Reinventing Mona

by Jennifer Coburn

  I walked to the exercise room where my teacher, Tio, was jabbing at bags as he waited for me. “Hey, girl.” He smiled. “Ready to kick some ass?”

  “Born ready,” I lied. Or maybe I was born ready, but that readiness took a detour, only now rounding the corner back to me.

  As I punched and ducked at the bag, Tio asked me if I was ready to start fighting real people instead of just punching the bag. “You’ve been getting pretty tough here, Mona. Don’t you think you should find out what you’re really made of? Unarmed combat is the ultimate test, girl.”

  Sure, I could beat the crap out of a defenseless sack of sand, but another person—a person with her own set of fists and ability to duck—was another story. Continuing my jabs, I told Tio I’d had enough of getting my ass kicked to last a lifetime. “Why you think you’d be the one getting your ass kicked?” he asked. “Maybe it’ll be you knocking some teeth loose.” The thought of knocking someone’s teeth loose held no appeal. I did get a bit puffed at the thought that Tio might put his money on me in a fight, though. “It could happen. You’re a natural fighter, girl.” I laughed in the absence of anything to say. I punched a little harder, determined to maintain my fighter image with Tio. “Hey, you know who was asking about you?” he said, smiling.

  Mike?!

  “Oh, who?” I tried to sound casual, but silently, motionlessly shaking his collar shouting, “Who, who?! Tell me now!” It could only have been Mike because I didn’t know anyone else here but the people at the front desk who scan my membership card.

  “That Dog guy,” Tio said.

  A choir of angels sang Hallelujah. Really they did. It’s just no one but me heard them.

  Casual, casual. Everything you say will get back to Mike.

  “Oh, how’s he doing?”

  Excellent. Inhale, exhale.

  “He’s lookin’ fit. Asked if you were still boxing here. I told him you were my lunchtime gig every Monday and Thursday.”

  “Lunchtime gig?!” I shouted. “My lesson is at two o’clock, Tio! That’s not lunchtime!”

  “Settle, girl. It’s when I eat lunch. What’s your problem?”

  “No problem.” I took it down a notch after catching my reflection, looking like something out of a Paxil commercial. “It’s just that you shouldn’t wait till so late to eat lunch. You could get, um, hungry.”

  Tio scrunched his face, looking at me like the crazy white chick I was. He pointed at the punching bag, urging me to continue.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Who?” Tio asked. Seriously, there must be a brain leak from all penises.

  “Mike. Dog. Did he say anything else about me?”

  “He said he doesn’t see much of you anymore and was wondering how you were doing.” So he asked my boxing teacher? If Mike was wondering how I was doing, why didn’t he pick up the phone and ask me? Why didn’t he send an e-mail? Why didn’t he ask his sister, who lived under my roof? What is wrong with this imbecile of a man? And more important, what was wrong with me for caring?!

  “Whew, you really kickin’ ass now, girl,” Tio said as I continued punching. “Watch your face. Protect yourself,” he commanded. “You’re hitting good, but you keep leaving yourself wide open. Put your hands up, girl. Hands up.”

  Driving home, I dialed Mike’s number, but hung up after the third ring. What was I going to say to him anyway? I dialed Adam’s office and the honker put me through to him right away.

  “Hello there, Mona,” Adam said with a formal friendliness we hadn’t gotten past. And I’m not just talking about our conversations either. We had been dating ten weeks with absolutely no sign of advancing our relationship to a sexual one. I can’t say I was overwhelmingly drawn to him physically, but it was so damned insulting to be respectfully pecked on the cheek after each of our dates. I invited him in for coffee on Saturday night. He said he never drank caffeine after seven. I told him I had decaf, but he said he had an early meeting with Jesus. Yes, Adam Ziegler was born Jewish but was baptized three years ago after he was born again.

  Of course, I found out about his newfound relationship with the Lord at the worst possible time. On Saturday night, I idiotically followed one of Mike’s last ridiculous pieces of advice and tried to sexually titillate Adam by giving him the impression that I once had a relationship with a woman. Melanie was actually a Venus Swimwear model trying to break into acting, and was hired to play Violet, the Bedford Falls flirt who would’ve become a bar brawling tart if George Bailey had never been born.

  Far more subtle than toxic Tim, Melanie slinked into the restaurant where Adam and I were having dinner, and illuminated our table with her astounding sex appeal. She should’ve had film noir damsel entrance music. Melanie alluded to our relationship, and for a moment, I wished someone this good-looking—male or female—was ever interested in me.

  “She broke my heart, you know?” Melanie told Adam. “She’s ruined me for all other women.” All male heads turned toward our table with such speed, I actually heard a swish. “I’ll let you enjoy your dinner, Mona, but I want you to know my life hasn’t been the same without you.”

