Mirror Lake

by Andrée A. Michaud

  “Hello, stranger,” he called out cheerfully as he climbed out of the boat. “Wanna fish with me?”

  If there’s one thing that enrages me more than anything, it’s naturally jovial people who think that just by casting some of their natural joviality your way, they’ll make you want to dance a jig. I stood up, walked over to his boat, snapped his fishing rod in two, and said, “No, I don’t wanna fish with you.” And then I marched back to the cottage as Anita was leaving, clutching a brown paper bag whose contents I asked to inspect, because Winslow had managed to ignite a healthy dose of the anger my depressed state had suppressed.

  I also took the opportunity to tell Anita what I thought of her. But when I gave back her bag, my heart twinged as I noticed her forlorn expression, behind which were silently sheltering the words you haven’t understood anything, you stupid idiot. But I didn’t see these words, I only noticed them afterwards, when it was too late, which is always what happens in tragic love stories. One person hears nothing of what the other person is striving to explain, or misunderstands, interpreting what is said in their own fashion and the situation sours and becomes dramatic. It’s what happened to Romeo and Juliet, and it was happening to Anita and me, too. We were victims of the irrevocable constraints of tragedy, and trying to escape them was as pointless as endeavouring to bring Shakespeare back to life so that he might rewrite the end of his story of mad love.

  When, at the top of the gravel road, Anita’s shadow disappeared along with that of Robbins’s dusty 4×4, leaving in its wake faint traces of unleaded gas and Shania perfume, I must confess I was a little shaken, which did not stop me from telling Winslow to take his whistling self back to the south shore and stay there. I hurt him deeply at that moment, just as every fool does who pushes away helping hands reaching out over the precipice. But, nonetheless, he behaved like a proper gentleman and pulled out the blue letter that Anita had slipped into my pocket, before — without whistling — he returned to the shore to which I’d banished him.

  Women are perfectly capable of being laconic when they so desire. I had an aunt like that, Hortèse, who would have been Hortense had the priest who baptized her not been half deaf. She usually expressed herself by means of proverbs, or onomatopoeia, a sort of modern-day Sibyl whom people would consult to find out about their near future or to be advised on what attitude to adopt should they suffer a reversal of fortune. “Bof,” she would answer most of the time, meaning there was nothing to be done or that it was pointless to worry, and you’d go back home and let the situation deteriorate or sort itself out.

  “What did Hortèse say to you?”

  “Bof.”

  “Bof?”

  “Bof.”

  Ah, well, there must be a reason, we’d think as we dropped our heads and gazed at our feet shuffling through the mud, or slush, depending on the season.

  Sometimes she was a little chattier, but no less enigmatic. When my uncle Jules went to tell her that my aunt Lourette — who had been christened by the same priest — was cheating on him, she replied, “Like father, like son,” so that everyone believed Rosanna, Uncle Jules’s mother, was also cheating on Uncle Jules’s father, Rosaire, making him a cuckold just like his son. Yes, like father, like son.

  Some in the family interpreted it differently. For this more feminist faction of my ancestry, Hortèse’s ambiguous maxim indicated that in reality it was Uncle Jules who was cheating on Aunt Lourette, just as his father Rosaire had cheated on Jules’s mother — Rosaire’s wife Rosanna, to be more precise. Like son, like father: turn it around and, hey presto, everyone’s a scoundrel! It’s incredible what ensued: two divorces, one abortion, and a poisoning attempt, but things settled down when Aunt Lourette, who’d become manic depressive in the meantime, confessed. She was so unhinged that people were hesitant to believe her, but as my uncle Jules was so profoundly hurt, my aunt Hortèse concluded that only the truth hurts, the trapper had been caught in her own trap, and everyone took to their beds. Those who sleep forget they’re hungry, she would have said. Everything would be better the next day.

