Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

  Copyright 2016 Meredith Miller

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  I sit across the table from him, my attention split between dinner and husband in equal parts. He picks at his food absentmindedly, and a piece of chicken falls from his plate. It lands on the white tablecloth, staining its pristine state, effectively ruining the thing. He doesn’t even notice the mistake he’s made; perhaps unaware that he’s just making extra work for me. He has bags under his beautiful blue eyes, which were by now bloodshot from lack of sleep and long hours in the office. He lies still enough at night, but I could tell that he has barely been sleeping at all. It worries me because he won’t talk about it with me, no matter how many times I try to breach the subject. He smiles at me now, but I can tell a fake strained smile from a mile away. Call it women’s intuition, if you will.

  Trying to start a conversation, I ask, “How do you like dinner?”

  At that his smile widens, and although he didn’t eat very much at all, he exclaims, “Oh, love it, it was a real surprise! How did you make it?” I purse my lips in annoyance, for I hadn’t made the chicken curry at all: it was take out that I’d simply arranged into dishes at home. Luckily he knew as much about cooking as I myself did, and I was able to stutter and bluff my way through a fake explanation well enough for him to spend the next five minutes complimenting my cooking. Still, I keep a bad mood until well after dinner, for he hadn’t said a thing about my new hairstyle and make up and new hot red fingernails. The whole reason that I ordered take out today was because I spent most of my time in the salon, getting myself a makeover for him. Really, sometimes I don’t know the way that this man thinks.

  We lie in bed, and we spend some time talking about our day. I neglect to say that I’d been to the salon (I’ll be damned if I mention it before he does) but skim over the other parts of my daily routine: work, the gym, brunch with a mutual friend. In the lull afterwards, I gather up my courage and say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. You’re always tired and rarely home. You’re distant and when I talk to you, it’s like you’re not even there.” In response, he turns over to face in my direction, although I’m lying on my back and looking at the ceiling. He goes on and on about how work has been difficult, how the new position carries a lot of responsibilities with it, and how he has been struggling to cope with everything. In my ears, all of his words sound hollow, as if he were simply breathing out hot air and letting it bounce around the walls of our bedroom. Deep in my heart, I know that he’s lying about what’s been troubling him, and start to get upset. I cut him off in my lawyer voice, the one reserved for the jury in court. I tell him about him that trust and honesty are important in a relationship, and that it isn’t beneficial to be hard headed and secretive about our problems. I then turn from him, unto my left side, as he keeps going on and on about how work has been draining him. He is unaware of the slow seed of doubt that he’d unwittingly planted in me, and as I sleep my nightmares nurture it.

  *

  I’m sitting alone in the living room. It’s Saturday but he isn’t here. He’d gone early in the morning, in a suit as well as a rush. I tried my best to make lunch for the two of us, but as usual I fail miserably and I end up ordering Chinese. When I called his cell he hadn’t answered, and so I had lunch already and am lazing now, watching a rerun of Doctor Who. I dislike the show but am not really focused on the TV anyway, and as the silly actor walks into a sort of telephone booth and whizzes off somewhere or the other, I sigh. Heroes don’t exist.

  Just then, the front door opens. He stands framed by the doorway, a smile on his face as he takes off his necktie. Just then I notice that he looks better than he had all week: His complexion is less sickly pale, his black hair is no longer a splayed mess, and his smile seems more genuine than the one he had given me in the morning. Somehow the sight gives me an uneasy feeling, and when he kisses me while rambling about some business deal that he managed to secure in today’s urgent meeting I catch the whiff of an unusual odor on him. A woman’s perfume. It gives me a shock, but then it all makes sense as I struggle to keep my features normal and fight for calmness. The unnamed fear that had been growing like a worrisome plant slowly, suddenly turns into hard cold bark. I say nothing for now, but vow to myself that I’m going to catch him red handed. Unaware of my plans, he goes on with his animated chatter, which I am now convinced is nothing but a rehearsed speech. The bastard! I pretend to be innocent and interrogate him sweetly until he drops a name. Apparently he was working in tandem with the production manager for his companies’ supplier. I know who to look for. While he sleeps at night I look through his phone. He had it under a password but it was simply the year that he was born. I spend most of the dark hours checking his call register, chat history, messages, as well as photos. I hide in the bathroom so the light doesn’t disturb him and blow my cover. It’s as clean as I had dared to fear, with nothing to incriminate him. But then again, a part of me knew this might happen. He was a smart man, I’m sure he had everything in another phone. Maybe he kept it in the office?

  In desperation, I look up the woman’s name, and when I found one with the same name who works in the company he mentioned, I pause in confusion. The picture I am met with is of an elderly lady, already close to being in her sixties, by the looks of her. Her greying hair and the wrinkles on her face give no clues. Could he possibly be eloping with her behind my back? Then I scroll down and find another picture of her speaking with her secretary, giving some sort of order with a smile on her face, presenting the image of a kind boss. My lips curve into a smile. That’s it, he’d given me the boss’s name to throw me off the scent, but I now knew who the slut is. I didn’t think he could be so crafty, but I’d come out the winner in the end. There was no way I’m forgiving either of them.