Roar

Guilt.

It was the guilt.

The guilt was, quite literally, eating her alive.

Her skin had become a patchwork quilt of guilt.

This terrified her, but realizing the root of the mysterious skin disease was enough to bring a flicker of hope. She only ever needed to know what was wrong, and then she could fix it. It was what she told her children when there was some concern eating at them. It was the great unknown that fed the fear.

Excited, she pushed the sleeves of her nightgown up her arms and studied her skin. These marks too were fading; the more violent ones were now less red and raging. And as she studied each one she remembered the moment, the defining moment each one had arrived. The business trip to London. The second night in a row to get a babysitter. The school trip to the museum she hadn’t been able to take. Their ten-year wedding anniversary night she’d gotten so drunk she’d vomited on the daffodils in the front garden and ended up sleeping on the bathroom floor. The third no in a row to a friend’s dinner invitation.

All of these bite marks were moments, moments she had felt she wasn’t enough for the people who needed her.

But she knew that wasn’t true. The people who loved her told her so. They told her every day and it was their voices she needed to listen to.

She climbed out of bed, she disconnected the IV from her vein, removed the pulse oximeter from her forefinger. The manic beeping from the machine began. Ignoring it, she calmly took out her bag and started packing.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Annie, the wonderful nurse who had cared for her during her stay.

‘Thank you for all that you’ve done, Annie. I’m sorry to have wasted your time—’ She stopped herself. The guilt again. ‘Actually, I’m not sorry. Thank you. I appreciate your kindness and care, but I have to go now. I’m better.’

‘You can’t leave,’ Annie said gently, at her side.

‘Look.’ The woman held out her arms.

Annie looked at them in surprise. Ran her fingers over the fading bites. She lowered herself to her knees, lifted the hem of the woman’s gown and inspected her legs.

‘How on earth?’

‘I let the guilt get to me,’ the woman said. ‘I let it eat me up. But I won’t any more.’

Or at least, she’d try not to let it. She could do this. She could do it all, because she wanted to and because she had to. Because it was her life, the only one she had, and she was going to live it as best she could, embracing every moment, going to work, being with her family and refusing to apologize to anyone for it, least of all herself.

Annie took in her determination and smiled. ‘So why are you rushing home now?’

The woman stopped and thought about it. She was doing it again.

‘The marks are fading but they’re not gone. If you push it, they may return. I suggest you get back into bed, let yourself get better and then you can go home. Rested.’

Yes, the woman decided. One more night, guilt-free, sleep-filled. And then she would return. Return home. Return to herself. Celebrating everything, guilt-free.

‘X, R, S, C, B, Y, L, R, T …’ she says, calling out the letters on the sign before her.

‘Okay, you can remove your hand now,’ the optician says and so she lowers her hand from her right eye, and looks at him expectantly.

‘Your visual acuity is very good,’ he says.

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It refers to clarity of vision dependent on optical and neural factors; the sharpness of the retinal focus within the eye, the health and functioning of the retina and the sensitivity of the interpretive faculty of the brain.’

‘Harry, I used to babysit you. I caught you dancing in the mirror to Rick Astley, singing into your deodorant bottle, with your shirt off.’

He blinks, a flush appearing on his cheeks. He rephrases: ‘What it means is that you have 20/20 vision. Perfect eyesight.’

She sighs. ‘No, I don’t. I told you that. They’re my eyes. I should know.’

‘Yes,’ he shifts in his chair, the professional side of him disappearing and the nervous young boy in his place. ‘This is what I don’t quite understand. You seem so sure of your ailing eyesight but you’re not experiencing any headaches, sore eyes, no blurred vision, you can read perfectly well. There’s no issue with your distance sight, in fact you read the bottom line of the eye chart, which many people can’t read. I don’t understand where your difficulty lies.’

She throws him the same look she had thrown him when she’d found him with his head hanging outside the bathroom window, sneaking a cigarette. He’d shouted to her that his stomach was upset, but she’d used a coin to unlock the door from the outside. If he didn’t have an upset stomach before, he had one after. She had been a terrifying babysitter. Despite the fact they were both twenty years older now, her intimidating stare held the same power over him.