  I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because Hortèse’s ramblings have absolutely nothing to do with my story. Still, that’s what I was thinking about when I read the contents of Anita’s delicately perfumed letter, blue as the sea and the sky. Anita had started with a drawing of a heart, then of a heart breaking, and then an arrow, under which she had written page 216, nothing more. I’d examined the sheet of paper from all angles, trying to figure out if Anita might have written in invisible ink, and went to look around the cottage to see if perhaps a part of the letter had been lost on the way. Nothing. Clearly Anita had just one thing to say to me: page 216. Once I’d settled on this explanation, it wasn’t hard for me to work out that the reference was to Morgan’s novel. What other book could Anita possibly have been alluding to in such an allusive manner and still expect me to understand? The mere sight of Morgan’s novel making me want to leap into Mirror Lake’s inestimable depths, I had no choice, it was a matter of survival, so instead I entered a phase of denial, checking page 216 in every other book longer than 216 pages that I’d brought with me to this den of iniquitous murderers.

  It’s incredible, the number of messages you spot when you’re looking, and after a few hours of uninterrupted reading, I had a multitude of options before me, each one more terrifying than the last and all of them meaningless. I had to confront the facts: whatever it was that Anita had to say to me was spelled out clearly in Morgan’s novel, which I didn’t have the courage to open. But finally I picked up The Maine Attraction, trampled my pride underfoot and set off in my boat with Jeff to ask Winslow if he would read to me a little. When I reached the middle of the lake, my loon let out its plaintive cry, a clear sign that it was early morning, that I hadn’t slept the night before, that time’s course had once again got away from me. I paused, wanting to abandon everything, wanting to throw the damn book into the water and copy John Doe, wanting to capsize and let myself sink, but I could hardly do that to Jeff, who had nobody but me in this dreadful world and loved me unconditionally.

  “Okay,” I said to the big head whose eyes were flooding me with love. “We won’t capsize today, but as for tomorrow, I’m not making any promises.” “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” I added, thinking of Hortèse, who probably would have said, “Who moves his feet, loses his seat,” an expression whose meaning I cogitated on for a while and decided meant nothing, because you don’t even have to move your feet to lose your seat and, even when you do, most of the time you’ll return to find the seat is still yours, short of being cuckolds like Jules or Rosaire. Hortèse was out to lunch and, to be frank, I’d had enough. I started rowing again, but hesitantly, because I was no more in a hurry to go and humiliate myself in front of Winslow than I was to discover that the course of my life had been determined by Victor Morgan.

  As I was docking, I noticed Winslow was awake, which would save me having to get him out of bed. A lamp was shining in his kitchen, and I could see Winslow’s heavy silhouette in front of it. He was assiduously making breakfast, the way men do who have quietly resigned themselves to the absence of a woman to scramble their eggs, and who subsequently sit down and indulge themselves in a silence penetrated only by the wind — when it’s windy — or by their dog’s panting if they have a dog, cheerful birdsong when it’s not raining, or the sound of the rain and less perky birds when it is, and then the glug of the coffee maker, the thunk of the toaster, and occasionally the knock-knock of a hungry friend, because the fact is I was starving when I knocked on Winslow’s door, knock-knock, and so starving I was ready to concede that this big heap of harmlessness was actually my friend. Knock-knock, I rapped at the door again, Winslow evidently deep in thought. If I’d been a little more perspicacious, I’d have noticed Winslow was sulking, not daydreaming, because I’d been rude to him the day before. After waiting a minute or two, I noticed that every
ten seconds or so he would cast a furtive glance in my direction, to make sure I could see he was pretending not to see me, that he was ignoring me the way you do someone who has hurt you.

  Winslow was in the right, I hadn’t been very nice to him at all. If he wanted an apology he would have it, the truth of it being that I needed him, but also because he looked quite affecting in his blue and yellow apron, the colours of Provence, and no doubt an item that was the inheritance from a lover from the distant past, whom he pined after so much that in the serene silence of solitary dawns he’d chosen to surround himself with memories of her. Be that as it may, I was dreading the scene to come, which would probably be like making up after a domestic, me taking the part of the lout who never takes into account the pride, dignity, and feelings of their partner. I’d play the clueless jerk who’s too wrapped up in his own little miseries to notice those around him are bleeding.

