Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes’ vanity mirror was lying to her. She wasn’t sure how and she most certainly wasn’t sure why, but the evidence was right in front of her, staring her in the face. She had to accept many injustices over the years, her multiple ex-husbands’ numerous scandalous extra-marital affairs, her thieving gardener’s treacherous grounds-keeping and her idiot housekeeper’s, well idiocy. But this? This was a step too far!
The deceitful glass was intimating that she, the star of the illustrious Man with the Golden Hands had wrinkles; wrinkles of all things; wrinkles! Dame Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes did not get wrinkles (she wasn’t actually a Dame but this was no time for semantics). Piffle, the thought was preposterous.
She sat on her faux 1760’s Chippendale chair pulling the skin on her face taut and frowning. Something clicked inside her and frantically she suddenly stopped frowning.
‘If I were ever actually going to get wrinkles it would be from using frivolous facial expressions; I know your game.’
She scowled at the inanimate piece of furniture without actually scowling. Olivia or Livy as she preferred to be called raced frenetically out of her bedroom in search of her house-keeper Jenny. Her delicate but worn ball gown wafted in the draft as she briskly searched through each of the forty-six rooms in her mansion. Though she was dressed for it Livy was not about to head off to a gala, for it was not even nine o’clock in the morning and no, she had not just returned from one either. Livy had not been invited to any galas, soirees, banquets, balls or even a barbeque in more than four years. Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes, the supporting actress in dozens of B movies such as Faster Pussycatfish! Krill! Krill and King Kong versus the State of New York had been forgotten by every one of her phony friends, her fans and worst of all her beloved Hollywood.
Livy had not realised this yet though, perhaps it was because she did not want to, the reality she imagined in her head was so much more fitting for someone her stature. In Livy’s mind all the movies she had appeared in were blockbusters and she had been the star in each and every one of them. To Livy she was reigning queen of the silver screen. To Livy she was still as beautiful, adored and desired as she was in the sixties, even as she entered into her fifties in this cruel decade that they call the eighties.
So she wore her finest gowns every day to remind herself of that fact and also to be ready to attend the next glamorous party on Mulholland drive when her invitation finally arrived, which it would, any day now.
She rushed into her ball room growing ever more agitated, but despite the urgency she couldn’t help herself, she took a moment to appreciate the splendour of the decor. The dance floor may have been scuffed and unpolished, the tables covered in dust cloths who themselves had been overrun by dust and the giant chandeliers may have effectively become display cases to antique cobwebs but the room was still somehow stunning.
She was fortunate to live in this vast if a little dilapidated mansion with its leaking roof and peeling wallpaper. She had won it off her ex-husband, the billionaire Waldo Emmerson, in their divorce. For all the years he had stolen from her it was the least she deserved, well that and the few million dollars she had all but now spent. Her attention turned back to the pressing matter of the day.
‘Jenny? Jenny?’ Livy hollered. ‘Where is that stupid girl? Jenny!’
Jenny happened to be in the kitchen, disinterestedly eating a plain slice of toast and ignoring both her mistress’s agitated calls and also her job. The kitchen was large and ornate, very much out of fashion and extremely dirty.
‘Jenny! Jenny!’ Livy shrieked.
Jenny sighed.
Olivia had almost reached her limit today and she hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet. She rushed into the kitchen where she came across her insolent house keeper hunched over the counter.
‘There you are girl.’ Livy snapped.
‘Yes Miss Wilkes.’ Jenny responded flatly.
‘What have I said about coming when I call?’
‘Yes Miss Wilkes.’ Jenny repeated
‘And, posture girl, posture!’ Livy exclaimed.
‘Yes Mi-’
Before Jenny could sarcastically reply Olivia dug a nail into her spine.
‘.-zz Wilkes.’ Jenny winced.
Livy turned her attention to the table, which was now covered in blackened bread particulates.
‘Crumbs, Jenny, crumbs!’ She shrieked. ‘What have I told you about keeping this place clean? You’ll be the death of me.’
‘Yes Miss Wilkes.’ Jenny said with a little more enthusiasm.
Jenny had been banking on that aneurism for a good five years now but to her frustration it did not appear to be forthcoming.
‘Jenny, the vanity mirror in my bedroom is lying to me. I want you to dispose of it.’ She said, finally able to get to the meat of her consternation.
‘How am I supposed to do that Ma’am?’
‘I don’t know, drag it to the curve, take an axe of it, however you normally deal with such detritus in whichever trailer park you crawled out of. Must I think of everything?’ Livy said dismissively.
Jenny’s face turned to thunder.
‘Perhaps it’s not the mirror ma’am, they can’t all be lying to you.’ Jenny said provocatively.
‘Of course it’s the mirrors, it’s always the mirrors, deceitful deviant little things.’ Livy snapped, observing her visage in the back of a spoon. ‘And this spoon, dispose of this as well.’ She said turning away from it in disgust.
Jenny regretted every life decision she had made that led her into working for this wrinkled old prune, the so called star of It’s a Quiet Christmas After Aunt Maude Murdered the Family and Attack of the Fifty Foot Tomatoes. She regretted it all, everything, from running away from home at the age of fourteen to getting pregnant when she was sixteen, her first abortion and then later, when she had her family, she regretted not having more abortions.
But all those mistakes paled in comparison to the decision of taking this job. In fact such was her hatred for the decrepit crone that she even felt nostalgic for her life before being a house-keeper. She would gleefully go back to that prison if it meant she never had to look at Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes’ miserable old face again and also if she got another shot at murdering her ex-husband. That was definitely number two on her very long list of regrets, failing to kill that overweight abusive tyrant. It seemed almost perverse she had to serve ten years for only attempting to kill him.
‘It’s a real sickness in our society that we punish failure.’ she thought ‘What does that sort of lesson does that teach the children? That it’s better to not try.’
Yes, Jenny wished she could live her life over again, she would make all the right decisions this time, hell she’d make all the wrong ones over again but she still wouldn’t end up here, she wouldn’t take this second chance at a second chance of asking. She just wanted the last nine years of her life back, was that so much to ask? At that moment a ripple in time emanating from somewhere far in the future washed over her and the lady of the house.
Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes had been many things to many people; she had been a less than successful actress living on imagined glories, entitled, privileged and at times a diva. But she had also been a kind and caring confidant to all of her unappreciative friends, a loving mother to her ex-husbands’ children when she grew to accept she couldn’t have any of her own. She had been very a patient boss to her frustratingly insolent housekeeper but most of all Olivia Elizabeth Wilkes had always been afraid of being forgotten, of fading away. Suddenly within a moment she never even existed at all, wiped out in a change in the future and a rewriting of the past. Jenny had got her wish.
The NaNoWriMo Poject 