The Quickening of Sarah

  I hate this place. Why doesn’t anyone look at me? Aren’t I pretty anymore? It’s probably because I’m stuffed into this dusty corner like an old relic next to these pieces of garbage. No one wants to come over here. Wait! Two suckers are walking in the door.         

  "I want to find a nice tea service,” the woman said. She was in her mid-fifties, attractive with dark hair and dark eyes. She was smartly dressed and wore glasses.

“I don’t know why, you only drink coffee,” the man said.

“It will look good in the dining room when guests come over in the afternoon,” the woman replied.

“No one comes over anymore,” the man said.

“Oh, Jimmy, you’re so negative.”

“I’m telling it like it is, Barbara. We have no friends anymore. We’ve driven them all away with our sadness.”

Barbara ignored his last remark and went off to find her tea cups, leaving Jimmy to browse my shop. Come over my way, you old fart. Look at me! As if he heard me, Jimmy walked back to my section, examining a coffee table that was wildly overpriced, in my opinion, and a severely tarnished samovar that no longer made tea.

Look at me, dammit! This way! Finally he turned and looked directly at me. He retrieved a tissue from his pocket and wiped my glass. Slowly his face came into view. It wasn’t the face he was accustomed to seeing—the bald head, the gray beard, the skin tags, the droopy eyes.

    “Ah, shoot me,” Jimmy said out loud.

    I sensed from looking at Jimmy that he was suffering from a loss. I only needed to look into his eyes to see inside his soul. What’s inside there, Jimmy? Tell me.

He had a daughter named Sarah. She tragically died at eight-years-old from a rare blood disease. He and his wife are devastated. It’s all he thinks about.

Thank you, Jimmy, that’s all I needed to know.

    “Daddy,” I said.

    “Who said that?” Jimmy turned his head and looked around. He saw no one.

    “Daddy, down here. It’s me, Sarah.”

    Jimmy looked down at the me and gasped.

“Sarah? Is that you?” Jimmy asked. A pristine clear image of a young blonde woman was smiling back at him from me.

“It’s me, daddy. Don’t you recognize me? I know I’m older now, but I’m still your little girl.”

    “But how can you…I’m losing my mind.”

    Jimmy put me down and rubbed his eyes with his hands.

    “You’re not losing anything, daddy,” Sarah said. “Come back. I have more to tell you.”

    Jimmy looked around the sparsely patronized store and cautiously picked me up. He put his hand to his mouth. This time Sarah was eight years-old. She had her mother’s front teeth and freckles and Jimmy’s round face.

    “I can’t wait for Christmas, daddy,” Sarah said. “Did you get me a lot of presents? Did you?”

    “Santa Claus will bring you presents if you were good.”

    “Oh, I don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore,” Sarah said smiling. “Tommy Caldwell at school told me there’s no Santa Claus. Or is there a Santa Claus, daddy?”

    “I could believe in just about anything right now, darling. What did you learn in school?”

    “Nothing.”

    “Do you have any tests this week?”  

    “Just math.”

    “You’ll have to get your mother to help you with that. I wasn’t very good at math. I’m the English, history, social studies guy.”

    “I know. Mommy does the math. Hahaha!”

    A hand touched Jimmy’s elbow and he jumped. It was a young woman with a pleasant smile.

    “Would you like to purchase that lovely mirror, sir? It’s quite a bargain at that price.”

    “Yes, er, I do, but if I pay you now, can I pick it up on Monday?”

    “Absolutely, that’s fine,” the saleswoman said. “Oh, by the way, where you just talking to someone on the phone?”

    “Uh, well, no I was talking to myself in the mirror,” Jimmy said embarrassed. “I was just trying it out. See if I liked it. You know, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…”

    “No worries,” she said, with a crooked smile.

After Jimmy had paid for me already, Barbara walked over with a sour look on her face.

“No, not that one,” Barbara said. “It’s far too expensive.”

    “But I like it,” Jimmy complained. “It’s classy.”

