REFLECTIONS
A Short Story

by Michelle Devon

My husband told me once, several years ago, about the bathroom etiquette rules of men; he explained how men don’t use the urinal next to another man, no conversation, get on with business and get out.

“Don’t make eye contact,” he had said. “And most importantly, don’t ever look at the penises.”

At the time, I had laughed. I never had any intention of using a urinal, but while I weaved through tables to the order counter at the café, I thought of that conversation. I glanced around and realized table selection in a café wasn’t much different from men picking urinals: ensure you don’t sit too close to someone unknown; nobody makes eye contact; and nobody acknowledge anyone else’s presence. Yeah, not that different. Except about not looking at penises.

Actually, that probably was a good rule in restaurants too.

The café was one of my favorite places to eat because it smelled of fresh-baked bread and coffee—two of my favorite scents besides my husband’s pipe tobacco—and because it had free internet access. I had been known in the past to spend entire afternoons there, sipping tea, snacking on baked goods; the bear claws were amazing.

I waited in line to order and took in a deep breath of pastry and bread scents. It was stunning how much scent was tied to memories, because, though it had been too long since I had been there, my last visit came back to me with startling clarity.

A few years ago, my husband and I had visited several times per week, in between classes at the community college across the street. Most of the employees knew me and Craig by first name, but they called us The Newlyweds. It had been so long since we had dined there that, as I looked around at the staff, the manager in the back was the only person I recognized. After having to take a break from school, I had stopped visiting the café.

Since I lived in the apartments near the college now, I wanted to dine more regularly at the café again. It was part of processing things, moving on, letting go.

Starting over.

Seeing things from a different point of view.

I scoped out a table, one that would afford me a view of the main dining area, so I could watch people. That’s what I liked to do: people watch.

People fascinated me. Inside them, they, like me, had stories, ones others could only guess. I liked to watch people and wonder at their stories.

While the person in front of me in line paid for his meal, my gaze wandered to the corner where I saw a little old couple. I presumed they had been together for years. They sat across from each other in a booth made for two and hardly spoke. He opened her plasticware, and she opened his straw wrapper. I figured they had spent so many years together they could coexist in comfortable silence.
I sighed. That was how I had always dreamed it would be with my husband, when we were old together.

Craig and I had usually chosen a table on the patio outside, when the weather was nice. We would tell each other stories about the people we watched, sometimes outdoing each other in how grandiose or morose the stories would become. We laughed a lot. One man might be a spy, engaged in international espionage while another person was really a rock star in disguise, just wanting to get a cup of joe like an ordinary person. We would see serial killers who liked to order black coffee and a roll and rapists, who for some reason always liked to buy cream puffs and put too much sugar in their coffee cups. Nobody was ordinary; no life was mundane. All the people Craig and I made up stories for had exciting, crazy, off-the-wall lives.

But today, it was the ordinary I sought, the mundane… the reality of it all.

“Ma’am?” the too-cute female voice of the teenager behind the cash register said.

I shook my head and smiled. “I’m sorry. Guess I was daydreaming.”

She smiled at me, an impatient smile, but a smile. I placed my order and returned her smile, mine less impatient than hers had been, took the credit card receipt and the order number placard, and apologetically pushed past those in line behind me who blocked the way to a table. It was too cold to sit outside, and I was alone, so I moved to a table in the corner section that led to the patio.

For a moment, I could have sworn I saw Craig sitting at the table, waiting for me to join him. It was just a moment, though, like a reflection in glass, a flash, that when you focus on it, it’s gone. I knew, of course, he hadn’t actually been there, but the mind can play tricks when the heart wants something badly enough, I supposed. It wasn’t the first time I had thought I had seen him in a crowd. I guess that was proof of what I had suspected all along: Anything can become a habit. Craig was my habit. Whether what I suffered from was grief or withdrawals mattered little; whether I was angry at him still also mattered not; I missed him all the same.

After I settled at my table, I watched the manager I recognized take my tray from the guy working the pick-up counter. She brought my order to me, and I smiled and thanked her. She smiled back at me, one of those smiles which I’ve become all too accustomed.

“You’ve come in here before, haven’t you?” she finally asked, when her stare had become uncomfortable.

