Reinventing Mona

by Jennifer Coburn

  Grammy and I were like cats on a fishing dock, slightly tipsy and cuddled together under one of the many handmade quilts strewn across the Hennigan home. A fire blazed and people continued drinking, exchanging stories of the worst winters that ever hit Ireland.

  Grammy and I also spent Christmas holidays in Jerusalem, Australia, Thailand, Athens, Rome, Barbados, and New York. Our New York trip was our last Christmas together. We were very much the tourists venturing through Central Park in a horse drawn carriage, taking in two Broadway shows and even going to the top of the red-and-green lit Empire State Building observation deck. I thought of how many couples planned to rendezvous there since An Affair to Remember, one of the only classic films I actually hated. I could never understand why Deborah Kerr didn’t just show up in her wheelchair to meet Cary Grant. Grammy said I couldn’t understand what a stigma it was to have a disability back then. She said it wasn’t like these days when people in wheelchairs are in Kmart commercials. Still, if I were madly, passionately in love, I’d hope that my Cary Grant would adore me no matter what. I would crawl up every last stair of the then-ADA noncompliant observation deck, panting and sweating, declaring, “I cannot walk, my darling, but I can still love. I can love you until I draw my last breath of life,” or something equally dramatic. The kind of crazy talk you can only get away with in old movies.

  * * *

  Not only could I walk, I was able to run, and decided I’d better get to it if I was serious about losing that ten pounds Mike suggested. As my feet hit the wet sand, I noticed the imprint darken, then quickly fade. I thought about last Christmas and the one night I spent off the pages of the New York tour book—the first time I crawled out of my own life and into someone else’s. Grammy said she wanted an evening to herself so I walked all the way from The Plaza down to Greenwich Village. I planned to hail a cab, but was distracted by the street vendors. I bought a blue fuzzy Kangol beret and scarf, which the Pakistani merchant said accentuated my eyes. A few blocks later, I picked up dangling earrings and a necklace made from old subway tokens. From the token lady, I also bought a belt made from Metro Cards. On Thirty-Fourth Street, a man named Gunther sold prints of the Statue of Liberty that he designed with torn strips of subway map. Without noticing the two-mile trek, before I knew it I was sitting in Washington Square Park on an unseasonably warm night, bumming a cigarette from a man who would’ve prompted Grammy to clutch her purse.

  As it turned out, the cigarette guy had a little street band that performed in the park for tips while intermittently exchanging undersized envelopes with passersby. “What are you dealing?” I asked.

  “I deal nothing, sweetheart,” he defended good-naturedly. “What do you call yourself?”

  “What do I call myself?” I laughed. It sounded as if I had a choice. Then I realized that I did.

  “Um, Monique.”

  “Sit down, Monique, we sing a little song about Monique. She take my smokes, she steal my heart.” From the pocket of his black wool coat, the young man pulled out a harmonica and his friend picked up his guitar from the ground and tossed the rainbow colored strap across his shoulder. I balanced myself on the metal rail fence and listened as the two improvised a song about “Monique, so beautiful, can’t hardly speak.” I giggled. Mona would never hang out in the park with drug dealers who write songs about her. But Monique kind of liked it.

  “I take requests, Monique,” said my Jamaican Romeo. “Like take out the garbage, honey. Kiss me here, kiss me there. Change our baby’s diapers. Love me all night long, sweetheart.”

  Romeo was smoking something very potent, but I didn’t care. I could see he was a harmless musician who made ends meet by dealing a little dope. Besides, we were in the middle of a very public park. The worst thing that could happen is I’d get arrested. “You look like a Beatles girl to me, Monique. You like dem Beatles?” he asked. Romeo and his friends belted “A Hard Day’s Night,” serenading me like a prop, a gimmick while people tossed coins in their guitar case.

  “You a musician, Monique?” Scooby the guitarist asked.

  “Musician? No. I’m an engineer.”

  “You tapping your toes and moving your lips like you want to play with the band, Monique. You want to play music with Romeo and me?” I shook my head in emphatic denial. “You head nodding no, but you feet tapping yes. What song you like? We play and you can hum along.” He took chopsticks from his coat pocket. “You tap these on the fence and be the drummer.”

