Reinventing Mona

by Jennifer Coburn

  “Hey, Mona Lisa,” he said when I gathered my resources and called again.

  “What did you want?” I said flat and cool.

  “Wanted to give you an idea for your boy. That’s why I get the big bucks, right?”

  “Fine. What is it?”

  “Is something wrong?” Mike asked. “You sound mad.”

  Don’t pretend you care, you heartless piece of shit. You’re all the same from Gregory Peck to you—totally and completely disengaged from your feelings.

  “Nothing at all,” I said. “Should there be something wrong?”

  “No, I guess not. Anyway, I was thinking that the next time you see this guy, you should act like you dig sports. So I want to load you up with a little sports jargon.”

  See how they switch gears so quickly? No sensitivity whatsoever. Completely out of touch with how I’m feeling. You think he’d be any different in a relationship?

  “Sounds good. Lay it on me, buddy,” I said.

  Chapter 25

  Spring is here and love is in the air ... or maybe it’s the smell of fertilizer being sprinkled on my neighbor’s lawn.

  —The Dog House, March

  There are only a few ways to tell it’s springtime in San Diego—the animals at the zoo are in a perpetual state of sexual arousal. Our trees are always in bloom, but only in the spring does our African gorilla hump his mate right in front of a group of Head Start kids. In March, it’s not the snow that’s melting around here. It’s the heart of the female orangutan that looks dreamily at her nappy companion, and thinks maybe—just maybe he really does care.

  “Don’t you just love springtime in San Diego?” I asked Adam as we rode the Skyfari toward the polar bear tank. “I mean, San Diego is beautiful any time of year, but there’s something magical about this city in the spring.”

  Adam shrugged. “Yeah, I hate to be argumentative, but I don’t share your love of San Diego.”

  What? Who doesn’t love San Diego?

  He continued. “Don’t you ever get sick of sunny and beautiful?”

  Never!

  “Um, sometimes. But it rains here occasionally. Back in November we had that big storm, remember? And just last week, it was cloudy most of the afternoon.”

  He continued. “San Diego has such a small town feel to it. It’s a city with an inferiority complex, and frankly, it should have one. That’s what believe.” He snorted.

  Then Adam said what I knew was coming next. “Sometimes I feel like if I don’t get out of this town, I’m going to bust. I want to move to a real city, someplace like Tulsa.”

  Tulsa? Tulsa, Oklahoma? Where did that come from? I was waiting for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or Paris. Isn’t the weather pretty moderate in Tulsa, too?

  “Why Tulsa?” I asked as our carrier descended.

  As we walked to the polar bear tank—where Julie, the actress I hired, was scheduled to pass out at the stroke of noon—Adam told me about a convention he attended in Tulsa. Three days of learning about detecting fraud at savings and loans, nine meals that included red meat, and a day at the rodeo, he recalled, as if he were dreaming of his entry to heaven.

  I spotted Julie watching a polar bear press his giant purple pads against the glass tank and back flip for her. She acknowledged me discreetly, then brushed her hair behind her ear, her signal asking me if I was ready. I was to cough once for yes, and twice for no. It was such naughty fun, I almost wished we had reason for more clandestine communication. Maybe I’d coach Adam and my children’s Little League team and use secret signals with players.

  When I coughed, Adam asked if I was okay. With that I knew I’d set my sights on the right guy. “I’m fine.” I smiled. “But that woman isn’t!” I pointed to Julie who had fallen a little too slowly and landed in a pose that was a smidge sexier than it needed to be. Her hip jutted out like Mae West and she actually placed her hand on her forehead.

  I ran toward her and announced to the other zoo guests that I knew CPR and would assist in saving this stranger’s life. Because that’s the kind of wholesome and good-hearted gal I am.

  “Stand back,” I exclaimed. “I can resuscitate her!” I knelt before her limp body as a crowd gathered around to watch. “Give her some air.” I searched her neck for a pulse. As I leaned my mouth toward her, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you a doctor?” demanded the tallest man I’d ever seen before. His voice was so commanding, I was terrified.

