Tributary--Paul Smith

The Tributary

 

 

My mirror doesn’t like what it sees. 

I can tell.  Neither do I.  We both see jowls, creases, features that belong on a meandering river.  I smile.  It takes a second or two as I get used to my face.  Yes, it’s worn out, but I’m comfortable with how it got that way.  It is the result of geologic weathering, like what happened to the Grand Canyon.  Its surface got deepened by a constant wearing down by outside forces.  The mirror points them out.  My smile is erosion control, environmental remediation, a lie.  If I go back a second in time, my initial look of surprise will return, surprise that hopefulness has given way to mask of put-on cheeriness.  I can deal with this, though.  I have after-shave.  

The mirror responds to that, too.  A bigger smile, a toothy grin of conspiracy.  But then, the mirror gets cloudy.  The mirror speaks.

“Lonely,” it says.

Its smile broadens wider than the Grand Canyon, wider than Moon River.  That is my smile lying to the mirror.

“Why can’t you accept that?” I say.

I navigate the day.  Work is a relief.  Some people say work is a waste of one’s life.  I feel the other way.  Work is an outlet for aggression.  If you are thwarted, work gives an outlet to the pent-up pressures, the geologic stresses that build up inside.  Work has a calming effect.  Eight or ten hours of it are enough to relieve tension and leave you spent enough to get relaxed and face the mirror again.

I face the mirror again at night, brushing my teeth.

“Lonely,” it says.

It looks me right in the eye.  Am I lonely?  Of course, but isn’t everyone.  This is my mirror.  My mirror is lonely.  Then I figure it out.

My mirror is lonely, not me.  It needs someone like it.  It needs another mirror.

I shop for a mirror.  Men don’t like mirrors.  Men are ugly.  In spite of myself, I have to buy a mirror to keep my ‘regular’ mirror happy, though.  I have to keep my ‘other’ mirror happy and content so it would stop looking at me that way.  I make a wise purchase of a mirror you hang on a wall.  I hang it on the shower door the night I brought it home.  Then I stand back.  My bathroom looks weird.  Two mirrors facing each other.  Nobody does stuff like this, not other men, other women, geologists, nobody.  But my mirror had been nagging me.  I have to make it stop.

The next day there are two mirrors watching me, one from in front, one from behind.  I feel surrounded.  I do not feel lonely.  I have plenty of company here in the bathroom.  Not only can I see my face and how I was doing shaving-wise, I can see my back for the first time, all the splotchy things on my upper shoulders.   But the mirrors are getting palsy-walsy, comparing notes about me, now being able to see both sides of me.

“Impostor,” I hear.  I spin around and see myself in the mirror hung on my shower stall.  It is his voice.  What is he talking about?  It couldn’t be me.  I am not an impostor.  I do not pretend to be anyone other than me.  I turn around to face my ‘other’ mirror, the one above my sink.  It gives me that look of ‘are you done shaving yet?’  It wants me to be done shaving so I would leave the bathroom and it could be alone with the other mirror.  That way they could talk about me.

I go to work.  Work is less fulfilling than a day ago.  I become more aware of other people, other people who weren’t pleased with me.  I supervise others.  People don’t like supervision.  People don’t like to be watched.  If I tell one of my foremen to make sure his laborers wear safety glasses and keep on their hard hats, he’ll resent that.  I always knew that.  But now, being watched by my mirrors, I can see how much my foremen resent me.  I come home, exhausted by their scrutiny, throw myself on the couch, afraid to go to the bathroom.  When I do, I do it with the lights off, relieving myself, washing my face, afraid to turn the lights on.  When I do, I see myself laugh.  I laugh hysterically so that the mirrors would see I didn’t take them seriously.  And it works!  They shut up.  I brush my teeth and go to bed.

As I go to sleep, I hear whispering.

When I get up both mirrors stand still and just watch me.  They give me the silent treatment.  Whenever there are three, one is always the odd man out.  I was the odd man out.  They were waiting for me to leave so they could talk about me.  I shave in a hurry, wash, eager to give them what they want.  On the way to work, though, I reconsider.  I had made them happy by placing them together.  Why can’t I be happy for their happiness?  Work is a blessing.  I speak kindly to my foremen, encouraging them to work safely and make sure everyone had on their personal protection devices so their limbs would not be cut off, or severed or damaged.  They all agree heartily.  Then I saw them whispering.  I come home recharged.

But I am not ready for what I find.

I find a conspiracy.  In my absence the mirrors had formed a union, a syndicate.  They have voting rights.  I don’t.  They had made the decision to remove me.

“Exile,” they both say.  I am to no longer shave or brush my teeth or even shower in their presence.  No reason is given for this, because as my shower-hung mirror states, ‘No reason is required.  It is simply our will.’  How can you reason with no reason?  You can’t.  How do you deal with rights that have been confiscated?  We look at ourselves from infancy and see nothing wrong with us.  All of a sudden, we look closer, and there are flaws.  All we have done has flaws.  I was voted into gulag.  But I do not want gulag.  I could have accepted it.

But that’s not what I want.  So the next day I put both mirrors in a truck and take them to work.  They put up a fuss, but I tell them to stay still, which they do.  I tell my foreman about my problem, to which he says nothing and just stares at me.  I explain that the mirrors could be just a reflection of my own problems.   He says, “It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

He was right.  I always thought about myself first.  Isn’t that how we are made?  Who else is there to consider?  I guess I could have thought of my mirrors first, but they were resentful.  So I put on my thinking cap and thought of all that had just recently happened.

Then it came to me.

When I go home, I put my mirrors back and look closely at them.  Both have a dull glare.  What had once been critical and shiny was now nearly opaque.  It strikes me.  It is they who were lonely, lonely together.  They are simply tired of seeing me.  My foreman is wrong.  It is partly about me.

I go out to Route 66 and put my foot on the gas, put the pedal to the metal-Joplin, Missouri, St. Louie, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Winslow, whoa slow down  - Grand Canyon, where my mirrors can see a real canyon, a purple mountain cavity.  I set them down by the Colorado River as the sun sets.  The magnificent trench stands still in the fading light, stars crystallize overhead and night falls.  Climbing out of the weathered valley, I see two glints of satisfaction as my mirrors contemplate not a replica, but the grandeur of God’s creation, a panorama big enough for them to revel in forever.  Leaving them behind, I take my washed out face back home on Route 66.

 

BIO NOTE

Paul Smith lives near Chicago with his wife Flavia.  He writes fiction & poetry and is a proud member of the Rockford Writers' Guild.  He likes walking along the canal, public transportation & Milwaukee Avenue.