The Looking Glass

Where had she gone? And suddenly, another thought emerged from the endless stream of agonizing recollections the man fought to stifle: how had he, a man from Tennessee, of good stock and even better morals, become the raving white lunatic of mulletdom? He was the ignorant, stupid man from the hills, from the Rust Bucket—a man born and bred to own five old Buicks, a broken John Deere, and be married to that familiar, crooked face down the road.

He had to find a mirror. There, across the street. But what to do with the kids? Again, anger welled up inside him, threatening to bulldoze what was left of a hedge of wisdom filtering the implementation of his thoughts. Curse her, he thought. But he did more than that. He allowed the storm to reach gale force through his lips, straight to his children’s ears. He was like a one-armed, one-eyed deaf person landing a jumbo jet on a forty-foot runway. Only in his position, the passengers weren’t just anybody—they were his own four young children. His own flesh and blood would suffer from this verbal crash-landing. He needed a mirror!

“Ok kids, we’re crossing the road—wait—hold on!” he shouted as he pulled back on Missy’s tiny fingers. The rest of his small, youthful entourage followed suit, quickly returning to the curb as the city traffic hurtled back and forth. Nearby sat a state capitol police vehicle, and the man redoubled his efforts to dam the forthcoming flood of profanity.

He couldn’t concentrate. Everything seemed to be a symbol of something he was and at the same time was not, but perhaps even more so, what stuck out in the scenery reminded him of his estranged wife. The late afternoon rush-hour depicted the pace of his mind at that moment. Bitter, convoluted, impatient, but altogether mindless, and more importantly, fruitless. Finally, the light turned. The walk signal flashed momentarily, and he pulled himself together well enough to guide what constituted his world to the opposing street corner.

“What do you think?!” he shouted to Matthew, the oldest.

“Dad,” he murmured, struggling to keep back tears, “she’ll be back soon—it’ll be ok.”

But everything wouldn’t be ok, he thought. Why did he just ask his young son what he thought of his precarious position in the family anyway? And where was that mirror? He needed to see what he really looked like—how the rest of the world saw him. Sherry had always made that irritating comment, and now it was time to really see it.

There, midway down the block, was a convenience store. Convenience indeed. He prodded the little group along, still holding Missy’s hand, and reached the door. Opening it roughly, he met a short, small-framed balding who awkwardly made eye-contact with him. The bespectacled fellow seemed surprised by the force of the abrupt entrance—especially as it included an unfortunate group of youngsters at the precipice of tears.

“Here, ya’ll get whatever you want,” he said in a muffled, defeated tone, handing Matthew a sweaty roll of money. Moving towards the restroom, he couldn’t help but notice what appeared to be a small, furry object scurry towards the ‘Employees Only’ Door. A rat. It had to be. Why did everything remind him of himself? He opened the bathroom door gingerly, absent-mindedly taking care not to touch the filthy handle, and shut it quickly. There it was at last: a mirror—the device long ago constructed to feed the insatiable appetite of visual self-acceptance. But it also has good uses, he thought, slowly feeling the edginess beginning to wear off.

For what seemed like twenty minutes, he starred at a man he did not know—or perhaps, wished he did not know. It was a picture of himself, complete with the scar near his temple from a childhood car accident, and even the rust on the mirror added some effect to the grim spectacle before him. His eyes were worn, one eye-lid was closed more than the other, and wrinkles had begun to form in all the usual spots around the face, consistent with his middle age. But there was more. His mouth was slightly droopy, as an older man might bear, with a sort of entrenched, cynical frown which gave away underlying emotions he’d felt for years. He gazed upward. His eyebrows, too, were furrowed. Not because he was still upset, but because they were always furrowed, even when he laughed or smiled. His wife had poked fun at this very attribute, and, though he deeply resented the unrelenting ant-bites of criticism, he had long ago decided to bury his dislikes and discomforts about life, permanently.

But who was he, really, to consider himself to be truly miserable? He might as well be Bill Gates complaining that not enough people were buying his software. But then again, that pesky cure-all of relativism somehow justified his frustration, and magnified it. His mind was a seesaw, for he knew he shouldn’t feel that way, either, because self-justified depression had only shoved him further down the mental black hole of despair.

It was at this point that he remembered his children—with the undisclosed amount of cash he had given to them. Well, he didn’t care really. Much. For his performance outside—in front of the capital and half a dozen hidden cameras, listening devices and capitol police—he could stand to lose it.

Taking one last weary glance at himself in the mirror, he washed and dried his hands, and turned to the door. Without grasping the handle, he nudged it open with his wrist. Bathroom handles were such dirty, slimy things.

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Written last year, I've touched-up this short piece a bit before posting it here. It is a sketch of a climactic event in the life of a man born in an underprivileged, mountain-region of Tennessee whose life appeared to be already mapped-out for him: poor, dysfunctional and forgotten about by society's elite. The story will be a study of a forgotten "class" in America, the predominantly white and rural populations who get little to no media attention with respect to their plight. I intend to contrast it with the often-discussed and widely-known problems in America's urban centers.

The short, balding bespectacled man will probably be an important figure the main character doesn't know yet.