Mirror Lake

by Andrée A. Michaud

  In the dream that followed, I’m in the clouds, thinking coherently, and surrounded by a bunch of winged, chubby-cheeked little Humpty Dumptys playing François-Adrien Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto in C major, and I wasn’t screaming anymore, didn’t have the strength. I gave in. I don’t know how long the dreaming lasted, but it seemed longer than ordinary nightmares, which usually have the decency to end as you reach the limit of what’s bearable.

  When I woke up, the white was clearer, with a hint of yellow, and I could see through the drawn curtains that the sun was blazing away, a beautiful July sun, as far as I knew, unless I’d slept for another six or seven months. Just the thought made me start shivering, fearful it might be a conniving January sun, and I decided that if I had to stay more than another two hours in the hospital, I’d demand a digital calendar connected to nasa. But as I waited, I had other concerns. I needed to know if I was compos mentis, or if the nurse with the syringe was the one losing her mind. And that woman, well, actually she hadn’t seemed all that much like a nurse, I mean a real nurse, but I couldn’t quite pin her down, because her face had been lost in the neuroleptic fog she’d propelled me into. That was a bad sign.

  To help myself, I put myself back in the scene of my rescue in the washroom, the smell of disinfectant making me woozy, the rubber-soled shoes thudding over the white tiles and making that annoying squeak that is hardly a tonic for sick people with delicate nerves — squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, so horribly high-pitched — my eyes focusing on her legs and, reaching her hips, taking in the nurse’s hazy and not at all reassuring expression from a low angle, her face unsettling as it bent slowly toward me.

  And then something happened, the kind of thing that happens when you have a surfeit of imagination. My memory, egged on by my anxiety, lost its way and ended up in Sidewinder, Colorado, the godforsaken hole where Paul Sheldon, the hero of Misery, falls into the hands of Annie Wilkes, a psychotic nurse who might as well have been trained at Auschwitz. By the time I’d readjusted my focus on the nurse’s hazy face, she’d taken on the features of Kathy Bates, alias Wilkes, and an axe had replaced the syringe in her hands, exactly like in Misery, goddammit! To perfect the tableau, sinister music permeated the room, screeching violins that evoked both the sucking noise of Annie Wilkes’s soles on the floor and the music accompanying the shower scene in Psycho, a true horror-movie soundtrack, enough for me to hear blood spurting on the invariably white walls. Then the rubbing sound of a door slowly opening conjoined with the music, and Kathy Bates, who was perhaps related to that other maniac, Norman Bates, entered with a grumble and carrying a tray of pills and a variety of purees. Seeing her, I let out a cry, just a faint one, before quickly smiling so that she wouldn’t get the syringe out. I wanted to ask her what day it was, but all I could manage to say was “ning,” I’m not sure why, which she interpreted as a greeting and replied with “Good mornin’.”

  So it was morning, and I could breathe a little, having read somewhere that psychopaths are more tranquil before noon — between six in the morning and noon, to be exact, or that’s what I’d read. Assuming it was July, then according to the position of the sun it must have been around seven, which gave me five hours to escape. Between then and now, it was in my interests to seem co-operative, so I let Bates feed me without protesting, even though I was perfectly capable of eating by myself. As for the pills, I copied Paul Sheldon and hid them under the mattress while her back was turned, there to drug her with if the situation became critical and I didn’t manage to escape. But she must have noticed, because she presented another out of the right pocket above her full bosom and stuffed it in my mouth with a spoonful of puree. After that I fell asleep. What did you want me to do? I was fed up with sleeping all the time, I’d been sleeping for three hundred and forty-three days at least, for fuck’s sake! I was rested, enough already, but try telling that to someone who’s not around anymore, because she wasn’t; after forcing me to ingest her sleeping pill, she trotted off on her squeaking soles.

