"Russ?" Apparently, Sherlock Holmes was standing behind me as I studied my image in the mirror, smoothing out my long evening gown. "The potatoes are crying out for your attention."
Only my husband Sherlock Holmes could say such a thing and have it make a lick of sense. I understood what he was speaking of immediately and a little smile lit up my face. Of course they were. Yet...oh, I was getting tired. And for once, for the first time in my life, I think, I didn't want to get dirty. I did not want things blowing up in my face-beakers, chemicals, the smell of heavy shag tobbaco overlying it all. I looked down at my stained fingertips. Was that peculiar bluish dye ever going to wash out?
"Tell the potatoes to shuss. They can wait a little longer." Lately, we had been experimenting with potatoes and electric currents. You've probably heard before that potatoes are a veritable source of energy. They are, strangely, conducters of energy and electricity, powerful little things. They were my husband's new obsession and I grudgingly allowed myself to be dragged along to the lab where there were sacks and sacks of them on the tables. I wished I could share his enthusiasm.
He made a clucking sound, and I could see him averting his eyes...he was thinking. Tonight, we looked more magnificient than I'd thought possible. He, in his black and white suit, looking somewhat like a dapper penguin. The thought was an endless source of mirth. I with my hair down for once, long and straightened by Mrs. Hudson, lovingly brushed. I had not recognized myself in the glass, and that was why I was staring.
We had just been to see our nearest neighbors, a good three miles away across the Downs. I feared Holmes had not enjoyed the company of some of the "bright young things", or yappers, as he called them.
"I survived," he said, flopping down on the edge of the bed and crossing his legs neatly one atop the other. He waited patiently for me to finish the inspection of myself in the mirror. Not, not me. I hardly recogized myself in the foggy glass. Surely, this could not be the woman that would soon be poking and proding spuds in a charmless laboratory?
Memory is an odd thing. It comes back to one at times when it's least wanted, and sometimes least appropriate. Is that a boy or a girl? Whispers Sarah Ball as I walk alone down the hallway in between classes. It can't be a boy. This is a girl's school, answers her friend, and I feel my face burn red, then deep crimson. How can they not tell? I am wearing my finest shoes, I am not trying to walk like a boy, to look like one. Later, Sarah walks straight up to me after class. She looks me over and then asks, how did you get into the girl's school?
"Simply for the fact that I am a girl," I say more heatedly than I'd meant to. And that is not the end of the nightmare, there will be stares and questions for the rest of my life. Even Sherlock Holmes will think the form coming across the Downs is a young man. Yes, even one of the greatest detectives in the world will be fooled.
I remembered the party we'd just been to. I remembered standing with Holmes by the fountain in the cool evening air and the stares from all that walked past. They wonder what an androgynous person is doing in a dress. They've thought...God, I don't know what they've thought. I am sure they are thinking I look out of place.
But that was not what they thought. Far from it.
I shall always remember the moment that two ladies walked by their parasols raised above their head, talking and giggling. One, having had to much to drink, turns to her friend and tries to whisper but ends up muttering audibly. "How did Holmes land himself such a prize?"
The other friend, leaning in and no less drunk- "I'll bet he pays her...ahem, for services. Hah, that would make sense. An old man, swimming in money, and he can do anything he wants with it."
The sound of discordant laughter makes me feel ill.
And then I had seen Holmes' face and it had broken my heart. I will never forget. No, I shall see his face in my dreams, and I shall always carry it with me. How to say it best? He was lost, completely. He was staring numbly into the distance, up at the first stars in the sky. His hands, which he massaged to keep warm, trembled slightly.
"Let us go home Russell," he said coldly. "I've tired of standing here in the cold."
"Holmes, I think perhaps I should dress up more often," I said, as he sat on the edge of our bed. I was admiring the job Mrs. Hudson had done on my blush. "I never took the time with my apperance, but I think it would be a good thing. Honestly, it was nice to see people staring for a different reason. I could be a different person, look at this!"
"The Mary Russell I know does not refuse the offer of experimentation.I think the wine has gone to your head."
Oh Holmes, no one ever gave you a lesson on how to talk to women! "You are jealous," I said in a frenzy, "Jealous because I outshone you tonight. For once, the eyes were not on you, and..."
He looked sad, lost, old. So much so that I could not continue my rant. I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. I kept them closed and dwelled in my own misery. Why would he blame me for wanting to keep my hands clean for one night? I did not want to lose the perfection of my image right now. I felt him press something cold into the palm of my hand as he left the room. "For your consideration," he said.
I opened my eyes. A locket. The gold chain gleamed in the palm of my hand. I pried the gold circle open and my breath caught in my throat. One one side, a picture of a woman in a beekeeping outfit, fearlessly surrounded by a swarm of bees. On the other, an inscription- SH to MR. My fingers trembling, I set the locket down and fairly flew out of my gown. My God, this woman in the mirror was not the real me! Think of the damage a vial of chemicals would do to this tight fitting gown. It was itching already! And my God, I'd seemed to have lost half my brain cells staring mindlessly at myself. Holmes was right, I belonged in the middle of things, in the heat and action. It did not matter if most young ladies cringed in horror. I was Mary Russell because I was neither squemish nor reserved.
When I reached the lab, wearing comfortable clothing, Holmes grinned. "If you prefer to wear your gown, I suppose it would be-"
"Holmes, you are the devil!"
"I suspected that I would need to remind you of your roots eventually, my dear Russell. You, with the folly of the young, would let your body control your brain, instead of the other way around."
"Could it not be you're a bit jealous of this new, glamorized me?"
"No, but I suspect her to be jealous of you. Overalls were never worn so proudly. And the blue tinged fingers surely suit you. Pick up a potatoe, would you? We're going to get quite a current going here!"
I could not help it. I lauged. "We are an odd pair, aren't we?"
"You do know that in magnetism, opposites attract...but we are very different at all. Hypothetically, if I were a woman, I suppose I would occasionally desire to play up my charms. Unfortunately, I am an ugly man, and I suspect if I were a woman, I would lack entirely any form of grace or emotional development...Although certain chemicals, hormones, and other womanly things would occasionally throw me into states of madness. So hypothetically, if I were a woman, I believe I would be very similar to you. And are we not always searching for that partner in whom we see ourselves mirrored almost perfectly?"
"My God, have you envisioned yourself as a woman, then!"
He shrugged his shoulders. I laughed without restraint now. We were a strange pair, but we were perfectly matched. I could feel myself coming back to life now, walking out of a temporary fog.
A vision of Holmes in an evening gown would be with me for some time now...