  But all is fair in love and war and I wasn’t intending to spend the day in his doorway. I knocked again, for form’s sake, and then in I went because doors at Mirror Lake are never locked, which at least means they won’t end up being kicked in by some crook or wandering John Doe. I’d noticed that Winslow often accentuated his discomfort by saying “hmm-hmm,” which must have a particular meaning for him, so thought I’d start with a “hmm-hmm” right off the bat to let him know I was feeling guilty, and then I mumbled, “I’m sorry, Bob.”

  This sequence obviously pleased him, because I heard him swallow something down the wrong way, like someone who is moved but wouldn’t admit it for anything. And yes, I was right, we were making up after a lovers’ tiff. All I needed was to execute the steps in the right order, as I’d learned to do over my long career as a sonofabitch, and Winslow would break down and snivel.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a bastard,” I added, adhering perfectly to the second step of the reconciliation process, which consists of painting yourself in the worst-possible light after you’ve grovelled and apologized. It was working, because Winslow was now looking unabashedly my way, but it wasn’t enough, it was incumbent upon me to curse myself even more, to humiliate myself, to confess out loud to my callous nature and kneel down and promise I’d change. “Okay, Bob, not only am I a sonofabitch, I’m a fucking bastard, I understand nuttin’, I never listen to you, I’m a monster, a Nazi, a worm, and I have no idea what a nice person like you is doing with a piece of trash like me, and —”

  Which is when Winslow waved a hand to signal that I needn’t go on. “I mean,” he said, “I’m not your wife, Robert, and I won’t be fucking you tonight, so get a grip.”

  Fine, my little game had been rumbled, but it had worked. Winslow had spoken to me.

  “Have a seat,” he said grouchily as he rose from his seat and went to make me some eggs. Eggs! If I was to be granted eggs then Winslow must have really forgiven me. Feeling as light as the breeze, I headed to the table after whispering in Jeff’s ear that he could follow me, that Uncle Bobby wasn’t mad anymore. Uncle Bobby! We can be so maudlin when we’re happy! I sat down as Winslow took the eggs out of the fridge and pondered the semiotics of the process of morning reconciliation. As I did so, I spotted on the packaging an image of a little egg with two legs, rubbing its stomach and smiling toothlessly at whoever was about to eat him. In less time than it takes a virus to latch on to innocent prey, my prevailing thoughts, inevitably governed by the symbolic — which, as it happened, had appeared that morning in the shape of eggs rich in fertility and sexual references — grabbed me by the throat and none other than Humpty Dumpty took the place of the little egg with legs. Was Winslow doing this on purpose or what?

  For a moment, the full impact of the plot and its immeasurable extent weighed down on my bowed spine and I regretted everything I’d just said to this oaf who, not wanting to appear too cheery, was whistling through one tooth as he stood at the frying pan. I took a deep breath and rebuked myself for thinking that Winslow was about to banish eggs from his menu simply because I’d been traumatized as a child by a particularly irritating specimen that consumer society’s ignorance had turned into a potato, which made me feel a little better but didn’t stop me from wondering if Humpty Dumpty’s mother was a chicken or some other bird, some egg-laying, you know, the existence of which Lewis Carroll’s storytelling had not revealed.

  When Winslow served me my two eggs, he of course noticed that I was preoccupied — this despite my efforts to smile at him nicely, the way you would after an abscess has been lanced, heavy clouds blocking the sky have drifted away, or floodwaters receded. “What’s going on?” he said in a worried way.

  “Humpty Dumpty,” I said. “I was wondering if he had a mother and, if he did, whether she laid him, in which case some charitable soul should have had the goodness to eat him before he became what he did.”

  Ever since Winslow had also started having dreams about Humpty Dumpty, he’d been more attuned to questions about the character’s life, and we both started conjecturing about Humpty Dumpty’s origins. We wondered if his mother had been disappointed when she saw his big smooth face after a labour that must have unfolded with intense suffering; if they had lived in a nest, she and he, and if the father was still in the picture or had abandoned the mother and his grotesque offspring — which could explain Humpty Dumpty’s dreadful personality. There was a long biography to be written, and we started laying the foundations for it in order to distract ourselves and not veer too close to the heart of the matter that had brought me to Winslow’s table.

