Life's Golden Ticket

  I watched him hop into the shower, get dressed, then sit silently over a bowl of cold cereal.

  “How does he look?” Henry asked.

  I couldn’t stand the sight. “I look—he looks—tired, awful. Like he’s half awake, and half . . . dead.”

  My mirror self walked back to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. In the bedroom, Mary was still asleep. He let out a despairing sigh.

  He went out the door and got in his car, where he listened to some trash-talk radio. At work, he walked by dozens of desks to his corner office without saying a word to anyone. His assistant came in and handed him a printout of the day’s schedule. She was bubbly and bright-eyed. “Should be a big day, huh? You excited for the meeting?”

  He didn’t look up at her. “Not really.” He didn’t see her frown and shake her head sadly.

  He sat quietly in his office, answering e-mail and gazing absently out the window. After looking over a sheaf of papers, he gathered them up and walked to a conference room at the end of the hall. As he entered, several people stood and shook his hand. He flashed a fake smile and joked around a few minutes about the weather and last night’s NBA game.

  “Hey!” I said, watching the scene in the mirror. “I recognize this meeting. This was about a month ago. It was a big meeting. We were reviewing sales and brainstorming how to improve.”

  Henry looked into the mirror and pointed to me as I listened to two men deliver a long-winded slide show. “He doesn’t look like he thinks it’s a big meeting. He’s just sitting there doodling.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m not—he’s not—doodling. He’s sketching out a better product.”

  The meeting went on, and the guy who was me offered a few critical comments about the sales numbers. He also made some complaints about the current product in the review session, but during the brainstorming session he didn’t share any ideas on how to improve it. In fact, the only thing he did was sit there, apparently frustrated or bored, throughout the meeting.

  After work he picked up a few things at the grocery store. When the bagger at the checkout stand smiled, handed him his bags, and said, “Have a good night,” he made a half-smile and walked to his car.

  When he got home, Mary ran up to him and gave him a loving hug. “Hey, there! How was your day, hon? Did you tell them about your idea?”

  “Nah,” he replied. “They wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. Bunch of morons.”

  She looked at him sadly and took his coat. He walked to the kitchen and grabbed a beer. Mary followed him in and said, “So you didn’t even tell them about it? I thought you were really excited about that idea.”

  “Just let it go, Mary. They’d just shoot it down anyway.”

  “But—”

  “Let it go, Mary!” he barked.

  He walked into the den, turned on the television, and didn’t speak to her the rest of the evening.

  The scene looped back to its beginning and froze on the image of me in my bathroom, staring disappointedly at myself in the mirror.

  Henry motioned to the image. “Is that who you really are?”

  I shook my head sadly. “No.”

  “Well, then, who is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s . . . it’s not really me.”

  Henry turned to me. “You know what, sonny? It is you. That was you we saw, wasn’t it? That was a real day in your life, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But it’s not the real me.”

  Henry scoffed. “Oh, c’mon! That’s a bunch of psychobabble, and you know it. That was you. That was who you have become. That was who you are now, right?”

  I looked at Henry’s eyes in surprise. Gone was the cheery cotton-candy man.

  He continued. “Hey, listen, sometimes you got to call it like it is. There is no real you versus fake you. No real self versus false self. You are who you are, wholly and completely. All your emotions and behaviors are a part of who you are now. Unless you accept every aspect of that, you’re lying to yourself. You’re avoiding yourself. Maybe you don’t like parts of who you are, portions of what you just saw, but those are portions and parts of you until you change them. You’ve got to admit that even the bad parts are parts of you. Otherwise, you’ll never change. That was you we just saw, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Then own it. That’s how your life is. That’s how it’s going. That’s who you are now. Decide if that’s who you really want to be tomorrow.”

  Henry walked away, leaving me staring at the image in the mirror.

  After a few moments I stalked away, disgusted, and started looking for Henry. I passed a few of the mirrors Henry and I had stood in front of earlier. The reflections of me quickly contorted and blurred as I passed. At one mirror, though, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the reflection wasn’t too distorted. I turned and saw a young boy looking back at me. The backdrop behind him was the reflection of the room I was standing in. The boy had long, wavy hair and plump cheeks. He wore a simple white shirt, khaki shorts, white ankle socks, and blue sneakers.

  Me when I was six.

  Looking at him, I smiled, remembering the innocence of childhood.

  He smiled back at me.

  I cocked my neck, surprised. He mimicked me. I raised my hand and waved. He waved back.

  “I like this game,” he said.

  Suddenly the background behind him changed. A tall picket fence was a few yards behind him now. And some grass. And a trampoline.

  He turned, ran into the yard, climbed onto the trampoline, and started jumping. He giggled and laughed unabashedly. He jumped higher and higher and screeched happily at each new height, “Wheeeee!”

  A little girl walked up to the trampoline. It was his neighbor. “Can I jump with you?” she asked.

  He stopped jumping. “Yeah. C’mon up.”

  “I can’t get up,” she said.

  His mother emerged from the back door of the house, but he didn’t see her.

  “Sure you can,” he said, and hopped off. “I’ll help you.”

