Greener

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. I’d catch glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye: when I grabbed my keys from the hook in the front hallway, when I brushed my teeth, when I checked my rear-view. At first, I wrote if off—get more sleep, Allison. Stop surviving off cappuccinos and B12 supplements. Our new deal in Buenos Aires had started to pick up steam; I told myself I couldn’t afford to get distracted.

I noticed the lag first. When my looks at my reflection would linger, the reflection would break away before I did. The asymmetry never lasted more than a split second, but that moment stayed with me until a heaping dose of Lorazepam pushed it out of sight. The irony stuck with me: pep talks in the mirror had always galvanized me before a tough talk with my boss or a daunting presentation. Now I looked down at my shoes, up at the abstract pointillism of ceiling tiles, into my palms; even my phone, at the right angle, would capture glimpses of her.

My dreams started to change. Normally, I'd paid them little attention, if any at all; now they screamed to be heard. Warhol panels of garish memory clambered through my slumbering mind, bringing into sharp, technicolor focus old shames I'd long since pushed aside. The time I walked around school wearing my niece's Frosted Flakes on my camisole; or called my second girlfriend by the name of my first; or tripped over my own heels and landed in my boss's breasts during my first solo presentation; or pissed my pants after four vodka sodas on my first flight to London. I managed to score a prescription for Ambien, but the dreams pushed through the fog, flashing visions lingering on my eyelids as I blinked my way out of sleep.

Old regrets wove their way through the weft of shame: never applying to the Peace Corps; never taking up Tai Chi; never asking out Sydney du Bois; never running a marathon with my sisters; never changing my major to environmental science. Thwarted success and unused potential convoluted themselves into the tapestry of a life poorly lived; and together, they enshrined my waking life. Repeatedly and randomly throughout the day, I found myself clutching my head, audibly choking at the sudden onslaught of unwanted memory.

All the while, the woman on the other side, the not-quite-me, metastasized. Our actions no longer feigned parallels; our images shared a body and little else. I'd catch cryptic glimpses of her life here and there: the name tag that read "Leydi's Mantle, Ltd." when we rounded a corner into a meeting; the inscrutable mound of yellow mush on her plate when we sat down to eat; the Hitachi that brought her to climax as I wiggled awkwardly around a lover's fingers.

I kept waiting for her to notice me, for her to catch sight of her own errant double; but her eyes never stayed on the mirror for long. The Other Allison engaged with her colleagues, engrossed in their words, nodding gentle feedback. She read ravenously, everything from Margaret Atwood to Immanuel Kant. She tended the flowers and vegetables in her garden. She observed the people around her kindly, patiently. Often, her eyes would softly close, and she would watch nothing at all. Other Allison used her mirror as just that, refining the edges and lines of her hair and garment until she looked neat, polished, not quite primped; her gaze fixed on everything but her reflection—everything but me.

One day, dreading the thought of Other Allison's graceful demeanor and gentle poise painting me into a caricature, I marred my respectable attendance record and called into work. I kept the shades drawn and curled into myself, into the sheets, into the dark. Once in the morning, once at night, I stumbled into the kitchen, head down, and popped a Lean Cuisine into the microwave. When the ding sounded, I hauled my steaming plastic tray-bowl of fettuccine al low-cal chow mein to the little table, chewing it ponderously. Once the plate was empty, I trudged back to bed, willing myself to sleep. I could barely call the passing of time from sunup to sundown a "day," but it was the first day I spent without her.

I called into work the next day, and the day after that. Eventually, I turned my phone off altogether. I ate frozen meal after frozen meal, managing to make myself eat in the kitchen for the first couple of days, until I saw a flash of her hair in the gleaming lacquer of the tabletop; I took my meals in bed after that, when I took them at all.

I couldn’t say when the light from outside began to fade, but by the second week, the walls around me had begun to fade out of focus, as though shrouded in smoke. Within time, I could barely see past the edge of the bed; and shortly after that, the only things I could make out were my own hands, dim shapes waving through the dark.

These days, when I come to, the moment nearly passes me by. When Allison catches a fleeting glance at herself, I look out at her world, suspended weightlessly within a glass prism. The moment her eyes break from the reflection, I vanish. The first few times I snapped into existence, I screamed; I know better now than to waste my breath.

She was getting herself ready for a gala a few weeks back. Ring light casting an unreal glow, she painted her lips scarlet, shaded her eyes with iridescence, twisted her hair into a perfect coif. I watched her with a distant fondness as she readied herself. I lost the power of will necessary to feel envy long ago; the closest feeling I know now comes as a vague hunger, a faint longing.

As she smoothed out the slinky silhouette of her dress, I longed for her to delight in her night out at whatever celebration she was attending. I hungered for her to feel joy, to get the things she was after, to live her life without reservation, without fear.

More than anything, though, I wanted her never, ever to know the Other Allison.