He tries to remember he is a grown man now, married, two children. Holiday home in Portugal. Mortgage half-paid. She can’t hurt him any more. He straightens his spine.

She breathes in and out. Counts to three silently. He’s qualified, an academic, but clearly he’s still the stupid teenager whom she caught jerking off into a sock.

‘It started happening a few weeks ago,’ she explains.

‘What did?’

‘The problem with my feet.’

He stares at her blankly. ‘You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am. What am I here for?’

‘Your eyes.’

‘My eyes,’ she snaps.

The grown-up Harry, the husband and father is gone. He’s back to the humiliated teen. The sock memory.

‘I can’t quite pinpoint it, but I would say it happened about three weeks ago. I woke up the morning after my birthday party and I felt wretched. I could barely recognize myself but I put that down to the tequila slammers, you see, so I let another few days go by before I realized it wasn’t just a hangover, there really was something wrong.’

‘And what exactly is wrong?’

‘They are seeing me wrong.’

He swallows. ‘Your eyes are seeing you wrong?’

‘They aren’t seeing me as they should. They’re showing me a different version of me. It’s the wrong version. It’s not me. There’s something wrong with them. Perhaps it’s not the vision, perhaps I need an X-ray or an MRI. Perhaps it’s not the lens – what if it’s the pupil or the iris or … another part.’

‘Let me get this straight …’ He leans forward, elbows on his knees, long thighs, long arms and fingers, quite attractive really for someone who was such a little pain in the ass. There’s the trace of a smile on his lips and this maddens her. She can see he’s trying not to laugh. She shouldn’t have come here.

‘You’re here because you look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself differently?’

‘Yes,’ she says calmly. ‘My eyes are not showing me how I feel. Therefore the message that the eye is sending to me is wrong. Do you understand? I look different, not how I feel at all. I got a bit of a fright at the sight, actually.’ She hears the tremble in her voice, so does he, and his smile quickly fades. He softens, looks a bit concerned. She thinks of him cosying up to her with buttered popcorn and monkey fleece pyjamas when he woke up from a bad dream. He wasn’t always a shit.

‘Don’t you think that there might be another explanation?’ His voice is gentle.

She thinks hard, he’s trying to tell her something. He’s being gentle about it and then suddenly – bam – it’s all so clear. What an idiot she’s been! She throws her head back and laughs.

‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s so obvious! It’s not my eyes that are the problem at all.’

He seems relieved that she’s not going to fall to pieces on his chair, in his office. He sits up and smiles.

She claps her hands gleefully and stands. ‘Thank you so much for your time, Harry, you’ve been a fantastic help.’

He stands too, awkwardly. ‘Have I? I’m glad. You know, I won’t charge for this session.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she reaches for her purse. ‘I’ve taken plenty of money from you – or your family at least – over the years, and both of us know I wasn’t worth it.’ She laughs, so happy to have this resolved. So pleased it’s not an eye problem.

He takes the money awkwardly. She waves away the receipt.

‘So … what are you going to do, may I ask?’

‘Well, if it’s not my eyes, Harry, what else could it be?’ she says. ‘I’m going to get the mirror fixed of course!’

The mirror man, Laurence, stands before the full-length mirror in her bedroom, scratching his head.

‘You want me to do what?’

‘Fix it, please.’

Silence.

‘That is what you do, isn’t it? According to the website, you’re an artisan glass and mirror company.’

‘Well yes, I mainly design custom pieces. But we also do mirror and glass installations and replacements, repair work to the frames, chips in the glass, that kind of thing.’

‘Perfect.’

He still looks confused. He’d taken a quick sweeping look at her bedroom as he entered, she’s not sure if he noticed that only one person sleeps here, just her, no husband, not any more. Apparently they’re almost through the worst of it; her separated friends tell her the light is at the end of the tunnel. She certainly hopes so, she’s nearing the end of her tether and thinking her eyes are a problem isn’t helping things.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asks.

