by Estevan Vega
Praise for Les Edgerton
THE DEATH OF TARPONS
“Set on the Texas Gulf Coast, mostly during the summer of 1955, Edgerton’s first novel shines with wisdom. Corey John, now in his mid-40’s, revisits the scene of that momentous season when, as a frightened 14-year-old, he desperately tried to win the love and approval of his abusive father, Robert. A former WWII pilot, workaholic Robert is frustrated by his wife, Mary, who’s pious and sexually unresponsive, and by his having been lured to Texas a few years back by his mother-in-law’s vague and still unfulfilled promise of a partnership in her restaurant business. Robert vents his anger by beating Corey. He also schemes to have Mary committed to a metal hospital. The boy’s only refuge is his kind Grandpa, who, though dying of lung cancer, takes him fishing for tarpon and helps him to see that Robert is incapable of giving love. It’s inspirational to watch Corey summon the courage to stand up to his father, as a teen and also in the present as he relives traumatic episodes and meditates on how he will raise his own son.”
—Publishers Weekly, February 12, 1996
“Facing his own battle with cancer, Corey John returns to Freeport, Texas, where he spent the summer of 1955 amid the turmoil of his dysfunctional family. Then 14, he had wanted nothing more than to go fishing and to please his abusive father. Yet through the tutelage of his loving, cancer-stricken grandfather, Corey crossed over into an adulthood in which he would not mimic his father’s example. Throughout this exceptional first novel, Edgerton uses fishing as an extended metaphor for life. Like a hooked tarpon that first lurks on the bottom before leaping high out of the water, life’s lows are followed by highs, and the successful angler must learn to cope with both extremes. Highly recommended for public libraries and for academic libraries supporting writing programs.” (Starred Review)
—Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City. Library Journal, March 15, 1996
SURVIVING LITTLE LEAGUE
“Learn how to help your Little Leaguer manage experiences with their fellow players, coaches, and parents. With chapters like ‘Possessed Coach,’ the ‘Coach’s Son,’ and the ‘Parent Critic,’ you’re bound to have your Little League concerns addressed.”
—Georgia Family Magazine
“From one 13-year-old to another this is the quintessential book meant to quell the anxiety organized youth baseball can at times rustle up.”
—Brad Spencer, Chicago Parent
“Humorously outlines some of the trials and tribulations that every kid will face during their baseball playing years as well as provide strategies for overcoming the sometimes unfair decisions that come from the people in charge.”
—Family Magazine
“The book takes a light-hearted approach to the over-the-top coaches, players and parents that surround the youth sports scene. The book pokes fun at the stereotypes and offers advice on how to summon a sense of humor and deal with them.”
—San Antonio Express News
“Must-read for parents and coaches who seem to forget what Little League is really all about—learning to play and loving the game.”
—Patti Martin, Asbury Park Press
“It’s time to give children’s sports back to children.”
—Samantha Critchell, The Seattle Times and the Associated Press
MONDAY’S MEAL
“The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Leslie H. Edgerton’s short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same. He brings to this task an unerring ear for dialogue and a sure-handed sense of place (particularly New Orleans, where many of the stories are set). Edgerton has affection for even his most despicable characters—”boring” Robert, who pours scalding water over his sleeping wife in “The Last Fan”; Jake, the musician responsible for his own daughter’s death in “The Jazz Player”; and Tommy in ‘I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger,” whose plan to get hold of some money involves severing the arm of a rich socialite—but he never takes the reader past the brink of horrible fascination into a deeper understanding. In the best story, “My Idea of a Nice Thing,” a woman named Raye tells us why she drinks: “My job. I’m a hairdresser. See, you take on all of these other people’s personalities and troubles and things, 10 or 12 of ‘em a day, and when the end of the day comes, you don’t know who you are anymore. It takes three drinks just to sort yourself out again.” Here Edgerton grants both the reader and Raye the grace of irony, and without his authorial intrusion, we find ourselves caring about her predicament.”
