by Angela Peach
Every mirror seeks a sorrow.
Pain makes sorrow the happiest emotion. Each tug of my heart, that had seemed so hard, so sure of its meaning, falls away into nothing. There are no happy pulls.
I shake my head, knowing somewhere below I am capable of happiness if I am allowed. All the while Freya is holding me in her arms, whispering words to me in a language that I don’t understand but that somehow soothes me nevertheless. How can I be soothed by someone who is not Helena?
I pant into her, holding her close, floundering in the tumult of emotions that truth brings to me. There is a saying that the truth hurts but I don’t agree. It’s the lies that have disguised the truth that cause the problems.
I have been an expert at hiding my truths, at turning my emotions into angers that seemed more agreeable. Anger is easier to deal with than love. Every emotion is easier to deal with than love. It is the only thing that terrifies, from teenage to old age. Because no-one wants to be wrong. No-one wants to feel a fool. Who is this unworthy sloth that I have given my heart to? Why did I not see this?
I watch the dagger edge closer and closer to me, to stab the desire from my stupid heart that never learns.
Freya still holds me tight, demanding that my eyes meet hers and, as hard as I try, I have to meet them eventually.
Love will always out.
And when I see her eyes, those pools of bright blue, I forget the horrors of my heart. I forget that love can also take horrors and throw them aside. I begin to swim in her and my shattered mind finds a piece of happiness it can hold on to.
Freya, I think, not sure where a thought can lead me.
Nicki, I remember, teeth clenched in hate.
Helena, my jaw slackens in misery.
There is so much to see and feel and I cannot be sure where I am supposed to look and see. All my life, I have been wrapped inside a box, too scared to peek out, terrified Nikki would bat me down.
No wonder an emotion is the scariest thing in my world, when my world only consists of emotions that don’t belong to me. Finding myself in an ocean of thoughts is almost impossible.
I grit my teeth.
I hold Freya to me. I take in the rhythmic beat of her heart and let it reassure me. She has never once swayed. Her love has been steadfast.
I feel myself sink, knowing Freya is right when she said I would leave her.
True loves never end up together. Like Heathcliff and Cathy, we shall be separated by the vain love of others.
My fingers itch to feel Helena. But when my hand stretches out all I can feel is the soft, coolness of Freya. Her skin is like poetry to my reading fingers.
I pull myself away, running to my bathroom where I can splash water to my face, hoping I will be brought back to myself because I don’t feel like I am someone I know anymore.
My face touches the porcelain and I breathe in the cold water splashes my hands are fanning to my face. I raise my head and look in the mirror at my reflection. My blue eyes meet my blue eyes. A wave of recognition flows down my body like the tide rushing in. A wave washes over me as I stare harder.
And then I see it, my face shaking as the image alters the tiniest bit and I realise I am not looking at myself, I’m looking at Nikki. I am looking in my mirror and seeing Nikki look back. Her mouth opens as my scream begins.
We are the same.
*** *** ***
I take a broken heart with me wherever I go. It’s been like that for as long as I am allowed to remember.
“I have Nikki address,” Mr Chan had told me and the wheels of motion began to roll, like a train I was driving at full speed with no place to go but the end of a track that took me over the mountain’s edge. I knew now where she lived and I had the money in my bank from the portrait of the dwarf. I had paid Mr Chan his fee without grumbling too much to his surprise and my own, and then I had phoned Ethel because I wanted more money. I didn’t know how long I’d need to be away and I didn’t want to rush things. Anticipation for me would be terror for Nikki.
Getting to her wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. I’d tried to buy a flight but the paperwork flummoxed me because I wasn’t as smart as Nikki. I had never been able to afford expensive holidays to exotic locations, so I didn’t know the correct protocol. It was sheer chance I even had a passport.
With every second that passed, I felt my hatred grow for Nikki, my happiness thief.