  He boosted the little girl up; then he taught her how to stagger their jumping so that they could spike each other higher. They laughed and played together for an hour.

  Soon the girl’s parents called her home and she had to leave. The boy helped her down and said good-bye. “Thanks for jumping with me,” he said.

  His mom walked over and gave him a tremendous hug, lifting him off the ground and twirling him around. “You’re such a good boy!”

  “We were jumping,” he said.

  “I know! I saw you. You were so good!” She put him back onto the trampoline, kicked her shoes off, and climbed up. She grabbed hold of him once more and started jumping with him. “You have such a good heart, my boy. Always make sure you have fun and help others jump higher, and you’ll do all right.”

  I watched them jump together for another ten minutes or so, and I started to tear up. Then the mother said she had to go get dinner ready and got down off the trampoline. Before she turned to go inside, the little boy asked her to wait and started jumping higher and higher. “Look, Mommy, I can go higher than anyone. I can go as high as I want!”

  She clapped proudly for him and then went inside.

  He played on the trampoline for a few more minutes and then climbed off to go inside. As he walked across the yard he stopped abruptly, as if forgetting something, and headed back toward where I had seen him standing at the beginning of the scene. He looked at me again through the mirror and waved.

  I waved back.

  Then he took a step through the mirror and stood right in front of me.

  “Hi, mister,” he said.

  My mouth opened, and the tears dropped. “Oh . . . hi . . . hi, little boy.”

  He looked up at me with bright eyes. “Maybe someday you can come over, and we can jump.”

  I smiled and tried to hold back the tears. “Sure, sure, you bet we can.”

  “Okay,” he said happily. He stepped forwar
d, hugged my leg, then turned and stepped back into the mirror. He waved at me and started across the lawn.

  I reached toward him and hit the surface of the mirror. The image immediately changed, and I stepped back in surprise.

  A gunshot.

  A slew of sprinters bolted out of their starting blocks.

  The scene in the mirror showed me sprinting, coming closer and closer to the finish line, closer and closer to the mirror. I saw myself cross the finish line, and suddenly a seventeen-year-old me stepped out of the mirror. He bent at the waist, trying to catch his breath. He was sweating and wearing a broad smile. He looked up at me.

  “That was fast, huh?”

  “Fast,” I repeated, looking at him with amazement.

  He raised his hand, gave me a high-five, and stepped back through the mirror.

  The image changed immediately.

  The man walked confidently out of his boss’s office. It was me again. He shook hands with a longtime co-worker and friend. They had both been given a promotion after a gutsy proposal. He and his friend bumped chests like football players. Then he moved away from his friend and walked through the mirror to stand in front of me. He grabbed me and put me in a headlock and scraped his knuckles across my head. “Smarter than the average bear, ain’t we?” he said with a charismatic tone. Then he jumped back into the mirror.

  The image changed again.

  Mary.

  She and the “mirror me” were hugging on the back deck of my new home. They were standing next to a large dinner table, arranged with dozens of candles and roses.

  He bent down. “Mary, you’ve made life worth living, and you have lifted my soul to the stars. Will you share your life with me? Will you marry me?”

  Mary lifted her hands to her face in surprise and burst into tears.

  “Oh, my God, yes!” She pulled him to his feet and kissed him all over his face. He hugged her tightly, rocking her back and forth for what seemed an eternity, not wanting to say a word, not wanting her to hear his voice crack.

  Finally, she said, “I’m so happy. You make me feel like a princess. I love you so much.”

  “I just want to be a good man to you, Mary. I want to be a good man.”

  “You are,” she said, nestling into his arms. “You are . . . you are . . . you are . . .”

  Minutes later she excused herself to wash the mascara from her eyes. As she walked into the house he crashed down into a dinner chair and began crying. Tears of joy fell from his face, and he kept nodding, convincing himself that she had actually said yes.

  Then he looked directly at me through the mirror. He nodded approvingly, then whispered, “You are.”

  PART 3

  13

  THE LIVESTOCK PAVILION

  I walked out of the Hall of Mirrors and took a deep breath. The air felt lighter, crisper. The noise of the people walking by didn’t seem so overwhelming. I started down the stairs. Henry was standing to the side, smoking a pipe.

  “You smoke?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied, and walked into the crowd.

  I laughed and followed. “What do you mean? You’re smoking now!”

  “You only live once, right?”

  Henry’s demeanor had changed. He seemed tired, distracted.

  We walked south, back toward where the elephants were. We didn’t speak. Henry just kept puffing at his pipe and staring off into the distance.

  “Is everything okay, Henry?” I asked.

  He nodded and took a big draw on his pipe. “Sure, son. I’m just a bit tired. Not as young as I used to be.” He smiled at me reassuringly. “But no time for that. We’ve got a lot of work to do yet.”

  “What’s next?”

  “We’ve got to talk about what you’re doing with your life. The scene I saw of you in the Hall of Mirrors wasn’t a good thing.”

  I shook my head and patted his back. “Don’t worry about that, Henry. I feel so different now. I’m going to change all that.”

  Henry stopped and grabbed my shoulder. “I hear you. But let me ask you something. How long has that been going on? You disliking your work, arguing with Mary because of it, being stuck in a job and a life that you don’t want?”