  When the guitar played the opening bars of John Lennon’s “Across the Universe,” my throat constricted. My mother sang this song to us kids most every night at bedtime. I knew every acid-inspired word, including the Sanskrit passage where most people just muddle through or fake it till the “Om.” With the freedom of being Monique, I began singing and Scooby harmonized.

  “Nothing’s gonna change my world ...”

  The combination of Beatles music and Greenwich Village drew people to our little corner of the park, and inspired wishing well-like coin tossing. I stared at the ground to forget that people were watching, and tried to escape into the lyrics of this beautiful song and an even more beautiful memory.

  Like my mother, I love to sing. It is my one true way of forgetting about the outside world and connecting with my core. I guess music does that for everyone, but singing is a special memory of my mother, who had one of the most intoxicating voices anyone had ever heard. She was a classically trained vocalist who everyone expected would sing for the Metropolitan Opera or something equally impressive. Instead, she sang lullabies to a house full of hippie kids. I sang in the shower. I sang in the car. But that night in the park was the first time anyone had ever heard my voice.

  “Monique, you got some fine pipes on you, sweetheart.” My Romeo laughed. “The people, they love you.” He motioned to the crowd.

  “Oh, they want weed,” I dismissed.

  * * *

  As I relived last Christmas season, my only audience was the Pacific Ocean, quietly cheering me with its crashing waves. I raised my hands above my head. “Thank you. Thank you, Coronado. You’ve been great!”

  Chapter 12

  Greta gave me two gifts for Christmas and my birthday—both self-help books. Getting to Know You: A Woman’s Guide to Self-Discovery and A Road Map to the Soul. “Please take these in the spirit I give them,” Greta half apologized as I was unwrapping the books. At least she had the good sense to give them to me privately, and not humiliate me in front of her fabulously well-adjusted family. Their book selections were certainly titles like Being Perfect in an Imperfect World and We’re Okay; They’re Not. Greta laughed at my characterization of her family. “Every family has its own issues,” she said. “I’m not exactly the daughter my parents expected.”

  Greta’s family didn’t seem terribly disappointed with the way she turned out. There were at least a half dozen toasts celebrating her return to San Diego and her overdue breakup. Greta seemed uncomfortable the moment Terry’s name came up. Her breath seemed trapped in her lungs and she shot her mother a look that pleaded to change the topic.

  It had been more than a month since Greta returned from Texas and I still had no idea what had gone so wrong in her relationship that she had to leave. My guess was that Terry was unwilling to marry her, and after three years together, Greta probably realized it was never going to happen. If Adam and I shared so much history in one city, it would be hard to stay there with the constant reminders of places we’d gone and things we’d done together. Then, of course, there would be the biggest reminder of all—him.

  After dinner we sat in front of an understated Christmas tree decorated with small white bulbs and tasteful glass balls buried in the branches. Flames in the fireplace struggled to stay alive and chattering became quieter and less frequent. A Very Perry Christmas filled the air as Greta’s mother handed us each a glass mug of spiced cider to “take the chill from our bones,” she said, laughing.

  “Would you ever consider playing soccer again
?” Greta asked.

  I laughed. “If you called what I did in high school playing, then no. I’ve never considered it.”

  “You weren’t that bad.” She teasingly shoved me.

  I was a second alternate fullback, and the three times I actually made it onto the field during a soccer game, our opponents whipped right past me. Sometimes I lost my balance and fell just watching the other players running by. All the faking this way and cutting that way was dizzying. Our school made room on sports teams for every girl who wanted to play because extracurricular activities looked good on college applications. Greta was our starting goalkeeper. In fact, she was recruited by several colleges and earned a full scholarship for soccer.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m joining a women’s league and thought you might want to get into it again. It might be good for you.”

  “Better mental health through soccer?” I joked.