“Yes,” I answered. “A few times.” I guess she hadn’t fully made the connection in her memory yet. I shrugged. It had been a while, after all.

“I thought I recognized you.” She nodded her head.

The moment was awkward, but I had also become accustomed to awkward moments. I could have put her at ease, but that afternoon was for me. I didn’t want to have to always be the one making concessions, and she was just an employee at a restaurant. It wasn’t that she wasn’t important to someone, just not to me. Not right then.

I looked away and mumbled, “I used to come in here with my husband.”

I fiddled with my plate and bag of chips, moving things around without really doing anything.

“Right!” she said, nodding her head with the dawning of true recognition.

Her eyes lit for a moment and a genuine smile half-danced on her lips before it was obvious she actually had remembered me… and Craig.
Connection made.

I could see her from the corner of my eye when she paused, unsure of what to say, and the smile turned from the start of genuine to the upturn of over-pleasant. She looked at me, her eyes briefly flitted down and then back up to meet my eyes dead-on, hoping I hadn’t noticed the lapse.

“Okay, well… good to see you again. I’ll let you eat your meal.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

I didn’t mean to be rude. I simply wanted to be alone. It had been a long week, after a series of many long weeks, and I had things to contemplate. Such as wondering why that woman in the next dining segment kept looking at me. It made me uncomfortable. As I said earlier, I like watching people, but I rarely like being watched. I couldn’t see her well, because she was behind the glass-paned dividing doors that separated my dining area from hers, but I could see just enough to recognize the kindred sadness I had noticed with my brief glimpse.
After I had passed my glance over her a couple of times, and each time finding her looking my way, I decided to do something to take the focus off of my people-watching tendencies. I reached for my bag on the back of the chair and pulled it around into my lap. I rummaged to find my notepad and a pen, and once found, placed them on the table.

Since I’d re-started classes at the community college, I’d been given a semester-long assignment in sociology to do one of my favorite activities: observe human nature. In other words, people watch and write my thoughts. The professor had suggested last week we jot down observations from our ordinary day about the actions and mannerisms of fellow humans to be used to write a position paper at the end of the semester. It had been joked about in class that we were studying humans in their natural habitat, like a scientist might study animals. Human beings, after all, weren’t much more than animals, the professor had told us, with their own rituals, habits and pack mentalities.

I thought then about my situation. I realized that, had I been an animal and not a supposedly evolved human, I would likely have either been left by the pack or killed by it. The weak ones weren’t nursed; they were left behind to die. I wrote something about that on my pad, noting the difference in evolution and humanity. Not humanity, as in human beings, but humanity as in the good will of humans to be more than our animal instincts, more than our wild animal counterparts. I wondered at that for a moment, thinking about how I had called myself weak and how I had thought about wild animals and humans. Was that what this all was, nothing more than a big social experiment, where I was the weakling and Craig was the wild animal I had tried to domesticate, and it had all gone horribly wrong? I contemplated this for a long moment, letting my soup get cold while I chewed on the end of my pen.

My laptop was in my bag, but for some reason, I liked jotting notes instead of typing them. I made another note, something about how maybe human beings were more evolved because we realized everyone had a unique ability, and that what was weak in the wild might not be weak after all when domesticated. People were just better able to make use of alternate strengths. I figured that was going to make a pretty decent topic for an opinion piece. After all, I had plenty of examples of leaders in wheelchairs, scientists with behavioral disorders, brilliant men and women with physical, emotional or mental problems.

I nodded, satisfied I was moving in the right direction. I had hoped coming to the restaurant instead of sitting in the apartment feeling sorry for myself was a good idea. I finally had an idea on which direction to go for my paper for class, so I could settle down to eat and people watching again.

The first bite of soup was tasty, even if it was lukewarm. My tea was empty. I sighed and glanced around the room to see if there were any employees nearby. The restaurant didn’t have a wait staff that took care of the tables, with the tea and soda machines at the front near the counter. I briefly wondered at the fact the staff always seemed up my ass when I didn’t want any help, but right then, when a little extra help might be appreciated, they were, of course, nowhere to be found. I figured one of them might take pity on me and refill my drink. It’s not like I couldn’t do it on my own or anything; I was simply being pessimistic and lazy both. Then I glanced down at my notepad and picked up the pencil and made a note about pity versus basic human kindness. Then I jotted a question: Can animals in the wild get depressed like humans do? Was that what happened with Craig? Had he gotten depressed?

