread of honey and rum, reaching Evelyn like the echo of a distant song. “You look like a virgin in a coffin. Over there at the pier, life is the color of this shawl. It’s a pity that only your reflection knows how to dance.”

Evelyn, the original, felt the same chill that the cold afternoon wind rising from the lake brought her. She had been the scarlet shawl before Bob’s death turned her into this mannequin.

“I’m not here for these charades,” Evelyn murmured, her voice just a complaint against the wind.

“It’s not a charade!” replied the reflection, turning mischievously, letting the scarlet silk flutter like a flag in the wind. “I am you, but I understood the darker side. I knew the man with hands stained and calloused from too much caressing. I stayed with him, right on the side where the lake is most polluted and life is real. You, my dear… you are the perfect shadow of a woman who no longer exists.”

The truth hit Evelyn with the force of a shot of mezcal. The reflection stripped her bare. It knew her lust for the sun, her disdain for the Yacht Club, and her secret desire to throw herself off the pier into the murky waters.

The afternoons became a date. Evelyn stood before the mahogany frame and waited for the other one, the one with the amber laugh, to offer her harsh reality. The other Evelyn told her about broken nets, poverty that smelled of fish and lemons, violent passion. And Evelyn drank all that foreign life, feeling the blood, so dormant in her veins, begin to awaken to the rhythm of a danzón.

One afternoon, Evelyn moved closer until she could feel the cold breath of the glass. The other Evelyn, seeing her so desperately close, slid a hand across the surface, right where Evelyn was clutching the pearl necklace her mother had given her.

“Cross over,” whispered the reflection, her voice now the promise of a fever, “cross over to this other universe. Here it smells of dirty life, but you can breathe. There will be no return. But you will never again worry about a pearl earring. It’s just the sun, the smell of fish, and me.”

Evelyn felt a chill. She was about to sink into the other shore of her destiny. She unfastened the pearls, which fell onto the mosaic with a tiny, persistent noise.

The other Evelyn, the one in the shawl, smiled with that relentless light. She reached out her hand across the glass.

And in that instant, in that blink between being and not being, Evelyn saw something that made her throat tighten: the other one, under the glare of her mouth, had lips burned by the sun and, around them, deep, marked expression lines. Marks of a harshness that she, Evelyn, the one in the beige linen, had avoided thanks to relentless care. Freedom came at a high price: the loss of beauty, the fatigue of the face.

“Tell me what happened to your mouth,” Evelyn said, her voice almost inaudible.

The reflection’s expression faded, turning into one of infinite weariness.

“The sun, my dear. The sun and the salt. It’s just life passing you by.”

But Evelyn had already seen it. She had seen the surrender that passion concealed. She understood that the mirror was not happiness, but the other ruin, just as melancholic as hers.

Evelyn walked away. She picked up the pearls from the floor. She felt heavy, yes, like an old woman, but with the solidity of marble. A figure in mourning, with her feet on the ground in Chapala.

The other Evelyn remained alone in the glass, watching, her outstretched hand now a pitiful plea.

“Evelyn, no. Don’t leave me! The humidity is killing me. Please, I just wanted a minute in the silence and the mahogany.”

The voice of the woman in the mirror was a muffled sob. Evelyn did not look back. She left the living room, closing the large wooden doors behind her. The sharp click was not heard beyond the old tiles. On the other side of the glass, the Evelyn in scarlet pounded on the glass with ugly, futile desperation. Evelyn headed to her room, knowing that life, in any universe, is just a choice of which misery you are willing to bear. She would bear hers, which was clean and boring. The wind from Chapala moaned over the lake, carrying away the memory of laughter and a shawl that had never been worn.