Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

“I asked the doctor whether that’s normal but he assured me that the moments of confusion were a result of the narcotics. They can take a while to wear off.”

  “Are you in pain?” I ask him.

  “The pain’s not too bad today, is it, Daddy? It’s all right today, but yesterday and the day before it was a different story. First he was hooked up to all kinds of devices, eh, that squeaked and pumped, it looked horrible. Even though I’m quite at home in the medical world, you know I was going to the hospital with my own father before I’d even learned to read or write, but it’s still a shock when it’s your own husband. I even thought for a moment: Am I going to faint? Am I going to vomit? But well, I hadn’t eaten anything, of course, so I couldn’t. I’d rather not eat, but I force myself because I have to stay standing. If I collapse now, that would be a calamity, wouldn’t it, Daddy?”

  Dad reaches for his drink, in a red sippy cup, like a little kid would have.

  “And the pain he was in, eh, Daddy? Pain! At a certain point he was lying there whining like an animal. So I complained to the nurses. ‘The doctors decide how much pain medication he’s allowed,’ they said. ‘Then call the doctors, for god’s sake,’ I cried, which made them stare. Yes, but well, no one should have to feel pain these days, that’s what people say, isn’t it? But you did, didn’t you, Daddy? In the end, they gave him something extra due to my intervention.” Marie beams as she says this.

  Dad stares out the window and says nothing. I notice a large clear bag on the floor under his bed, there’s dark-brown piss in it. Is that color normal? I don’t want to look and move my chair back a little.

  “Good thing I’m here, eh, Daddy? Take this morning. A physical therapist came along to do a few exercises with him. That person has hardly said three words when Daddy interrupts him, saying he’s not yet ready for it. Well, then I stepped in. I said, ‘Yes, but well, we’re not going to get anywhere like that, are we? The road to recovery is long, but this will make it even longer.’ Yes, that’s what I said. ‘A person sometimes needs a push in life.’ I did that myself when I had that operation on my foot, do you remember? That was no laughing matter, but I went to the physical therapist and I bore the pain. All right, I have a high pain threshold, but that’s not the point. The point is, if I hadn’t done the exercises, I wouldn’t have gotten back to being my old self as quickly. The hospital therapist, he agreed with me. He said, ‘Sir, let’s just give it a try, maybe you’ll surprise yourself.’ He was a friendly man, wasn’t he, Daddy?”

  My father makes the smallest nod possible.

  “Finally, he cooperated. With a lot of groaning and puffing and panting, but I’m sure he was glad in the end that he’d done it, weren’t you, Daddy? I was proud of you.” Marie looks at him with a sweet smile on her face. “The faster you recover, the sooner you can come home, that’s the way to think about it.”

  “And are you coping, yourself?” I ask as she pauses for breath.

  “Well, I have to, don’t I? They’re long days and all the stress, it’s bound to affect you. But well, I’m doing it for Daddy. I’d do anything for Daddy, isn’t that right, Daddy? Yesterday he even said, ‘I’m glad you’re here. What would I do without you?’ He can’t cope with being on his own in any case, he’s never been able to. And now with all this to-do, he needs a woman at his side more than ever. It’s normal. So I’m here for him, always, at least as long as visiting hours permit, because I don’t want to get dirty looks from the nurses, of course.” Marie throws her ball of yarn a little farther away to lengthen the skein. “That nurse, the blonde, she said to me, ‘It can’t be easy for you, ma’am, spending so many hours here each day.’ I replied: ‘I can’t help it. It’s in my nature, always thinking of others before myself.’ She also said she could see that I was doing it all on my own. ‘Well,’ I told her, ‘the children are always busy. That’s normal too, they’ve got jobs, our son’s got a baby.’ And—”

  “You know I wish I could come more often but you always say you get nervous when you can’t sit with him, and Dad finds too many visitors hectic.”

  “Yes, it’s all fine for me the way it is. I’m only repeating what the nurse said, that’s all.”

  There’s a momentary silence. Only the click-clack of knitting needles and the sound of a quiet conversation in the hall. After the storm, there’s something magical about silence. I smile at Dad and he smiles weakly back.