  “Um, no, I’m not a doctor.”

  But I play one on dates?

  “I am,” he said, shoving me aside. He felt for Julie’s pulse at which point she opened her eyes.

  The crowd clapped.

  “What happened?” Julie asked.

  Dr. Mean Guy turned to me and shouted, “She had a pulse and her breathing was fine. This woman did not require CPR.”

  “Um, okay, sorry.” I sunk into my shoulders like a child being reprimanded by her teacher. The crowd had not yet dissipated, so he continued lecturing them, using me as the example of why laypeople should not attempt such heroics. “Anyone with a double-digit IQ can pass a first aid class, but before running in to perform unnecessary CPR that could have caused this woman serious harm, ask if there’s a doctor available, people! That is why we go to medical school.” He turned to me and repeated, “You could have seriously injured this woman. I’m sure your heart was in the right place, but next time, try using your head.”

  By this point, the crowd was glaring at me as if the reason Julie was lying on the ground in the first place was because I strangled her. Two kids sneered at me. One mother shook her head with disgust. Adam was on his cell phone calling for an ambulance.

  The person who was most upset with me, however, was Julie, who called me the next day, hysterical that she spent four hours in the hospital emergency room being evaluated because both Dr. Mean Guy and Adam thought it was best to take the precaution. “I don’t have health insurance and my driver’s license has been suspended, Mona!” she cried. “They say I can’t have it back until I’ve gone six months ‘episode free.’ How am I supposed to get to rehearsals, Mona? How am I supposed to pick up my son from school?!”

  Doctors are so arrogant. My parents were right when they used to rant about how doctors believed they were ordained by God. Four of the kids got very sick one extremely rainy winter and we were forced to call a doctor from Missoula in to examine them. Two weeks of soup, herbal steams, and prayer weren’t doing the trick so they brought in the big guns. The doctor did little other than criticize us for living in such close quarters, and nearly freaked out when he discovered only half of us kids were immunized. I didn’t hear most of the conversation because it took place behind closed doors, but I distinctly recall my mother telling the doctor that they were only seeking his medical advice, not a commentary on their lifestyle. As she closed the front door, she sighed. “Such arrogance. We want to fight a virus, they want to fight us. The almighty medical establishment knows what’s best for everyone.”

  As Adam and I drove back to Coronado, I tuned my radio to a college basketball game. “Who do you think will be this year’s final four?” I asked.

  “A hoops fan?”Adam smiled. As I looked at Adam, I saw someone who would never leave his family. There was something very attractive about how firmly grounded he seemed. I didn’t agree with everything he was grounded in, but I liked that he was anchored. Mike was like a vapor. Anytime I tried to wrap my arms around something real with him, I realized it just wasn’t there. Or if it was, the mist was so fine and so fleeting that couldn’t feel it for more than a second.

  “Nothing like that March Madness.” I giggled nervously as I recited my line of utter bullshit.

  “Oh yeah?” Adam seemed pleased. Mike was right about this one. Wonder of wonders, he was right. Adam seemed to love the fact that I knew a little something about basketball. “Who are your teams?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath, knowing this time it was me who was the a
ctor reciting lines. “Everyone loves the powerhouses like Duke and Arizona, but I’m an underdog kind of gal. I think Syracuse has just about the best freshman in the country right now.”

  So far, so good.

  “Carmelo Anthony,” Adam relieved me of remembering the name.

  “You gotta love the six-eight swing guy who plays both the three and the four. He’s unstoppable in the post and can shoot the threes,” I said, hoping I’d recited my lines just as Mike had written.

  Adam looked thrilled. “You’re right about Syracuse, but you know Jim Boeheim can never pull out the big win.”

  Jim Boeheim?! Jim Boeheim?!

  I shrugged, hoping Adam would dismiss the whole Jim Boeheim conversation. “Come on, Mona, name the last big game Boeheim pulled out.”

  Can we talk about Anthony’s high school record?

  “See, you can’t name one, can you?” Adam asked.

  “Um, well, he’s just one player,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Um, you can’t expect one guy to be responsible for the success of the whole team,” I said softly.

