Margarita in the Mirror

As she tried on the first summer dress and stood in front of her bedroom mirror, Margarita felt the familiar sting of disappointment she’d known in life. Her first husband and the father of her three children hadn’t recognized that he was giving her a small helping of himself and reserving the balance of his life for work, and as she later learned, for affairs with other women. After her divorce, she went to work fulltime and focused on the lives of her children who were entering their teen years and needed a mother’s support.  
 
Her husband disappeared from their lives with the exception of his summer custody agreement. Every August began with Margarita working to heal the damage done by the six weeks they spent with their father and whoever was his current housemate. Margarita hated that her children had such a negative concept of fatherhood because her own had been wonder. They loved their grandfather but didn’t know him well since trips across the border were rare and he died shortly after Margarita’s marriage dissolved.  
 
As she looked in the mirror, she could hear him advising against this dress because “Estás dando un poco demasiado aire a tus pechos,” or “you’re giving a little too much air to your breasts.” He was sure to add, “try a dress with a conservative neckline, Margarita. Leave more to mystery.” She could almost hear his gravely voice, “Deja más espacio al misterio.”  
 
“If you wanted to help me dress for this date, you should have stayed in my life,” she said. She felt her eyes moisten.  
 
One more shower, she thought, and she carefully placed the dress back on its hanger. She caught a glimpse of her nude body in the mirror and paused. Oh, those tan lines, she thought, but a week at the beach with her children had been a welcome time of relief and healing.  
 
Her eyes drifted down to the horizontal scare on her tummy. Her youngest, 12-year-old Ana had been born by cesarian because of complications. She was now as tall as her 16-year-old sister, Isabella. Their brother, Carlos, was almost 15 and smaller than his sisters. Margarita worried that he got his height from her, but he seemed to be growing faster as he got older.
 
Margarita’s eyes fell to her "sacred region" as her father would call it and remembered her last time with her husband three years earlier. Except for one accidental night soon after her divorce, she’d kept herself pure since her divorce. La abstinencia was no great moral feat for a busy mother, she thought.
 
As she felt the warm water flowing across her skin, she thought of the deep longing she felt and wondered if William might be a portion of the answer to that longing.