—Denise Gess, The New York Times Book Review, November 16, 1997
This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. These strange tales often revolve around macabre happenings, such as dismemberment, murder, kidnapping, cannibalism, or death. Many are set in the French Quarter of New Orleans with its jazz musicians, numerous bars, night walkers, and even voodoo. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings. YAs who enjoy reading Stephen King or watching The Twilight Zone will eat up these unique, often gruesome, at times humorous, short stories.
—Dottie Kraft, School Library Journal, January, 1998
Also by Les Edgerton
The Death of Tarpons
Nonfiction
Finding Your Voice
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go
Perfect Game USA
Surviving Little League
And many adult titles
Acknowledgments
A big thank-you as always to my wonderful agent, Chip Macgregor. To my wife Mary who grows more beautiful every day and is the perfect writer’s wife. To one terrific publisher, Aaron Patterson and his wonderful assistant editor, Kate Neal.
Dedication
I wrote this book many years ago and not to publish it but just as a labor of love for my oldest daughter Britney. She was a voracious reader and I simply wanted to write something just for her that she could look at and say, “My dad wrote this for me.” In other words, I wanted her to be proud of me.
When she read it, she turned to me with luminous eyes and told me it was the scariest thing she’d ever read. Keep in mind she was about nine years old at the time so it wasn’t as if she’d read thousands of books. But, it made me feel great.
When her little sister Sienna came along, both Britney and I urged her to read it. She did and she had much the same reaction as her sister had. Scared the pants off of her! I thought for the first time that maybe it might be publishable, but it wasn’t until a few years ago when Britney and I were talking about everyday things, when Britney suddenly said, “You know, Dad, after I read MIRROR, MIRROR I couldn’t look into a mirror at myself for more than a few seconds at a time before I had to look away. It just scared the crap out of me!”
And that’s when I realized it was publishable. And so, I find myself with the pleasurable task of determining who to dedicate this, my fifteenth book published, and it’s a nobrainer. MIRROR, MIRROR is dedicated to both of my little girls who taught me anew that it’s the joy of writing that affects another person’s emotions that’s the real reward of being a writer.
An important thing to be reminded of. Thanks, Britney and Sienna! I love you. And, Sienna, I hope Logan reads it and gets the pants scared off of him as well.
CHAPTER ONE
I’M INSIDE MY BATHROOM MIRROR.
I don’t mean in the cabinet behind the mirror. I mean, I’m inside my bathroom mirror.
The bad news is, I can’t get out.
There isn’t what I’d call a lot of good news.
I’m trapped. Forever, if I want to believe Liz.
Liz is my mirror-world counterpart. See, my name is Elizabeth, Elizabeth Mary Downing, and I’m inside this mirror and Liz—she’s the original occupant, the one who trapped me in here—is out where I used to be. She’s three-dimensional and I’m flat like a Gumby character. It used to be the other way around.
She tricked me.
She had two powerful weapons which she used to get me to trade places with her. Vanity and curiosity. My vanity, my curiosity.
It’s a long story.
And it’s still going on…
CHAPTER TWO
IT ALL REALLY STARTED years ago, ten years ago to be exact, when I was six years old. Ever since I can remember I’ve had this strange feeling whenever I looked into a mirror that there was someone on the other side staring back at me. I mean, someone not myself. Every time I passed a mirror, I swore I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be there. What, I couldn’t tell you, just something extra in there that didn’t belong.
