The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

  After both soldiers were obliterated for the fifteenth time, Brent exited the game and switched the monitor to standby.

  “Almost time for the viewing,” he said. “Duty calls.”

  “I’d rather keep playing than sit and watch that clone for four hours. I can totally see how someone could get hooked on this stuff,” Jeremiah said. He took off his headset and combed his fingers through his hair. He’d been letting it grow, along with his beard, for the past few weeks and it was long enough now to snag a bit in the back.

  “I know, right? Maybe now you’ll go easier on Parker when you get home.”

  At the mention of his son, a wave of regret washed over Jeremiah. Parker had been on his mind during the entire game. Part of him had picked up that controller in a futile effort to feel closer to him, but somehow, he felt more removed from him than ever. Why, just once, couldn’t he have thought to join Parker in one of his games? Why had he let it become a wedge between them?

  “Hell, I’ll probably start pestering him to let me play,” Jeremiah said sullenly. “You want to make some dinner before this thing turns on? I’ve been wanting to try lasagna.”

  “This is something I need to see,” Brent said. “All this time I thought your specialty was toast.”

  “I’m branching out,” Jeremiah told him. “You’re rubbing off on me. Besides, I have so little to do around here that eating has taken on a whole new meaning. I like my food these days.”

  Brent followed him into the kitchen and went into the fridge to get them some beers while they worked on dinner. Jeremiah didn’t know when, exactly, but they’d quietly begun opening their first even before the viewing started.

  “Hey, what’s with all the light beer?” Brent asked. “Where’s the good stuff? You drinking my beers on me?”

  “No, they’re in there. Just look. While you’re at it, get me the cheese, too.”

  “I am looking. It’s not here. The only beer in here is this crap.” Brent handed a package to Jeremiah and, with a grim expression, opened a can of light beer.

  “This is fat-free mozzarella,” Jeremiah said, tossing the package aside. “Is there anything else in there? What the hell is fat-free cheese even made from, anyway? I thought cheese was fat.”

  “That’s it for the cheese. What gives, porky? You on a diet or something?”

  “Not that I know of,” Jeremiah said, and stuck his head in the fridge. “What the hell? What happened to all my food?”

  There was no half-and-half, a piece of chocolate cake saved from yesterday was gone and the milk had been replaced with a carton of something that looked like it had been used to clean a paintbrush. There were more fruits and vegetables than an average horse could eat in a week. He checked the freezer. Ice cream had been replaced with frozen fruit bars and an entire stack of frozen pizzas had simply disappeared.

  “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “Something’s gone crazy around here. I have this thing programmed to order my food in a very particular way. None of this fat-free, diet garbage is on my list. That’s for sure.”

  “That’s weird,” Brent said. “Maybe a malfunction or something?”

  “That’s quite a malfunction, I’d say.” Jeremiah went to the old-fashioned telephone and picked it up for the first time in more than a month.

  A cheery female voice greeted him as soon as the receiver was at his ear.

  “Good evening, Mr. Adams,” she said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Yes, h-hello,” he stammered, still feeling somewhat like he was calling room service in an overpriced hotel. “I wonder if you could tell me what’s happened to all the food in my refrigerator. It seems to have been stolen and replaced with an assortment of inedible things. Fat-free milk, for example. And fruit.”

  “That was an order from Dr. Pike, Mr. Adams. He sent it down this afternoon. Is there a problem?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “The problem is I won’t eat any of this stuff. The problem is I am going to starve to death in here. I’m no scientist, but I think that might be bad for this experiment.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll need to speak to Dr. Pike about that, Mr. Adams. His order was very specific and I’m afraid I can’t override it without express permission. If the food isn’t to your liking, a new shopping list has been preprogrammed into the refrigerator. There are over one hundred and fifty items within the allowable parameters. Or I have a list of permissible items I can have sent to you right away, if you prefer.”

  “That list wouldn’t happen to include any normal cheese, by any chance. Maybe a variety that is actually made from cheese? I’m trying to make lasagna.”

  “There are several fat-free varieties of cheese.”

  “Is there any decent beer on your list?”

  “There are several selections of low-calorie beer, too. Should I read the menu?”

  “No,” he said. “Never mind. Thanks.” He hung up the receiver and turned to Brent. “It would appear I’ve been put on a diet,” he said.

  “And me, too, it seems. This stuff is like dishwater.” Brent poured the contents of the beer can down the sink. “There’s some ham in there. I’ll make us a sandwich. But I’m afraid the bulky rolls are gone. And there’s no mayonnaise, either.”

  “Whatever,” Jeremiah said. “I’ll get Pike over here. I’ll straighten this out.”

  They returned to the living room, set the food on the table in front of them and sat down just as the monitor switched on. Jeremiah was alarmed to see the clone entering his mother’s room at the assisted living home. He hadn’t expected that. He visited her every Tuesday after work, but never on a Friday.

  “Hi, Mom,” the clone said. Jeremiah felt a little sting on hearing that word come out of the clone’s mouth.

