The Old Mirror – a short story
She studied her face in the mirror. She was tired and the annual Christmas party had been just the same as it always was. The usual drunken colleagues making fools of themselves and she’d noticed some of her female co-workers even welcoming the advances of men they wouldn’t give the time of day to in the course of a weeks work.
Every year, it was the same – and the same embarrassed faces in the office on the following Monday morning. And, every year, she vowed to herself that this would be the last of the Scrumptious Chocolate Factory Christmas parties she would go to. Christmas though only comes around once a year, and while it comes around quicker with every passing year, it doesn’t come around quite quickly enough for her to remember the vow she’d made, yet again, the previous year.
Wiping off the last traces of her make up with the Neutrogena cleansing towelette, she wryly observed that the face in the mirror fell a long way short of that of the woman portrayed on the box. Time, she thought. How cruel it is. When had her smile lines become so pronounced? She allowed herself a little smile at the irony of this as, for some time now, she hadn’t been doing a lot of smiling. The worry lines on her forehead had far more of a right to be there and there they were.
Ok, he’d been a total bastard, both emotionally violent and, sometimes physically too but it had taken her completely by surprise that, when she’d finally told him to fuck off, he had. That was five years ago. Not a word since and she still missed him in odd little ways. She’d often heard said in humour, ‘Women, can’t live with them – can’t live without them.’ It was something she’d heard Pat say to his drinking buddies, regularly when she told him it was maybe time to go home. While he said it in a jokey fashion, she knew the chances were that this was not going to be a good post-pub night. Maybe the same could be said for men. Can’t live with ’em etc.
There was a vertical crease down her forehead, bisecting the worry lines. That was new, or maybe she just hadn’t taken a good enough look in a while. She remembered a far less troubled face in the mirror when it was new. When she and Pat were also new. It was an odd Christmas present but he had also written a poem that had touched her. The gist of the poem was that he wanted to show her the beautiful woman he saw, whenever he looked at her. He had her. Once he did though, she was never sure that he wanted her. He never wrote her another poem – or told her she was beautiful after a while.
Was this the same face that had woken up beside a man she barely knew, the morning after the Christmas party a few months after her husband’s departure? On the Monday after, she couldn’t tell who was more embarrassed, the maintenance man or herself, though she wondered how she’d never noticed his wedding ring before. She had vowed – and remembered too – that two glasses of wine was all she’d allow herself at future work parties. She’d adhered to that one and had been well able to ward off any drunken Romeo, and had not had to suffer the Monday-after ‘bangover’ humiliation thereafter.
Her eyes looked tired and sad. She wondered if her appearance had changed so drastically in the last year. She hadn’t noticed anything different, week by week or month by month. Maybe she just hadn’t been paying as much attention to the mirror. She wondered too if it was her refusal to take anything after the second glass of wine….. no, it couldn’t be that because she hadn’t since that other Christmas and yet, in all the years since, there had been quite a few unwelcome advances. This year, not one.
She made two new vows that night while in front of the mirror. Come January, she’d start looking for a new job. Seventeen years in the same place was long enough. She would also bin this mirror. This mirror that looked at her so pitifully and go out and buy a new one. One with a little optimism built in.