The Broken Mirror

My brother was born twelve minutes before me, his twin sister, and thus our differing paths in life commenced. Mother told me he was still crying when I was ejected, and so his newborn squalls were the first sounds I heard. She also said boys usually cry more than girls, but how would she know?—she only had the two of us. Mother didn’t mind his crying; she said it strengthened his lungs. Is this the reason I can barely make it up the stairs, even now, at 26, without getting winded? Logan is the mildly overweight one, not me; I’m a rail. I’m not telling you my name because it’s embarrassing. It rhymes with my brother’s; Mother knew she was having twins.

My father was a hard-working man, from what I’ve heard. Blue collar and seething blue eyes. He left town the millisecond after my mother told him she was pregnant, but that estimation was probably on the generous side. Mother never married again, nor have I ever seen her romantically involved with another man. Once, I saw her smile at the UPS driver as she signed for a package. She likely had ten years on Mr. UPS, but I don’t think either one of them would have cared if the stars aligned above them. He smiled back and lingered a few seconds more than was appropriate before wishing her a good day. He wore brown shorts and had brown eyes. I asked Mother if she fancied the handsome delivery man. I should’ve known better. She told me to mind my own business, and Mr. UPS never graced our front stoop again.

  As I’ve stated before, Logan is the name of my brother, my twin, but we weren’t known for our similarities: He was born with dark eyes, mine are blue; he grew up solid and sturdy, I’ve been knocked over by a strong breeze; his simmering anger was often misidentified as swagger and confidence; I’ve allowed things to fall where they may, only then deciding in which order to pick them up. Even as adults, the disparity was obvious: Logan liked Led Zeppelin, I was a fan of Sara Bareilles; he favored Adam Sandler movies, I preferred Meryl Streep but am not averse to a good Kristen Wiig offering; Logan was no stranger to a bouncer’s peacekeeping fist, I rarely went out.

When we were young, Logan was known to throw tantrums in public, establishing a situational dominance that simply wasn’t there. However, I would frequently hear him sobbing into his pillow in the adjacent bedroom after lights-out. I never told Mother of this less sinister side of Logan because I knew he wouldn’t have wanted me to. Even at an early age, I tried to placate him, identifying wrinkles and ironing them out before he noticed them. I believe Mother was aware of my maturity in handling potential pyrotechnics that Logan may unwittingly set off, and she always came to me first when questioning any less-than-stellar behavior on his part. If I did happen to implicate him in a malicious act of cruelty or some physical thuggery, my part in her information-gathering was thankfully kept between us.

Logan and I didn’t go to the same school after our elementary years. It was a fortuitous transition when Mother moved the family to a district with two middle schools and two high schools. I’m not saying we didn’t get along well; we did most of the time, but grades one through six provided many woeful accounts that got back to Mother—one of us had inevitably been embarrassed by the other. I was bused to a middle school as a teen, and I collected a few friends who rarely visited my home because of the distance. Logan walked to his school, and there were daily instances of strange boys in our house, loud and full of energy, lacking compassion for Mother’s things or the material elements of the house itself.

Once, when I was eight and Logan was eight plus twelve minutes, he invited me to investigate a dead raccoon at recess with him and a small horde of his rebellious cohorts. I should’ve known better and remembered that his mischief escalated whenever he was around his deviant friends. As we crouched to inspect the poor animal, which had landed less than twenty feet from the road, I saw its body had been freshly ripped open and its bloody entrails were visible. Maggots and other insects were already engrossed in the natural processes of death. As I realized my mistake of naive participation a second too late, a boy of much more physical strength and simpler intelligence than Logan pushed my face into the viscid decay of the raccoon. The entire throng of boys immediately retreated with frenzied whoops and wails. I didn’t tell my mother about this incident because I had only a gut feeling that Logan masterminded the entire plan. If I had known for certain, I may have reported everything and left Logan’s fate up to parentally induced karma.

I never had feelings of retribution for this slimy act of juvenile misbehavior, so guilty or not, Logan went unpunished. He never admitted or apologized for the prank, and he didn’t cry during the night as I had expected. Either he was evolving into a bolder version of himself, or I’d become more lax at identifying his troubling patterns. Still, I developed an aloofness toward Logan after the raccoon episode, and the trusting bond we shared was damaged. When we finally separated by going to different schools, I realized I needn’t worry about his playground antics anymore, and if he developed some kind of self-control, we could become close once more. Mother was busy with two jobs and was rarely home for more than a quick meal and a peck on the cheek, so I promptly learned that home life was the new school playground.

A few months into our thirteenth year, Logan called me into Mother’s room. She kept a hand mirror on her dresser that we all called Nana’s Mirror. It was my grandmother’s and now my mother’s, and I had assumed it would be mine one day. It was an antique with a solid silver back detailed with intricate swirling patterns. As I answered Logan’s call, he grasped the mirror like it was a tennis racket, and he bashed me on my head as I walked in the room. The mirror glass shattered, creating a bloody gash on the side of my forehead. Logan left me bleeding on Mother’s bedroom carpet. He called her at work and left the house, not returning until well after Mother and I returned from the emergency room. I never understood the rationale for this latest attack. We had been somewhat civil leading up to it, and I had not blamed him for any recent wrongdoing. However, I had told Mother he had thrown a garter snake into the tub while I was showering. But that had been weeks prior to the mirror incident. Logan was grounded for two weeks and was banned from playing video games, which only succeeded in raising the sibling temperature inside the modest house on Sutter Lane. 

