Last Night's Fortune

I look in the mirror and smirk. 

Christine once told me that no one can look at themselves in the mirror dead on. Christine says that when someone looks at themselves in the mirror, they instantaneously make some sort of face, usually to make themselves more attractive. I hate facts like that, and Christine is full of them. It’s like when I’m in the waiting room at a doctor’s office and Christine asks me if I can hear the soft hum of the air conditioner above us, and then asks me if it’s something that “bothers me too.” Well, Christine, now we’re both bothered, because now I’m not gonna be able to hear anything besides that air conditioner until the receptionist tells me it’s time for my check-up. At least the doctor’s office is once a year or two. I’ve got a mirror in my bathroom. That’s gotta be thousands of smirks a year. 

And I’m fine with my face, honestly. I think it looks pretty much alright. In high school, after class, we all used to ask each other questions and often someone would ask something along the lines of “rate yourself out of 10.” Most people would get flustered. They’d either rate themselves a number way too low to get everyone to pity them and say “no, no, don’t be so hard on yourself”, or they’d rate themselves a number way too high and, in my opinion, the outcome of rating yourself too high is even worse. Trust me. Becky Sandford says she’s an 8 and now everyone’s making eyes at each other, and telepathically they’re all saying the same thing: “You’re sure as hell not ugly Becky, but an 8? Someone could use a little more life experience.” If it ever came around to me, I’d just describe myself as a 6; that’s slightly above average, assuming 5’s the average. Whenever I’d say that, everyone would just nod their heads, perhaps even with a hint of admiration for my right-on-the-money approach.

Some people think that all I talk about are looks, but I talk about other things too. I’ve got substance. Trust me. I have things about me others don’t even know, for example. Deep secrets, even dark ones too. When I trust you, you get a secret. When I trust you even more, you get a dark one. If you and I are best friends for a really long time — and I’m talking decades at this point — I’ll tell you something absolutely nuclear. Something that’ll make you go “wow, that is not something I ever would’ve expected you to share. You sure got more going on than I thought.” 

I’ve told Christine many secrets. Today I tell her a slightly darker one that I decide I don’t need to keep to myself anymore. I tell her that one time, on a school trip in the eighth grade, my class was at the Holocaust museum and I was standing next to Lindsey Klonner, this girl I had a huge crush on. She looked like if the Arctic was a person, but in a good way. Ice blonde hair, eyes like the sky — when it’s not the sort of weather we’ve been having the past few weeks — and the type of smile that’d be perfect in any mirror. The type of girl where, if she said she was an 8, everyone may think she’s actually pulling the pity card; but Lindsey wasn’t that type. She was real sensitive about things. A ‘feels-first’ sorta person. 

Anyway, I’m standing next to this big chart, maybe thirty-feet tall, that has all this information about all the children who died, and Lindsey starts crying. I’m sad too, but I’m not crying; I’m just standing there, with a solemn look on my face, thinking about how awful it all is. Then I notice that Pierre Le Blanc, who’s standing right behind me, starts crying too. And before I know it, Lindsey’s by his side, putting her arm around him, and they’re sobbing together. 

Pierre was a nice guy, so it's not like I have anything against him. He had recently moved from some suburb near Quebec city, and really hadn’t made very many friends so, looking back, it’s probably good everyone noticed him crying. They saw he was all sensitive, and a ‘feels-first’ kinda guy, and that probably made people trust him more. No one wants to trust someone who’s a ‘thinks-first’ kinda guy; someone who just spends all day thinking.

I’m ashamed to admit it but, in that moment, I just got mad. I got mad because even though I was just as sad as Pierre, no one seemed to care unless I had the physical proof. So I get to work and started thinking about the saddest stuff I could, and before I knew it, I was thinking about my Nana who was lying sick in the hospital. And that really got to me because, you know, my Nana always meant a lot to me. So I’m thinking hard about how she’s sick, and how she’s gonna die, and how I’ll never see her again. At lightning speed I’m thinking about all the good times we had together and how that’ll just be it because soon she’ll be gone. And as I start to envision what the funeral is going to look like, I feel the tears coming. So I seize the moment and stare at the huge billboard of statistics, opening my eyes wide. I’m careful not to blink so my eyes get real dry. Finally, the tears come and I start sobbing too; I start sobbing way louder than Pierre. I make a complete scene that, mind you, is 100% genuine; I just happen to not be crying about the kids — but no one knows that except me. 