    Jimmy lifted me up and twisted me in the air. I was a two foot oval surrounded by a once gilded frame. Most of the gold had flaked off me and my bare wood showed through. My glass was dull but had no cracks. 

“No, Jimmy,” Barbara said. “It’s too expensive.”

    “But I like it,” Jimmy complained. “It’s classy.”

    “When in your fifty-four years have you been classy?” Barbara said.

    “I married you twenty five years ago.”

    “Everybody gets lucky once in their life,” Barbara said.

Jimmy returned to the shop on Monday when Barbara was at work to pick me up.  He returned to the house and nailed met on the wall in the basement in his ‘man cave.’ Barbara rarely stepped into the basement, even to clean. The basement was Jimmy’s autonomous zone.

He covered me with a white sheet so Barbara wouldn’t know he had bought me. Jimmy visited me every day.

On Monday, Sarah was fifteen and had no smiles for Jimmy. She wanted to get a tattoo of her boyfriend’s name on her ankle.

“You can get all the tattoos you want when you’re eighteen,” Jimmy said.

“You don’t get me,” Sarah said to him. “You’re so uncool.”

And with that, Sarah disappeared.

Jimmy was angry and sad at the same time. He didn’t think he was going to like teenage Sarah when she came. But, fortunately, she came rarely. The most frequent visitor was twenty-one year-old Sarah, her actual age. This was Jimmy’s favorite Sarah.

“Hello, daddy! Love you!” Sarah said to Jimmy.

“My love! And how are you today? Jimmy asked me.

“Fantastic! So glad to see you.”

“And how is college, my dear?

“Wonderful! I love it!”

“What’s your favorite class?” Jimmy asked me.

“My favorite is Byzantine history! I thought it would be boring but the professor is really interesting and the class is fun!”

“Byzantine history, huh? Like Constantinople and Julian the Apostate?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Sounds like a load of fun,” Jimmy smirked.

“Oh, daddy!’ Sarah laughed. “If you knew the professor you’d change your mind.”

“What is he, young and handsome?”

“No, actually he’s old and bald.”

“Watch the bald quips”

“I love your bald head, daddy, and I love you!”

“I wish I could give you a big hug,” Jimmy said to Sarah.

“If you want to give me a hug, there is a way.”

“Please, tell me how!” Jimmy put his hands on my glass and touched the reflection of Sarah’s hands. His warms hands felt good against my glass. I took them and let them melt into the surface of my glass until they were touching Sarah’s. His hands glowed as his fingers pressed through my glass giving off a gentle heat.

“I can’t believe this! It isn’t possible!” Jimmy exclaimed.

“Keep walking through,” Sarah said to him, “and we’ll be together forever. But close your eyes. It may burn them.”

   “Oh, yes! Forever!” Jimmy said, closing his eyes and smiling.

    Jimmy stepped forward and his body melted into mine with a rush of heat.

    “Just a little farther, daddy,” Sarah said.

    “This is extraordinary, I can sense your whole body next to mine. But your voice sounds different now, Sarah.”

    “You can open your eyes, daddy,” Sarah laughed in a deeper voice.

    Jimmy opened his eyes. He was looking at middle-aged woman with brown and hazel eyes and a wry smile on her face. It wasn’t Sarah anymore. Even more alarming, Jimmy realized he was the mirror.

    “Who are you? I don’t understand what’s happening?” Jimmy said. “Where’s Sarah?”

    “There was no Sarah,” the woman said. “The mirror reflects who you want to see. Who you need to see. We all have something we want to see in the mirror that doesn’t exist anymore. I was tricked into seeing my husband. He died in a car accident. I was in an antique shop, too. A different one. Thirty-five years ago! I had to wait all that time to find someone else to trick. And you, too, will find someone to trick once you get the chance. I hope you won’t have to wait as long as I did. Or maybe you’ll end up in a junkyard, if your unlucky. Now let’s put this sheet back over you.”

    “No, wait, please! Sarah! Help! Please! Sarah! Sarah!”