She is a large woman. In another place or circumstance, she would have been the woman in the flowery housedress with fluffy mules on her feet. She would have been the lady you always seem to get stuck next to on the bus when it is hot and crowded and everyone has to hold onto the strap. She would have been the one with the smelly armpits. But she fits no clichés. She has money from sources unknown. She has a style so cosmopolitan it makes your teeth hurt.

She’s always waving. Hello. Bye-bye. Oh you… (said with a tsskk and a pursed-lipped smile.) She likes to wave her hands around. She’s got these big hands, long, so well-manicured. Red or purple nails, of course. Jewels. Funny thing about the jewels. She buys them for herself, these big, hunky things, as if they were a gift from someone else. One of them hocked would keep me going for quite a while. But she doesn’t notice that other people might be wanting. It’s funny the things she’ll notice. About herself she’s so oblivious it’s calculated. Or so calculated she’s oblivious. I’m not quite sure which.  Yet. It’s hard, though. She certainly doesn’t notice me.

But I watch her. Sometimes it’s like standing inside a kaleidoscope.  She’d probably love to hear that description—”Ooh, you’re joking! Me? That’s me?!”—with a begging sort of smile. But I won’t tell her. She wouldn’t believe that I had ever managed to come up with such a thought.

Notice I said “standing inside,” not “looking through” a kaleidoscope. She does that to you. She turns everything into a game where you’ve just got to have all the pieces. She does, of course. It’s not like a puzzle, no, it’s not a puzzle, because you always know what it’s going to be, her kaleidoscopic design. If you turn the kaleidoscope around enough times, the patterns will start to reappear. Most people don’t know that. They like to think that each little cardboard tube filled with bits of glass and colored paper is a one-of-a-kind. You know, so that they can say, “Lookee, I’ve got an original. I’m the only one.” It’s at times like these that they all just seem to regress. Not me, though. I know. I’ve watched a lot of things from inside that kaleidoscope. It’s all the same in the end.

Like snowflakes. They’re always fooled by snowflakes. First snow, just listen. Somebody’s bound to say, “And each one is completely different.” But I’ve sat at the window and I’ve seen them. I’ve got time to do that. She certainly doesn’t care. So I sit at the window sometimes when she’s not looking and I watch the snow.  Sure, they’re not all the same. They can’t possibly all be different. Infinity is too difficult. It’s easier to think that once in a while I see a duplicate. Somebody up there liked the pattern and cut it out again.

She lives in another family’s mansion in the best part of town. You enter the home of strangers and proceed to a doorway marked, “Private Entrance.” Up a twisting stairway lit by candles and overflowing with vines, you enter her domain. The attic floor, the top of the house. Larger than an ordinary house. It fills you with envy. She likes that. She’s become very skillful at recognizing your envy. She pulls it, like taffy.

She takes you by the hand, showing you her space. It can only be hers. It is decorated to the nth degree, filled with collectibles, old signs and posters. Sleek varnished floors, covered with oriental runners.  One long hallway. She is. You are the rooms, almost an afterthought.

Her pride and joy, her stage setting. It is all a Broadway scene. Her bathroom, old-fashioned and immense, huge claw and ball bathtub against one wall. Against another, in the corner, is a shower from some misbegotten past of some elegance. Her conversation piece. It possesses two copper pipes running down each side, with needle spray capacity. It is built for a woman of her stature, a smaller one would drown. It is a purely sensual experience, she is quick to tell you. It makes you want to just shed your clothes in abandon. That is how she wants to make you feel. It just makes me nervous.

Her bedroom she shows with no shame, with an air of “This is where I have fun.” A huge four-poster bed, draped in white, regal. Pillows. Pillows. A dressing table, covered with scents and tubes and bottles and brushes. She spends a lot of time there. She likes to look at herself in mirrors. I like looking through windows. But she never looks out.

She sits you down in her living room, small and cozy, surprise, surprise, cluttered with porcelain eggs in porcelain egg cups. It is a few days before Christmas and her house is decorated. She is a Jew, but, as she jumps to explain, it just makes her feel cheery to be a part of all the hustle and shine of the season. She needs that.

She is entertaining a few of the select tonight. You should be grateful to have been counted as such. Bow and scrape in proper obeisance is the password to riches unknown in her domain. She is aware and adjusts accordingly. And you’re one step up on the Adrienne ladder.  Why, fame is just lurking. You lucky thing, you.

She’ll feed you caviar and hummus, tortellini and hotdogs. You’re supposed to ask for the recipes. Some she’ll give, some she won’t. She likes to have her secrets. Always bring ’em back for more, she says. Bring ’em back.