  “Well, the goals are loftier than marrying a stranger,” was Greta’s retort. “Seriously, it’ll be fun. You’ll meet nice women, get some exercise. Come on, you always say you have no life. Get a life. It’s a social thing. No one’s expecting you to be a star.”

  “I don’t know,” I hedged.

  “When I signed up, a woman on the team told me that in addition to their regular games, they have scrimmages for women who aren’t able to join the team for whatever reason. Why not give that a try?”

  I scrunched up my nose. “I’ll watch you play.”

  “Stop watching and start doing. Isn’t that what this early retirement is supposed to be all about?”

  Soccer sounded about as appealing as an afternoon of mowing the lawn with my teeth, but I agreed to play in the following Saturday’s scrimmage for a few reasons. It would burn a few hundred calories. I really did want to start making new friends. But the real reason was that I could use it as collateral with Greta. Or rather, I could prevent her from using my refusal against me. If I declined, she almost certainly would cite it as an example of my unwillingness to work on my own life. If I went to her soccer game, she couldn’t say that I’m solely focused on Adam. I looked at Greta, eagerly awaiting my response, and was overcome with guilt. What a shitty friend I was, attending a soccer scrimmage as a preemptive strike. For whatever reason, it was important to Greta that we play soccer together again. I could extend myself in this way for one day.

  “Okay, but they better know that I suck,” I said.

  “Fabulous!” She clapped. “This’ll be such fun.”

  “And they’ll know I suck, right?”

  “Mona, I will most assuredly tell them that you suck, happy?”

  “Not just yet.”

  I crawled into bed at midnight and had a great deal of trouble drifting off to sleep. I flipped from my back to my left side, then to my right I spent a few minutes on my stomach before deciding my problem might be temperature. As soon as I opened the window, I realized it needed to be shut again. I conceded that perhaps I simply wasn’t tired yet. I scanned through a few pages of Greta’s pop psych books she selected for my lost soul. Road map to the soul. Puh-lease!

  Too many women today are looking outward for wholeness. What they have not yet realized is they are already whole and this God-given wholeness can only be actualized from within. There are so many distractions from the self. Yet if we spent as much time looking at ourselves as we do turning to the mall, the bars, the office and the dating scene, we would discover that we do not need all of these outside sources to complete our lives. We are already complete. The truth is that it’s easier to look outside ourselves for happiness. The hard work is looking at what we could do to make our lives better. The hardest work is really digging deep and figuring out what’s missing within us that makes us seek validation from outside sources. The more women look outside themselves, the more they really ought to be looking within.

  Yawn! If Greta’s agenda were any more in my face, it would be my skin.

  I logged on to Google.com to see what I could come up with if I typed Adam’s name. In ten seconds, there were thousands of references to Adam P. Ziegler listed before me. I giggled, almost guiltily, as though I’d accidentally caught a glimpse of his naked body. I couldn’t contain my grin at the sight of his name emboldened on every blurb I saw.

  “Let’s see where you’ve been all my life,” I said to no one.

  “Gave a lecture on Congress’ Corporate Auditing, Accountability, Responsibility and Transparency Act.” I continued to read. “Death and Taxes: Tips for CPAs who file 706 forms on behalf of the deceased.” I wondered if we’d have to file one of these for Grammy this year.

  “Oh my God, how cute. Seen on the street. Says, ‘I go for comfort before style.’ The word he uses to describe his clothing choices: ‘Sensible.’ He is so unpretentious.” I scrolled further.

  “Wow, he wrote an article praising Bush’s tax cuts for the middle class.” I read a few paragraphs. “Hmm, someone needs to clue my sweetie in on what middle class means.” I smiled. At least he has an opinion and isn’t afraid to publish it. Grammy was a Republican, too, and she was perfectly wonderful.

  “Stanford, okay knew that from the degree on his office wall.” Then a surprise. “Of his generous gift to the San Diego Chamber Music Society, Adam P. Ziegler says it is incumbent upon arts patrons to give all they can to this fine organization. Without music, our culture is a poor and soulless place where people simply exist but cease to live.” Wow. A tad dramatic, but what passion he has for music. Who knew?

