The Beautiful Six Years
by Ernest Dempsey
Laboring his legs upstairs in that dingy tavern, Adam Cooper failed to answer the question in his mind. How could a woman like Nora Reed live in this place? Naturally, it led to another question. Did this place cause her death?
At length, the attendant brought him to a small room in the most obscure corner of the building. He unlocked the wooden door, eaten by termites all along its frame.
“Here, sir,” said the attendant, leading him in. Adam felt the warm, stuffy air meeting his nostrils, carrying a mixed smell of wood, carpet dust, and mold.
“Thank you,” said Adam, and the attendant left him alone. Closing the door, Adam turned to scrutinize the place where his old friend had breathed her last. He and Nora had had a long platonic relationship bound by mutual interest in books, country music, and antagonism towards conventionality. Unlike Nora, he had some friends, whose society finally induced him to start a family. When he married the young and rich Tracy Brandon, Nora became slowly ostracized. With her thinning hair and emaciating complexion, she suddenly found herself an old doll whose only playmate had changed his taste.
Taking her books and the souvenirs of her youth, Nora Reed left her rented apartment uptown and permanently hired a small room in Stayer’s Tavern just outside the city, in the small town of Craigwood. That was six years ago, Adam remembered. He had visited her every couple of months or so and had pressed her to come and live with them in their annex.
“Thank you, Adam,” Nora would smile, looking at him. “I’m perfect here!” He had, at times, felt pangs rising in him with every little move of her weak and wrinkled hands as she made him coffee or tea in that secluded haven of hers. They still talked about books, characters, viewpoints, and people. But something vital had changed, was lost for good. He would get over his nameless guilt by reassuring himself of his loyalty to their friendship. She acknowledged it.
“Adam, it’s so kind of you to take time away from your life to see me here.” Nora would express her gratitude with a soft generosity. But then those very words struck him as if carrying a shadow of discontent. Exchange of gifts had never entered their friendship. It had, from the very start, been a very skin-deep expression of honesty. The moments they had in each other’s company served as the unbreakable thread holding their lives at the ends of miles of space.
There was one thing that could break this thread: death. And it finally worked its way between them.
He was then out of the city, staying in Sabestland, fifty-two miles from Craigwood. His wife Tracy and three-year-old son Dave longed to visit Tracy’s parents. So Adam took them there for two weeks.
The manager of Stayer’s Tavern called early in the morning, with apologies preceding the news of Nora’s death.
“Yours was the only number we felt like calling,” the manager said.
As the shock of the news faded, Adam wrote the manager a check to arrange for Nora’s burial. Next day, he went straight to the church. Nora lay like a clean white doll, self-contained and silent, in the coffin. He could not help crying. A few tears were the only possible words to convey his honesty. The burial took place in the churchyard. He was the last to leave. From the churchyard, he went to the tavern.
“We’ve locked the room, sir,” the manager told him, “but we found this at her bedside. It advises us to hand her belongings to our old servant Amalie. It was she who stayed with her two nights when Miss Reed ran a high fever. Amalie also took her to the hospital. Perhaps Miss Reed remembered her service.”
Adam read the letter. Nora had left him her meager bank balance and a mirror in her room.
The last item puzzled him. A mirror! He asked the manager to let him take a look inside the room. The attendant with the key led him there.
Alone, Adam glanced at the empty room. It had never felt empty like that before. He himself had never felt so empty and lost. His eyes found the mirror on the wall opposite the entrance. He remembered the words in Nora’s handwriting in her last letter: Do not take the mirror off the wall. Let Adam take it himself. His curiosity ran high.
Why would she leave it to me? he thought, and approached the mirror. It was a small, rectangular glass in a bluish gray plastic frame of dated design. Dust covered the glass.
He took a tissue from his pocket and wiped the dust off its surface. His face appeared in the mirror, clear and distinct. For a moment, he kept looking at the face that stared back at him. There was a striking difference, a thing that left him wondering. The wrinkles of his face and the circles beneath his eyes were not visible now. He looked younger and fresher than he had looked in any mirror over the past many years.
Nora’s words filled his thought. He remembered that she had stayed here for six years, never exactly telling her secret reason for staying so long. Moments flew past him and his image in the mirror as they kept looking at each other. Then he slowly woke up and took the mirror down from the wall.
Story Taken from The Blue Fairy and Other Stories of Transcendence (Love Healing Press, 2009) by Ernest Dempsey
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