Even as a child, Kelly never liked mirrors. While other children might spend hours staring into mirrors, trying on faces for impact, watching themselves in tragic fascination as they cried, or gazing open-mouthed into their own half-chewed food, Kelly never did. Mirrors had always seemed traitorous to her, suspiciously dormant; a liquid, shining eye, like mercury that might at any moment part and suck her through.

So coming across a split-level home of mostly mirrors on her honeymoon house-hunting tour didn’t thrill Kelly. She and Andrew had researched hundreds of houses via the Internet during their four week, long-distance engagement, emailing house descriptions and pictures back and forth. Those virtual images had held such promise, each one a world of possibilities. But the day Kelly drove across Virginia—from Kentucky-bordered coal country to Eastern Shore crab country—to view the houses, she found a wide discrepancy between the photo-descriptions and reality.

And as near as she can remember, none of the computer listings had mentioned a house with mirrored walls, and yet here she was, confronted, the moment she stepped in, by floor-to-ceiling paneled mirror strips, a pair of fully mirrored sliding closet doors, and a mirrored, tiled ceiling overhead. The entire foyer sparkled when the chandelier was lit.

“What’s with all the mirrors?” Kelly asked Andrew under her breath as they fell in step behind the real estate agent.

“Mm?”

“The mirrors,” she said, grabbing his arm and speaking into his ear. “Lots and lots of mirrors.”

“I’d like you to see the downstairs first,” the agent said, speaking over her shoulder as they descended the stairs, reflected selves keeping pace in the mirrored wall to their left. “The master bedroom is through here,” she said, holding her arm out towards an odd square area—half hallway, half room—off of which a bathroom, bedroom and basement exited.

Two-inch, square, mirror tiles covered the ceiling, fragmenting Kelly’s reflection into a cubist portrait when she looked up. Beside her, a mirrored wall, oddly studded by a double tier of Tru-life makeup lights, reflected the three remaining walls, also mirrored, complete with mirror moldings, mirror switch plates, and mirror outlet covers.

“The former owner was a model,” said the agent. “This is where she did her make-up.”

“A model?” said Andrew. “That explains a lot.”

“Would we know her?” asked Kelly.

“Oh, sure. She was a super model in the eighties. Her face was everywhere. Donna Regis.”

“Donna Regis?” said Andrew. “Sorry, no.”

“But surely you know of her,” said the agent. “She was discovered right down the street working at Howe’s drugstore when she was sixteen. Then she was a cover girl and sold that line of clothing and advertised for Feed the World.”

“We’re not from around here,” offered Kelly.

“No? Well, maybe that’s why,” said the agent. “But still.” She led them back upstairs to a formal sitting area with a rock fireplace and large picture window, surrounded on either side by mirrored vertical blinds. To the right, a large dining area appeared at first to be two rooms, until Kelly realized that the other room had the three of them standing in it as well. “Where are you from then?”

“I’ve been in D.C. for twelve years,” said Andrew, “but the FBI just moved operations to Quantico so we thought we’d look around here.”

“And we just got married,” said Kelly, linking her arm into Andrew’s.

The six months during which Kelly had tried computer dating before she met Andrew on-line had proven that—description or no—you had to see the product in person before you could believe the claims. Computer dating wasn’t her first choice for meeting men, but in Grundy, Virginia, the dating prospects weren’t exactly abundant and interesting. And through the anonymity of the Internet, men who would ordinarily take years to reveal themselves in person gave away intimate, telling details with each musical trill of the incoming instant message screen. Fortunately, Kelly enjoyed weeding out men at the speed of light that way. No-risk male browsing was the ultimate shopping thrill.

Most of all, though, Kelly knew she didn’t want to end up an old maid teacher caring for her aging mother, or worse, leading a cars-on-blocks existence in a trailer on the edge of a mountain. She knew, from the death of her parents’ marriage, to be careful. Kelly hated to think of her mother during those infidel years: staring out darkened windows muttering declarative statements of hate and bravado, checking pockets for little folded-paper bombs, engaging her father in late-night scream sessions rank with accusation and tearful pleading. Worse, though, was how traitorous Kelly felt for still loving her father, for dressing up, flirting, and preening to keep him home; then, when he wouldn’t stay, feeling responsible, inadequate, and angry, as if he were cheating on her, too.

