Following the time they had together there now remains only this, that
phantom time they will not ever.
A hole at each of its four corners bears testament to the upright
mirror’s previous placement, removed as it was from the front of his mother’s
wardrobe long since dismantled and discarded, after which it had been propped
up against the wall outside the bathroom at the top of the stairs.
Nothing more than a simple matter of convenience, that much easier than
to actually unpack and construct the new free-standing mirror ordered as its
replacement, itself eventually removed to the garage intact in that very
packaging within which it had arrived, finally adopted as one passive part of a
strategic and sustained living exorcism to make her house their own.
Less passive perhaps though on his
part, crawling now both as they are on out through the back years of their
forties with it stood there propped aslant for just how long neither one of
them could even hope to guess; so that now, nearby and tidying up ahead of an
imminent visit from their son, talk gravitates again, as it often can and will,
toward Elvis:
ache1 (laughing, mating socks from the laundry basket):
People say Elvis was never the same when he got out of the army
Skunk (clawing at that current iteration of beard growing unchecked
upon his face): I, I, I mean, I’m sure I’ve heard
that but
ache1: and that, that the army, it was the army that broke him, or tamed him might be a better word,
Skunk (as news announcer): “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Presley:
castrated by the U.S. Army”
ache1 (laughing): no, no, but, the idea was that whatever
rebellious spirit, or or, what, essence? vitality? he had up ‘til then... emb-,
embodied? is that the word? whatever that thing was he’d had beforehand he left
behind him in Germany and he came back home without it.
Brother Skunk and his reflection each catch sight of the other, both
immediately bewildered by their askew and disturbingly unrecognisable familiar,
their shared features creasing in mutual frustration.
ache1: But
sighs
ache1: ..the facts are these: at that same time that Elvis
was in the army his mother died. His national service was only ah, two years,
but he’d had a, a lifetime with his
mother. Which do you think had more
impact?
They fold their clothes in the silence.
ache1 (unspoken): I
mean I don’t know, I don’t know, but there are... Jesus God, some days I miss
my folks so much I don’t think I can even stand
it. And antler... antler...
..their son, her son.
Skunk (distracted): Yeah... yeah.
The mirror seems to Skunk like so much clutter. He imagines his mother
in her time, a moving reflection dimensionless upon the surface of its glass,
and what each might have seen in its other.
the mirror forms
And too he remembers ache1 standing before it, angling her
self this way and back: to see how the clothes sit; how her hair lands; how the
make-up functions in just this degree of light; inspecting that much of herself
as the restricted view might afford, but it all seems somehow, for him at
least, so very long ago.
The mirror forms the grown child’s absent grandmother.
Skunk: Can we just get rid of this?
ache1: Get- what? Why?
Skunk (shrugs): It’s not like you use it anymore, do you?
then suddenly seeing the disappointment register in her face, and with
immediate regret now biting down hard upon and cursing his idiot tongue.
It is his own crying as wakes him from the dream.