  “Have a chat with your father, eh. You’re here now and you’ve hardly said a thing.”

  I look at her, wanting to respond, then there’s a knock on the door. Alexander comes in.

  “Oh, it’s busy in here,” he says.

  “You were on the roster for tomorrow.”

  “Oops, my mistake, sorry. Bye, everyone.” Then my brother looks at me, reads my expression, I suspect, and asks Marie, “Hey, Mom, would you like to have a coffee with me downstairs? It will give you a break.”

  “Gosh. Daddy, do you mind if—”

  “Of course, Mommy, you deserve a break,” my father reassures her.

  She puts down her knitting and picks up her handbag and the two of them leave the room. My father exhales loudly, in relief perhaps, or from the pain, that’s also possible.

  “I try to sleep as much as possible, or I pretend.” He coughs, it’s a wet cough and it looks as though it hurts.

  “That’s not good, having to fake it in your own hospital bed.”

  Dad stares outside as though he needs a moment to consider this. Then he turns back to me. “Mom has shed a lot of tears since I’ve been in here. But those tears, you know, they’re for herself.” He scratches his cheek, which makes a scraping sound because he hasn’t been shaved today. “Oh well. When everything’s back to normal and she can return to her hobbies, it’ll be more bearable.”

  At that instant, a nurse waltzes in. “I’ve come to take care of you, young man. How are things here?”

  “When my favorite daughter’s here, things are always good,” my father says.

  I feel happy and embarrassed at the same time.

  Understandably, none of this matters at all to the nurse. “Are you going to stay?”

  “Um, no, I’ll wait in the hall.”

  I look around. I wish I had a better idea of what to do. Charlie told me a few days ago I should stop humoring everyone, that this would help him, not just me, to broach certain matters. What should I talk to him about, then, exactly, I asked. Charlie smiled and said I already knew the answer to that.

  9

  I didn’t think Louis would be home, so I just walk into his study. There’s an immediate commotion. I see him slam his laptop shut, his pants are down around his ankles, his bare knees stick out awkwardly on either side of the chair. He’s sitting with his back to me and he doesn’t dare turn around now is my guess.

  “Oh, um—” I don’t continue because I can’t think of anything to say. I close the door again behind me. I don’t think he’d come yet, I would have noticed the smell of sperm in such a small space. I go into the kitchen. Is he finishing the job now?

  I start making dinner. As I rummage around in the vegetable drawer, I wonder whether he still visits the site with women fucking each other with fluorescent strap-on dildos. I stumbled on it once in the search history on my computer. Apparently he uses both mine and his own computer to satisfy his pornographic needs when he’s in his writing cave. Later, I discovered that this particular site seems to be his favorite—it came up a remarkable number of times. To be honest, I was surprised something like that would be so exciting. The women first have to fight each other and the one who wins is allowed to fuck the other one roughly with a brightly colored fake penis, larger than any I’ve ever seen in real life. The winner always acts mean, the girl who has lost groans with pain, her face contorted. I’ve never asked him why this excites him so much.

  When was the last time we made love? About three weeks ago? We were watching a movie together and when the man fucked the woman against the kitchen c
ounter, horny and hurried, I cuddled up to Louis, at which point he reached for my breasts and kissed my neck. He used his tongue, he knows that turns me on. It was a simple lay with the movie on pause. Afterward, he fetched both of us a whiskey. His leg rested against mine while we watched the rest of the movie in the bedroom. Louis was asleep the moment the credits started to roll. I was still wide awake. I got up again, lay down on the living room carpet on my side. The wool prickled my cheek, I could see my hand and my arm, I could hear cars out on the street, music coming from the apartment beneath us, just the bass, an ambulance or fire truck somewhere in the far distance, and all I could think was: What if I just lie here forever?

