“Oh, you’re here. I thought you might be with your family. You look dreadful, my sweet creature. What have you been through? Come here so I can kiss you.”
I look at him and stay where I am.
He sits down next to me and takes me in his arms. He smells like himself, I think. Smells tell you everything. Empty and listless, my shoulders touch his, my arms his arms, my breasts his chest, my left leg his right.
He rocks me back and forth. I think he imagines this is how you comfort someone. “It’s so terrible for you, so terrible.”
“Really?”
He lets go, looks at me, there’s affection in his incomprehension. “Of course. Losing a father, that’s—yes, it must be terrible.”
“If it’s so terrible, why weren’t you here?”
“Who would have thought your father would go so quickly? And you know how soundly I sleep, I must have slept through your calls. I had to stay overnight there, I was really too tired to drive. You understand, don’t you?” He looks at me and gives me a slightly waggish smile. “But I’m here for you now, all for you.” He pulls me to him again, almost flattening me.
I kiss his right temple and break free. “That would be the first time, then.”
Louis frowns. “Are you really going to pick a fight now? Now?”
“No, not a fight. But I don’t want to have to understand, for once. I think I’ve been understanding about too much, for much too long.”
“But, honeybun, what’s got into—”
“Do you think we’re really together?”
He hesitates. “What kind of a question is that? Together enough, right? We have a reasonable time together, the two of us. And we’ve managed to get this far. And we don’t argue very much. We respect each other’s freedom, each other’s particularities, anyhow. And there’s always some problem, whoever you’re with, isn’t there? But why on earth do you want to talk about this now?”
“I don’t think I want this anymore.”
Louis twirls his hair around one finger, he always does that when he’s nervous.
“The way you treat me, well, and the way I react. I’m not claiming it’s all your fault. I let it happen. Because I’m so used to it. When I see the way Marie—”
“Are you going to start comparing me with her now? Gee, thanks.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“We should sit down and have a good talk about this. We—” Then Louis falls silent.
I can feel myself shaking. The way he’s sitting there now, his voice full of doubt and an expression as cold as a polar wind—Coldness is what protects him, I think then, I’ve seen it so often—I want to hold him in my arms again, but that would be for all the wrong reasons.
I breathe in and gather myself together. “Yes, we should talk. But I think we both deserve better, both of us. I once decided that you were my life preserver and if I let go of you, I’d drown. Now I think I want love.”
He looks at me as though I’m speaking Chinese. I squeeze his arm and, without saying anything, I stand up. I look for my shoes, put them on, take a coat from the rack, and put on my backpack.
“What’s this? Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“What do you mean? Don’t be so stupid. Sit down and let’s talk about it.”
I go to the door.
“What we’ve been doing for eleven years, that’s not love, then?” He almost shouts it as he struggles his way into the hall with me. I open the door. “Wait, then.” He grabs his coat. I go down the stairs, into the hall, out the front door. He rushes after me.
“Just let me go,” I say.
“No,” he replies, “not until you explain it to me.” He grabs my shoulder, holding me back.
We stand in the middle of the footpath. I look at him. “I’ve started to realize that live and let live, make your decision and stick to it, and try not to be unkind to each other, is not real love, no.” I button up my coat. He looks somewhere between lost and furious, but I keep going. “I want to be with someone because it feels like I can’t not be, because no one understands each other better than we do, because we feel compelled to get involved in each other’s business, because we really want to help each other to become the best versions of ourselves. Those kinds of things.”
“And which stupid magazine have you read that definition of love in?” His eyes are piercing.
Then I begin to cry. Two people walk past, staring unashamedly at us. Louis hates public scenes. Normally he’d have gone back inside already.
“I saw Dad with Joanna. And I’ve thought a lot about what she said to me.” I gulp once, and then again.
“Yes, so what?” He squeezes my shoulder too hard. It’s not deliberate, I think.