I went to see Freya the night before I flew away. She had answered her door with such a sad look on her face and I felt my heart, already broken, shatter into a million pieces. I cannot abide a woman with tears in her eyes because it steals all the walls I have erected to protect myself. I held her in my arms for a long time, neither of us daring to speak, enjoying the moment we knew would be our last.
“When do you leave?” she asked finally.
“First thing in the morning,” I told her.
“Will you come back?” she asked, struggling to hold the break that was trying to come through in her voice.
“I don’t think so,” I told her. “I don’t know how this ends but it probably won’t end well for me.”
“Then stay this night with me,” she demanded, holding me tighter in her arms as if she thought I might try to escape.
“I’ll fall asleep,” I told her. “But I’ll stay. Hold me while I sleep.”
“Jeg vil aldri gi slipp pa hjertet ditt.”
I’d no idea what she meant as I drifted off but I hoped she would hold on to my heart.
*** *** ***
I was on a tight schedule and had no time to waste in the morning but I took a moment to kiss Freya goodbye. She had given my heart happiness when it was drowning in a sea of heartbreak. She had cooled the fires that Helena had set alight in me, the passion that almost consumed me, almost burned me out.
To free Freya and save her, I’d have to leave her, set her off to find love away from me.
“You go to your friend, Mavis Street,” I told her, while my taxi waited, my hands on her face. “You tell her I’ve had to leave and that you need a friend. She loves you. She’ll look after you in a way I’d never be able to.”
She nodded, tears making pathways on her face, glistening in the strain of sunlight.
“I love you,” I told her. “I love you!” I said again, through gritted teeth. “It’s taken a lifetime to show me this. It’s too late for me but it’s not too late for you. Don’t be dragged down like I was. Find a love, be happy. Live in happiness.”
She kissed me.
And that was all we could do for each other now because the kiss between us had always been everything and always would be. A kiss is for life. The music from Freya’s lips fed through me, into my ears, my heart, and made me dance to her tune.
Too late, too late, I was always too late.
I wasn’t going to be late anymore. For Nikki, I was going to be right on time to end her. But I was saving Freya and that made it worthwhile. To make the right choice at the end seemed worthwhile. Something surely had to be.
I was saving Freya from the torture that the love for Helena held around me, I was shackled with the chains around my ankles dancing to the tune Helena wanted. I had been held in these chains for years, it was all slowly making sense the closer I came to meeting Nikki.
It was like I had been laid a trail of gingerbread crumbs and the more I ate them through life, the closer I got to my destiny.
Our destiny, I reminded myself.
Nikki might be laying out the crumbs but I was gobbling them up as if I was starving. I was the pecking hen grubbing for the shit she’d throw me. I was and always had been desperate for her crumbs.
No more! I’d had enough of her rubbish. I fell asleep between my perfectly organised flights, the ones it had given me a headache to arrange, agonising over the details, time differences, sleep patterns. But I kept going because I would no longer let that bitch beat me.
Freya, Freya, Helena, Helena. Two of everything.
The women I loved,
spinning around my head as I boarded my plane. The slut had been at it again while I was making my way over. She wouldn’t know the difference between love and lust if they slapped her in the face. The only things she liked slapped in her face were another’s thighs. She revolted me.
I never touched a woman unless I thought it could lead to love. If it didn’t lead to love, it was just lust and I am not an animal, I can wait, I can control myself. I will wait. I waited ten years for Helena, only to realise in the moment of our love, that she would never be what I had yearned for. That was the most heartbreaking part of it all. Not her betrayal or her inability to trust in me years ago, or her marrying a man. It was the knowing I was wrong, that I had given my heart to the wrong lover. Who wants to hear that they have been deceived by the very organ they hold most dear?
It’s like looking into the mirror and seeing a reflection that could kill you. A face that is yours but not yours. A heart that beats inside a rib cage that feels like it’s your own but is someone else’s love. A spiteful love that wants you to suffer burning inside, a mirror image that wants to torture and torment, taking any form of happiness away from that heart that could have been theirs.