  I cut the eggplant into thick slices, sprinkle them with salt. Then I peel the tomatoes and in the meantime, I try to think of things I like. I like a lot of things Louis considers ridiculous. I like brightly patterned shirts on men, doughnut holes from the funfair, cats when they are kittens. I like falling stars and making a wish and believing it will come true. Books with happy endings. Words invented by me or by somebody else. White- and milk-chocolate-flavored Mister Whippy. Paintings by Van Gogh (according to Louis, he’d never have achieved the fame he enjoys today if he hadn’t cut off his ear) and by Richter (pathetic pseudophotography and gloomy ambient abstracts, says Louis). Passport photos of children in women’s wallets. Pastel-colored boas, very short skirts, and plunging necklines on women who can get away with it. Playing a particular song on repeat during an endless journey. Corny sunsets in colors that look like a child’s painting. Escalators, Christmas lights, cuckoo clocks, felt-tip pens, snowballs, disco balls, bubble wrap and being able to pop each bubble one by one, plastic flowers, ladybugs, four-leaf clovers, five-leaf clovers, wishbones, and greeting cards that play music when you open them. Cookbooks, men’s hats, women’s suits, pinball machines, the poems of e e cummings (empty form experiments, Louis thinks). Notebooks and then having too many of them with too little written in them. Believing that coincidence isn’t a coincidence. People who are kind to you, just because, without your having done something for them first. People who dare to show their vulnerabilities without being afraid of being seen as pathetic. People who try harder to save the world than I do. People who spontaneously burst into song when there’s no reason for it. Goodwill, naivete, assertiveness. Optimism. Poorly lit spaces, busy streets, the way stillness is captured in the arts. Rainbows. Old trees, fog and mist, sea views, big shells and then listening to the sea in them, baby clothes, sour candy. Romance, even when it verges on the gooey. Big words and big feelings.

  Louis comes into the kitchen and kisses my right temple. “Oh, eggplant, delicious, my lady of the pan.”

  “Pasta alla Norma,” I say.

  “When will it be ready?”

  “No more than half an hour, I expect.”

  “Great. I’ll just pop out for some cigarettes. Want me to bring you anything?” He never usually asks.

  “No, thanks.”

  When we’re sitting at the table, he wants to know whether Anne-Sophie has replied yet. He pours me a large glass of red wine, says he picked a good one, then shows me the label.

  “No, not yet.”

  After talking to Alexander, we decided I should email her. Neither Dad nor Marie has even mentioned her name since Dad went into the hospital, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. For more than four years, Anne-Sophie has been traveling around South America. She’s even spent time in Africa. Her whole life fits in a backpack. I have no idea when she’ll read my message, often she doesn’t check her email for weeks. And she’s never had a cell phone. I miss her.

  “I wonder if she misses me.”

  “Maybe. But she rarely gets in touch, does she? Is there any more pasta? This sauce is yet again delectable in its simplicity.”

  I get up and put the pans on the table.

  “How are rehearsals going?”

  “A read-through without much enthusiasm this afternoon. I think the actors think as little of the piece as I do, only they don’t dare to say it.”

  “They’re not very courageous, your actors.”

  “I’m not either, so . . .”

  “Oh, my poor sweet coward. Do you want some more too?” He holds a spoonful of sauce above my plate. I wave my hand, no thanks. “And on the home front?”

  “Dad’s getting better every day, I think. He’s walking the full length of the corridor and spending at least an hour upright in a chair three times a day. But Marie looks terrible, dark circles under her eyes, lost a lot of weight.”

  “Really? And she already was so skinny. Poor woman.”

  I nod.

  “Hmm, yeah, Marie,” Louis says.

  He turns his fork in his spaghetti, creates a massive bite, and then puts it all in his mouth at once, smacking his lips. Before his mouth is empty, he begins out of the blue to describe a dream he had. It’s about a woman with fleshy legs that rub together when she walks. She came up to him and he didn’t know what to do. I wait for the point, but it doesn’t come. Marie is in almost all my dreams, sometimes she has a bit part, other times, she determines the whole sequence. I wake up from a lot of my dreams feeling suffocated.

  “I saw Charlie very briefly this morning.”

  “Hmm,” Louis says, seeming to focus all his attention on his plate.

