"Angel"

I



She used to have the feeling of being attractive, even sexy. She could look into the mirror and not see all those lines and dark circles staring back at her. On this day, that seemed like a faraway, distant memory.



When she was very young, Lily was in love with her father, in typical Freudian style. She thought that when she was old enough to get married, he would be there, waiting for her. She had no concept back then that he would age, too. Likewise, she never dreamed he could die. After all, Prince Charming and his princess always rode off into the sunset, happily ever after. Right?



Lily met plenty of slick talking substitutes over the years. Each one told her whatever she wanted to hear. They said she was pretty-some even said "beautiful". They told her what a good person she was. How smart, and how sexy! Afterwards, lying in the dark unable to sleep, she would realize, once again, this was going to go nowhere. In the morning light, she would hate herself with new gusto.



Then, along came Jack. He was genuinely nice and very funny. When she talked, he listened as though he truly cared about her thoughts, her opinions, her life. Jack understood the struggles she had been through. Before too long, it occurred to her that he hadn't left. Here they were, after a few months, and he said he loved her, too. (She had said it first, as usual).



They married on a beautiful day in December. It was an intimate, informal wedding in a small church. Lily had never been happier in her whole life! At last, there really was someone who loved her for who she was.



Many years later, as Jack announced the affair to her, she stood frozen and numb. Their life had been full of up's and down's, but she always knew he loved her and no other woman. Suddenly, it had all come undone. She had not even suspected.



Lily never bounced back from that. Oh, they stayed together, trying to make the best of it. Jack even moved in with his mistress, but when he realized he loved only Lily, he came back-and she held the door open. Kicking herself, she held it for him again and again, while he tried to make up his mind who to choose.



On a chilly spring day, another argument ensued. It was stupid, thought Lily, to fight over some trivial matter. But, here he was screaming at her again! How long was she going to take this sort of thing? She yelled back and then he called her crazy again. Again, again, it was said again! Lily snapped. That was it. He wanted her out of the car and she eagerly obliged. Later, when he said he wanted her out of his life, for once, she didn't argue.



But now, Lily looked at her reflection in the mirror. Wiping steam from the glass, she looked at her face and her body, with a new sadness. The gray hairs, the wrinkles, the tired expression. "Who is ever going to want you now?" Lily whispered to the woman in the mirror. The flat chest that cancer ravaged stared back the hardest. The scars seemed to mock her now.



As evening fell, she sat down to listen to some favorite music, while she thought of a young man she met years before. He called her "angel" then, something no one had ever called her. No one.



Lily wished it could all work out. She mostly wished that Jack did not want her  and that this young, gentle, kind man did. She wished she could shake the feeling she was going to end up very alone, no matter what. She wished she did not feel a desperate need to keep her heart from being broken again. To lose again, to be rejected again, might be too much. It would be especially awful if this sweet young man turned out to be like the rest of them. To stay with the familiar would be easy. Yet, Lily knew that to go back was not the answer. "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got," she reminded herself.



So, on this day, Lily will go to work, and then come home to her kids. She'll finish up the dishes, throw in a load of laundry, take a long warm shower. She will think of a young man who called her angel. But she'll avoid the mirror.