I’ve looked into a mirror and seen a world change before my eyes. I’ve seen love change to misery, and misery change to love. I’ve felt hands hold me down to heartache and weights pull me under trying to drown me in feelings that weren’t meant for me. I have looked at love with happiness and sadness, with longing and hatred. I have looked behind love and in front of it and I’m still no closer to understanding the mystery that makes it twist around me, knowing I want it out of me. I want rid of this, this atrocity that strikes me when I am weak, that gives me strength when I think I have none and then winds me once more, a laughter echoing far away.
Love, love, I wanted you so much. I ached for you. I longed to feel you in my toes and on the hairs that stood on my arms in the cold. I was desperate with my heartbeat, hoping love would hear me. I heard every sad song and knew it had been written for me.
“Love! Love! Find me!” I screamed in so many nightmares that, when I opened my eyes, were there in that day. Sunlight never hid my fears.
I held what I thought was love close to me for so many years that now it felt like some titanic joke the universe had played on me. I hadn’t held love — I had held fear.
There was only one of us that had love and that was Nikki. She had taken the love meant for us both and claimed it all for herself, unable to share, unable to give me a tiny shred of happiness. I was coming for her and, as I thought this, I felt the tears fall down my face.
I was hurting. It hurt too much but I wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t going to end until one of us had ended.
I fell asleep in a hotel room. I woke up and it made me smile that Nikki was terrified because she knew I was here.
Destiny had brought me to her. There were songs that had been written about us that if you listened you’d hear, they take your heart and toss it in the air before kicking it away.
But I had things to do today and feeling sorry for myself was not one of them. I had limited time, as both Nikki and I were well aware of, and I quickly pulled on my jeans, boots and jumper. I brushed my teeth, splashed some water on my face, running my wet hands through my hair. I didn’t want to look in the mirror, too scared by what horror might greet me, and I didn’t mean the state of my reflection.
I meant eyes that would lock with mine, taking all I had. I used to feel that looking at Helena drained me because the emotions I felt from her tired me out, over-powered me but it was just another lie, told to keep me in my chains. Only one of us could be happy, I saw that.
I lit a cigarette as soon as I left the hotel, walking fast and smoking, enjoying the slight dizziness the nicotine brought. When I finished smoking, I hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address Mr Chan had provided me with.
I stared out the window, my heart calm now that the final minutes were ticking down. I didn’t see the houses and cars and people that we passed. It was a blur, my eyes looking somewhere else in time.
The taxi stopped, I looked at the meter and paid, adding a tip because I had heard Americans expected it and I didn’t want him to think the Scottish were mean, even though I wouldn’t normally tip someone just for doing their job.
I was stood in a quiet street, houses facing houses, lawns and well-watered trees littering the avenue. The sun was high in the sky and I took my jumper off, tying it around my waist. Now that I was here, I didn’t quite know what I was going to do, so I lit another cigarette.
As I blew out my first inhale, slipping my Zippo lighter back into my jean’s pocket, I saw a woman leaving and locking a side door on the smaller building attached to the house I was standing in front of. Of course, Nikki had her own private studio. Nikki had fucking everything.
As I lifted my cigarette to bring it to my lips, the woman turned down the path, walking towards me, my cigarette frozen in mid-air.
“Helena?” I squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
“Nikki?” the woman said, a confused look on her face.
She looked so much like my Helena! She continued to scrutinise me as I realised what she had said. She had called me Nikki and I realised then that I must, to an outsider, look like a version of Nikki. A skinny, bedraggled scruffy version but eyes that reflected in a mirror.
“You’re not Nikki,” she half laughed, in the American twang I was still getting used to. “You look so like her but the accent is wrong. I’m Malena,” she added, almost as an after-thought.