‘The problem is, I don’t see a problem with this mirror.’

She laughs. ‘Do I pay for that diagnosis?’

He smiles. He has dimples. She suddenly wants to fix her hair. She wishes she’d paid more attention to her appearance before he arrived.

‘Well there is a problem, trust me. Can you replace the glass? I’d like to keep the frame. It was my mother’s.’ She smiles, a bigger than she’d intended; his smile is contagious. She chews the inside of her cheek to stop herself, but it doesn’t work. His just grows. His eyes start to wander over her, goosebumps rise on her skin.

‘Is it cracked?’ He drags his gaze away from her and studies the mirror, running his hands over the finish. She can’t stop watching him.

‘No. It’s not. But it’s broken.’

‘How is it broken?’ He frowns, scratching his head again.

And so she tells him how she went to the optician but there seems to be no problem with her eyes; so the logical conclusion both she and the optician came to was that the mirror must be broken.

He stares at her, curious; but gently so, not in a judgemental way.

‘Maybe you’ve heard of this problem before?’ she asks.

He goes to say something, then stops himself. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘It’s a common problem.’

‘Oh good,’ she says, relieved. ‘If it wasn’t the mirror, I wasn’t sure who to go to next.’

‘Is this the only mirror you use?’ he asks.

‘Um …’ It seems a strange sort of question. She’s never given it any thought before. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ She has been avoiding mirrors for a while. Since everything in her life went to shit, she couldn’t be bothered to look at herself. It was only when she started looking again that she noticed the problem.

He nods. Quick look around her bedroom again. Perhaps he sees now that only one person sleeps in it. Is it that obvious? She wants it to be obvious.

‘I’ll have to take it with me, back to the studio. I’ll have to take out this pane, cut one that will fit just right. And I could freshen up the frame for you too, bring life back to it.’

She’s hesitant to let it go.

‘I’ll keep it safe, don’t worry. I know it’s important to you.’

The woman sees her mother posing in front of it. Pictures herself as a little girl, sitting on the floor beside her, watching her get ready to go out, wishing she could go with her too, thinking her mother is some exotic creature that she will never resemble. She smells her mother’s perfume, the one she saves for her special nights out.

Twirl, Mummy.

And she would. She always did. Swirling pleats. Billowing skirts. Revealing side splits.

She glances in the mirror again. She doesn’t see the little girl. She wasn’t expecting to see her, was she? She sees a version of herself that she doesn’t like. Older. She looks away. She’s not herself. Nope. This mirror has to go.

‘I could use another mirror, I suppose …’

‘No, don’t do that,’ he says. ‘This is the one you want.’ He rubs the frame lovingly, delicately. ‘I’ll make this perfect for you.’

She stifles a school-girlish giggle. ‘Thank you.’

And before she closes the front door behind him he says, ‘Promise me you won’t look in any other mirrors until this one is ready?’

‘I promise,’ she nods. When she closes the door her heart is pounding.

He rings the next day to tell her that he’d like her to come to his studio to pick out a piece of glass. She wonders if it is necessary. She wonders if he is just trying to see her again, hoping that’s the case.

‘Aren’t they all the same?’ she asks.

‘The same?’ he cries in mock outrage. ‘We have plane mirrors, spherical mirrors, two-way and one-way mirrors. I don’t want to decide until I see what it is you like.’

She pulls up to his business address in her car the following day. She has spent more time on her appearance. She used the bathroom mirror, it seemed a little off too but certainly closer to the version of herself that she was used to, as she applied make-up, feeling giddy, and also like an idiot for getting ahead of herself.

She expected a dirty warehouse or a retail outlet, somewhere cold with hard surfaces, soulless, but it’s not what she finds. Down a pretty country lane, she travels to a converted barn set off from a thatched cottage. The inside looks like something from a design magazine; a studio filled with the most stunning mirrors she has ever seen.