For Kelly, the effect of those years had always been physical. At ten years old she lay in bed and plucked her hair out, strand by soothing strand, until her mother discovered a bald patch the size of a silver dollar and spanked her soundly. At twelve she sucked a blood-bruise onto her forearm and chewed the skin of her fingertips down to raw pink dermis. No one understood what a comfort it was to exercise control over something as wild and capricious as a body.

When she told Andrew these stories, he wasn’t shocked. He said that was what he loved about her—her intensity. Andrew had proven the calm exception to the flock of odd and desperate Internet men. She came across him, miraculously, on the same day she logged in, disgusted, to remove her personal profile from the cyber meat market. She had begun a final browse of the “men currently on-line” page when a screen name popped up with a pair of hearts entwined, indicating a personal profile that matched hers. When she clicked on his picture, and it opened up before her, all three-piece suit and salt-and-pepper goatee, she trembled with anxious desire.

At 45, Andrew, admittedly a little old, was still quite the catch: stable, never married, with a government job and a condo in D.C. When she first spoke to him on the phone, his voice was deep and rich; they talked for hours until her ears were hot and sore. He laughed in all the right places with a warm chuckle that made her want to crawl up inside his chest and feel it vibrate all around her.

Andrew came to meet Kelly that first weekend, drove six hours each way, just to have lunch with her and meet her mother. He was the first man she’d ever met who knew exactly what he wanted. Decisive, that was the word for Andrew. He called her “fresh” and “hot” and said he knew the moment he saw her that he had finally met the woman he would marry. Within a month he was suggesting they elope to Vegas, and within three months, they had.

Kelly began calling Andrew her “make-it-happen man” the day they bought the house. After hours of entering musty smelling fixer-uppers, chip-strewn bachelor pads, and remodeled-for-the-aged-grandmother homes, he said he knew the house was destined to be theirs the moment he stepped across the threshold. Built in the 1960s, impeccably maintained, it even had new appliances and spotless beige carpeting. It smelled good. If not for the mirrors, it would have been perfect.

“We live in the house of a thousand mirrors,” said Andrew, on their first night as homeowners.

“Yeah,” said Kelly, lifting a leg and kicking the air. “And when I do this? It’s like being with the Rockettes.”

“Ooh, now that has possibilities,” he said, stroking his jaw in appraisal.

“Except I’m hardly built for a chorus line.” Kelly stood tall and smoothed her hands down her shirt, drawing in her stomach and pulling her shoulders back. “Too much bounce in the breasts.”

“Never.”

“Good answer, honey.” She blew Andrew a kiss then leaned against the bathroom counter and lifted her chin toward the mirror. “You know, these makeup lights show every last pore. Why would anyone design a home where you can’t get away from yourself?”

“They brighten the place up. We get twice the light.”

“God, you sound like the realtor. I think they’re creepy. Who would ever want to see themselves so much?”

“Relax. Once we’re settled I’ll take out some mirrors. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal to you. You never look back. God, I can’t believe we have a house. I think I’m getting hives.”

“Hives?” Andrew flattened a box and stepped on it, watching Kelly’s reflection in the mirror as he did so.

“You must admit the whole meet-marry-move-buy-a-home thing has been a tad stressful,” she said, concentrating as she spread toothpaste across the flat of her toothbrush.

“Stressful? You’ve left Podunk, USA, you don’t need to work, and you live in a gorgeous house. How’s that stressful?”

She turned to face him, pointing with her toothbrush. “The speed of it was stressful.” She began to brush her teeth with short, vigorous strokes.

Andrew shrugged. “I know a deal when I see one,” he said.

“Yesh, I know. You were helpesh to reshist,” she said, catching a drip of toothpaste with her hand.

“Well, I don’t like to let the good things get away.” He passed her a creased and flattened towel from the opened box marked linens. “I snatched you up, didn’t I?”

She spit into the sink and cupped her hand under the running water. “Out of the very jaws of death, honey.”

When Kelly picked Andrew up from work the next day, he climbed into the car with a heavy sigh. “Bad news,” he said without preamble, punctuating it with the click of his seatbelt buckle.

“Okay,” said Kelly, leaning over to kiss him and thinking the first bad news of our marriage. “I’ll bite. What’s up?”