My negativity was nearly suffocating. I knew I needed to snap out of it, but taking these first steps again, so to speak, were important. I figured I was doing better than I had expected. That at least was optimistic.

Before I went back to my food and jotting scribbles on my notepad, I looked up and caught the blurred vision of the woman behind the doors again. While I didn’t stare, I let my gaze flit slowly from her to my tabletop. I noticed her hair looked mousy, perhaps a bit frizzy. She sat slumped over. I could only see her from about the shoulders up, so I couldn’t get a good look at her clothes, but they looked expensive to me, which contrasted with the hair and sad face. I found, unlike the others in the restaurant, I didn’t want to create her story; I wanted to know her story.

My mind danced along storylines for her life: maybe she was an abused wife, enjoying a short break from her spouse, while he thought she was at a PTA meeting. No, I figured that wasn’t her story. She looked sad, but not necessarily defeated. Her hair seemed unkempt. Maybe she was poor, and she had scavenged her nickels and dimes together to get enough to treat herself to a rare meal out at a restaurant. I liked that one better than the abusive spouse storyline for her, but her clothes belied that possibility.

Neither story felt right to me. I chewed on my sandwich, the thoughts still rolling in my head. I was certain my sociology instructor at the college would tell me how my theories would have no scientific basis, and he would be right. After all, a restaurant wasn’t a controlled environment, there was no focus group or any sets of measures or standards to follow. I could make as many assumptions as I wanted about the lives of the people in the restaurant, but I would have no way to know if any of my assumptions were true. I shrugged and wondered if I might have been better off having taken creative writing instead. I thought about that a moment.

Me… A writer. Nope.

I then realized I was wandering in my thoughts to avoid the one thing that my mind kept lightly touching on before it flitted like a butterfly onto something else: I wondered what stories other people made up about me. You see, I didn’t think twice about the woman behind the door looking my way. Since the newspaper front page splashes and the nightly news programs plastering my husband’s face and mine up on the screen, I’d grown accustomed to people looking at me, wondering where they knew me from. It wasn’t like we lived in a huge town. Things like that don’t happen here every day.

I shrugged and took another bite of soup all pretty much at the same time when a young girl moved from behind the counter and came to my table.

“Can I get you some more tea, ma’am?”

My instinctive reaction was to smile a fake smile and say, “I can get it myself.”

But I was tired, and the winter wind had worn me down, and memories of Craig had made me weak. Plus, I had only moments before wished someone would come ask to fill my tea, but once she did, I reject it out of hand. My notepad caught my eye and I was reminded of my negative thoughts and about human kindness, so instead I said quietly, “Yes, please. Thank you.”

“You want sugar or lemon or anything?”

“No, just the tea, thanks,” I smiled, and for the first time that day, the smile matched the emotion.

I watched the young girl move to the soda fountain counter where the tea dispenser sat, and I let my mind wander on that employee’s story. She was maybe eighteen years old, if she was a day. She was thin, but had just enough padding to have some curves and a bust. Her almost blonde hair was pulled back in a peppy ponytail, and her outfit was modest but cute. She wore a cap on her head for the restaurant, but the rest was her own: tight legging pants, a cute double-layer knit top.

I figured she still lived at home, with mom and dad both, but that her parents probably had quit talking to each other years before. They stayed together for the kids or simply out of habit. That was something I had promised myself I would never let happen in my marriage. Sure enough, it hadn’t. Looking back, I would have preferred that to what had happened, though. Anyway, she was daddy’s little girl and mama’s vicarious life, and she probably had a job because her parents thought it would make her more responsible. No siblings, so she was slightly spoiled, and perhaps the job was to make up for that and give her a sense of purpose in the world.

My thoughts were interrupted by her return with my tea.

“Thanks,” I said, and that time, my smile was easy and gentle. After all, my lot in life was not her fault, and she’d been nothing but kind to me, regardless of what stories I made up about her in my mind.