‘I use reclaimed wood for the frames,’ he tells her, bringing her on a tour around the studio, lined with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. ‘This is the most recent. I’m almost finished, the wood is from a tree root I found while out gathering,’ he explains, pointing to the woodland stretching out for acres beyond the barn. ‘It doesn’t have to be grandiose wood.’ He points at a bathroom mirror: ‘That was made from reclaimed pallet wood.’

She runs her hands along all of the frames, impressed by his artistry, feeling a little embarrassed that she contacted a man with such a gift to fix a pane.

He developed the barn himself, he says, explaining about windows and light rebounding. She has no idea what exactly he means but it sounds beautiful. And if ever there was a man made for spending his days working with mirrors, it’s him. She feels something when she looks at him, something she hasn’t felt for a very long time, a lifetime ago, when she was another person. The person she doesn’t look like any more.

He comes close to her, places his hands on her two arms and turns her around. The personal touch surprises her.

‘Your mirror is over there,’ he says, pointing.

She sees her mirror in the corner of the room. He has done exactly what he said he’d do, he brought it back to life. It has been sanded and varnished and she can see it as it was, in her parents’ bedroom, by the wardrobe, Daddy’s shoes lined up beside it, Mummy’s hair curlers plugged into the wall on the ground.

She walks over to it and stands before it, seeing his reflection as he stands behind her. She looks at her reflection. She takes herself in, examines herself.

‘You fixed it already,’ she says with a smile. She’s back. It’s her again. She looks rejuvenated, as though she’s had a facial or invested in a new expensive moisturizer, which she hasn’t. It was the mirror all along, she knew it. ‘I thought I was here to choose a pane, you tricked me!’ she laughs.

‘You’re happy?’ he asks, his eyes sparkling as the light of dozens of mirrors bounce light around the room and make him look like he’s glowing.

‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ she says, examining it again.

She sees a red dot on the glass and reaches out to touch it. Her hand hits the pane, no dot to be felt. Confused, she spins around to look at him in the flesh. ‘What kind of mirror did you use?’

‘Look at it again,’ he says, a strange look on his face.

It feels like a trick. She slowly turns and faces the mirror again. Examines the frame, the glass, everything but her face really, because he’s behind her and she’s self-conscious and fluttering inside. The red dot is still on the glass and she wonders if it’s a test, though she has already reached out to touch it and it’s not physically there.

‘Have you ever heard of a thing called simultaneous contrast?’

She shakes her head.

‘It’s a painting term.’

‘You paint, too?’

‘Just as a hobby. It’s a term for when certain colours look different to our eye when placed next to each other. The colours aren’t altered, it’s just our perception.’

He allows this to sink in.

‘Turn around and look at yourself again,’ he says gently.

She slowly turns around and really takes herself in this time. Her eyes scan over her older face, her fuller cheeks, the wrinkles around her eyes, her fuller stomach. She pulls her blouse away from her waist self-consciously and as she’s doing so she sees the red dot again. Instead of reaching out to the glass, she looks down at her body and finds the sticker on her arm. ‘How did that get there?’ she asks, peeling it off.

He’s grinning.

‘You stuck it there,’ she says, remembering her surprise at his touch when he spun her around. He’d used that opportunity to place the red sticker on her arm.

‘The mirror test. All of us mirror artists do it,’ he says, joking.

‘The first time I saw the sticker, I thought it was on the mirror,’ she says, figuring his test out. ‘The second time I realized it was on me.’

He nods.

‘It’s not the mirror, it’s me,’ she repeats, and the message hits home. ‘It wasn’t the mirror that was broken, it was me all this time.’

He nods again. ‘Though I wouldn’t say you were broken. It’s all about perception. I didn’t want to touch the mirror. It’s perfect as it is.’

She turns around and faces the mirror. Studies her face, her body. She’s older. She’s aged more this year than she feels she has in five years, but this is her now. She’s changing, she’s ageing, more beautiful in some ways, other ways it’s harder to take.

‘Well?’ he asks. ‘You still want to replace it?’

‘No. It’s perfect, thank you,’ she says.

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