Sit down, sit down. No, she doesn’t want any help. Just make yourself at home. Mi casa, su casa. She’s adept in foreign tongue, too. She brings you fine white wine and whiskey, motions towards the silver box of weed, says help yourself. She is a free lady, now, isn’t she? In tune with the scene. One of the people. Good with the kids.

She sits down, rolls herself a joint, inhales, exhales, inhales again and passes to the right. Fine weed, she says, got it from an old boyfriend, haven’t seen him in four years, called me up the other day, took me out to dinner. I think I’m in love.

She talks on and on, regressing into cutesy poo baby talk. You sit, sunken in the pillows of her monologue, lulled by the monotone, mellowed by the drug. You stare aimlessly around the room, at the tens of pictures of her dearest of friends on the walls, at the many little mirrors of antique silver and enamel, out the windows draped with lace, out into the night where the big oak tree looms and scrapes against the side of the house, out to where the man’s face is pressed against the very pane—

You freeze. You take another sip of your wine. You slowly look out again. Is he really there? Confirmation. You turn to Adrienne. You try to interrupt her, you start to speak in narrow words through tight-lipped mouth, so that he will not guess that he has been seen, your voice comes out rasping croaking gasping. Adrienne, everybody, look, don’t look, don’t move, there’s a man, a peeping torn, the window, a man…

Conversation stops. Slowly, to a person, the assembled, the select few, turn their heads and look. Not Adrienne, though. Not her. She’s so cool. She laughs, says, oh, don’t mind him, he’s there all the time, I see him all the time, it turns him on to watch me.

Fun and games are over. The audience feels on stage and so take their final bows. Encore. Bravo. Promises of, yes, of course we’ll have to do it again sometime. Hugs and kisses all around, with glances of something like fear towards the window at the end of the hall. Adrienne can’t quite understand why you’re all leaving.

It’s another enchanted evening. Same scene. The stage is set. The tinsel drapes the potted palm in the corner. Presents are heaped around.  She opens them in front of you, saying, oh, I just can’t wait another minute. She tears like a child, draping ribbons and sticking bows on her shoulders like epaulets. She throws the packing popcorn on the floor. Porcelain eggs. Porcelain eggs. You laugh, embarrassed for her, embarrassed that you bought her the same. But she doesn’t mind.

People know me so well, she smiles, with a lilt upwards at the end.  Almost a question. I’ve got so many. But each one is different.

She brings you food and wine. Talk. Talk. She rambles, yes, my boyfriend, you remember, I told you, the one whom I haven’t seen in four years, well, he’s back into my life again, I just know he will be. No, he hasn’t called again, no, I haven’t seen him again. But he’ll be back, I know it. We’re so special together. It’s nice to know that you’re special to someone, for some reason. Oh! Come on! Let’s dance!

She pulls you up to gyrate furiously to the beat of something acid rock and indistinct. You move slowly, surprised and logy from the wine and talk. She grabs you, spins you, pushes you out, pulls you back, spinning you again and again, and as the room trails by in acid rock blur, you see the face again. With two-minute-mile breathlessness you stop, say Adrienne, Adrienne, he’s there again, Adrienne, DO SOMETHING! But she doesn’t stop, she leaps and undulates ecstatically in front of the glass where the face is pressed, the features paper-white and smooth, condensation forming. She doesn’t stop as you move slowly backwards backwards, away, into the hallway, mumbling, I’ll see you later, Adrienne, I’m leaving, Adrienne, past the vines and the candles, out the door, into the other family’s house where you break into a run. She doesn’t even notice when you’re gone.

She stands in statuesque triumph as layer after layer drops to the floor. She doesn’t look out. She never looks out. No, she only stares at the fragments of her flesh as they flash in first one then another and another of the little mirrors, a breast, a shoulder and elbow, knees. Hands moving disembodied, she stands and caresses herself for me.

Lisa Ben-Shosan wrote and illustrated her first book, entitled Valentine Wish, when she was in the first grade; the single edition was treasured by her parents. An avid journal keeper for many years, she parlayed her skills into a career in marketing communications for higher ed., and is now slowing down her life by working at Apple. A positive outcome of her encounter with breast cancer set her on a path of investigating her family genealogy where she keeps the memories of everyone who came before her alive. She is currently working on her first novel, which examines the repercussions of a devastating act of violence experienced by a young Jewish girl in early 1950s Morocco, and how it continues to impact her own teenage daughter years later in Israel.