I moved out before my eighteenth birthday. I had been working part-time at Bradford Motor Inn as a housekeeper and before that as a sweeper at Shayleen’s Beauty, so I had some money saved. Janet, a friend from school who was also going through an abusive time via her stepfather, and I, decided to leave town after graduation and live with her cousin in Mayville. Mother cried when she saw me with my suitcase, and Logan ran to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I consoled my mother and told her I wanted to see the world, for lack of a better fictitious reason, and I apologized for not letting her in on my plans earlier. When Janet showed up, I called out my goodbye to Logan, hearing no response from behind the Star Wars poster tacked to the wooden bedroom door. It was the last I saw either family member until I visited for Christmas this year.

Someone must have picked up and shaken the town because it looked like a snowglobe with twinkling lights and gently falling snow. I had moved several times since leaving home, each time a little farther away, but I made it a habit to call Mother at least once a week. She came outside in the snow when she saw my car ease up to the curb on Christmas Eve morning, and we hugged until we started to shiver. Logan came a few hours later. He lived in an apartment on Main Street above a hardware store. He was an auto mechanic and worked for a friend who owned a garage. All this information was supplied by my mother, as I rarely spoke to Logan. He said it was good to see me and called me Sis, which he had never done before. He gave me a surprisingly hearty hug, and I could smell industrial solvent and cheap aftershave on him. His dark hair looked thin, and he didn’t appear as frighteningly overbearing as I had imagined while driving; Mother had said he lost some weight. My anxiety over returning home abated as I put a few presents under the tree while Mother flitted around and Logan read a magazine. But I still wanted a drink.

Mother and I went to Midnight Mass, and we left Logan in front of the television. I’m not religious, and neither is my mother, but we went because she wanted to see her friends and as a respite from the stuffy house. I didn’t recognize many people, and the few I did know seemed to have aged twice as fast as they should have. Everybody seemed pleasant and cheerful, and I briefly wondered if I should make homecoming an annual occurrence. It was well after 1:30 a.m. when Mother and I clicked our seatbelts in my car and headed home.

The colorful red glow from the Christmas tree could be seen through the large window in front as we pulled up. I told Mother to be careful on the ice because the last thing she needed was a broken hip. Inside, we put away our coats and wondered if Logan was asleep. Mother said he wanted to stay over in his old room even though he lived less than fifteen minutes away. When we saw the wrapping paper, it nailed us to the floor, and Mother emitted a short, sharp gasp. It appeared Logan had unwrapped and opened every present that was under the tree; paper and boxes were strewn everywhere. The sweater I had purchased for my mother was carelessly thrown on the floor. Other gifts were haphazardly deposited on the coffee table or sofa. One of the two things I had bought for Logan was on an end table—a bottle of Jack Daniels, uncapped and drunk from. I brought Mother into the kitchen and sat her down. I put the kettle on to make some cocoa and told her I’d find Logan.

Logan’s door was closed, and mine was ajar, so I went into my old bedroom. I flicked on the light, and there he was—my twin brother. My childhood friend and nemesis. In the closet. He was hanging by the second gift I had brought for him—a thick leather belt with a pewter buckle, a dark muddy brown, with holes along the entire length because I didn’t know his size. I sat on the bed and looked at him. He had wrapped and buckled the belt around his neck and positioned one of the first holes on a hook in the closet. Logan’s weight and gravity did the rest. His face was bloated and had a shiny blue tint. His eyes were closed, but his mouth remained open, revealing the testament of a lifeless purple tongue. He may have been crying before losing consciousness, tears drying on his face as Mother and I listened to the congregation sing “Nearer My God to Thee.” I noticed the belt still had the store tag attached, and I covered my face with my hands.

As I headed toward the kitchen, I passed my mother’s room. She still had the antique hand mirror on her dresser. I picked up the thing that was once an heirloom, once a weapon, now powerless and mirrorless. There was a ladybug under it sitting on the lace doily, another of Nana’s leftovers. I remembered my mother saying there had been a surprising invasion of them in late fall, when it started to get cool. I watched it start to crawl, its hiding place now exposed; the bright red-orange shell seemed misplaced in the drab room. It soon stopped, either too exhausted to continue or reaching its intended destination an inch and a half away. I put the mirror back down over it and switched the light off.

I walked into the kitchen and made cocoa for two while my mother wondered out loud about Logan and why he would ruin the presents, effectively ruining Christmas. There were plastic candles with clear, shiny bulbs in the kitchen windows, doubled with their reflection. I briefly wondered what Christmas had been like over the last several years, my mother and my brother sitting around the tree, sipping whiskey or coffee, talking about work or the weather or me. I wanted to smash my mug against the kitchen table, but instead I placed it down gently. I put my hand on Mother’s and squeezed. I told her she looked beautiful tonight, and she smiled at me. After a minute or so, I patted her hand and said, “C’mon. Get up.”