Dec 24, 2024
Nov 16,2024
About Artifice, Sharon says: "I think there's something fascinating about watching somebody watch their own reflection in a mirror, making decisions about what to show and what to hide from the world. Artifice is a story about coping, resilience, grief... and the effort required to maintain hope."
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You flinch when you see her, the woman with the bright red hair, which in your head still screams life, mischief, courage. Watch her with breath-quickening anticipation, slit-eyed, as you lower your bum, incline your head back into the neck of the sink and she moves to take a seat opposite in front of a bulb-lit mirror. Another woman, a girl, directs arrows of water onto your head, penetrating frizz, shocking tired particles of scalp. She enquires if it's too hot. It's not. You like it hot, the hotter the better, hope the warmth might perforate, radiate inwards the way the woman’s red hair radiates outwards, moves in tandem with the fleshy contours of her black-clad limbs, squirming for comfortable arrangement now, seeking purchase on the slip of black leather.
You’ve seen her before. Not every time you’re here, because you’re here a lot, and there are a lot of girls here, but a few times. She dried your hair once. Told you her name was Sophie. Usual hairdresser chit-chat, which was disappointing. If her face has popped up on the website when you’ve been booking since, you’ve cancelled, gone for a different stylist, a different time. You don’t know why you’ve done this, can’t make sense of it, but there’s so much you can’t make sense of now, this is small. You do know you enjoy watching her. Watching this. The Show. A thrill of curtains up as she plonks her make-up bag down on the shelf in front of the mirror, pushes her hair back with a band, with panache, exposes her early morning face to this limited but public space.
It’s a satisfying face. An amalgam of striking features, young enough, a little younger than you, maybe early thirties, yet old, anachronistic in its creamy folds, which hood her eyes, searing blue or green under eager black brows. Pointed. Critically poised now, entirely focused on the self staring from beyond beaming lights. A mirror view. As real as any other measure. Lips a muted line of resolve. Nails, purple, precede the fingers of her right hand, deft to the bag, remove a tube of foundation, smaller tubes and bottles, a palette, brushes, a sponge. Two pencils. She lines them up. Shifts in the chair. Stands to pull it in. Adjusts the round chrome base, pumping at the lever to regulate the height until she can rest her Doc Martens solid on the footrest.
Murder On The Dance Floor pipes low from above, the white space melding into reflections and spotlights and ceiling.
Conditioner? the faceless girl behind you asks. Please, you say. Wondering if the harsh croak will declare you. All over or just on the ends? All over, you say, Any help I can get. A weak attempt at banter so you don’t seem too stand-offish, a defence, perhaps, for your position, splayed, displayed, no option to bury yourself in something captivating on your phone.
Beyond your eyelashes, Red – you’ve dismissed Sophie, it’s too mundane a noun - regards her own face in the mirror. And though it’s a face you find endlessly watchable, as you watch her watch herself you realise it doesn’t fit the standard parameters of attractive - too jowly, angular, worldly - a face you imagine might cause its owner some discord. You can see her as a toddler, standing ground with older siblings, peers in junior infants, wispy blonde creatures dancing to her whim, her expressed displeasure already powerful, the result, perhaps, of some early slices with life. She fascinates. You want to understand how she was formed. The layers and shapes which created this sanguine Buddha.
The girl behind combs acrylic nails through your hair, kneads them into your scalp.
Red lifts the sponge to her forehead, the right side of her face, smears beige liquid rhythmically down her cheeks, along the slopes of her nose, chin, upper lip, completes the circle. Repeats. Regards herself. Lifts a double-sided brush, a palette, chooses a darker colour, maps its course onto her skin, flips the brush and begins to blend. A hypnotic curling, sweeping motion, willing to life a face which, maybe, lies beneath. Veins hidden reimagined in a dusting of synthetic blush. She doesn’t appear to have succumbed to botox or fillers. Thoughts move swiftly through her features and her lips have natural plumpness, unlike the girl from behind, in full view now, who pats your hair dry, wraps it in a towel, leads you to a chair at an opposite mirror, offers coffee from a mouth sore with shine and effort. Leaves you sitting with your own image. Which is, always these days, a surprise.
You look like yourself. A bit pale, your mother would say, and your eyes appear receded, but you applied your makeup this morning, before leaving the house, couldn’t leave the house without it, not the bedroom, not even the ensuite. You need to be armoured before you meet the mirror on the landing, portal to the real world, gateway with a Ghost Centurion who issues every morning a license for you to pass.
Some days he doesn’t. Some days you go back to bed.
A fair haired girl brings coffee and a Penguin bar. You thank her and smile. Wonder if you’ve seen her before, this specific version. It’s a big salon, a chain, and turnover is high. They all look a little alike. Sometimes you get a variance, an older stylist, a man. But mostly they are young and pneumatic. Ciphers. The customers are ciphers too. They all look a little like you.
Which might be why Red pays you no attention, no recognition. Or perhaps she has simply limited her worldview to a domain of a couple of feet, drawn an imaginary pod, invisible walls, to enable her focus on her task. Your view of her is fabulously skewed: you watching you watching the mirror behind you where she is watching herself. Making important artistic decisions as to how she will activate her eyes. Weaponise them.
You’re not getting it cut? another girl asks, taking a hairdryer from its holder, brandishing a brush.