  I watched as her skirt swooshed through the doorway, the door closing heavily, and immediately I fell back into a dream in which I was Paul Sheldon, sitting at the table with his old typewriter, trying to resuscitate his novel, Misery. I was in the midst of pulling my hair out because the only words I could see printed on the otherwise-blank page belonged to the postmodern novel that Jack Nicholson, a.k.a. Jack Torrance, writes in The Shining — “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All . . .” — when I heard a whistling in the hallway outside my room, a refrain from one of those childhood songs that you can’t mistake, like “Oranges and Lemons.” I didn’t feel at all wary, or at least not until I became aware of some discordant notes in the melody, a few off-chords at odds with the song’s innocent air . . . “Oh no,” I muttered when I recognized the tune they were whistling but, before I was able to react, the door opened on Daryl Hannah, who, in her sexy homicidal nurse’s costume, was whistling the theme from Twisted Nerve, like I needed that, and heading toward me. Which is when the telephone rang and I woke up, sitting upright in my bed but the wrong way round — I mean facing the wall, not on my head (because were that the case, I’d have said “sitting on my head”).

  “Hello?” I whispered, grabbing the phone that was ringing so insistently. It was Bill, who wanted to tell me something I did not understand because — proof that dogs, who understand humans nine times out of ten, are more intelligent than we are — I’d never bothered to learn the difference between woof and warf. “Give the phone to your master, Bill,” I commanded, but it was Anita who came on the line.

  “Sorry, Bob,” she said, “the phone slipped out of my hands.”

  “No problem, Anita,” and before she could say anything more I told her things were going badly, very badly, and pleaded for her to come get me, get me out of this loony hospital. “Hurry up!” I said. And then I hung up and decided to make my way to the washroom and lock myself in it until she did.

  I was still not confident about my ability to walk, so I rolled to the edge of the bed and then crawled through the smell of disinfectant, acquiring the perspective of a reptile or some short-legged animal. Let the Fraggles play, gobo, mokey, weembly, I counted, as I approached my goal tile by tile, and when finally I reached the momo of the last, I gave the door a firm kick, shutting it with a slam, evidence my leg was in good shape and that I could have used my head to get to the bathroom instead of my elbows. I started to stand, which was painful because I was still wobbly, like the flame of a candle burning in a pool of wax, but I managed. My first instinct was to lock the door, but I couldn’t, which made me look very stupid, thank you very much, and my second was to look around for an object or piece of furniture with which to block it, again unsuccessfully. And then my third was to cast a quick sideways glance into the mirror above the sink in order to be certain that I’d hallucinated the Humpty Dumpty I’d seen in it before.

  But I shouldn’t have.

  I shouldn’t have, because what appeared to me in the mirror was far worse than Humpty Dumpty. I saw Winslow, Bob Winslow, the one and only, ugly as life and staring at me with his big periwinkle eyes protruding out of a face emaciated from a year of fasting. Confronted by something so horrible, anyone else would have passed out, and I was about to but managed to fight the fainting off; I needed to stare reality in the face. “Every truth . . .” Hortèse started, but I told her to shut up and approached the mirror with a hand covering my eyes, then spread out my thumb and index finger, because had I not I wouldn’t have seen anything. Closer up, the situation was much improved in one aspect but worse in another. Much improved, because I resembled Winslow less when I assessed myself piece by piece — if I separated the nose from the cheeks and the eyes from the forehead — and worse because, in close-up, neither Winslow nor I were pleasing to behold. Exposing myself to such unforgiving scrutiny was hardly an enjoyable experience, but the situation required that
I put my feelings aside.

  Then I carried out a more exhaustive examination of the face reflected back at me and, with a degree of bad faith, concluded it was not me. Hadn’t Winslow and I always appeared similar, and had he not always irritated me for precisely that reason? I’d never wanted to admit it but, in another life and had he weighed a hundred pounds less, the tub of lard might have passed for my brother.

  To put myself even more at ease, I decided to proceed as a scientist would and examine my teeth: teeth are like fingerprints, they don’t lie, only I did so too vigorously, they fell out of my gums, and when I gathered my wits again I had Winslow’s dentures between my index and middle fingers. No big deal, I thought as I studied Winslow’s revolting dentures between my fingers, don’t panic, these aren’t your dentures, you must still be asleep, a possibility Anita contradicted when she half opened the bathroom door to tell me she was there. With a mixture of disgust and discouragement, I lisped that I needed her to give me two minutes, found a small bottle of bleach behind a curtain, sprayed the dentures with it, and left the bathroom with a forced smile.