“The Bureau is sending me to Thailand.” He spoke in a resigned monotone and didn’t look at her.

“Thailand?” she said, tightening her grip on the wheel. “Jeez. Why Thailand?”

“More remains.” He passed a hand down his face.

“God. How many?”

“Possibly three. Who knows? It’s just fragments. A downed Huey.” Andrew leaned over and adjusted the briefcase at his feet. “This isn’t my choice, you know.”

“I know,” said Kelly, touching his arm. “For how long?”

“Three months.”

“Three months?” she said, drawing her hand back.

He looked at Kelly for a long moment while she drove and glanced from the road to him and back. “We’ve discussed this, Kell. It’s my job.”

“Well I know, I know. But three whole months? That’s as long as we’ve known each other.”

“Look, the Bureau says, ‘Jump,’ I say, ‘How high?’ ”

“But why for so long?”

“Three months isn’t that long, Kelly. It’s not simple body recovery. It’s a twenty-five-year-old crash site in the middle of the freaking jungle—which obliterates everything. The bodies, if they ever were intact, have been picked over by animals, or people, strewn around, and you can bet the chopper’s been stripped of any useful parts. Retrieving remains means a week, minimum, to get in-country and on-site in the first place, then you sort through the wreckage, down to sifting dirt if necessary. The remains have to be sorted and classified—it’s endless, really. Three months is just a starting figure.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re going. You have to go. But it still sucks.”

“In a word, yes.”

“Can I go with you?” She hated the pleading sound of her own voice.

“Don’t I wish you could.”

“Well I can. Why not? I’m not teaching anymore. I’ve got time.”

“Kelly, dependants aren’t authorized or even allowed on these missions. You know that. Besides, we couldn’t go away and leave the house for three months.”

“Well you are,” she said, staring him down at a stoplight. “Leaving, I mean.”

He pointed her back to the now-green light. “My job pays the bills. I don’t have a choice.”

“So, apparently, neither do I.” In the silence that followed, Kelly had the feeling of sitting inside her mother’s pinched, resentful skin, and changed her tone. “Okay, fine. I’ll be here and you’ll be there. But we’ll talk, right?”

“Sure we will. Every day I can manage it. And we’ll email, too. Just like old times.”

“Old times?” She turned the car into the driveway and looked at him. “What old times?”

Kelly dropped Andrew and his duffels at the airport and drove home with a wretched swelling in her throat. There had been so little time. And very little warning, like her father’s unexpected leaving, so many years ago. Her mother’s howling grief and anger then had negated Kelly’s own, and at fifteen she had struggled not to feel the same desperate drowning desire to leave that she knew her father must have felt. So she used her skin to provide relief, a simple regaining of control. A scab, picked slowly, just so, a cuticle, torn gently, lengthwise with the grain of flesh, created the perfect stinging antidote to keep despair at bay.

Kelly’s chest tightened. As she drove, she pinched the skin of her wrists to be sure she was alive. She would not let herself think about husbands and fathers going away.

As Kelly opened the front door and entered the empty house, the movement of her own reflection in the mirrored foyer startled her; she would never get used to the constant reflected motion. And good God, look at her: purse dragging at her side, her hair a mess, her wrists a mass of reddening pinch marks, her face thick with unspilled tears. No wonder Andrew left. She’d go away, too, if only she could escape her own disgusting self.

Kelly turned her back to the mirrors, lay on the floor, and sobbed. How would she ever manage? Just like a man to leave her high and dry. What would Andrew do there, alone, so far away? Cheat, obviously. It’s what they all did. How could he leave her like this? He didn’t even care. Why wasn’t she enough to make him stay?

The light from the windows changed to a dusky purple and Kelly’s tears turned to salty smudges. A dry longing sat at the back of her tongue. She eased herself up stiffly and stretched. Andrew was gone. There was nothing to be done about that. She stepped forward until her toes met the mirror, and standing close, pointed to her reflected image. She made a stern face. “Kelly Swank, you will make the best of living here. You will learn to appreciate these mirrored walls. You will save on paint. You will have lots of reflected light. You will buy Windex by the case.”

