Shop Windows

By

Daniel Maclaine
 

The young man strolled aimlessly. At times, he would stop and look into a shop window. If there were no other people about, he would steal a glimpse at his own reflection. There were times when he liked what he saw looking back at him. At other times, he was sorely disappointed and would move on quickly, hoping that a different shop window further down would be more complimentary.

As a lad, he had a habit of peeking around corners. His mother said, “You never know what’s around the next corner.” She had never said it directly to him but he had overheard it many times in her conversations with other adults. He had been fond of listening as a lad and his mom had taken him everywhere rather than leaving him with a minder. He heard more female adult conversations before his tenth birthday than many men would hear in a lifetime.

He still remembered the first time he had heard his own voice on a tape recording. He never knew he sounded like that. He hoped he didn’t sound like that to other people.

When he was more than a lad but not yet a young man, the youth had discovered that mirrors held a particular fascination for him. If he stared intently enough into his own eyes, he felt that he could see his future. You had to stare long enough for it to work properly. If you only stared a little bit, you didn’t see your future. Instead, you started to fall in love with yourself. With your face pressed right against the mirror, it was as though you were looking at another person. He had never been that close to another person so that he could look into their eyes for such a long period. He was still at an age when such a thought was unimaginable. He thought he had nice eyes. He dreamed that one day someone might look into them and think so also. Then, as he continued to stare, he saw the future.

He had sad eyes, he decided. No, not sad. The eyes looked sad because of the future, not because he was a sad person. He saw that he would drown.

The first girl who loved him was called Lea. She loved him from first grade to ninth grade. He never loved Lea. He loved Anna and Sylvia. They were Italian cousins and the junior high boys loved them interchangeably. The school dances were only fun if you managed to dance with both of them. Neither Anna nor Sylvia ever loved him but they would dance with him. In ninth grade, he even danced with Lea. She had been asking him for five years. He felt this made him a good person, a kind person, a charitable person. His mother was right. He was a child of God. When he finally danced with Lea, she didn’t love him anymore.

The young man thought that God loved him. He was frightened of Jesus though.  He didn’t know why he was scared; he only knew that he was. For many years as a boy he had faced the wall while waiting for sleep in his bed. As sleep began to come, his mind became syrupy and he would imagine Jesus sitting behind him on the edge of the bed. He had begun this in an attempt to talk to Jesus. His mother had told him that Jesus would listen to him. In his boy’s mind it was impossible to listen to someone properly if you weren’t in the same room. Such was the power of his own conjuring skills that the boy believed he could make Jesus appear by the sheer force of his will. The only trouble was that the boy had never turned over in his bed to see if this had worked.

There were times when he thought he felt weight on the bed. It could have been Jesus. But by then his mind was too fogged with coming sleep. He curled closer into himself and was terrified to turn over. What if Jesus was there, after all? For whatever reason, this scared him. Now, when he was a young man and no longer that boy, he regretted never turning over in the bed. Now he would never know if Jesus had been there or not.

The shop windows further down the street were more interesting. The wind had rearranged his hair and the young man was more pleased with what he saw. The reflection this time was more complimentary. He thought he noticed a familiar face across the street. He turned to look but she had already disappeared through a doorway. It looked like Susan.

All he could remember about Susan was her hair and how it had smelled like strawberries. He could just about remember her face but it was not a constant image. Perhaps that was why the girl he had seen across the street reflected in the shop window had looked like her.

Her face could have been any girl’s face. Was that why he saw her everywhere? Susan had been the first girl to take him into her bed, and from there, into herself. He never thought he loved Susan. She had made him float. It was the first time he had felt like he was floating. He even forgot about his eyes in the mirror when he was floating inside Susan. He was still the only person to have ever stared deeply into his own eyes.  Susan hadn’t been able to do that. He had kept his eyes closed. No, her name wasn’t Susan. Sandy. It had been Sandy.

The youth had quit school before he was finished. He felt as though he had finished. It turned out that he was not. He went back after one year because he missed his friends. Then the school told him that he was now properly finished and he left with their blessing. He left his friends as well. If there had been good-byes, he could no longer remember them.

The young man went to university. He went because he missed his friends again and wanted new ones to replace them. Along the way, he went to enough classes and wrote well enough on his exams to leave with a degree. He hadn’t recalled if he had said goodbye to any of those new friends, either. He would have liked to take them with him wherever he went. It wasn’t possible. This seemed unfortunate to him. Now he would have to get new ones all over again.

He wanted to be loved. It made him nervous that he was not loved. What if he drowned before anyone loved him? Then no one would remember him. No one but he himself would have looked into his own eyes. It made him give himself to people in the hope that they would love him. It hadn’t worked. One boy at school had said he loved him. But then morning came and it was never said again.

The young man looked in another shop window and felt not old but not young either. He felt uncomfortably in-between. A lad stood next to him and they both peered in through the glass. The lad next to him was about seventeen. The young man remembered when he had been seventeen. For the first time in his life, he saw age in his eyes.