  “She said she hates the term dysfunctional families because that’s the type of family she sees as exceptionally functional. The kind that isn’t focused on people flourishing individually and feeling good, but on a system that has to be kept in place, a system in which everyone plays a role, even if it’s at the expense of everyone in it.”

  “Yeah,” Louis says with his mouth full.

  “Interesting to think about, isn’t it?”

  “Golly. Well, to my mind, Charlie’s read too many self-help books. What herbs did you put in this sauce?” He points his fork at a green bit.

  “Basil, like I always do.”

  “Really exceptional, honeybun. And I was ravenously hungry.” He sucks up the last strings of spaghetti, making a squishing sound.

  I think about the many meanings of the word hungry. I consider going to take a sniff of his study, but decide not to.

  “I’m going to finish the whole pan if that’s OK?” Louis scrapes his spoon across the bottom of it.

  I think about Dad. What does he dream about? Dying and giving up? Marie and her knitting? I start to feel cold. “Want to watch a movie together?”

  “No, I want to finish that essay.” Louis wipes his mouth, gets up from the table, puts his plate on the counter, not in the dishwasher, and refills his wineglass again.

  I go over to him, press myself to his body, hold him tightly, and just for a moment I never let go.

  10

  There’s a long line at security. A kid with a whole lot of hair isn’t allowed by her mother to sit on the floor and begins to whine fretfully. A man with helpless ankles beneath too-short pants stares at the ceiling as though something interesting is about to happen there.

  “Airports have been loony since 9/11,” Marcus says.

  He puts his perennial pair of sunglasses in his hair, runs two fingers under his nose for the nth time, and straightens his right shoulder. The question is how much coke he’s snorted. It isn’t even afternoon yet, and I thought just now that I smelled alcohol but was hoping I was wrong.

  He’d been doing well for just over three years. He checked into a reputable clinic and, after that, seemed rid of his worst demons. But bit by bit, the habit crept back in. He seldom uses when he’s working, he says, so he doesn’t think it’s a problem.

  “I’ve got the feeling we’ve hardly moved three steps in twenty minutes. We’ll miss our flight at this rate.” He puts his sunglasses back on his nose. I’m mildly tempted to smack the glasses from his face when he begins to complain like this, but I tell him we’ve got plenty of time, everything will be fine. Marcus insisted on going to Berlin and back in one weekend to talk to Hans because, a
long the way, he’d begun to have more and more doubts about the material too.

  It’s almost our turn. Marcus constantly shifts his weight from one leg to the other and talks at top speed about a book he’s reading. He gives away the entire ending, even though he’d started by impressing on me that I had to read the novel urgently. We arrive at the conveyor belt, I take a plastic tray, put my phone in it, my laptop, my shoes, and my coat. I pick up my suitcase and lay it on the belt, ready to be checked too. Everything’s carry-on; it’s a short trip. Marcus puts his bag on the belt and dumps his keys and phone into my tray, then he walks toward the detector, where one of the security men points at his shoes. Marcus points back at the man’s shoes, laughs, and keeps walking.

  The man barks, “Your shoes need to go on the conveyor belt, sir.”

  “These sneakers never beep, you’ll see.” He tries to walk on, but the man holds him back.

  “Sir, I must insist that you follow the rules.” He adopts a stern expression, like a father who doesn’t know how to react or a teacher who isn’t very happy.

  Marcus goes up to him and stands too close. “Do you enjoying humiliating me? Is that it? First make us wait forever and then you behave like a motherfucker?”

  The man doesn’t bat an eyelid; he’s been trained for this. A female colleague discreetly comes closer. Before she’s said anything, I go over to Marcus.

  “Marcus, please, just do what they say or we’ll miss our flight.”

  I carefully lay my palm on his shoulder, he looks at me without looking at me, shakes off my hand, but does go to the plastic tray, takes off his shoes, and puts them in it. People behind me stare, some of them visibly annoyed. Marcus goes through the metal detector as though he’s walking onstage to accept his applause, his arms spread theatrically. He looks at the security man, who ignores the provocation. I presume Marcus is disappointed in some way. He probably just watched one of those documentaries about recalcitrant rock stars who claim that artists must resist all forms of authority.