To prove her change of heart she decided to clean the mirrors. She would give them some loving care, spray off the smudgy streaks of moving day, of dusty coveralls and sweaty hands. It would keep her mind and body occupied, and show the house her good intentions.

Downstairs, in the area outside the bathroom, she stared into a mirrored wall, holding her left hand, with its diamond-studded wedding ring, beside her face and looking into her fixed, red-rimmed eyes. With her other hand she lifted the spray bottle, took aim, and shot her reflection in the face.

As she sprayed and wiped, she studied herself in the various mirrors. How could she not? There was no looking through a mirror. And every time she turned around, there she was. Kelly, Kelly, everywhere. She had never looked so ugly. It was time to make some changes if she hoped to keep her husband. For starters she would lose that extra twenty pounds.

And that night, Kelly pleased herself by eating only a bagel for dinner. Then, while waiting for the call from Andrew that never came, she tweezed her eyebrows into two thinly arched lines. It took over an hour, and each mincing pain above her eye was pure pleasure. She had to force herself to stop.

The following day when Kelly was searching for twine to tie a stack of crushed boxes for recycling, she came across a magazine clipping in the far corner basement drawer. She pulled it out and studied it for signs of recognition; a manicured face (smooth even skin, piled curls of hair, straight white teeth in a practiced smile) stared back. Kelly took a moment to think of this woman in this house, then ran the image through the copier twice and taped one picture to each bathroom mirror. The original she stuck to the fridge and Donna Regis’s flawless face smiled coolly out, a single line of text under the photo urging, “Eat to Live. Don’t Live to Eat.”

When Andrew finally called, more than a week into his trip, the staticky connection gave Kelly a sense of panic. How would she remember to say everything she’d been thinking and doing? How could she tell him that his absence left her groundless, floating, and sore? How would she manage to be funny and charming, yet needy enough that he would be compelled to call again?

“How are you?” shouted Andrew from the other side of the world.

“I’m good.” Be cheerful. “I miss you.” But melancholy. And inquire into his life. “How are you?”

“Good, good. I’m good. How’s the house?”

“It’s good. The mirrors are starting to get to me though.”

Andrew laughed a hearty belly laugh that should have been a comfort, but wasn’t. “Oh, you’ll do fine, honey. Just ignore them.”

Kelly had tried this. But in that fraction of a second between instinct and reason, when each reflected movement caught the edge of her eye, she couldn’t help feeling that someone was there, someone was watching her. Try as she might, she couldn’t force her thinking brain to override that first instinctual burst of panic that fractured her days into blasts of unwelcome adrenaline.

“Listen, I’ve got to run, Kell, but I’ll call you again soon, okay?”

“Soon is good.” Don’t nag.

He laughed again. “All right, honey, point taken.”

“Andrew? Wait!”

“Yes?”

“What about email?” Don’t beg.

“Oh, a connection is ridiculously expensive to get here, but I’ll try to send one this week. Gotta run, honey. Love you.”

“All right. You, too.” And he was gone. She held the phone away from her ear and stared at the black receiver in her hand.

Afterward Kelly lay in bed thinking of all the things she should have said, could have said, would have said if she’d had more time. She should have asked how the recovery was going, who else was on the job with him, if they had identified the bodies, if the weather was holding, if the women were beautiful. She struggled to stop picturing Andrew, dark and handsome, drinking-in the decadence of Thailand—the Thailand she had read about, where Viagra sold cheap, by the handful, on street corners. Where ridiculously young and desperate girls serviced men under the tables in sex cafés while the men folded their newspapers, talked and sipped their beers above the lipsticked bobbing heads, the sluicing hands, pretending that their minds weren’t being blown beyond belief at their own good fortune.

Kelly shook her head, slapped her cheeks and sat up. The house was too quiet. She hated being alone with herself. Too much solitude made her heart perform a desperate skipping dance. She turned on the TV and searched through the late-night infomercials for company. And there, on channel 82, a familiar face smiled dryly out at her. Donna Regis, beautiful and aloof, stood before the camera exhorting Kelly to feed the hungry children of Bangladesh. Kelly stared in fascination at the angular shoulders, the hollow cheekbones and long thin neck. Donna Regis looked exquisite, a starving child of Bangladesh herself, beautiful and doomed.