When I was in kindergarten, I had an experience that convinced me this was more than just some wacko dream I’d gotten from standing too close to my mom when she was using Drano on the sinks and inhaling the fumes. I was in my parents’ bedroom, fooling around, “getting into trouble” as my dad likes to say, and I climbed up on the chair that sits in front of their dressing table. Of course it had a large mirror and of course I had to look into it. What kid could resist? At first, all I saw was myself looking back, a girl dressed in the same brown overalls I was wearing, hair the same whitish-blonde as it was then (it’s a darker blonde now) and every other detail mine except one tiny difference. My eyes are the brown of dead oak trees and the person looking back had gorgeous blue eyes. I swear I’m not making this up! I didn’t even notice the discrepancy right away and if I had been the average six-year-old and not too observant, maybe it would never have dawned on me that the eyes were a different color, but I have always been all too aware of the color of my eyes, having wished long before I was even six for blue ones instead of these mud-colored things I’m stuck with. I saw the difference right away.
I scooted my cute little butt right off that chair and ran screaming into the kitchen where my mom was fixing sandwiches for lunch.
“Mommy!” I screeched. Naturally, my mother thought I had chopped off a finger or something so she checked me all over for blood and broken bones, and when she saw I was in one piece she just laughed while I tried to tell her about the girl in the mirror.
“Mom, there really is. Honest, Mommy, honest.” Even my tears didn’t help. My mother can be a cold, cold woman sometimes. Joan Crawford’s kid was a lucky slob, compared.
“Well, of course there is, Elizabeth. Just like there was an alien in your bedroom last night, sitting on the dresser. Now go play and let Mommy get lunch started. Go outside and ride your bike, dear. You need fresh air.”
What I needed was a mom who didn’t think I suffered from hallucinations.
I’ll admit, after a few more tears, she did go into her bedroom and look into the mirror with me, even forcing me to look into the mirror again, at which I did some healthy yelling, but she was right—there was no one there this time except her and me...and my dumb brown eyes. I stayed mad all that night, refusing to eat anything at supper except my dessert, which was chocolate pudding, my favorite at the time, and I got mad all over again when she told my father about it and he yukked it up.
“Quite the imagination, little princess,” he said, reaching over and patting the top of my head. I ducked and gave him my best glare, but all he did was laugh and say, “Here we have the next Steven Spielberg. We’ll want to remember this moment when she’s rich and famous.” I’m frightened out of my wits and all they think is that I have this retarded imagination. Is that fair?
The mirror person never appeared again...until two weeks ago. For years and years she’d stayed away until even I began to think I’d imagined the whole deal.
I wish I had imagined it.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE’S BAAAA-AACK.
Miss Blue Eyes.
In the hall mirror, where I do my last minute face-on-right check. She was the same age as me and dressed identically, which shows at the very least, extremely good taste on her part. I was on my way out of the door to go to school—my boyfriend, Jimmy French, was tooting his horn like the Doofus of the Month he is sometimes (like on days ending in “y”)—and I just peeked into the mirror to see if my hair was okay and if there was anything from breakfast on my teeth, like a piece of egg or something, and lo and behold, there she was again, blue eyes and all.
Oh boy.
Yow.
Double yow.
I didn’t scream this time, but I did jump like I’d been poked with one of those cattle prods, and I tore out of the house like Freddy Krueger had just peeked in the window. I jumped into Jimmy’s car and slid over by him, quick-like, and being the slowhead that he is, ol’ Jimmeroo thought I was that glad to see him and not scared out of my Calvin Klein jockeys, which is what I was. For a minute, I thought about clueing him in but decided not to, remembering Mom’s response a century before. Jimmy’s comments would be a thousand times worse than anything Mom had ever said.
“Whatsa matter?” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Originality is not one of Jimmy’s hot traits. I hope he doesn’t decide to become a writer. He might make a decent President, though. I’ve noticed they use clichés like they invented them.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Look out!” He was bearing into the opposite lane and a bus was coming at us. Jimmy’s one of those guys who turns the car in the direction he’s looking. I have an uncle like that. Every time he goes to change the radio station and reaches for the dial or pushes the cigarette lighter in he ends up in somebody’s front yard. I think he’s trying to invent a new way of dying from smoking. It must be a guy thing. You want to keep Jimmy’s attention on the road ahead at all times, just like Uncle Rob, or he ends up on somebody’s front yard or standing on his brakes.