  A two-note chime came from my computer, like the arrival of a fairy. In the corner of my screen, a note alerted me that I had an instant message from MDog2@aol.com, and asked if I would accept it.

  “Um, okay,” I said before realizing I had to respond through my keyboard.

  Hey. What are you doing on the computer on Christmas night?

  Mike? I replied.

  Yeah, sorry. I put you on my Buddy List so I can bug my friends when I get tired of working.

  Oh. I was just doing a little work myself. How was your Christmas?

  Average. Yours?

  Okay. I got suckered into playing soccer next weekend, which I’m not looking forward to, but other than that, nothing unusual.

  A soccer player, ay?

  I actually suck, but my girlfriend wants me to play.

  Your girlfriend? Soccer? Did my invitation to this year’s Dykefest get lost in the mail?

  Don’t I wish? Then I wouldn’t need to rely on the likes of you! Imagine paying you to show me how to land a girlfriend! Seeing how you do such a great job at keeping the women hooked.

  Ha! You’ve read January’s column.

  I’ve read every month’s column.

  Impressive.

  Well, I wanted to know what I was buying.

  A strong back and a good set of teeth.

  And an ego that never quits.

  That’s called endurance, and believe me it ought to be on your checklist.

  You’re terrible!!!

  You need a good helping of terrible. Hey, did you sign up for that class?

  I’m not stripping!

  Hold on.

  I waited as Mike undoubtedly went to the bathroom or grabbed a beer.

  Okay, I’m back. Mark January 8th on your calendar.

  How come?

  Stripping class. I enrolled you.

  I can’t do that!!!!

  What the hell are you paying me for if you’re not going to take my advice? You told me you were Claudia Fucking Schiffer to get my attention, then nearly blockaded the door to get me to sign on as your Guy Coach. I cashed your check. Take my advice. It ain’t cheap.

  I smiled at his rogue persuasion.

  Okay. But let me seriously think through the stripping class.

  It’s one night, Mona! Three hours.

  I suppose I could get through three hours. Do you really think this will help me?

  Of course, I’ll need a full report of everything that goes on in
strip class. So I can do my job better, of course.

  I’ve got to get some sleep. It’s nearly two.

  Night. Merry Christmas.

  Good night, Dog.

  Chapter 13

  The morning grass was slick with dew and sunshine was fighting its way through a mild fog. I adore San Diego, where my biggest weather complaint was that it was too bright and a bit nippy in January.

  Seven women, including Greta, stood in a circle passing a neon yellow soccer ball to each other. A guy in a rugby shirt was fixing the net to the goal box, shouting at two dogs that chased each other around the field. As I approached the group, I couldn’t hear exactly what the women were saying, but it was the cadence and tone of sports taunting and bravado. That friendly ass-slapping banter among comrades. Several of the women wore sports bras and one had the most perfectly sectioned abs I’d ever seen. It was perfection beyond human capabilities. Like the physical specimen posters from high school biology classroom posters.

  I entered apologizing. For being late. For sucking. For not having cleats. “Hey don’t worry about it. We’re just kickin’ the ball around today,” said the abs set, Brooke. “Get in here,” she coaxed. I tried to pass the ball to Greta but it flew toward Lucy. The upside of passing the ball in a circle is that no one was sure where I was aiming, and by default, it always wound up in the general vicinity of someone.

  During the game, Brooke ran down the field on a breakaway so I shadowed her, desperately hoping she would never pass the ball to me. Of course, she did. It came straight to me and I surprised myself when I stopped its course with my foot and gained control. With a clear field in front of me, I began to dribble the ball as fast as I could. I ran full throttle toward the goal and felt the sheer exhilaration that comes with the potential for victory. I saw myself at the net, shooting the ball past the goalkeeper. I saw her dive toward my cannon shot and land on the grass just after the ball grazed the tips of her gloves. I saw my team carrying me off the field on players’ shoulders. I saw a microphone and a television camera in my face, asking “Mona Warren, you’ve just won the World Cup. What are you going to do now?” I saw myself with perfect abs, mugging to the television cameras. “I’m going to Disneyland!”