Kelly located the box she had packed in her own Grundy bathroom three weeks earlier and dug through it. She found the hair color, lightener, actually, that her mother had purchased and given to Kelly in one of her many attempts to make her more man-friendly. On a whim Kelly had packed it away, intending to use it as a prop to regale Andrew with one of her can-you-believe-my-mother stories. No matter, there it was, just when she needed it.

While the gentle botanicals of aloe, chamomile, and ginseng seeped into her hair Kelly shaved her legs. The entire leg, from toe to hip—something she had known for a while that other women did, but had not done herself. After a moment’s hesitation Kelly soaped her forearms and shaved them, too. The rivulets of water flowing down her hair-free skin sent shivers of pleasure throughout her body. As she rinsed away the long soft arm hairs, the razor’s polished edge shone with a beckoning gleam. Several hairs remained lodged between the twin blades of the razor. Kelly swiped it sideways across her forearm to remove them and a hairline slice of skin began to fill satisfyingly with red.

To avoid breakfast, Kelly rewashed her newly lightened hair, then blow-dried it and carefully curled it all over. At noon, a woman Kelly didn’t recognize came to the door and knocked, then peered in, face moon-white and pressed against the window, hands to either side of her eyes. Kelly stood and watched her, twice-reflected from the bathroom door, but did nothing.

By dinner Kelly decided that food was a weakness she couldn’t afford to indulge this day. She was purifying, tearing down and building anew, and as the hours passed she realized that sleep, too, was a simple, absurd notion—something for those of a lesser constitution.

Yet there was still much to do. Kelly would keep improving. She would make herself into a trimmer, more beautiful woman. She would polish her nails and wear high heels. She would make her husband proud. Then Andrew would come home.

One look and he would never leave her side again.

As the sun begins to rise, the new Kelly is not hungry. She is not hungry, yet she realizes that to live one must eat. She does not want to die. And so she cuts a piece of bread and saves one half for later. Then, thinking better of it, she saves three-quarters of the bread for later. She places the remainder in a bowl and cuts it into tiny pieces.

From her spot on the refrigerator door, Donna Regis fixes Kelly with a disapproving stare. The children of Bangladesh are starving, yet Kelly eats.

Only today Kelly cannot eat. The bread is coarse and inedible. With a sharper steak knife she cuts the pieces smaller and yet each bite grows inside her mouth, sawdusty dry and swelling with saliva until it fills her jaws with a gagging sigh and chokes her. Kelly runs to the bathroom, knife in hand, and retches up her food. It is only so much dirt.

A throbbing pain pounds inside her head. Like a TV on the fritz, she whacks it on the side. The pain moves in swirling eddies that want out, that whirl and suck her down, spinning a roily sludge that would pull her skin and hair away, peel her down to nothing.

She only wants to let it out.

Kelly holds the fine, sharp point of the steak knife poised above her inner forearm. She brings the handle down with enough force to split the skin and a small amount of pain escapes like hissing steam. She sighs.

Her body vibrates with a low throbbing pulse and the bright cosmetic lights glint along the silver edge of the knife as she lowers the blade and carefully cuts. The skin of her arm resists at first, pressing down beneath the blade, rising up on either side. Then she places the knife within the tiny split and slides it slowly across her arm. Her skin gives way, and a grinning wet red gash stretches across her arm. There is no pain—it takes the other pain away, in fact, and makes her feel alive. In control.

She makes another sliding cut below the first, and a satisfying drip travels from one cut to the next then gathers and slides down her arm. One drop falls like a ruby into the sink, beautiful against the bright enamel.

Kelly takes a deep breath and smiles. If only she had known it was this simple all along.

She wipes the knife clean then wraps a towel around her arm and hums. She turns off the sixteen Tru-life makeup lights and steps out of the bathroom into semi-darkness. Her eye catches the movement of a figure in front of her and she freezes in sudden terror, hands in mid-motion.

She stands there, caught and startled, face-to-face with a stranger—this unfamiliar person who has snuck into her house to harm her.

§ § §

Mary Akers is a graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program in creative writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in RE:AL, Pindeldyboz, Bellowing Ark, Ray’s Road Review, Compass Rose and Wisconsin Review. She currently lives in upstate New York.

This piece was first published in INK POT #4 - 2004, a literary journal.

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