The seventeen-year-old was looking at a pair of sneakers on display. The young man pretended to look also but he was really looking at the lad out of the corner of his eye. If he could be seventeen again he would remember to say goodbye to his friends.

He took a job. It was an adult job. It was not like the gas-pumping or fry-slinging jobs of his youth. This job was for grown-ups. He supposed it meant that he was a grown-up. He didn’t like the job but it allowed him to buy things. He liked the things and so kept the job. He didn’t think the boss liked him very much. One of the girls in the office downstairs across from the fire extinguisher liked him, though. She smiled at him whenever he passed. Another young man who was two floors below in an office next to that floor’s fire extinguisher also smiled at him. He had decided some time before not to smile anymore at other young men.

The girl touched his shoulder when they were together on the elevator. She smiled when she did it. He said something funny and she smiled and touched him. He was certain no one would ever touch him again so he married her. They smiled and laughed together. He didn’t care anymore if his boss liked him or not. They went on a large ship for the honeymoon where there was more smiling and touching. He didn’t drown. This surprised the young man. He had been expecting to drown when he agreed to the cruise.

She said “I love you” to the young man often. He said it to her. He said it less often. He wished he felt it. One night, they both said it at the same time. They had laughed. Nine months later a child was born. The young man thought the baby beautiful. It was a boy. He waited before giving his son a name. He wanted the baby to have a short time in the world where he could just be—where he could remain a child of God that did not need a name. The young man cried often that first week. He did it in secret when he was alone. He looked in the mirror again at his own eyes. He did not see his future anymore. He only saw his new son. His wife said it was time for a name. The boy would be Gavin. Gavin had his father’s eyes.

The young man was no longer young. He was now a man. At the same time he realized this, Gavin had grown and become a young man in his own right. The man walked with his son down the city street past the shop windows of his own childhood. Gavin grew to be taller than the man.

The man no longer looked at himself in the shop windows. He had lost interest in his own reflection. He reveled in looking at his son. It seemed they had only walked a short distance before the small boy at his knee changed into the young man he himself had once been. He no longer searched the background for familiar faces. He didn’t care who was in the background of the reflection of the shop window.

The man’s wife no longer loved him. It upset him less than he thought it should. He was not surprised. Even though they had laughed together and said “I love you” at the same time; even though she had smiled and touched his shoulder many years ago—she had never looked into his eyes the way he himself had done in the mirror when he thought he saw his future, when he thought the eyes were sad and that he would drown. She said goodbye. He watched her leave.

The man hugged her at Gavin's university graduation. He felt proud of this. He thought of Lea and how he had danced with her in ninth grade. She had stopped loving him then but he had danced all the same. His wife had stopped loving him and he hugged her anyway. He was still a good man. Gavin went off with his friends after the ceremony. The man hoped his son would say goodbye to his own friends the way he himself had neglected to do many years before. Before getting into a car, Gavin stopped and waved at the man and smiled. The man waved back.

He cried in much the same way he had cried when Gavin first came into the world without a name. He had a name now. He had the man’s face. The man wondered if Gavin ever pressed his face close to the mirror and looked deeply into his own eyes. The man left alone. The woman who had been his wife did not.

The man felt old. He was an old man. He never thought he would be an old man. His eyes in the mirror had told him he would drown. The man was afraid to go to sleep. He was scared he might not wake. If he didn’t wake up then he would not see his son again. He would not see his son who had grown into a strong man with a son of his own. He felt like a child again. He was fearful of what was beyond each corner. He found himself peeking around them before passing much like he had done as a boy. He no longer stopped to look in the shop windows, preferring instead to walk on and see remembered images and moments.

The last time he had stopped to see his reflection, he had disappeared. He saw a weathered face staring back at him. There was no hint of the young man he had been. Worse, he had noticed people passing would turn their heads in his direction. He saw their glances reflected in the shop windows. He did not like what he saw in their eyes. They looked at him as one looked at a wounded bird.

The man went to sleep. He was no longer afraid to go to sleep. The man could be young again. He dreamed he was young again. He dreamed of the day when he held Gavin for the first time. When he awoke, he shuffled to the mirror and held his face close to the surface. He looked into his own eyes. He realized that there was no longer any future to see. His eyes remained sad. They had always been sad. He thought they must have been that way because they knew they would one day close and open no more.

The man was feeling tired and went back to his bed. The phone was ringing at his bedside. When was the last time that the phone had rung? The man could not remember. He let it ring. It was soothing. It reminded him that someone out there was trying to reach him. He felt very sleepy. He pretended that the person on the other end of the phone was someone he had not said goodbye to those many years before. There was always time.

The man felt his eyes begin to close. He knew that they would not open again. He smiled and laughed and touched his own shoulder. He remembered that first touch many years ago. He remembered it had been that one touch—from the girl in the office one floor below and next to the fire extinguisher—that had given him his joy, his son—his Gavin.

He had loved and had been loved.

He was glad he hadn’t drowned.