  Anita came to my side and bent over to kiss me, but suddenly veered away: “What the fuck did you eat, Bob?”

  “Soap,” I said, a twinge of irony in my tone, as I thought of Aurore. “Aurore the Child Martyr, you know, the abused girl from Quebec whose stepmother made her eat soap?” It would seem the reference was not clear, so I mimed a little girl spitting up soap bubbles, but either Anita didn’t understand or didn’t want to laugh, because my joke fell flat. Didn’t really matter. Aurore would not have been upset.

  “I told you I was in a bad way,” I added, and then, gripping her arm, I asked her to bring me my clothes. The pants she handed me were, like Winslow’s, three sizes too large, but I preferred to think the pants belonged to the last patient in a coma and that he’d fled without even putting his clothes on, or that he’d died, leaving the pants behind. Whatever, I had to hurry, I needed to manage, so I used the lamp cord Anita was holding out to me as a belt and we tiptoed out, tip-tip, tip-tip, and we hopped quickly, hop-hop, hop-hop, hop-hop, into the elevator where, of course, the nurse who thought she was Kathy Bates was waiting for us. Oh so courageously, I took refuge in Anita’s arms and French-kissed her for four floors in order to preserve my anonymity. When, at last, Bates exited the elevator, Anita was on the point of chlorine intoxication. For a moment we considered heading to Emergency, but opted instead for a breath of fresh air — which, first good news of the day, or even the year, did indeed turn out to be July air.

  While Anita went to get the car, I sat down on a bench and let the sun warm my face without pausing to reflect on the damage UV rays could do to skin that hadn’t seen daylight for months. I tucked my anxieties beneath the bench and, sitting in the July sun and inhaling the smell of the hot asphalt and exhaust, gave myself up to the simple pleasure of simply being. It felt like a very long time since I’d been permitted a minute or two of pure relaxation. My year in a coma seemed to me like the length of one night, and consequently I felt as if recent events on Mirror Lake must have taken place yesterday or the day before, and nobody could pretend my life had been at all tranquil since. I didn’t deserve it, but clearly God was not of the same opinion and intended to teach me there was no such thing as peace in this base world.

  In my convalescence, I hoped I’d be granted little respite once I arrived at Mirror Lake, that I’d have the chance to start over, to pick things up as I’d left them, which, said the nasty and irrepressible voice in my head — not content to merely annoy me but delighting in destroying my illusions — is to say in total disorder. To rub it in, the bundle of anxieties I’d stashed beneath the bench started moving, and out of it arose all the questions I’d not answered: Who am I? Is the person I am sound of mind? What, fifty years ago, did Victor Morgan want with me? Is there a meaning to life that isn’t death or a coma?

  At any rate, even the questions I had resolved didn’t answer anything. For example, vis-à-vis John Doe’s identity, what was the point of knowing? John Doe was none other than . . . Fuck! I’d forgotten who John Doe was. Ah well, the nasty voice shot back unpleasantly, you just said there wasn’t any point in knowing. I was lying, I said to the voice. I was trying to appear Zen when faced with life’s setbacks but I’m not Zen!

  “I’m not Zen!” I shouted out to everyone including Anita, who was driving up in my car. (What was she doing with my car, which had disappeared when Artie had been requisitioned by Picard?) “I’m not Zen, Anita, I’m not Zen!”

  “No, no, shh, shhh, you’re not Zen,” she confirmed, pushing me and my suitcase full of anxieties and questions into the car. “You’re not Zen, Bob, absolutely not.”

  “So who am I, and who is John Doe, and who is Bob Winslow, and why are you calling me Bob, my name’s Robert, dammit!” I was whimpering and snivelling, while Anita wondered if perhaps she should seek out Kathy Bates and her syringe.

  I was on the point of easing up when I noticed the mock-leopard cover on the back seat.

  “Where did that come from?” I asked.

  “Woolworth’s, but Robert doesn’t like it,” she said, providing no further explanation. I was Robert and, true, it didn’t appeal to me, but how did she know?

  “Robert who?” I mumbled, scratching at a little bit of dirt stuck to Bamboo’s fake fur — a spot of ketchup or strawberry jam, maybe. I preferred not to learn the answer to my question, so refrained from asking twice.

