Half And Double is a short story by Jack Rusher, published here Tuesday, February 08, 2005. It is part of Stories.
A new folk tale about coping with change.
Helen had — during the period before she dropped out of cooking school, but after she dropped out of her marriage — developed the habit of buying two of everything at the grocery store: matched pairs of steaks, symmetrically perfect sets of lamb chops, double packs of breakfast sausages; she would, when given the chance, share this bounty with a neighbor or a friend, unafraid to show love through nourishment, even after it had become emotionally impossible for her to do so in any other manner, but she mostly ate both portions herself. She had doubled her weight since the divorce.
She was half way home from the market late one evening when she saw her double reflected in a piece of store-front window glass. She turned to look, but by the time she turned, her double had left the window and she had entered it. Life as a reflection seemed very much like life as a person, only with long stretches of forgetfulness — she was, after all, absent without a surface in which to be seen.
Helen’s double bought only half a portion of each thing, and, as a result, nearly always went hungry. The double also stayed home when Helen would have gone to work, slept during the day, walked around the city all night, remained silent when Helen would have spoken and spoke when Helen would have remained silent. None of Helen’s friends much liked what they perceived as the change in Helen’s personality, which they thought of as a sign of depression rather than reflection.
Some months later, Helen’s double — who had, by this time, lost half her body-weight — saw the remaining half of Helen in the mirror. This time the half-Helen in the mirror and the half-double collided in mid-air and recombined, like light shining backwards through a prism, into a single whole Helen who was neither half the woman she had been nor the double of the woman whom she wanted to be.
After that, Helen went back to school and gave up shopping for two.