Chapter 4 - Part 2

It was gloomy inside and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the low lighting. When they did, we were surrounded by a path of mirrors set at odd angles and seeming to trail on in an infinite number of directions for an infinite number of miles.

“We’ll never find our way through here,” Sonya moaned behind me.

Brittney giggled, “This’ll be fun!”

I started forward. I could see in the mirrors that the others followed me. When I saw Sonya turn, I turned to follow her, but smacked my nose into the mirror in front of me. I turned again trying to find the opening, but saw four different places where my family all seemed to be leaving at once. I chose one, but again smacked myself in the nose. I turned again, but now I could see no one. That is, I could see no one but me reflected back hundreds of times in the mirrors around me.

“Great!” I sighed. I put my hand out to feel the walls. When I came to an opening I took it only to be surrounded by reflections of myself once again. The difference in this room, though was that the mirrors were distorted in some way, making my head look grotesquely large, my chest tiny, and my waist large. It made my stomach turn for real. Where was Brittney and her child’s sense of humor when I needed her?

I started forward and smacked my nose again before I remembered to put my fingers against the wall. I traveled around the room and then traveled again. Of course, I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that I had been completely around the room twice – that would mean I had made it around at least once for sure. Still, I found no opening – not even the one from which I had entered. The hundreds of images of my distorted head were making me physically sick. I closed my eyes and leaned back against one of the mirrors. When I finally forced myself to open my eyes again, I was no longer alone in the room.

That man was there. What had he said his name was? Ken. That was it. I reached out my hand to see if he were real or just another illusion of the room. I touched the softness of his shirt and his voice boomed out in a mighty laugh. “Afraid I’m not real are ya’ Sam?” he asked.

I looked at him warily. “It wouldn’t surprise me in this crazy place.”

“Oh, I’m real,” he assured me. “I’m very real.”

“Great!” I said, “Then you can tell me how to get out of here.”

“Of course!” Ken said.

I waited but he said nothing more. “But . . .” I ventured, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I could,” he said, “But you already know the answer yourself.”

He smiled. I shook my head.

“It’d be a lot easier without all these distorted mirrors,” I grumbled.

For some reason, Ken looked pleased when I said this. “It would! Wouldn’t it?” he asked. “Why would it be easier, Sam?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?” I shot back at him.

“How else will we find the answers?” he replied with wide-eyed innocence.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. It would be easier to get out of here without the mirrors because I can’t see where I am going!”

“Don’t the mirrors reflect reality back to you?” Ken asked again.

“Yes, Mr. Smart Cracker, but not exactly as it is. These mirrors distort the truth. Even the ones in the other room were set at such odd angles that they reflected things that I wasn’t looking at – or that I wasn’t meaning to look at. What I mean is, I thought I was looking at one thing and found that I was looking at another.”

“And that makes it hard to find where you are going?” he asked.

“Extremely,” I said keeping my eyes locked on his so that I didn’t have to see the wavering image of myself on all the walls.

“Are we sometimes like mirrors to one another, do you think, Sam?”

“Like mirrors to one another?” I repeated.

“Do you ever check your reality with the reality of another person?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” I said thinking of the little boy I had once been who was forever shunned from his mother’s side.

“Then, wouldn’t it follow that we should be very careful that what we reflect back to other people be as honest as possible -- to avoid distortion, that is.”

I thought about that. Here in the house of mirrors, that was absolutely true. But in the real world, honesty was complicated. Honesty could get people hurt. Not to mention, things could be true for you one moment, and not true the next.

Ken was watching me carefully. Suddenly, the room changed from mirrors to a sort of movie screen and on every screen was a reenactment of the last time Sonya had sung. My heart melted to see her sing again. She was so beautiful Just as quickly, my heart seized up in my chest as I saw her singing with that man. My face hardened and I turned away. At least I tried to turn away, but there she was on the other wall as well. I turned again and again. I crumbled to the floor in front of Ken with my head in my arms.

“You didn’t really want Sonya to stop singing, did you Sam? Tell me honestly – tell yourself honestly, what did you feel at that recital?”

I could feel sobs building up in my chest. “How could I tell her that? How could I tell her that when I saw her with that man, I saw what she meant to me and I know what I am. It makes no sense for her to choose me, but I need her and I can’t let her get away. I can’t! It would kill me. It would kill me.”

Ken waited a moment as I sobbed into the quiet. Then he said, “Now that, sir, is emotional honesty. But you reflected something different to Sonya that day, didn’t you? And when you did, you distorted her path, so that when she tried to follow you, she was lost. You created the maze that lost her. Even if she suspected your real feelings, how could she talk to you about them when you were not being honest with her – when you were not being honest with yourself?”

I sat up and wiped my eyes. “How can I find her again?” I realized that I was no longer talking about the maze of mirrors in Ken’s carnival, but about my own life.

“Who caused the problem?” Ken asked.

I had a co-worker once who said that only fools confess. I was past that now. There were other things more important. “I did,” I said.

Ken reached down and offered me his hand, pleased with me again. “Then who has the responsibility to make it right?” he asked.

I took his hand and stood up. “I do,” I said and when I did, I realized with wonderment that I felt a sense of power that I hadn’t felt for a long time.

“Why does it feel good to say I’ve done something wrong?” I asked Ken.

“Have you been avoiding responsibility?” Ken asked me. “Have you been breaking your commitments?”

Suddenly the mirrors changed again only this time they showed Tom and I in the car before his first day of football practice. He looked so scared. Why hadn’t I noticed before? He certainly hadn’t distorted anything for me, but I hadn’t been looking, had I? He was asking for my promise that I’d come pick him up after the practice. I watched as I promised him.

This hurt, too. I hate that kind of hurt – that kind of disappointment in me. I pushed it away. “I had a meeting,” I told Ken. “No one should be held to commitments that are not fair.”

Ken looked at me for a long minute. “Do you want to have a boy who trusts his dad – a boy who knows his dad is telling him the truth to lead him the right way through the maze of life?”

“It was just a stupid football practice!” I hollered at Ken.

“Was it?” Ken asked. “Or was it a broken promise? A lack of integrity? What did it mean to your boy?”

“Enough!” I roared. “Enough!” I swung around to plant my fists through the screens, the mirrors on all sides, but found instead, to my amazement, nothing to stop my momentum and suddenly I was falling – falling through the floor.