“Hello, Malena. I’m a friend of Nikki’s from the UK. Is she in?” I asked, finally remembering the cigarette burning my fingers.
Burning, burning, someone was going to burn. But no, not her.
She looked me up and down suspiciously.
“We blog together about our paintings,” I told her, suddenly vocal. “She’s better off than I am,” I laughed. “But she invited me over, said we would paint together, a fusing of styles she called it.” The lies and smiles fell together easily.
I looked at Malena closer as I spoke. Her eyes, her face, they…they were so like Helena it disarmed me. Ten minutes ago, I would’ve stabbed anyone who stood between me and Nikki, but no, I couldn’t hurt Malena.
Malena, Helena. It was all too close to home.
I must have convinced her because all at once she smiled a warm, Helena-style smile and I thought my heart would break once more, when I had thought there was nothing left to break. Beautiful women have always been my enemy.
“She’s gone to the rink with Ness, I actually thought she’d be back by now,” she said, as if I knew who Ness was.
“Oh, damn,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I still can’t get used to this time difference. Where’s the ice rink? I’d love to surprise her. Can you tell me where it is? Oh, she will love this!” I exclaimed, my sheer excitement, winning her over.
“Here,” she said, taking her phone from her pocket to show me where to go.
“Thank you! And could you get me an Uber, my phone doesn’t work here,” I smiled, wanting to touch her and not knowing if that touch was to caress or kill.
“Of course!” she grinned. “You’ve come so far, judging by your accent. I’ll do anything for a friend of Nikki.”
She ordered me an Uber and we haggled over payment, as I left throwing a ten dollar bill at her. God, you wouldn’t get this aggro in Glasgow.
As I sat silent in the back of yet another cab, I wondered why Nikki would pick a woman to fall in love with who was the replica of the girl I had fallen in love with as a teenager. What had attracted her to a woman who looked exactly like the girl I’d been obsessed with for years? Was she seeing something in my love that she wanted for herself? That would be typical of her, hating me, getting one over on me, wanting what I had. By choosing Malena, she had saved her life. I’d never hurt someone who looked like Helena, even though I knew her love was no longer right for me. Memories are powerfu
l things that can conjure up an image of a lost love at the drop of an eyelid.
In that second my hands could have been around Malena’s neck as quickly as it was Helena’s and then I would have been horrified.
Who was who?
Who is who and who am I?
I had no time to wonder as my taxi dropped me off at the ice rink where Nikki was with some girl called Ness. Did she love her? I felt my anger begin to rise. Did she love her like I had loved Helena for all those years, hopelessly waiting for a woman who would never love me the way I wanted to be loved, because all my love had been stolen before I could have it by a jealous slag?
Nikki didn’t know what it felt like to lose the one you loved. Oh sure, she’d slept with her fair share of women, I think one had even died, but she’d never had her heart twisted and tortured under a turning heel that squashed it down. She didn’t know the utter desolation of a lonely life, where love passed you by and all you had to hold on to were memories and dreams that would never come true.
That was it.
Nikki had never known how I felt but it was too late for retrospective pity, as I searched for a way in to the locked ice rink. I wandered the boundary seeing a light on and I knew, I just knew, that Nikki was in there, trying to hide. The doors were locked but, growing up in Glasgow had taught me a thing or two, and I soon found a way in. I listened for any tiny sound as I made my way to the centre, where the rink was, and I crept around until I saw them, wrapped around each other. Two bodies, with smiles on their faces, their arms and legs tight together.
I stood for a moment, finally seeing Nikki in front of me. I looked at her thin legs, so fragile, her skinny arms grabbing the girl I assumed was Ness, trying to hold her body over her, never knowing what horrors might come in her sleep.
A horror like me.
A tear slipped down my cheek. I loved Nikki and she would never know this. I’d never tell her that when my heart beat I felt hers too, that when she cried, I felt a tear behind my eye. She would have hated my love. She did everything to take love away from me.