I turn back to wipe my eyes and find that Lindsey’s removed her arm from around Pierre. She’s looking sympathetically at me and, after a brief hesitation, walks over and asks if I’d like a hug. I tell her that that’d probably help, and so we hug, and I stain her shoulder with my tears and a bit of snot, but Lindsey was the type where that was okay. The dark part of that secret is that my Nana happened to die only a few days later. I know what I did and Nana’s death are unrelated, but it still makes me feel a little icky; just icky enough that I’d call that secret mildly dark. 

I finish telling Christine the story and she responds by calling me a ‘sick mother-effer.’ She says that people don’t do stuff like that, and that what I did was exploitative, like a union that doesn’t stand up for its workers. I didn’t really get what she meant by that, because I didn’t see how unions related to my Nana dying, but Christine said they did and so I decided it was easier to just nod my head and charge on. I told her that I probably wouldn’t do that now, and she said that I probably would. She said that if she was in the hospital and I was at the Holocaust museum with another girl, I’d probably do the exact same thing. I told her that the odds of me going to another Holocaust museum was pretty much nil, and when she heard that, she just stormed out. I knew I should have just nodded my head and charged on, but because I had forgot my own advice for that split second, she’s gone and locked herself in the bathroom. Well, that’s how these things usually go anyway.

I go to the bathroom door to make peace and can hear her crying on the other side. I start knocking on the door to let her know I’m there. Some dark part of me thinks it would be funny to ask if she’s actually crying about this or if she’s just thinking about her dad who died last autumn. I bite my tongue on that one, and instead I tell her that I want to apologize for what I had said and done.

“Leave me alone!” she yells back.

So I leave her alone for a bit and go downstairs to get a drink of orange juice and reheat some old pasta from Thursday. I put it in the microwave on ‘HIGH’ for a little bit because I don’t want to be caught downstairs making pasta when she comes out of the bathroom to make peace. I taste the pasta, which I know could’ve tasted better, but I know that’s not the pasta’s fault; the ‘HIGH’ setting just does a super uneven job reheating. After a few bites and a sip or two of orange juice, I go back upstairs and knock again. I had brought the pasta and orange juice with me, so first I had to place them on the ground so I had a free hand to knock with. “Christine, I’m sorry!” I tell her. 

“Eff-off!” she yells back.

I kneel down and take another bite of pasta. The next time I knock, I am met with complete silence. I start a little routine where I take three bites of pasta, a sip of orange juice, and try my luck at knocking again. Five circuits in, I finish my pasta, so I go downstairs and put the dishes on the counter. Next to the landline, I see that I had left a fortune cookie from last night’s beef and broccoli take-out. Christine had taken most of the beef, leaving me most of the broccoli. I put the fortune cookie in my pocket and go back upstairs. 

At this point, we’ve been at it for over twenty minutes, and it was becoming increasingly unfortunate that our unit had only the one bathroom. We didn’t really know our neighbours, and I knew it would be too awkward to ask, so I mustered up some courage and knocked once more.

“Christine, I know you’re mad, but please come out. I really gotta go now, and my stomach’s starting to hurt. So if you don’t want to talk, I’ll just step away from the door — I’ll even close my eyes if you want — and you can take over the bedroom.”

In a very matter-of-fact way, Christine tells me that she hoped I effing ‘went’ in my pants. 

“Christine, I know you’re mad, but if I go in my pants, it’s just going to be terrible for the both of us. I’ll have to throw out my pants and the hallway will smell like you-know-what.”

In a way that was just as matter-of-fact, but maybe slightly more hostile too, she tells me that if I 'went' in my pants, then I’d smell the way I looked because I was truly that ugly. 

Those words hurt my feelings a lot more than anything she had said so far. One of my secrets — one that wasn’t so dark, but was just kind of special and important to me — was that I wasn’t the #1 fan of how I looked. I knew I didn’t look as ugly as she was saying, and I also knew she was just saying what she saying because she was mad at me, but it still hurt all the same. Christine knew me better than anyone, and she knew, proportionally, her opinion was one I really cared about.

