Room for Reflection

Room for Reflection

Something has fallen from the roof. I hear the slump from the bathroom
window. It is a messy, clumsy sound.

I am on the toilet, reading the thick November issue of Family Circle.
I usually noises that slip into this room - the phone ringing, the boys
fighting, Jonas calling for help in finding his jacket. The bathroom is
my sanctuary.

I'd been reading about Sarah Ferguson. She struggled for years with her
weight until Weight Watchers helped her learn to eat healthily. In her
before pictures, she was a pudgy young woman with a face like mine
looks now - doughy and undisciplined. Now she looks elegant, beautiful
almost.

The walls are mirrored in here. I can see my image repeated hundreds of
times in these mirrors, from every angle. I am surprised anew at each
reflection that gazes back at me. She is a sour, dried-out looking
woman, underwear around her ankles with the magazine spread before
her.

I saw a bathroom like this once in Architectural Digest early in my
marriage and it seemed the height of sophistication to me. Jonas
volunteered to install one for us himself. I thought it was sweet. That
was before I knew well enough to say no. The project went on for
months. When he finished, the mirrors came crashing to the floor one by
one. The shards took days to pick up and weeks later we still found
them hiding between the tiles. We had to pay an atrocious sum to have a
professional redo the room.

When I hear the fall, I am not surprised, remembering the sound of the
glass shattering to the floor. Jonas is cleaning the gutters. I told
him it was a foolish idea, that we should hire a professional. He never
learns.. He climbed up the ladder this morning with rake in hand and
cheerily waved to the boys and me. He looked like a scarecrow from that
distance, so thin the breeze threatened to topple him.

I rise from the bowl and close the magazine, folding down page 87,
covering Sarah's bright eyes. I place the issue on top of the toilet,
rinse my face with cold water and run a comb through my hair. It stops
short at the blunt ends, hitting my collarbone. Long waves used to flow
there, a cushion for the bones underneath. I would toss the mane behind
my shoulders, feeling the comfort of its weight on my back, knowing how
the boys would watch. Jonas says my hair was the first thing he noticed
about me.

Jonas was mid-way through law school when I met him at a party. He was
young and shining. Girls hovered like moths around him, helpless in
front of his smile. That was how I saw him for the first time - circled
by giggling and swaying women, each one hopeful that her own tittering
was the most attractive. Jonas stood out like a firefly amongst them,
aglow from within. I watched him from across the room as he floated in
their midst, his smile incandescent. I thought that by being around
him, some of that brightness would rub onto me. So I too flapped my
wings and tried to absorb the light.

In the beginning Jonas and I were such a pretty portrait -- the future
lawyer and the writer-to-be. After we married and moved into our first
house, he led me by the hand into a small room he'd converted from a
walk-in closet. There sat a mahogany desk with a brand new typewriter,
keys gleaming. Reams of paper were stacked next to the machine, their
innocence at once exciting and terrifying.

I sat down in front of the purring typewriter day after day with a mug
of steaming lemon tea on the desk next to me and tried to write. The
blank page waved to me, as if it were beckoning for brilliance. The
first clicks of the keys were the chimes of the future. But soon they
became like tiny fists knocking against my head. As I read over my
work, I realized that the pages were filled with nothing but ordinary
words forming mediocre sentences. Day after day, I appealed to every
corner of my brain for rescue. Yet the afternoons inevitably ended
without one. I can still taste the cold and bitter tea as it was when I
sipped it hours later, defeated. Each day, I emerged from the office
with an increasingly heavier head, weighted with the knowledge that I
was not a writer.

Then Jonas failed the Bar exam. He conveyed the news to me with a
casualness that at once baffled and angered me.

"It's not a problem, Sher," he insisted," I'll just take it again," he
said, running his fingers through my hair. His complacency made me
grind my teeth.

He found a position in sales at a computer supply company.

The sales job didn't last. Neither did the next one. Soon, the pattern
dug itself into our lives. In the early days I shot barbs of fury at
him, hoping it would spark him to action. He caught them and absorbed
their blow, rendering them ineffective. He couldn't be poisoned. He
would take a hold of my shoulders and massage them, digging deep into
the knots that were housed there.

"Sherry, you worry too much. Everything will work out in the end", he
said in his lazy drawl and my muscles would tighten and I'd pull
away.

Once, when he told me about another failure, I literally slapped the
smile off his face. It was partly, I admit, an experiment to see if it
was possible. I watched my hand meet his skin as if it operated
independently from me. I heard the whack and waited for the sting that
followed. For a moment, Jonas' dark eyes glistened with an intensity
that transformed him into a stranger. I turned my head. When I looked
back only a sad smile remained.

"What are you doing, Sher?," he murmured, and walked away. As I lay in
bed that night I felt a cold breeze whipping through my chest, as if it
were hollow.

The next day I cut my hair.

***

I keep a large stack of magazines in the cabinet under the sink --
Marie Claire, Vanity Fair, Oprah. I have subscriptions to all of them.
When I open the rusty mailbox each day, the flap squeaking in protest,
my eyes probe for a fresh magazine packaged in plastic. When one
arrives, I rip off the covering and crack it open in the driveway. I
walk back to the house reading, the new smell prickling my nostrils.
Jonas doesn't understand it. He just laughs and shakes his head. He's
never read a magazine in his life.

I plunge into these articles with blinders on, trying to shut out the
reminders of what could have been.Yet, sometimes when I turn to a new
piece, the jealousy pricks me again. There was a time I dreamt that
others would be turning the pages of my own articles, eagerly soaking
in my own words. Things didn't turn out that way. The pain used to be
worse, a sharp biting reminder. Over the years the feeling has dulled
to a faint knocking somewhere in the back of my mind.

Jonas has been around a lot lately. The interviews have sputtered out.
He stays at the house and putters about, disassembling my vacuum, the
kitchen chairs, the car, and attempting to put them back together. His
whistling floats through the air, piercing my ears. I speak to him
without looking at his eyes. I can't bear to see the smile that remains
after all these years, immune to our failures. I focus my energies on
the dust bunnies or grab the mop and attack the kitchen floor. As I add
another layer of cleanser to the tiles, so too another layer of
something unnamable hardens inside me.

These days I keep the door to the writing office closed, opening it
only to shove in an old piece of furniture or stack of papers I'll
never look at again. I cast my eyes down when I open the door, avoiding
the reproachful glare of the machine. I allow the dust to fill its
cavity-the waste particles produced by the life I wound up with. The
attention it gets is from the boys who bang away at the keys without
discrimination, confusing the letters, jumbling words.

Now I confront my face in the bathroom mirror. I trace the lines that
have formed around my mouth with my fingers. These lines were not
formed in laughter. I wonder how it is to be married to a woman like
this, why a person would allow their smile to be stolen by another. A
sudden fear grips me as I wonder why he stays.

"Mom!" I hear my youngest boy shout. I realize that it's Jonas who has
fallen. My heart twists itself backwards. I find myself taking the
steps by twos. And then I am outside.

The air smells like crisp leaves and winter. I look around for
Jonas.

"Mommm!" The call reaches me again and suddenly I'm swifter than ever
before. I bound around the house to where my children stand in a
huddle. They part when I arrive.

And there is my Jonas, my poor incapable, sweet Jonas, crumpled in a
heap. He couldn't float after all. My heart threatens to stop. His arm
is twisted backward underneath him unnaturally and his eyes are closed.
His mouth is set in a scowl I've never seen on his face in the thirteen
years we've been married. I am overcome. I fall to my knees, put his
head in my lap. I hear my voice crying, "No, no!" and I know I love
him.