  “I can if that guy is the coach.”

  Chapter 26

  Adam told me that the two dates we had were the best he’d ever had. I wondered if this was just a line—how this could possibly be true—but there seemed to be no ulterior motive for him to say such a thing. He didn’t need to borrow money. He was not pursuing a sexual relationship with me. If Adam Ziegler had an agenda, I could not figure out what it was. He seemed genuinely happy to spend time with me.

  I, on the other hand, woke up feeling gutted after both dates. Adam was such a good choice for a mate, and from a distance I felt such chemistry with him, but the more I spent time with him, the more he bored me. Any sparks that flew were a result of my frantically rubbing sticks together to create them. Yet, Adam seemed perfectly content and asked to see me again the next weekend. On autopilot, I agreed but dreaded it. Part of me thought my reluctance was the pressure of having to come up with a new public relations stunt. Another part knew it was just the simple realization that Adam was not blowing my hair back the way I’d expected.

  My mantra these days seemed to be that passion was fleeting, but the more I said it the less I believed it. A reverse meditation of sorts, bringing me further from the place of inner peace and contentment I so desperately sought. I thought about Grammy and my grandfather’s relationship and how perfect they were together despite what appeared to be a very formal, polite acquaintance. I remembered my father grabbing my mother by the waist every time she passed by, pulling her in for a kiss on the neck. She swatted him playfully and chided him, but her body language clearly communicated her sheer pleasure with their sustained mutual attraction. But even as their passion lasted, they did not. I came up with a new, more positively phrased mantra for myself. Instead of focusing on passion being fleeting, I would repeat that stability was enduring. Enduring, I liked that word. I wasn’t giving Adam a fair chance. I needed to focus on all of the wonderful qualities that attracted me to Adam in the first place.

  I hung on to the hope that perhaps the first dates with Adam fell flat because of the venues. Death was preferable to Ozzfest, and like most San Diegans, I’d been to the zoo only four million times before.

  Last week, Greta complained that her married women clients gripe about the lack of excitement in their relationships. The thrilling roller coaster of courtship has been replaced by the mundane teacup ride of domesticity. “They always think if they married someone else, their lives would have turned out differently,” she complained recently during one of our beach runs. “I see women married to good men, shitty men, philandering men, boring men, alcoholic men and they all think there’s someone different out there who would have been better for them.” She sighed. “They seem to think if they married their ex-boyfriend or the phantom prince, their entire lives would have turned out like a fairy tale instead of a cookbook,” she said. “What they don’t get is that if they hadn’t chosen their current partner, they would have wound up with the same guy wearing different pants,” she said, laughing.

  Greta could see I wasn’t following. “What I mean is that the people you cast in your life have very little to do with how things turn out. If my patient weren’t married to Steve, the alcoholic womanizer with intimacy issues and a mean temper, she’d be married to Paul, the alcoholic womanizer with intimacy issues and a mean temper. Remember that movie with Gwyneth Paltrow where she gets on a train and you can see her life as it would have turned out if she got on one train instead of the one that came along five minutes later?”

  “Sliding Doors,” I said.

  “Well, this whole idea that one little thing like catching a later train would have changed the outcome of everything is utter nonsense.”

  “But Greta, ultimately she meets up with that same guy in the hospital,” I reminded her. “So missing that train changed the course of her life, but only for a short while. She was destined to meet that guy somehow, some way.”

  “My point exactly,” she said.

  “I thought your point was that the message of the film was nonsense.”

  “Maybe that one’s not a good example, but the idea that life could be dramatically different with such minor changes is a sham,” she said.

  “Is it? Because in one of the books you gave me it said that small changes make a big difference.”

  “Good for you,” she dismissed. “You’ve been reading them. Anyway, I’d like to write an article, a short story or something where a married woman wonders what her life would look like if she had married someone else. Then she gets a visit from an angel who shows her what life would have looked like if she never married her creepy husband. Can you guess how it looks, Mona? Exactly the same, but with a different creepy husband. Her kids have different features, but they’re still giving her the same problems. She has the same couch, the same paintings on the walls, and wears the same smile in her wedding portrait.”