“You’re welcome,” she said, with a smile back that I estimated was probably genuine too.

When she didn’t leave the table right away, I glanced back up at her and met her eyes. From my peripheral vision, I could see the woman in the other dining room looking over at us, watching our exchange, and the man with a laptop in the corner of the same dining segment was also trying to watch us without being obvious. I hadn’t ever enjoyed being center of attention. I hated it even more these days.

The old couple stood to leave and caught my attention. I turned to watch the old man stand and then pull out the chair of the old woman. He helped her on with her coat and then the two of them walked out the door together, their arms interlinked.

I sighed.

“They’re cute, aren’t they?” the employee said.

“Yes,” I said, “They are. I always thought my husband and I…” My thought broke off at my unexpected sharing.

“I heard about what happened with your husband,” she said, her voice full of what seemed genuine sadness more than pity. That moved me to look up at her. “The…” she drew in a deep breath. “On the news.”

She shrugged.

I nodded, choking back a sob that I had learned to carefully control the release of only when I was alone. I shrugged too, but tried to keep my expression open and emotionless.

“My…” she started, hooking a thumb over her shoulder and briefly glancing away, “my manager told me.”

I nodded. “I figured,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact.

She quickly scrambled to follow up with, “I’m sorry for your… I mean. I’m sorry for what happened.”

It was a kind thing to say. An honest thing, but also a common thing.

“Thank you,” I said. “Me too.”

It struck me that when someone died, especially when it was suddenly, unexpectedly, like a car accident, it was difficult to come up with anything unique to say. I suppose that was okay. But in my situation, with what happened so frighteningly unusual, surreal, unreal, I don’t know if I knew what I would say in someone else’s shoes. In my own shoes, I didn’t even know what it was I wanted to hear from someone else.

I sometimes found myself hating Craig for that. Holding my love for him inside my hatred only confused me even more.
Most people avoided me. For those who hadn’t, I had heard pretty much the same things said in pretty much the same ways. None of them made me feel any better. I figured the placations probably made the ones offering them feel better, so I had learned to nod and smile, to choke tears down, and accept as graciously as I could. The condolences on Craig’s death were easier to take than the pity I sometimes felt sent my way about the lives he took with him when he went.

Or, like me, the life he left behind.

I realized she hadn’t said anything else, so I again offered her a mumbled, “Thank you.”

A man walked through the side door of the café and made his way to the counter and the girl talking to me made apologies and went to wait on him. I glanced around the restaurant as casually as I could to see who else remained in the dining room from when I had entered.
The man in the corner on his laptop computer tapped away furiously at the keyboard. It was as though he was making it up as he went along, just so he would look like he hadn’t been eavesdropping on our conversation.

I hadn’t come up with a story for that man yet, but I did jot down his presence on my notepad. He was probably a businessman from the look of the suit, but it was possible he was looking for a job, since he was in the café after the normal lunch hours.

I could see a young couple with a small child in the dining area to the left of me. They struggled to put the child into the highchair. I jotted some impressions of them too and let my mind wander to their storyline. Their daughter was not very old but was at least old enough to sit up without assistance. She was unhappy with being restrained, not wanting to be strapped into the chair, like she had no control.

That was something with which I could relate, like I had no control over my own life. I had done my fair share of screaming and kicking, though mine was more figurative than literal. I suppose it might be different for a child, but maybe not. Maybe they fought against these things for much the same reasons adults might fight against them. After all, a desire for freedom probably is innate. I wondered if freedom was only a human condition, but then realized animals probably didn’t like being caged and captured much either, if they knew any differently.

My notepad was filling with all of my observations, and I had almost finished my soup and most of my sandwich. I reached to open the small bag of chips. The man in the corner with his laptop finally closed it and walked by my table while I popped a chip into my mouth and crunched. With a closer look, I could see his business suit was simple, not very expensive, but his overcoat was nice. The scent of a sweet cologne wafted by me when he breezed past, and I found it entirely too fragrant for the man who wore it. Definitely job hunting, I decided.
Craig would have been disappointed in my simple assessment, with nothing more grandiose to offer. Screw him, anyway. Who was he to judge?

