Broken Mirrors

Chapter 4

Andrew rolled his neck from side to side listening to the crack. It didn’t do much for the stiffness that was sinking in and was really more of an act of habit than anything truly beneficial. Without looking at it, Andrew picked the cigarette up that he’d rested on the shop floor to get both of his hands around the bottom of the fender and went to take a drag. He frowned at it, realizing that it had burned itself down to the filter while he’d been absorbed in the work he was doing. He lined the spent filter up next to the others that he had there, almost like military men on the dusty shop floor.

Andrew rubbed at his eyes and heaved himself to his feet, walking across the shop and dramatically stretching his knees, listening to them crack a little as he moved. His life hadn’t been kind to his body. The up and down and years spent on his knees on the concrete of shop floors simply made some things wear down quicker than others. The beatings from his old man…those hadn’t helped his body feel any better with the passing of the years either.

Andrew lit another cigarette, this time keeping it in his hands and paying attention to the speed with which it burned down. He leaned against the doorframe of the open stall of the shop and rubbed back and forth to scratch a spot between his shoulder blades, like a bear with an itch.

The night outside was almost black, and the only light came from a light pole that sat awkwardly in the middle of nowhere, hovering in the blackness not far from the trailer that Andrew shared with Derek His brother might be home…it was pretty damn late. If he was he was more than likely passed out drunk somewhere in the tin can they called their house. If he wasn’t home…then he was probably working his way toward passing out.

Andrew had raved against his brother a million times about driving drunk, especially on his motorcycle, but his asshole brother was too damn hardheaded to listen to him. He only hoped the fucker’s head was hard enough to withstand the asphalt when the night finally came that he crashed the damn bike into a tree somewhere.

Andrew wasn’t sure that he could say he loved his brother. He wasn’t sure that the concept of love was anything that he could wrap his mind around at all. It sounded, if the words were spoken aloud, like a pretty shitty thing to say about your brother and the only breathing person you even gave a single f**k about, but it was just the truth.

Sometimes Andrew tried to imagine how he’d feel when he found out, and he was sure in the back of his mind that the day would come, that Derek had killed himself some damn stupid way in a drunken stupor. Andrew didn’t know, though, if the way that his brain told him he’d feel was only in response to the fact that it was a hypothetical situation, because when he thought about it, he really didn’t feel much of anything.

He was almost made sorrier by the fact that he didn’t feel a damn thing when he thought about his brother’s untimely demise, than he was about the thought that his brother would just be gone.

That’s just how the f**k it was, though, right? Life was just f*****g like that. One minute you’re there and the next damn minute you’re not. Andrew had heard assholes talking about leaving legacies and s**t, leaving something behind. In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. People were only going to remember the shitty things you did. Those were the things that would withstand time. The rest would only be remembered by the few people, if they even existed, that really gave a damn about you, and realistically it wouldn’t change anything. They’d get up, just like they always did, and they’d go on with their lives, and they’d realize, before even too much time had passed that it had been weeks since they thought about you, and then years, and before long they just didn’t think about you. The whole leaving some mark on someone…some life changing thing…that was just bullshit someone made up somewhere so that people wouldn’t feel so damn sorry about dying.

Andrew looked back at the Coupe that he’d been working on since quitting time at the shop. The fenders looked better than he’d even expected they would. It wouldn’t be hard at all to make them just as smooth and perfect as he wanted them to be. He knew that a lot of people, when he’d first brought the junker up behind the shop, had looked over it, tossing around their so called expert opinions, and they’d said that he’d never get the dents and bangs out of those fenders. But Andrew knew he could handle that s**t even if they couldn’t, and looking at it now with just the one side done, he smiled to himself. That damn Coupe would be just as straight as you pleased down both sides and every surface would be as smooth as glass.

