Mirrors

Irene Valerie

Chapter Thirty-Three:

Irene Valerie

“Hey, Branton.”

“Hi.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“And your daughter?”

“You haven’t heard, haven’t you?”

“No. How is she doing?”

“She’s . . . um . . . how do I explain this?”

“Is she dead?”

“Hey, I—I—I gotta go. Where’s your bathroom by the way?”

“Straight on ahead and take a right turn.”

“Thanks.”

I went to follow my dad to the bathroom. I knew that he wasn’t going to do anything in there, but stare into space and possibly cry. I hadn’t seen my dad cry in a long time, not after Mom and Florence came back home.

Dad stared at himself in the mirror, gazing into his own tired, brown eyes. He looked at himself with shame—the same look I had given myself many times before. The guilt he had held for so long began to accumulate inside, coming out and haunting him. I stood and saw him, devouring himself with sadness. He was blaming himself for everything; for what had happened.

I didn’t want to let him feel that way.

The only way I could do things right was to say something to him. It would make things okay. But before I could even make a step, he whispered something almost inaudible.

“Wake up, Irene.”

A strange force pulled me from behind, forcing me away from Dad’s reach. The scene was going away, shrinking away in size. Regret began to flood in me; why hadn’t I acted earlier? The last image of my dad was lamentable. I wanted to change that.

“No! I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to Dad!” I protested, screaming into the ocean world. “What’s wrong with this place?”

“Irene! Irene! Calm down!” little Irene reassured. “There’s a reason why you couldn’t go to your dad’s. It takes a lot of energy to bring your spirit back in the present world. It’s different if it were part of your memory, but a present visit just takes too much.”

“Especially now that you only have so little left,” Valerie added. “The longer you stay in this ocean, the more you’ll become incoherent. Remember those people floating around mindlessly? You’ll turn like them if you lost energy.”

“Well, how am I gonna get out of here?”

“We have one last person to visit, remember?” Valerie reminded me. “After that, you’ll move on.”

“Let’s go then.”

There I stood by a large boat, staying afloat by the street. People drank and talked, speaking in a language I have no way to recognize. The long, white boat was a restaurant called Cercla de la Mar—Circle of the Sea. That was French, which meant that I was in France. I turned my head away from the boat, scanned the view and found my dream come true. The Eiffel Tower stood a block or two away from me. I was shocked and enthralled. What was I doing here?

An accordion was playing;  a man with a protruded stomach played a song with such charisma, it hypnotized me. It was no fancy restaurant—quite silly actually. But many romantics seem to come and eat there, since it was at a close proximity to the Eiffel Tower.