I jotted something about clothing and accessories and fashion trends and how that pertains to the human animal, much like a lion’s mane determines leadership in a den. Or the peacock who displays his tail feathers to impress a mate. I then wondered if I would ever consider dating again. I thought Craig would be forever. I hadn’t ever considered dating anyone but him for the rest of my life. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t sure any man would ever consider me anything but damaged goods. Plus, how, after the horrid events of the last year, does one ever learn to trust another human being to that extent again? I surely didn’t know how to do that yet.

The child in the highchair caught my attention again, and for a moment, I had to choke back a tear for thinking of all the children Craig and I would never have together.

I had been trying to get pregnant for several months before Craig had gone crazy. I suppose, in a way, it was a good thing that hadn’t happened. The bullet he’d lodged into my belly would have surely killed any baby-in-the-making. If not, the surgery to remove the other bullet from my spine would surely have complicated the safety of a pregnancy. I suppose sometimes things happen for a reason. I sure wish I knew what those reasons were.

The sadness of those thoughts made me think of the woman in the corner of the other area of the dining room. I glanced up to see if she was still at her table, but new customers had come into the dining room and had blocked my view. Still, the sad lines of her blurred face had touched me, stayed with me, and try as I might, I could not come up with any storyline for her that fit what I’d glimpsed in her eyes. I wondered what might have caused that pain, caused her to give up on her appearance, caused her shoulders to stoop the way they did. I wondered if I had looked that sad, if I still did look that sad, since Craig. Everything from this point forward in my life would be measured as before Craig and since Craig.

I found in the stranger a kindred spirit, and wondered if, perhaps, she might understand my own pain better than anyone in my life who tried so hard to console me in the days, weeks, and now the year since Craig died, taking the lives of three others, and almost taking my life with him. It was a long time, an eternity, that had passed both too quickly and agonizingly, painfully slowly.

Suddenly, I realize that what I felt was not pity for the other woman, but rather… helplessness. I felt her sadness and knew there was nothing I could do to make that go away for her. I wondered if that was what people might be thinking about me when they learned who I was or remembered or realized what had happened to me. Maybe it wasn’t pity they felt, though I often assumed it was.

The thought brightened me some. I jotted a note on the notepad to remind myself. It was a thought I wanted to return to again, because if I could get past the idea that people pitied me, perhaps I would be able to accept their condolences better. Maybe it was simply their feelings of helplessness at not being able to do anything to make it better for me. Somehow, that made it easier to understand.

Shrugging, I decided not to let myself dwell on it. My meal was finished and the weather outside looked like the wind was kicking up even more than before, so I packed my notepad and pen back in my bag and placed all my items on my tray. I was glad I had decided to come, glad I had forced myself to make the step to visit the café alone. I thought I might just have found some healing in doing so. There was plenty more healing to do, but it was a start.

It was a good start.

I reached my hands down to unlock the brake lever on either side of my wheelchair and pushed the chair back from the table, and then I maneuvered to push it forward again. I was proud of how I had managed to get the chair into the van on my own and how I had driven to the café without any assistance. It was my first time out completely alone since Craig’s bullet had put me in the chair, and the outing had given me some hope that I might be able to venture out of the mobility-assist apartment I had moved to after our house had been sold, around the time I had started physical therapy. Thank God the university we attended had the medical program, and most of my physical therapy and treatment was done at the medical campus after I was released from the hospital. It made returning to school so much easier for me, even if I was only taking the one class this semester; it was an interesting class though. It was helping me process what might have happened to make Craig, a man I’d known my entire life, seemingly snap in an instant. Society… sociology… psychology. I don’t know. But maybe, somewhere along the way, I’ll learn. I’ll figure it out.

I decided to grab a bear claw on the way out, for breakfast in the morning, before the physical therapist would come to torture me before class.

As I navigated the wheelchair around the tables in the dining room to the counter to place the to-go order, I stole one last glance back at the sad woman whose story I couldn’t create. Closer to the panes of glass separating the segmented dining room, she was no longer blurred. I could clearly see the empty table, with no tray, no trash, no trace anyone had been sitting there.

I raised my hand up to touch my mousy frizzed hair and smiled, then I nearly laughed out loud, before feeling slight embarrassment at realizing I didn’t have to create a story for those sad eyes after all.

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