  For the rest of the journey, I didn’t open my mouth except to breathe — and to ask who John Doe was, which was a question that struck me as less compromising.

  “John Doe is John Doe,” said Anita bluntly. She could be unyielding when she chose, and arguing that the very nature of a John Doe is to be a John Doe, you can’t escape it, certain truths are immutable. Rumour had it he might have been one Bartolomeo Eustachi, but Robert had refuted it.

  Anita refusing to enlighten me, I would ask Winslow if I wasn’t Winslow. And if I was Winslow, I would ask myself, because I had to be someone somewhere, dammit!

  You’re out of your mind, I was thinking concurrently. You’re losing control! Comas don’t suit you. If you’re thinking like yourself, then you are you. That’s all that counts — what’s on the inside, the soul, the mind, your intrinsic nature, the truth of the self beyond mere appearances. If I was Winslow, then I was only Winslow on the surface, nothing more. Which reminded me of what my mother used to say as she pushed me into Ginette Rousseau’s tentacular arms, completely cognizant that I’d never throw myself upon her and morality would remain intact: she’s not beautiful, but she’s a good little girl on the inside. The correlation didn’t convince me back then, and I can’t say my opinion has changed since, but I could work with it.

  When the image of Ginette Rousseau receded, we were leaving the highway for the lesser road to Mirror Lake, and my anxiety increased a notch at the thought of being immersed in all my things once more: my cottage, my bed, my books, my Jeff. I was scared that my universe might have fallen apart in my absence, and that I wouldn’t recognize Mirror Lake any more than I would myself in the mirror. Anita turned onto the side road that led to my place, proof that I was me, thank you God, otherwise she’d have carried on to Winslow’s turnoff. I closed my eyes because of the emotion, but also the fear, and only opened them again when she stopped the engine. But I didn’t see much because, gazing on Mirror Lake’s beauty, they immediately filled with tears. But Anita had an answer for everything, handed me a tissue, and we got out of the car.

  Outside, everything was chirping, sparkling, blooming, and for a moment I believed I was the luckiest man on the planet. I felt a strong urge to go to the lake and dip my toes in. Anita supported me and I asked her where Jeff was, told her I wanted Jeff, repeated that I needed Jeff at all costs; that I needed to experience this incredible moment with him. She gave me a funny look, women are constantly astonished when
they realize men have feelings, but she went to get him from the cottage anyway, where the good animal was waiting silently. When he saw me, he launched himself my way and jumped on me, big happy head first, and knocked me into the water, which I didn’t care about at all, because I was thrilled, as Jeff was too, ecstatic that I was home at last. And since I could hardly believe it either, I picked him up bodily and we rolled around on the beach, not caring about the sand clinging to our fur and hair, our clothes, making its way into our ears, too bad, and we promised we’d never leave each other again. “Nevermore,” croaked a crow, and I quoted it, telling Jeff it wasn’t my fault, that I’d been ill, which he understood. He leaned over me — I was prostrate on my back — and licked my face so much that I started to cry. Anita, watching, gave me another tissue and we stayed by the lake, where everything was still intact and unchanged, thank God. And then, letting out a big sniffle, I heard what could have been a child crying.

  “What’s that?” I said to Anita.

  “What’s what?” she said.

  “Somebody’s crying,” I said.

  “Nobody’s crying,” she answered, giving me another funny look. And she was right, nobody was crying. It might have been a bird, maybe a barred owl, or a northern saw-whet owl disoriented in the full sun, or perhaps even the memory of something else I’d read trying to assert itself through my tears.

  “Are you hungry?” Anita asked.

  It occurred to me that I was starving, that I was ravenous — like a raven, as I said to Anita. “Nevermore, nevermore, you know, caw, caw,” but she didn’t get the reference. As well as being so reserved, she could also be a little slow, though you certainly couldn’t describe her as stingy. My sweet Anita thought of everything. She’d prepared a few things, she said coquettishly as she stepped in the direction of the cottage, and I followed, making no secret of my emotion, so content was I to be there — and relieved, above all, that any trepidation I was feeling had remained in the car, where I hoped the heat would smother it.