(This story was inspired by Hugo Simberg’s painting “Wounded Angel”)

Henry looked in the bathroom mirror. His hair was done up, his suit and tie were crisp, and the small rose bud pinned to his lapel added a bit of color to the otherwise monotone look. As he turned his head from side to side he decided he did, indeed, need to shave. His beard was just a tad on the scruffy side and he wanted to look his best. With a sigh of both frustration and acceptance, he pulled off his suit coat, vest, tie, and white shirt. The last thing he wanted now was to get beard trimmings on his suit.

Setting aside the clothing, Henry pulled out his electric trimmer and began running it through his beard. He was careful to lean over the sink while he worked to ensure his pants stayed clean as well. From time to time his eyes would wander away from his reflection and over to the old photograph in the top right corner of the mirror. It was curled from years of humidity and the colors were tinted blueish green. Even still, it was easy to make out the three kids in the picture. Two of the kids, Henry and his younger brother Frank, were dressed in their finest clothes. Frank had found a half decent hat somewhere to add to his ensemble. Neither of them was smiling. Frank had his head bowed, a dower expression on his face, whereas Henry was staring straight out of the picture with a look of utter boredom.

Between the two of them, held up on a makeshift stretcher that they were carrying, was their sister older Tabatha. She wore a white bedsheet as though it were a long dress, and had an old white sock wrapped around her eyes like a blindfold. On her back were a pair of rather impressive white wings.

The wings were what had started the whole affair. There was a lake not too far from where they lived and Tabatha and Frank had gone down there to catch frogs along the bank. Instead of returning with the frogs, however, they came home dragging a very large, very dead, swan. Their parents were out for the afternoon, otherwise that would have been the end of it. As there were no adults around to confiscate the dead bird, Tabatha set her two brothers to work.

“I’ve got an idea,” she had proclaimed and handed them each a steak knife.

Henry remembered how surprised he was at how difficult he found it to remove the wings from the bird. Looking back now, he was even more surprised their pitifully dull kitchen knives had ever been sufficient at cutting through the wings at all.

By the time Henry and Frank had removed the wings Tabatha was already draped in the sheet and she’d taken the liberty of setting out Henry’s and Franks clothes for them to change into. Frank helped Tabatha secure the wings to the back of the dress with an ingenious combination of a couple belts and about every single safety pin they could scrounge up. It wasn’t the most stable solution but it worked.

“Now I need you to carry me,” Tabatha had announced.

Henry was pretty tired of their game by this point but Frank, who tended to be Tabatha’s shadow, was eager to go along with it. Voted two against one, Henry agreed. They tried an arm carry at first, with Frank and Henry linking arms to make a seat for Tabatha but the wings kept getting in the way. They tried giving her a piggyback, but that wasn’t good enough for Tabatha.

Henry couldn’t remember whose idea it was, or how many other failed attempts they went through, before making the stretcher. It wasn’t much more than a couple of the decorative bamboo sticks their parents kept around the house with one of the seats from their swing set hooked onto them. It worked pretty well and finally allowed for both the look and feel that Tabatha had been envisioning.

At her instruction, they paraded Tabatha around their house, through their yard, and eventually up their street. One of their neighbors had seen them and snapped a quick picture. Henry, who’d been the only one to see the neighbor taking the picture, didn’t think anything of it at the time. He just wanted to be done with the game and do something else.

It wasn’t until the following week when the neighbor came over to share the picture with their mother that Henry thought it might have been a good idea to have looked away so as to conceal their identities a bit better. Fortunately, their parents handled it pretty well, and only Tabatha and Henry were punished since they weren’t supposed to go to the lake without a grown up. The wings, which Tabatha had been keeping hidden in her closet for future use, were of course taken and discarded before the smell of rotting swan could get more established.

Henry chuckled and returned his attention back to his beard. He’d been trimming without paying much attention and he’d done a rather terrible job. Deep gouges were cut into the normally smooth and manicured surface of his beard. It had taken him well over a year to get it this long and he felt a pang of regret for having made such a mess of it. Some patches were shaved right down almost to the skin.

There was no salvaging it at this point and he began to remove the beard in its entirety. Years seemed to come away from his face as he worked. The number of times he’d heard jokes about men shaving their beards only to find a baby face hidden beneath all played through his mind and he couldn’t help but admit he did look significantly younger without the beard. What his wife and kids would say when they saw him, let alone the rest of his friends and family, he could only guess. Certainly, he was going to get a lot of questions about it, and that part did bother him. He didn’t want to distract from what today was supposed to be about. He hoped at least that people wouldn’t think he was intentionally trying to draw attention.

Henry splashed his face a few times with hot water after he’d finished with the electric clipper and then applied the shaving cream. It had been a while since he’d last used his straight razor but he still knew his way around it. He kept himself focused this time, making sure not to cut himself. When at last he was finished he ran a hand over his smooth chin and cheeks.

How long had it been since he’d been clean shaven? He wasn’t sure. He’d maintained some sort of facial hair ever since he’d been old enough to grow it. He hardly even recognized himself in the mirror, and yet, when he looked at the old photograph he had to admit he looked much more like that little boy now than he had done with the beard. He cleaned up around the sink, brushing the remnants of hair into the trash and rinsing the sink before getting dressed once more.

Before he left the bathroom he sat down on the floor and cried. He didn’t like to cry in front of other people, though he didn’t mind crying in general. He just didn’t like the attention, always feeling that crying was a personal, private event. He wasn’t ready to let go of his sister. She wasn’t that much older than him, and of course he knew this day would come for all of them eventually, but it seemed far too soon, too sudden, for her to be gone. Yet gone she was, and he’d been asked to help carry her once again. This time there would be more than just Frank to help bear the burden and for that he was grateful. Tabatha had touched all of their lives in remarkable ways and all of them would need some help as they bore Tabatha, bore the loss of her presence, that day and every other day still to come.

Henry wiped his eyes and blew his nose. His heart still ached but he could go out and be with the others now. He hesitated at the door, however, and then turned back to the mirror. He unstuck the old photograph from the mirror and tucked it into his inside breast pocket. He wasn’t sure if Frank had a copy of the old picture, or if he even remembered it, but Henry figured it was as good a day as any to recall passed memories and enjoy the good times they had growing up.