  His mother was sitting on the little stool in front of her mirror, brushing her hair in careful, smooth strokes. Her face was powdered and she was wearing a green dress with a silver brooch at the collar, in the shape of a star. She turned when she heard the clone come in and looked at him strangely for a long moment. So strangely, in fact, that for just an instant Jeremiah entertained the thought that she knew she was looking at an imposter. There was such a sense of confusion in her eyes and she scrutinized him silently.

  “You’re late,” she said at last, and turned back to her own reflection. Jeremiah breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want his mother dragged into any of this. “I can’t seem to fasten this damn thing. If you’ll just help me, I’ll be ready to go in two shakes.”

  The clone walked over to her and took an ornately carved wooden barrette from her shaky hand. He said nothing as he gathered her auburn hair into a long ponytail, smoothing the sides of her head to catch the loose strands, and fastened it behind her neck.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him without expression. “Now if I could just find my bag. I can never seem to find that thing.” She shifted her gaze toward the doorway and then back at the clone. “You know,” she said in a whisper, “I think they hide it on me. I really do. I think they’re playing tricks on me.”

  “Who’s hiding it? No one is hiding anything on you,” the clone said.

  She stood up and walked to her closet, shifting the rows of blouses and dresses in a flurry until she got thoroughly flustered.

  “And someone has stolen my rabbit fur coat,” she said.

  “Rabbit fur?” the clone asked, confused. “Mom, you got rid of that coat thirty years ago. Don’t you remember?”

  Jeremiah remembered. She had been given the coat some years before, a gift from one of many admirers in her younger days. She loved it at first, and wore it everywhere, always commenting on how warm it was and how it was no wonder rabbits could stay outdoors all winter. She used to invite total strangers to run their hands over it. He didn’t know when, exactly, she had a change of heart about it, but knowing her, it
likely involved a wild rabbit spied outside the kitchen window. When he was sixteen, she made a very big deal about needing some sort of atonement for the transgression of owning a coat made from another creature’s skin. She included Jeremiah in that endeavor, too, likely seeing an opportunity to instill something noble in her son.

  She spent a great deal of time deciding how best to get rid of the now-offensive garment. In typical fashion, she wanted something symbolic and meaningful. At first, she looked into donating it to a homeless shelter, but quickly decided it wouldn’t do to simply pass the sin on to some other poor, unsuspecting soul. She spoke briefly to animal rights’ organizations, but they were too quick to chastise her for having the thing in the first place. Finally, she found a hippie priest woman or something, who presided over a complicated ritual that involved burning and burying the coat in an effort to return it to some animal spirit realm. He could still remember the smell and the oily black smoke rising up from the backyard. There was also chanting involved, he seemed to recall. Afterward, she wrote a sizable check to a local animal shelter and began leaving carrot sticks out in the garden in neat little piles—something she still did to this very day, even at the assisted living home.

  On the monitor, his mother stopped and turned to look at the clone. Something in her expression looked lost for a minute, as though she might be remembering the exact same story, and then her lips straightened with a firm resolution.

  “I know that,” she said, and then repeated it as though to convince herself. “I know that.”

  “Why do you need a coat, anyway?” the clone asked, an uneasy smile curling the corners of his mouth.

  “Well, I can’t very well go to the party without a coat,” she said. “It’s the middle of winter.”

  “First of all, it’s April, Mom,” the clone said. “And what party? There isn’t a party.”

  “Of course there’s a party. There’s always a party on Christmas Eve. Don’t be silly.”

  “It’s April,” the clone told her again, quietly this time. “It’s not Christmas Eve, Mom.”

  In the lab, Jeremiah put a hand to his forehead and said nothing. Brent shot him a concerned glance and then turned his attention back to the monitor.

  “It’s April?” his mother asked. “It’s not. Are you sure it’s April?”

  “I’m sure,” the clone told her. “Why don’t you come and sit down for a while, Mom. Or maybe we could go to the dining room and get something to eat. Have you had dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry.” Her voice was hushed, and she avoided looking at the clone as she crossed the room and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. “I think I’ll just get some sleep. I’d like to be alone. I want to get out of this dress.”

  Jeremiah watched the clone and tried to compel him to do something other than stand there with a useless, blank look on his face. Go over there, he thought. Put a hand on her. Hug her or something!

  But the clone remained where he was, his face cycling through several expressions in quick succession, settling at last on something that looked like defeat. Finally, he looked down at the floor and backed out of the room without a word. Just before he closed the door, Jeremiah could hear his mother say something else about Christmas Eve. Reluctantly, he realized that he would have reacted exactly as his clone had if he had been there himself. It was easy to judge from outside, but he knew that he would have stood there just like his double had done, looking at his shoes, clueless and utterly shaken. As if to demonstrate the point, Jeremiah closed his eyes and turned his head away from the monitor, without even realizing he’d done it.

  When he looked again, the clone was in the hallway and the camera angle had shifted. He looked as though he weren’t certain where to go and Jeremiah could feel his distress in the pit of his own stomach. He’d known for some time that dementia was likely, but he’d never seen his mother like this before. When had it gotten this bad?

