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Posted By MissMeliss on November 30, 2008

The brooch had been in our family forever, handed down from mother to daughter on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. At first glance, the color made it look like a cameo, but in reality the image was not a single profile, but three sisters: arms linked, skirts a-twirl, hearts free from any burdens.

“The middle one looks like you,” I told my mother the night before I turned eighteen, when it was my turn to receive the heirloom. “She has your smile.”

Mom fingered the pin, tracing the lines of each figure with a perfectly manicured finger. “Do you think so? I always thought the women looked like my own mother and her sisters, but then once I began to wear it a while, the girl on the left reminded me of your aunt Liz.”

I peered more closely, and sure enough, that left-hand figure did have Auntie Liz’s distinctive brow, and even a hint of the way her hips swayed when she walked. “She told me once that she’d never liked the pin,” I said. “But she also thought it would go to Aunt Emily.”

My mother placed the brooch in my open palm and gently curled her fingers around it. “We all wondered who would get it. Em’s the oldest of us, but she was always so confident about everything – she would be a doctor, no question – that when she turned eighteen, she looked at your grandmother and said it ‘just wasn’t her style’.”

I grinned at that. “I can see her doing that,” I said.

“She hasn’t changed much,” my mother agreed. “And then Liz… She and Tony are storybook sweethearts in a sense. Did you know they met in high school, and dated all through college.”

“Didn’t Aunt Liz ever want a real job?” I asked. And then, because I know better than to think being a homemaker isn’t a ‘real job’ I amended, “Outside the home, I mean?”

“She always seems completely happy,” Mom said. “She always has, and I suspect she always will. Contentment is something most people never get – if you ever find it, be cognizant of that.”

I laughed softly. “Is that another Life Lesson?”

“I suppose it is, Miss Bliss,” my mother answered.

I opened my hand to look at the pin again, and noticed something. “Mom – the woman on the right looks a LOT like Aunt Liz when her hair’s pulled back.”

“I suppose it does,” she said absently, adding after a beat. “I guess that’s only because we all share a family resemblance. Some of the old pictures of your grandmother’s sisters look a lot like you, too.”

“Gran was beautiful,” I said, because she had been, with glossy black hair and lively brown eyes, and smile that came from deep in her heart.

“Mmm. Walk with me?” My mother led me out of her bedroom and down the stairs to the dining room. Crossing the parquet floor, we opened the back door and stepped into the cool night air. “It’s chilly,” she said, “but sit with me a moment anyway?”

“Sure,” I said. This was one of our common rituals – stargazing from the back stoop no matter what the weather. I sat down, and she followed shortly after. We didn’t talk about the pin, or anything else really, just had some silent mother-daughter communion.

The next evening, at my birthday party, Auntie Annette, my grandmother’s college friend, who was godmother to my mother, came to wrap me in an embrace made of equal parts vintage fur and Chanel No. 5, and then she pulled back, and stared first at my collar, and then into my eyes. “You’re wearing the Muse Brooch,” she said. “I’m so glad it chose you.”

“Muse Brooch?” I asked?

“Yes,” she said. “The three girls on that brooch represent song, story, and laughter. If you have all three in your life, you’ll never be unhappy. I wonder who the faces will look like, when you wear it.”

“You can’t mean they change,” I said.

“Not at first,” she said. “But after several years, you’ll notice that one of the girl’s has your best friend’s eyes, and another has your sister’s hands, and you’ll realize that their best traits are yours as well, to use and share.”

I didn’t believe her, of course, but I listened to make her happy, and then gave her another hug. The party went on, and so did my life: college, my first job, my first serious break-up…and then it was my wedding, and my little sister was helping me dress. “You have the something borrowed and the something blue,” she said. “And the dress is new, but what do you have that’s old?”

“My brooch,” I said. “On the dresser.”

She retrieved it, and brought it to me. “Shall I fasten it for you?”

“Please?” I asked.

As her nimble fingers worked the clasp I heard a soft gasp of surprise. “Ellie,” she said, “Did you know that the girl in the middle looks like you?”

“Does it?” I asked. “I always thought it looked more like Mom.”

“No,” she said. “It’s definitely you. But the one on the left looks like Mom, a bit.”

I didn’t respond to that, just smiled at our reflections in the mirror. Would you believe me if I told you that my own reflection winked back?

Written for the November/December Project at CafeWriting: Option Two - “Can You Picture That?”

Categories: Cafe Writing, Fiction, Flash-Fiction
Tags: Cafe Writing, December, Fiction, Flash-Fiction, November, Prompted