Well, maybe it’s another girl. Maybe it’s the same one. Somebody somewhere drops a tray of rollers, emits a curse, a baby cries and you tingle, feel the familiar rise in your innards, the catch of fright in your throat, find your arms drawn tight to your torso, involuntarily, as if by a magnet. You focus on Red, but the rest of the tableau smudges into white-grey-brown-black whirls.
This happens now. A lot. Find your breath, go slowly, they tell you. Go easy on yourself, they tell you. You need time. But when you try to take it, retreat, they worry, suggest fixes. Expect you to unravel. Spontaneously. You tell them you’re seeing a professional, taking pills, simply to placate. The irony of this 'time needed’ is the amount of it you spend comforting others. It's why you changed salon. Well, not entirely changed, you still go back to the old one for the colour, the cut. It’s the sympathy there you find exhausting. Here, you are anonymous, you can pop in and out without talking to anybody, really, exit ready to launch yourself on the world. A woman with her shit together. Well-dressed. Coiffed.
They didn’t know what to make of this You when you went back to work in the gallery. Five weeks After, it wasn’t what they were expecting. You’re looking so well, they’d said. A judgement. You don’t have to be here. Another. You’re so brave. By which they meant mad. But mad was hanging around the house. Caught in a persistent state of disconnect, calm with disbelief. That you were still here. Could still function. Make a cup of tea. Change a bed. And you were driving David mad. Not that mad was far for either of you to go. Things had been difficult, Before.
At the Griffin opening, Louise relegated you to backroom admin. In case anybody might upset you. Be upset by you. Transpose their imagined emotions into your situation and find only dissonance. You looked fine. You’d argued you were fine. You’d push through. It was better to be busy. And by six months After, you were handling the O’Neill exhibition yourself. Standing to give the introduction, a wave hit you so hard you physically shook. Felt like vomiting. Felt like bolting. Evaporating. But. You held firm. Pushed through. People said you were amazing. Strong. Coping so well.
Red is smudging the corners of her eyes with a brush and you regret your compromised view. You like to watch her apply liquid eyeliner, a skill you’ve never quite mastered, something you sometimes attempt when you’re going out.
Going out is mostly work related now. There were a few social invitations at first, family gatherings, quiet dinner parties and the like, people consciously making an effort to include you, mind you, but somewhere along the way, maybe when David left, your WhatsApp grew quiet. The sight of you single seems to wither people. As if there is an acceptable hierarchy of loss and you’ve shattered the ceiling. As if The Sadness might be contagious. Dangerous.
A riff - The Power of Love - bleeds into the space, the beat airborne and compelling. Red taps her foot in time, focused on the lips, pencil to define, red to fill, a slick of gloss. She’s done. No, wait, something amiss, a tissue employed, a line straightened. A reapplication. She starts to sing … cleaning my soul … low escalating notes. Packs up her kit. Stands. Show ready, her spirit inhabiting her fully now, pulling her tall, moving her puppet-like with certainty, purpose, towards the cloakroom to deposit the bag, towards the coffee machine for her fix, cracking jokes with the other girls, drones to her vivacious Queen Bee.
It was the week before Christmas she dried your hair. Your mother’s shindig for the neighbours. Your father told you gently you didn’t need to come, in the circumstances, but after years of yearning to be excused this noxious event, the blatant act of de-invitation made you determined. Not simply to go, but go all out. A new dress, blue velvet, a boho blow dry, liquid eye-liner.
Red’s accent was broader than you’d imagined. Dublin mixed with a hint of Yorkshire and you’d wanted to enquire, but you’d held your counsel. She was chatty. Cheery. Friendlier than anticipated. The usual:
Are you all set? I’m exhausted already, my little fella was up all night watching the Toy Show.
She’d shown you a picture, on her phone, a little boy of about three in pyjamas, cheeks stung with excitement. Nathan.
D’you have kids yourself? she’d asked.
The room slipped and receded in fairylights. Crowded with images of Christmas past, a curly head, freckles, a hero smile. A hospital bed.
I had a little girl, you’d said. Rocking slightly.
And Red had nodded slowly. Sagely. Heard.
The girl hangs the hair dryer back in the metal ring holder, goes to fetch some serum, rubs it onto her palms, pats your stray strands into place. Smiles. Nods. Done. You pull yourself to standing. Ready, not ready, to fight the grey swirl again. You hand her a couple of two euro coins as you walk towards the door, and she walks in the direction of the cloakroom. You tap your phone to pay at the cash desk, only vaguely aware of the bluster of the place, the sublanguage hum of commerce.
Red is suddenly beside you, carrying your coat. Holds it out. Your breath deserts you as you put your arms in and when you turn to thank her you get a close up of those eyes. As arresting as any work of art. More green than blue, gold flecked irises sparkling against many blended hues, lashes winged with flair and life and strength. Eyes that draw yours from their cave, force them to connect.
You look beautiful, she says.
Sharon Guard lives in Dublin, where she works in the pharmaceutical industry. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick, and her work has appeared in New Irish Writing, SWERVE magazine, The Ogham Stone and Washing Windows. She won the Molly Keane Award in 2020, and her debut novel, Assembling Ailish, will be published by Poolbeg Press in February 2025.