That was, maybe, the only legacy that Andrew would leave behind. Even that he knew wasn’t eternal. Eventually some asshole would wreck the cars he fixed and sold, or junk them again once the good was got out of them, or let them sit around and rot simply because they thought they were for looking at and they never realized that a car like that needed love, respect, and attention. Eventually, just like Andrew himself, the cars would simply cease to exist. He’d rot away to nothingness and they’d rust away, most of the old bodies being made primarily of steel instead of the crunchy ass fiberglass they used these days.

It seemed fitting to Andrew , though, that the best thing about him. The only thing good about him really, would simply just rust away, forgotten, someday. It was just as suiting as the end to any other legacy, he supposed.

Andrew rubbed his eyes and decided to call it a night. He didn’t know what time it was exactly, but he’d have to be up early enough to pull the Coupe back behind the shop and get the place ready to start working on the cars that paid the bills. He stepped inside the shop and rolled the heavy metal door down, locking it. He walked through, throwing away the spent butts from his night’s work, and flipped the lights off, stepping outside and locking the door.

He walked toward the tin can palace that the light reflected off of, shining almost as bright as if it had been a mirror reflecting back the absurdity of the oddly placed electric beacon.

———————————-

Crystal was up earlier than she normally had to be. Things had to be done now that she was responsible for this teenage kid. She was tired and the coffee pot seemed like it was roaring louder than was hardly necessary for the hour.

Crystal had hardly slept. She’d closed herself in her room after they’d eaten the pizza in silence, and she’d had the full intent to lock herself in the fantasy world of at least one of the books she’d brought home from the library a few days ago, being the first to read these new arrivals, but instead she’d made the mistake of deciding to flip through Sophia’s files, and deciding to flip through the stack of other papers that had been slipped into her hands regarding her responsibilities as Sophia’s guardian.

And today she had to register Sophia at the high school and get her there to start her first day of classes.

Crystal had never thought, back in the glory days when she entertained the idea of parenthood, that the day after she got the child she’d be up at the high school trying to get it enrolled in Algebra, Chemistry, and whatever else it was that Sophia needed to be taking to stay on track.

The morning had been awkward already, too, since Crystal wasn’t sure how to wake a teenager up. She didn’t feel like she had the right to go into the girl’s bedroom. She didn’t even know Sophia, so she didn’t want to go barging in and shake her awake. So she had thought about it for a while and finally stood quietly knocking at the door and gradually increasing the volume of her pounding until the girl had yelled something at her which was probably an obscenity.

Crystal had informed her that she had school and she had to get registered, so she’d better get dressed and get downstairs.

Crystal didn’t have anything, really, in the way of nutritious food to offer the girl, but she’d set the pizza box on the table with the leftover pizza in it and she figured that Sophia could graze from that. She’d go to the store when she got off work and she’d get something to start feeding the girl, but until then the leftover pizza was about all she could do.

Crystal was so tired that she almost did a dance when the coffee finally finished brewing. She drug her coffee cup across the countertop and filled it, standing there and taking a few sips before she even removed her hand from the handle of the coffee pot.

Sophia’s feet pounded down the hall above her and down the stairs. Her sour face was the first human contact of the day. Absolutely delightful. Crystal was suddenly craving the library, and she was ready to get to work.

“You want some coffee?” Crystal asked when Sophia stood a few feet in front of her, glaring at her with that chipper good morning appearance that she had. Sophia cured her lip and narrowed her eyebrows.

“You’re offering me coffee?” Sophia asked. “Jesus! I’m fifteen!”

Crystal blinked at her. The nastiness of her attitude was rubbing off on her already and it didn’t help when compounded with the exhaustion and the night’s worth of self-degradation she’d engaged in over the fact that she’d even let herself get trapped in this little endeavor that simply could not end well.

“It’s coffee,” Crystal said, “not cocaine.”

Sophia curled her lip again and shook her head, huffing as she did.

“Where’s breakfast? I’m sure we’re having bran flakes or some s**t like that,” Sophia said sarcastically.

Crystal sipped at her coffee, holding the hot cup between her palms and warming them against the slight chill of the kitchen.

“The pizza’s on the table,” Crystal said. “I don’t even have bran flakes.”

