Entry #64
July 25, 2024 — 9:45 PM
Late work because the caulk finally skinned and I could set the hallway mirror. It’s an old beveled piece I pulled from the downstairs closet, foxed at the edges, heavy as wet sand. I braced it on shims against fresh paint and checked the frame with a torpedo level. The clip-on work light hummed and threw a hard circle across the landing. Dust still in the air from sanding the trim; I could taste gypsum and old varnish.
I lifted the tape measure to mark center and caught myself in the glass, same as always except not. My arm rose and the arm inside lagged by a fraction. Not a trick of attention—there was a half-tick where the metal blade in the mirror hung lower than the one in my hand. I froze, the tape cutting into my thumb.
I tested it like a fool at a storefront. Chin up, chin down. A slow lift of fingers, then a stop, then a start. In the mirror, each start seemed to arrive a breath late, then catch up. I blinked once, hard. No smear. No double image. The light buzzed steady, but in the glass it looked like it hesitated after my movements, as if someone had eased the whole scene through thicker air.
When I stepped back to reset my feet, the hallway in the mirror didn’t pull back with me the way it should have. The baseboard ran on a shade longer in there. Past the corner near the linen closet I saw a sliver of floor that doesn’t exist—one extra inch of tongue-and-groove, an extra length of the runner that isn’t under my feet. The far wall in the reflection seemed an arm’s reach farther than the actual wall at my shoulder.
I counted boards the way my father taught me to check a cut: eyes on the end grain, finger tapping. Out here: eleven across the landing. In the glass, as I tapped, I got to twelve before I lost nerve and looked over my shoulder to be sure I wasn’t miscounting simple wood. Eleven. Back to the mirror: by then it was eleven again. The extra sliver gone as if someone had tucked it back under the wall.
I killed the work light and let the house go to its usual dim. The reflection blackened to a faint window. I switched the light on again, slow, waiting to see the catch-up. Nothing. My hand rose, the hand rose. Timing clean now. I set the level on the frame again. Bubble dead center. I pressed my knuckles to the glass. Cooler than the room by a few degrees, smooth except where the silvering is eaten away in freckles. A moth rattled against the shade. The only sound.
It would be simple to blame old silver, warped backing, my own tired eyes. I wanted that. But what I saw wasn’t curvature; it was sequence. Space doing an extra thing, then pretending it hadn’t. I stood there longer than the task required, trying to coax it again—micro-movements, pauses, even breathing in counts. The mirror refused to misbehave on demand.
I turned the mirror to face the wall, set a drop cloth under its edge for the paint, and stood there feeling ridiculous for doing it.
— Thomas Hale