  After a moment, the clone was approached by Nichelle, the busty, plain-speaking head nurse with skin the color of bittersweet chocolate. He was never sure how she’d greet him when he came to visit: sometimes with a wide grin and a story about something funny that his mother had said, and sometimes with an exasperated sigh and a stern shake of the head. Today it was the latter, but it was mixed with a shadow of concern.

  “Mr. Adams,” she said. “Patricia’s episodes are getting worse. Do you know she asked me to alter her wedding dress today?” She didn’t even own a wedding dress, Jeremiah thought. “And she practically accosted poor Dave the orderly this morning because she insisted he was her brother and he was very dangerous. And she keeps asking the doctors to drive her to the airport. I’m afraid Administration needs to see you before you leave.”

  Watching, Jeremiah said out loud that someone ought to check her medication. This had happened before, he told Brent, and all they had to do was increase one of her pills to three times a day. After a few days, she was back to her old self.

  “Have they checked her medications?” the clone asked. “Maybe she just needs her meds tweaked or something. That helped before.” Jeremiah nodded his head and looked at Brent as if to say, See? I told you.

  “The doctors have checked her over,” Nichelle told the clone, her face softening around the edges. “You can see for yourself what this is. It isn’t a problem with her meds, Mr. Adams. This is her mind. We need to talk about a more suitable place for her. Come with me to the office. They’re expecting you.”

  “Where would she go?” the clone asked as he followed her down another hallway behind the reception area. “She’s happy here. She has friends.”

  “There are options. Good places with the right people. You’ll see.” Nichelle stopped momentarily and turned to look at him. “This is for her own good, Mr. Adams,” she said. “We all want what’s best for her.”

  The clone looked down at the floor again. In the lab, Jeremiah buried his face in his hands.

  “I know,” the clone said at last. The exact same words echoed in his own head. He knew.

  Nichelle put a hand on the clone’s shoulder and gave it a light pat, exactly the gesture that Jeremiah wished the clone had done for his mother, and led him down the hall where a thin, blond man was waiting in front of a closed office door.

  “Hello, Mr. Adams,” he said, extending a hand. “Dr. Tim Waterson—we’ve met before. You’ll have to excuse the interruption, but for some reason they’re installing a new phone system in my office at this exact moment. They should be almost done. I don’t know why they couldn’t do this later.”

  Almost as soon as he said it, the office door opened and two men in nondistinct gray overalls came hurrying out. In the lab, Jeremiah was vaguely perplexed, but if the clone shared those feelings, he said nothing.

  “All set, Doctor,” one of the men mumbled as they shuffled past. The doctor said nothing and ushered the clone inside.

  The camera angle wavered slightly and then settled into a seamless view of the office. Jeremiah understood at once it wasn’t a phone system they were installing.

  “Does he have people waiting in the wings to put in his cameras?” Jeremiah asked Brent with some alarm. “How did they get it done that fast? How the hell did he even know?”

  Brent shook his head and continued watching. “Charles Scott likes to cover all his bases,” he said.

  “Have you had a chance to visit with your mother yet, Mr. Adams?” Waterson asked the clone.

  The clone nodded as he took a seat in front of the desk.

  “And how did she seem to you this evening?”

  “I’ll agree she did seem a bit confused,” the clone said, “but don’t you think it’s going overboard to talk about having her moved?”

  “Mr. Adams, this isn’t something we do lightly. You need to understand this is for her own safety and the safety of our other residents and staff. We are simply not equip
ped to handle cases of dementia here. We’re a small, general assistance home. But there are a number of other facilities that specialize in these things. Some of them close by. She’d be much better off in one of those. Much happier in the long run.”

  “But she likes it here,” the clone said. “Moving will be hard on her. Traumatic, even.”

  “There will be an adjustment, certainly,” Waterson said. “But she’ll be fine in due time. I don’t see any other way. I’m concerned about her well-being here. She needs a certain level of care and monitoring that we simply cannot provide. If she were to become confused or disoriented, especially overnight when we’re at minimal staff, well, I hate to think what might happen, Mr. Adams.”

  The clone frowned and leaned forward a bit in his chair. “So how do we go about this exactly?” he asked. “Do I just choose another facility? I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “I’m here to assist you in any way I can,” Waterson said. “I have a few suggestions here that you can begin to look at.” He pushed a handful of pamphlets forward on his desk. The clone took them and laid them in his lap without glancing at them.

  “What are we talking about for a timeline?” he asked. “I mean, does this have to be tomorrow?”

  “Regulation dictates that we allow sixty days for the transfer. I would suggest, Mr. Adams, that we move somewhat faster than that. We’ll need to assign a dedicated nurse for your mother, around the clock, until she’s moved. I’m afraid that will be your financial responsibility. It can be quite expensive, you understand.”

  The clone pursed his lips and nodded. “I’ll start looking through the information right away,” he said. “Do what you need to do. I understand.”