Sophia glared at her a little, but Crystal thought there was some sign of pleasure there as Sophia pulled open the box and stood, leaning against the table, eating the cold pizza.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” Sophia asked, her mouth full of pizza.

Crystal looked down, taking in her sneakers, the boot cut jeans she’d gotten somewhere that were a little big, but at least they weren’t too tight, and the sweatshirt that someone had gotten as a souvenier at Disneyland and passed to her. She shrugged a little. She let her gaze fall on the teenager.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” She asked. Sophia was wearing jeans and what appeared to be two tops layered together. Crystal didn’t really think that she should be criticizing anyone’s wardrobe…but she supposed that as a teenager she would have done the same thing.

Sophia made a face, but chose not to respond. She plucked a second piece of pizza from the box, smashing the lid down with the palm of her hand.

“There’s no mirror in the bathroom upstairs,” Sophia said. “And judging from the looks of you I’m guessing the one down here is missing too.”

Crystal ran her fingers absentmindedly through her hair. In her opinion that act in itself meant her beauty regimen was complete. It was as good as it was going to get. As Mike would have said, no matter how much you tried to shine s**t, you still ended up with a polished turd.

“There’s one in my bathroom,” Crystal responded. “You can use it if you need to and I’ll get you one after work.”

“Whatever,” Sophia said. “It’s not like I care what these assholes think. I’m not going to be seeing much of them anyway.”

Crystal tried to ignore the girl’s flippant attitude. She finished her coffee and put the mug in the sink. She reached around, unplugging the coffee pot that until this morning had shared the only conversation she’d tried to make any morning since Mike had gone to prison, and she stood regarding the teenager for a moment. She crossed the kitchen, pulling open the drawer that seemed to collect nearly everything in the house, and came up with a half used yellow legal pad and a pen that she could only imagine worked since it was the only one visible that still had a cap.

“Here,” she said, thrusting it toward the girl, “we can go after I get off work and get you some school supplies or whatever you need, but at least you won’t walk in looking totally unprepared.”

Carol paused a minute and pulled the pad back, scribbling on it.

“This is my name…the house number…the number at the library I work at…” Crystal said as she wrote.

“You’re a librarian?” Sophia asked. Crystal nodded. “Figures,” Sophia said. Crystal didn’t respond.

“And the address. I don’t know what bus you take or any of that. We’ll have to ask that when you’re registering,” Crystal said.

She handed the pen and pad to Sophia then and the girl took it a little reluctantly. She ripped the top page off, the one that Crystal had written on, and balled it up somewhat, shoving it into the back pocket of her jeans.

She looked at Crystal with an expression of extreme boredom.

Crystal reached in her purse and dug through, pulling her keys out. She twisted one of the keys off attached to a keychain from Key Largo that one of her friends had brought her back when she was in high school. She’d carried it around as her house key when she’d been married to Mike, and now it just hung from her key ring as an extra key to lug around. She held it out to Sophia.

“Don’t lose that. That’s the key to the house. If you lose it you’ll be stuck waiting outside until I get home from work,” Crystal said.

Sophia snatched the key and shoved it down into her front pocket, sucking her teeth a little and c*****g her head to the side.

“Anything else?” Sophia asked.

Crystal looked around the kitchen for some kind of sign of anything that she might be forgetting, but she couldn’t think of anything. She picked up the pile of papers that the social worker had paperclipped together for her as documents she would need to register Sophia and she slung her purse over her shoulder.

“I think that’s it,” Crystal said. “Are you ready to go?”

Sophia looked for a moment at her half used legal pad and ink pen.

“I think I’ve got everything,” she said.

“Then let’s go,” Crystal said. She walked toward the door and Sophia brushed past her, heading to the car without waiting.

“This is going to be just awesome,” Sophia growled as she passed by.

Crystal stepped out the door and pulled it shut, locking it behind her.

“Really? ‘Cause I think so too,” she grumbled under her breath, knowing the teenager who was already closing the passenger side door couldn’t hear her high level of enthusiasm about the adventure they were embarking on together