Mirror Images
For the seventh time that day, a metro train left a station just as Ian stepped onto a platform; he hissed: “Jeesuzzzz! Again!”
The next wasn’t coming for ten minutes.
“Ten bloody minutes. Jeesuzzzz!”
Waiting produces rewarding observation. But Ian just wanted to observe his bed.
He sat down beside two women who had long hair and were covered in jewellery. The women’s watchbands’ colours matched the colours of their watches’ faces. Perfume enveloped them, like atmospheres engulfing self-contained worlds. Ian was still thinking: Ten bloody minutes!
The crystals in the women’s shoes glittered with pointless beauty. It was pointless because it was just surface. But surface was profound for some.
One said: “There’s loads of gas.”
The other women’s agitated distance was so profound that it looked permanent. Because her dread was vivid against the other one’s thrilled self-absorption, Ian stopped thinking about wasted time. He started listening.
The first woman continued: “David’s so happy that it’s a boy. I’m happy either way.”
The other one’s not even listening, Ian thought.
“We’re calling him Michael,” the first woman continued, “after David’s father who’s helped us so much.”
The talker’s delighted enthusiasm plastered the other woman’s face with perturbed tedium.
She’s so uninterested in listening, Ian thought, that she’s not even pretending to listen.
“We’d tried for a while as well,” the first said. “Then it happened; it’s been wonderful ever since.”
The other woman’s deadpan face suggested that anything had to be more interesting than this.
She thinks the pregnant one won’t notice that she’s bored. And she’s right, Ian thought.
“He’ll probably have,” the pregnant woman continued, “blue eyes, like our mothers.”
The other woman’s face looked stretched.
“David wants him to look like me,” the pregnant woman added, smiling.
The silent woman’s face exuded a pain that was consistent and unchanging, like set concrete.
“Our families are so happy,” the pregnant woman said. “They can’t wait and neither can we.”
The talker’s blue eyes sparkled in her facial flame of contentment.
It’s an achievement, Ian thought, to feel greatness without having achieved anything.
The bored woman believed that she had had pregnancies infinitely more important than this pregnancy.
With regretful casualness, Anne-Marie, the pregnant woman, fired a question as the train arrived, Rosemary, the bored one, saying: “A special bus picks them up. Most parents have to take their children to school.”
Her eyes now glistened. Ian’s curiosity belittled his previous anger.
Anne-Marie’s face assumed the distance that had evaporated from Rosemary’s when the question had been asked.
Never ask these women questions, Anne-Marie thought. Never!
“That must save a lot of time?” she asked, contradicting herself.
Only her lips moved on her now bored face.
If a man looks bored, Ian thought, people say: Men don’t listen.
“It’s great,” Rosemary replied. “I can get to work earlier so I can leave earlier.”
Anne-Marie studied her reflection in a facing window in the carriage they had entered, Rosemary’s ebullient hands resembling drops flying around on a hot stove. Ian faced them on the other side of the carriage.
“I can spend more time with the kids,” Rosemary said.
Anne-Marie’s face imitated Rosemary’s previous sour mould of irked uneasiness.
Rosemary, having had two pregnancies, wasn’t interested in a third: pregnancy’s once riveting appeal as a subject had disappeared because she wasn’t going to get pregnant again.
Now it was about raising children.
“Getting home earlier,” she continued, “means I spend longer helping the kids with their homework.”
Anne-Marie’s asides created false impressions of interest to keep Rosemary occupied while she – Anne-Marie – studied herself, imagining the adoration that David was about to give her.
It’s wonderful how he strokes my stomach while he kisses me, she thought, Rosemary saying: “Because of this they’ve improved at school.”
Anne-Marie heard Rosemary stop so she asked: “Are they improving at school then?”
Ian covered his smile with a hand.
Lucky I missed that train, he thought.
Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. 87 of his stories have been accepted by 73 different magazines.