I put my back against the wall that was adjacent to the bathroom door, and put my hands in my pockets as a sign of defeat. My right hand comes into contact with the fortune cookie from downstairs, and since I have nothing better to do, I pull it out and open it. I hesitate before eating it because, if my stomach was already telling me I had to go, eating more would probably only make it worse. But honestly, with all the stress of everything going on, I thought a little sugar cookie would do me some good.

I crack the cookie in half and eat one of the halves. Only as I am chewing do I realize that you’re supposed to read the fortune first. Now I can’t possibly back out of whatever the fortune is. I decide to step outside of my comfort zone and take the risk. I unroll the little piece of paper, pop the second half of the cookie in my mouth, and read what it says:

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it” -Confucius. 

The door flies open mid-crunch and Christine is suddenly in my face. “Are you effing eating? For someone who had to go to the bathroom so badly, I didn’t expect to hear munching through the door. What, you’re trying to get even bigger?” With that, Christine walks straight into the bedroom and locks the door behind her, leaving me with cookie in my mouth.

I finish chewing as I enter the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Her words had stung even more, because now she had made a direct reference to my stomach. When she was happy, the fact that my stomach had grown now and then over the years didn’t seem to bother her. When she was mad, it was her go-to way to make me feel hurt. 

I look in the mirror, smirk, and think about how hurtful it is that someone who I tell all these secrets to would try to make me hurt like that. Christine’s not pretty like most, but to me she’s very pretty, and I always make sure to tell her that. Sometimes she’ll say thank you, and other times she’ll say I’m lying and lock herself in the bathroom. 

Doesn’t she know I see my stomach too? I said I was a 6 in high-school, for crying out loud. That was when I was tops. Twenty or so years hasn’t been so helpful to me in the looks department. I mean, I bet even Lindsey Klonner doesn’t look so amazing anymore and she used to be the CEO of the looks department. 

Well, all I’m saying is that I see what the years have done, and I don’t need it the truth of it pointed out, right in my face. All I’m saying is that I don’t need the one person who I tell all my secrets to, to mistreat me like that. 

I look at the fortune from the cookie and read it again. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” I look at the mirror once more, smirk, and search for the beauty. I have a real go at it too, but my mission proves itself to be pretty difficult. My eyes just seem like my eyes. My nose is a little on the bigger side. My ears are okay, I guess. My teeth aren’t fantastic, but I think they could really be a lot worse. My chest muscles are softer than I’d like, but unfortunately I already know that because, besides my stomach, they’re a target for insults from Christine too. My stomach’s big and round, so that’s not so great, but I guess that’s already been established. I’ve even got some marks from how big it is too; those are more recent. 

I look at the fortune from the cookie and read it once more. Then I look at the mirror, smirk, and keep searching.

The fortune, the mirror with the smirk, and the search.

Fortune, mirror, search. Fortune, mirror, search. Fortune, mirror, search. Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. 

I pull down my pants and I do my business. Staring forward at our ordinary floral striped wallpaper, that Christine chose, I start to feel even sadder. I begin feeling just absolutely, downright, terrible. I start to wonder if I’ve ever felt so low.

As I sit on the toilet, I start to wonder how Pierre Le Blanc is doing, as a ‘feels-first’ sorta guy. I send out my best wishes to him because life can be pretty hard for someone who spends a lot of their time feeling. As a ‘thinks-first’ man myself, even just a little bit of feeling sometimes feels like way too much. 

But then, something begins to happen. I start thinking, real hard. I pull the fortune from the bathroom counter where I left it, and read it once more. And then I read it again, and again, and just one more time. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” I think to myself: I tried to see it and couldn’t. But according to this paper, not everyone sees it. Aren’t I one of those ‘everyone’s?’ That must mean I don’t have to see it for it to be true. 

I finish up my wiping as soon as I can and pull up my pants. I turn to the mirror, I smirk, and I stare at myself. Slowly, I let the smirk fade, until I look like I’m in training for the best passport photo of all time. 

I look, and I look, and I look. I don’t see the beauty, not really, but at least I know it’s there. Maybe it always has been, and maybe it always will be.

My smirk comes back and I mutter under my breath: “Eff it, I’m at least a 7.”