  I thought about it, and my enthusiasm waned. “A few years.”

  “A few years?”

  I looked at the ground. “More than a few.”

  Henry kicked at the toe of my shoe. “Try about four,” he said sternly. “And in the past four years, have you ever felt pretty good about yourself, the way you’re feeling now, even if just momentarily?”

  “Yeah, for a moment here and there, but nothing like this before I . . .”

  “Good enough,” he continued. “Good enough. But listen, just because you are starting to get over the past and you feel lighter and better because of it doesn’t mean you’re going to change. We’ve got to have a serious discussion about why you’ve allowed all this to go on for four years, because you and I both know the reason isn’t just your difficult past—it has to do with the way you’ve been making your decisions. So, will you agree to talk about all this a little more?”

  Henry’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. I couldn’t tell if it was because of his smoking or if he was just feeling tired or if he was just tired of me. Either way, my gut told me something was bothering him.

  “Sure, Henry, I’ll talk about it.”

  “Good.”

  We continued walking south past the animal cages until we came to an enormous steel-sided building.

  “The livestock pavilion,” Henry said, with a surprising tone of contempt.

  “Not a fan?” I asked. “We don’t have to go in. I don’t like the smell of these places anyway.”

  “Me neither. But we do have to go in.”

  We entered the building through a two-story-high garage door. The dirt floor of the pavilion was littered with piles of manure.

  Henry crinkled his nose and looked at me. “Yeah. We do have to be in here. The crap that goes on in here has gone on in both our lives. Best we see it so we don’t keep stepping in it.”

  We sat on the top row of the bleachers, four rows above anyone else. We could see the entire pavilion. Metal livestock pens holding cattle, pigs, goats, and horses spread across what must have been two football fields of space. The noise of all the animals was almost deafening. In the middle of the pavilion was a large, fenced-in circle. Henry said that was the exhibition area, where farmers and ranchers showed off their animals.

  The place was huge. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of it,” Henry said. He spoke in a whisper, almost as if he were talking to himself rather than me.

  “Oh?” I asked. “Did you grow up on a ranch?”

  “Practically.” He looked down into the pens and seemed troubled. “Do you remember . . .” He suddenly erupted in a spasm of coughing. He coughed so hard and for so long that I instinctively reached over and patted him on the back. When he could speak again, he thanked me.

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “You might want to stay away from that pipe.”

  “Right,” he said, his face turning pale. He spat on the ground and continued. “Do you remember when I vouched for you at the front gate?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it . . . and to thank you for it. I realize that it was, in some way, a big deal. So thank you.”

  Henry scrutinized me as if checking my sincerity. Then he slapped my knee. “Well, it was my pleasure. I saw something in you. And after seeing Mary’s unopened envelope, I knew our stories were supposed to overlap. Anyway, if that’s the case, I better tell you some of my story.” He paused and looked across the pavilion. “Unfortunately, a lot of it happens in places like this.” Henry shifted in his seat as if readying himself for a long story. “I suppose my life isn’t much different from yours, at least when it comes to the themes that have woven through it. Like you, I thought the world
was a dark place for a long time.

  “I was raised in Wyoming. Most people don’t know that about me. It was cold as hell there, and I don’t talk about it much. Just the memories alone sometimes chill me to the bone.

  “My dad was a coal miner. He was a big man. Tough and mad at the world because his life hadn’t worked out the way he wanted it. But you could tell he loved us. He never said it, but he’d look at us now and then with pride. There was one scene when I was twelve, when he bent down, hugged me hard, looked me straight in the eye—one of the only times I can remember—and said that he knew I would make him a proud father. He used to tell all his co-workers that his kids would really make it in the world. He worked and busted his ass and sacrificed his whole life to make sure we could go to school and have a better future than he did.

  “Anyway, when I was thirteen, the coal tunnel Dad was working in collapsed. He and twelve other guys were buried alive. . . . They never dug him out.”

  “Oh, no . . .” The words just fell out of my mouth. “I’m sorry, Henry.” I felt partly sorry for him and partly guilty that I had never asked him about his life despite all his questions about my own.

  He didn’t seem to hear me.

  “I remember when Dad went to work that day, down to every detail. He yelled at Will and me—Will was my younger brother—for not doing our chores. Then he said we had to be more responsible and ruffled Will’s hair. He said to me, ‘Be a good boy. Take care of your brother today. You’re bigger than him, Henry, so you should always look out for him and other people.’ Before he left he told Mom he’d be home on time like always. He said, ‘Thanks for breakfast, darlin’. You’re the light that pulls me out of that pit every day.’ He always said that to her. Then he was gone.

  “Few years later Mom died of a broken heart. Doctors said it was heart failure, a bad valve, but we knew. Will and I didn’t have anybody to support us—no family, nothin’. So the local church found us a job and some housing . . . clear across the state. They sent us to work for a rancher named Wade. He agreed to feed us and shelter us. What they didn’t know was that he’d work us to the bone and make us sleep in the loft in his barn. Unfortunately, we were too young to make our own decisions; we just went where we were told.