Mirror Lake
Christian Rose
Winter 2010
Winter 2010
Chris held onto this idea as he made his way to the bathroom, where he stopped dead at the sight of the mirror. It was smashed, spidery cracks radiating out from a point of impact in the center. He paused there, waiting for a memory to hit him, but it didn’t happen. Instead he just stood there, face to face with his shattered reflection. He was handsome. He hated to look at himself. Looking in the mirror felt like self-deception. His reflection told nothing of what was happening beneath the surface, and that’s what he wanted more than anything, to know why this exterior felt so incongruous with how he felt inside, with the person he was becoming.
He walked away, moving through the cottage. In the daylight Chris found things he never noticed before. There was a photo of Stacey at age five in a red jump suit, her hands held above her blond head like a super-hero flying. What struck him was her smile. It was real. Her whole face was happy, even her little blue eyes. There were boyhood pictures of Chris smiling like this in his own home, but somewhere during adolescence the pictures had changed, he couldn’t smile that way anymore, even when he tried to fake it. What amazed Chris was that Stacey still smiled this way at age 21. Chris couldn’t fathom what could cause such a deep and honest sense of contentment and happiness to spread itself across someone’s face.
He remembered their walks around the lake last summer. Stacey always wanted to hold hands. Chris always took the first opportunity to break their grip and slip his hand back into his own pocket, despite himself. Holding such a happy hand felt wrong somehow, like a lie, like looking in the mirror, a betrayal of some sad truth about himself he would never even understand.
Chris took the picture of the young, smiling Stacey in his shaky hands, studied it, and turned it face-down on the table. He got up quickly and opened the fridge. His stomach dropped when he saw that it was empty. He tried not to panic as he rummaged through the cupboards, hoping to find a bottle of vodka. There was nothing.
Lost, he wandered out to the dock. He kept a lookout on the far side of the lake, his only hope now was to see Stacey’s red VW Rabbit approaching, top down, blond hair flowing in the wind.
A floral scent rolled by on the breeze that reminded him of the way Stacey smelled on those walks around the lake last summer. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, trying to burn the essence of that smell into his lungs. When he exhaled the smoke drifted out over the lake, vanishing like a ghost.
Chris looked at the lake. The blue sky and clouds were reflected perfectly on the glassy surface. The reflection was so clear it looked like Chris could go skydiving by simply stepping off the dock. But he knew there was a different world down there beneath the surface, a world that had nothing to do with blue skies or white clouds. It was a deep lake. It was cold and dark down there, with plenty of places where the sun never interrupted night.
Chris leaned forward on the dock, chest-down on the boards, looking into the water. His reflection looked back at him, searching, undulating slightly with the waves. Chris tried to see beneath the surface. He could just barely make out the seaweed at the bottom, swaying slowly like green fire, a set of yellow fish-eyes emerging from the weeds, peering up at him.
It was then, looking into those eyes, that he remembered. He felt that familiar sensation like déjà vu, a sudden flash of blurred images rushing through his brain – he saw himself leaping back and forth over the fire, lighting a cigarette with a burning stick, singeing his eyebrows, jumping naked into the lake, pouring beers over peoples’ heads, people cursing him, following Stacey into the house, cornering her, trying to kiss her as she pushed him away, telling him it was over as he wandered into the bathroom, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the bathroom mirror, then head-butting it as hard as he could, watching the shards crash down into the sink as Stacey screamed at him to leave, slamming the door on her, pissing through the crack in the cottage wall as she turned the music off, saying the party was over and everyone had to go. Mike trying to drag him out of the house, fighting Mike off, pushing Mike down, raising a fist to Mike. Mike looking at him with some new, horrible kind of realization, then slamming the cottage door shut on him once and for all.
After they were all gone Chris took a twelve pack of Natural Ice out to the picnic table, watching the sunrise as morning mist rose from the lake. It felt like a victory at the time, like he was the lone survivor, the only one with any staying power. It felt like the opposite now. His whole body sagged on the dock, waterlogged with shame.
Chris dropped his hand in the water and watched the ripples distort his reflection, no longer bothering to lift his head each time he heard a car on the far side of the lake. He tried to see into the darkness down below, but the sun was too bright, the lake as reflective as the mirror he’d head-butted the night before. All he could see was his own handsome face. It had never looked like more of a lie. He wanted to know what was on the other side of that reflection, that sad truth he’d never understood, the reason he couldn’t hold hands with a happy girl, the reason he drank himself out of college and drove his friends away last night, the reason he’d stranded himself here, all alone with this reflection he hated to see. He wanted to swim down into the darkness of the weeds, dig his hands into the cold, black mud, hold tight to the roots and peer into those yellow fish-eyes. The truth would be there, he told himself, reflected back in the darkness.
Chris boosted himself forward off the edge of the dock and slipped through his reflection into the lake, disappearing beneath the surface with a splash.
The ripples radiated out until they were gone, the lake calm once again, a perfect reflection of blue sky and clouds.
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