  After cooking up a few different hypotheses, we stuck to that of the mother hen and the ugly child. Which was this, more or less: that Humpty Dumpty’s mother was a kind though not very smart little hen that a shameless cock had knocked up after an ignoble courtship. As soon as the relationship was consummated, the cock disappeared without caring about what became of the little hen, who had decided nonetheless to take the pregnancy to term, incubating Humpty Dumpty with all her mother-hen love. But this turned out to be a pointless endeavour, because her son was tarnished from birth and, aged fourteen months, left the nest and told his tearful mother to take a hike, her ever-weaker clucking marring the dawns, days, and dusks of Humpty Dumpty’s native village of Saint-Zurin until the enfeebled hen expired one spring morning without ever having seen her ungrateful son again.

  “The fucking bastard,” exclaimed Winslow at that point in our tale, and if Artie had been there, it would have been worse.

  For his entire life, Humpty Dumpty tried to deny his country origins, to mask the henhouse scent that clung to his shell, the result being that people started mistaking him for a potato, a quintessential symbol of the bucolic life and testament to the impossibility of concealing the truth of your rustic nature without consequences.

  “The biter bit,” Winslow gloated, and he hadn’t even known Hortèse. We changed the subject before we threw up our eggs because, were that to happen, other mothers less hennish than Humpty Dumpty’s would send their little degenerates to market before they irreversibly ruined the entire species’ reputation.

  “You can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg,” Winslow went on. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket, goddammit,” and I wondered whether or not I was involuntarily transmitting my thoughts and if Winslow, as a consequence, had captured the family memories resurfacing to my mind as I started to mull over Anita’s confusing letter.

  I was telling myself I’d have to check it out again later when Winslow asked what had so upset me about Anita’s letter that I’d decided to swallow my pride and come talk to him. When I heard him say that, I think I was afraid — no, I don’t think, I know I was afraid — that I really was transmitting my thoughts to Winslow, he was reading me like an open book. That or we’d been turned into conjoined brothers whose brains were able to communicate internally due to such a shocking mistake of nature. Winslow must have seen how seriously scared I was, because the imbecile made everything worse by conf
essing he could read me like an open book and, hard to overlook, that I’d been crumpling Anita’s letter between my damp palms for the last ten minutes. He didn’t need to be Einstein to figure out what was bugging me. I ground my teeth, then smiled, which I hadn’t done for some time, before offering Winslow the damp, crumpled scrap of paper tarabusting me. “Qui me tarabustait, you know, that was bothering me,” quickly translating the word so he wouldn’t have to look in the dictionary.

  After Winslow opened up the letter, he groaned, which was a bad sign, then frowned, and, as I had done, turned the page backwards and forwards looking for a code underneath the message. He held the missive under a lamp, threw flour on it — for fingerprints, he said — and handed it back to me. “You broke her heart,” he said. I still needed Winslow, so kept my mouth shut and breathed deeply, because a person who doesn’t breathe will die of asphyxiation, after which I placed the letter beside Winslow’s dirty plate and put my damp index finger on the words page 216 before quickly removing it, so that Winslow could read what his eyes had so carelessly overlooked. As a result of the pressure, the number 216 was printed on my fingertip, another sign that fate was desperately trying to mark me with its seal, so I put the fingertip in my mouth to make the ink disappear, which meant, symbolically, that I was striving to eliminate all trace of page 216 by swallowing the integers that represented it. And then I waited for Winslow to figure it out.

  “Undoubtedly a reference to Morgan’s book,” he finally spat out, and I hastily put the book under his nose, open at page 216, so we’d be done with it. Without my needing to explain what I was expecting of him — Winslow knew me like the back of his hand — he started the fateful reading of page 216, then closed the book and, to augment the suspense and annoy me, scraped his plate clean with his knife, scratched his forehead diagonally, and then told me to go away, he wanted to be alone, which wasn’t at all like him and was a sure sign that page 216 was pretty horrific.