  “It’s an Irrelevant Life?” I suggested as a title.

  “It’s not her life that’s irrelevant. What’s useless is sitting around wondering what might have been, because what might have been is what is. The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence, but grass is basically grass.”

  “I think it needs work,’’ I told Greta.

  Snapping back to present day, I asked myself if perhaps I was suffering the same emotional immaturity that Greta described with her patients. Maybe life was just dull, and the important thing was not finding the right guy, but the right type of guy. And Adam was the right type. I’d invested quite a bit of energy into Adam, and persuaded myself to give our relationship one more month before deciding whether or not we had a future together. But to ensure that decision was even mine to make, I figured I’d better redeem myself for the disastrous zoo incident. If Adam took a moment to review our dates, he might realize they weren’t the best he’d ever had after all. He could realize I’m a potential CPR killer with a shady past. But Mike was on to something with the sports jargon. If only I hadn’t blown it with the Jim Boeheim blunder. The next image-enhancing stunt I’d pull would have less talking and more action—good, clean, nonviolent action devoid of a heavy metal sound track.

  I called Tim to see if there was another actor in his company that could use extra cash. Not surprisingly, there was a guy more than happy to make a cameo appearance on my next date with Adam. His role: the purse-snatcher. Mine: the damsel with no distress. When Toby snatched my purse after Adam and I left the movie theater Saturday night, I’d chase him, and reclaim my purse along with my dignity. Adam would see that I was a woman who really could save the day—or in this case, night.

  That was the plan anyway.

  I remember right before I graduated from high school, Grammy and I were walking down Ocean Boulevard when this scrappy-looking kid with an undersized denim jacket and a mess of black hair whipped by and snatched the purse right out of her hand. Without a m
oment’s hesitation, she bolted after him. Grammy was sixty-eight years old and she didn’t stop for a moment to think about the potential danger of pursuing a criminal, or the fact that in a race between an adolescent and a senior citizen, the geriatric usually loses. She just said, “No one takes my purse,” and darted off after him. Not a particularly bright budding criminal, the kid looked back in disbelief that Grammy was chasing him and within seconds was flat on his back, knocked unconscious by the street lamp he ran into. Like some sort of madwoman, she put her foot on top of his limp body and held her purse over her head. Picture that snapshot joined by the cinematic spinning newspaper headline, reading, “Local Senior Helps Keep Coronado Crime-free.” Within days, the news of Grammy’s heroics spread across the island and everyone was calling her “Gray Lightning.” Although the few news outlets that covered the story did their mandatory “Don’t try this at home, kids” disclaimer, it was pretty clear that everyone thought Grammy was pretty cool.

  Even Grammy did her share of backpedaling after the adrenaline rush returned her to the reality that she’d just risked her life for a few hundred bucks and prescription shades. “Normally I wouldn’t have done something as reckless as that, Mona,” Grammy explained. “But this community means a great deal to me, and when that boy snatched my purse, it was as if he was trying to take away the Coronado I love. If I had been thinking straight, I would have let the boy take the purse, but at the moment, the thought of being robbed lit a fire under me.” Apologies notwithstanding, I could see that Grammy was also pretty pleased with her newfound status.

  My staged purse snatching had the similar theme of someone falling; unfortunately that someone was me. I chased Toby for all of ten yards on the downtown San Diego sidewalk before my ankle snapped from under me and I was left watching Adam quickly gain on Toby. Unarmed and completely unprepared for Adam’s chivalrous pursuit, Toby ran clumsily like the school nerd being chased by the bully. (Casting could have been a bit better on this one.) Soon Toby was flattened onto the sidewalk getting the living daylights beaten out of him. I hobbled toward them watching Adam’s fist rise and plunge into poor Toby like an industrial sewing machine. “Stop!” I shouted. “He could have a gun.” This admonition caused a gasp from passers-by who quickly dove to the sidewalk to dodge Toby’s imaginary bullets.