I shook all the way to school, my teeth clacking like a set of castanets, and Jimmy dummied up. Mad, at my backseat driving. About a block from school his pout ended and he asked me again what was wrong.
“I’m freezing, hon,” I said, and patted his arm. The fact it was Indian summer and eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit at eight a.m. didn’t enter his brain cavity because he just grinned like a game show host and hugged me closer like he thought he was saving me from frostbite. Comfort was what I needed, so I didn’t say any more, and by the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was only shaking like an Indiana earthquake which doesn’t do much to Mr. Richter Scales. When we went up the steps I saw a bunch of my friends and we started yakking and screaming like we always do and I pushed the mirror person to the back closet of my mind for the time being. I waved goodbye to Jimmy and went on in the building with my buds.
Like hel-lo. Like I could really forget something like that. Duh.
First period class was all right; it’s algebra and you have to use your brain waves to keep up, so I was okay there. But second period is English and we were studying Wordsworth the poet, who I know is this great literary figure and all, but kind of a mood-setter for naps sometimes, too—I mean, why can’t we study song lyrics more, like, for instance, the words from Green Day’s “Longview”—that’s poetry too, isn’t it? Unless you’re a hundred and thirty-five. Anyway, my mind zoned out on me in English and up popped the mirror girl. Next class was health and that was the bummiest. I got embarrassed when Mr. Swartz asked me what the chief cause of drowning was and I said “water” without thinking. It got a big laugh from everybody except Mr. Swartz who just gave this famous frown he’s notorious for, but which doesn’t intimidate anybody except maybe his poor wife, but the bad thing is now I’ll bet any amount of money he
thinks of me as the class clown or something totally zero like that and which I don’t need. I have to have a good grade in his class to get into medical school eventually which is where Mom and Dad want me to go but I think I’d rather be a marine biologist—I mean, aren’t those seals just the cutest thing? I’m with Jane Fonda on this one even though as an actress I think Angela what’s-her-name from that series “My So-Called Life” is yards better, but who knows what Angela thinks about our ocean friends? At least Jane Fonda puts her money where her mouth is and I admire her for that.
Already that mirror person was getting me into trouble!
At noon, all of us girls go into the bathroom to trade makeup secrets and talk about our boyfriends and teachers and who’s the worst-dressed in school and who’s the best-dressed and then we picture them out on a date. It’s a hoot! Sometimes it gets a little cruel and I don’t like it when that happens; I mean, those are people too, but usually it’s just in good fun and nobody gets hurt, unless you call getting a reputation for being the worst-dressed a harmful thing, which, as I think about it, is, so maybe we shouldn’t be doing that. I’ll bring it up, see if some of the others think the same.
It’ll have to be tomorrow, because I absolutely couldn’t enter the bathroom. Do you know how many mirrors there are in the girls’ bathroom? Only about a million and a half!
In fact, I never once even looked into my compact to see if my mascara was running or if my cheeks were too pale, because I just knew Blue Eyes would be staring back out at me. I could have had a hunk of Pizza Hut pretend cheese between my teeth and looked like a gomer all day for all I knew, except no one said I did and I know that if I did Missi Smith would have been only too glad to point it out as she thrives on telling you your faults and bad points whenever she can. Not going to the bathroom with my friends caused me all kinds of grief, since now they all think I’ve got some kind of nose problem and I’m too good for them which is, of course, ridiculous, but I certainly can’t tell them the real reason I didn’t go to the bathroom. My kidneys must look like one of those water balloons stretched out. I’m developing a serious phobia about mirrors. I’ll have to look up in my psych book to see if there’s a cure. Probably I’m the only one in the universe that has it and there won’t be any info on it I can research. If I was a psycho killer they could probably do something but I just bet there’s nothing about people sitting in mirrors and scaring innocent bystanders like moi.