“I want to do what he never could. I don’t want . . . It seems to me . . . We’re the answer to each other’s weaknesses, I can see that now.”
“What do you even mean?”
“Do I really have to explain it here and now?”
“No, you should come back inside, with me.”
I stay where I am. “If I was insecure about my appearance, I’d be with you because you told me that my butt didn’t look fat, get it? I want to learn to be OK with my butt regardless, from here on out.”
“What’s all this about your butt? Christ!” Louis rolls his eyes.
“I mean: we can’t do that together, love each other for the right reasons. I’ve repeated what I learned, I chose somebody who gave me what I knew. I have to fight for love and attention with you. You pull me toward you and then push me away again. You make me feel like you could disappear from my life at any moment and I’d only have myself to blame for it. You make me think it’s never enough, that I’m never enough, that you are more important than me. And that says something about me, I realize that all too well. It’s exactly what used to happen at home when I was a child. I’ve made myself so—”
Louis makes a dismissive gesture. “I’ll just assume that this is your grief talking, or something like that, and that you’ll return to your senses later today, or tomorrow.”
And now you’re doing it again, I think. I smile at him, turn around, and begin to walk. Tears run down my face as though the supply of them is endless, and I—the girl who’d eternally put on a brave face—I don’t go to the slightest trouble to hold them back. If you’re always strong, you lose yourself, I think. Louis runs after me half-heartedly, I can sense.
“Don’t overreact, Mona! Come back.”
I don’t want to go back, I want to move on.
“For fuck’s sake, Mona!”
I look back. He’s stopped in his tracks, there on the worn cobblestones. “I don’t want to hurt you. Quite the opposite.” I say it too quietly, he won’t be able to hear. But I walk on, turn the corner. On the other side of the street, the sun is shining, and I cross over. The wind is blowing hard, but it feels warm, or warm enough. I want to love, I think, because I’m capable of it, and live, I want to live fully and eagerly, because I have to live anyway, so I’d better do it well. I want to continue walking into the wind, past houses, trees, water, clouds, walking and walking until I reach the far horizon, there where all beginnings begin. I see a father, he lifts up his young son and puts him on his shoulders. The little guy holds on to his ears like they’re reins. I want to stop hoping and do what it takes to make it happen. I put my hands in my pockets and quicken my pace. I want to finally be who I am, not the person I always thought others wanted me to be. I see birds in the distance. They’re flying in a big flock to wherever they need to be. I think: I don’t want to forget, because that’s the only weapon we have against that bastard death. I look at my feet and the way they are doing what I want and I think: I never want to leave myself behind again. I want to walk until I’ve lost track of the streets, and the sky. I walk and I see before me everything that was, and then I dream of everything to come, it’s so much. I see three people on a quiet bench, perhaps they’re smiling, perhaps they aren’
t, it’s hard to tell. I see a man with a beard, a little boy with a backpack, two girls looking longingly at something or someone, a cat darting away into the bushes. I feel my telephone in my coat pocket. I think: I want to understand what love is, remember that it’s everything, or almost everything. I want to save what still can be saved—myself, for example. I want to know what I am worth, choose what is right and good, believe that it is possible. I think: That’s what I want. I want to dare, at last. Yes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Griet Op de Beeck, born in 1973, lives in Belgium and has taken the literary world by storm since the publication of her highly successful debut novel, Many Heavens Above the Seventh. Her work has been translated into several languages, including German and French. Her second novel, Mona in Three Acts, was embraced by readers in the Netherlands and Belgium and is her first novel to be translated into English. For more information, visit the author at www.grietopdebeeck.be.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2017 Elma Coetzee
Michele Hutchison was born in the United Kingdom and has lived in Amsterdam since 2004. She was educated at UEA and Cambridge and Lyon Universities. She translates literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, graphic novels, and children’s books. Recent translations include La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Roxy by Esther Gerritsen, and An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew by Annejet van der Zijl. She is also coauthor, with Rina Mae Acosta, of The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less.
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