  In her clingy red silk dress, Melanie wished me well with a luscious pout and warned Adam he’d better take good care of me. As she strutted away, her body was a visual smorgasbord—her flowing platinum hair, her muscular tan back, her perfect scoops of ass cheeks, larger models of her perfectly scooped breasts. Everyone within a six-table radius was sexually charged. Men were ordering oysters. Women were lustily looking at their companions, changing their dinner orders to T-bone steak. The front window of the restaurant fogged up. If my chair had an armrest, I would’ve humped it. Everyone seemed infused with hormones. Everyone, that is, except Adam, who said that I should be deeply ashamed of my past.

  “Mona, I’ve grown very attached to you, but clearly the person you are today is not who you were years ago,” he said, like Ward Cleaver reprimanding Beaver. “Can you assure me that the lesbians and drug addicts are youthful indiscretions?” I nodded my head, wondering who, other than Adam Ziegler and Congressman Henry Hyde, used the term “youthful indiscretion.”

  “Okeydokey. I can live with that. After all, if I were perfect, I would’ve never come to know Jesus. Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I believe.”

  At first I laughed, thinking he must be kidding. I realized he wasn’t joking about four minutes into his excruciatingly detailed account of how Jesus paid him a personal visit and served as his spiritual obstetrician, delivering him to the world of Christianity.

  “Hello, Adam.” I spoke loudly into my car phone. “I just got out of boxing class and wanted to say hello, and see how you’re doing.”

  “Doing well, but I’m going to have to get back to you in a few, okay? Is this an emergency? Can it wait?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.” I hung up wondering why I was still even in this relationship. The few times I started to break up with him, I panicked at the thought that he was my last chance for a stable, happy married life. As long as he was still interested in me, I was immobilized by the fear that Adam was as good as it got, and that if I gave him up now, I’d only regret it.

  As I turned onto Alameda Avenue, I saw the familiar sight of navy guys waving certain cars in to the base. They scanned my car, then moved on to the next.

  I returned to what I thought was an empty home, but saw that Vicki had left fabric swatches and paint samples sitting beside printouts from movie Web sites. In Vicki’s handwriting, notes about Tara blocked entire pages with notes along the margins and asterisks on every page. At the bottom of each page, Vicki listed upcoming art auctions, estate sales, and art dealers.

  She breezed by in a pair of red go-go boots and a knapsack, dashing madly out the door, saying she was late for work. “If I’m late one more time, I’m seriously fired,” said my blur of a roommate.

  “Who’s at a strip joint at quarter to four on a Monday?” I asked her exi
ting body.

  “Guys with dicks.” The door slammed.

  The answering machine taunted me with no messages, so I played the old ones to fill the silence. I sat at the piano, and sounded out a few notes. I stared at the silent phone. Fine, don’t call. I don’t give a rat’s ass.

  “Dog was asking about you.” I heard Tio’s voice

  “I told him you were my lunchtime gig.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed without pausing to remember the number.

  “Talk to me,” Mike said casually. How could he be so happy-go-lucky when I missed him so desperately? I hung up the phone, which rang just seconds after I placed the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Mona?” he said. “Why’d you hang up on me?”

  Fucking caller ID!

  “Oh, hey Dog. Sorry ‘bout that. There was someone at the door so I had to hang up.”

  “Who was it?” Mike asked. I wasn’t sure if he was just making conversation or trying to catch me in a lie.

  “The postman,” I said.

  “The postman rings the doorbell?”

  “Sometimes twice,” I said. By the lack of acknowledgment, I could tell he didn’t get the reference. Dumb shit.

  “So what’d’ya call for?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just at the gym today and Tio said you were asking about me so I figured I’d give you a buzz and catch up. It’s been awhile. What’s going on with you?”

  He hesitated, embarrassed that Tio had turned him in, I suppose. “Not too much. You know, same shit, different day.”

  Thank you, Cliché Man.

  “So how’s it going with your boy?” Mike asked. “What’s his name, Aaron?”

  Just hearing the sound of Mike’s voice made me want to cry. Why hadn’t he called me? Why didn’t he care that we were no longer friends? I’ll bet if I really was Claudia Schiffer he would’ve been back at my doorstep the next day—bullshit Dog Rules be damned.

  “Adam. His name is Adam,” I said through clenched teeth. “Mike, can you give me an honest answer to a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you ever really been in love with a woman?” I asked. “Never mind, never mind. We don’t have to talk about this kind of stuff now that I’m not paying you. It’s just that I’m not really sure it’s Adam I’m in love with, or the idea of Adam. Or someone like Adam. Or someone like who I thought Adam was. By the way, he’s a born-again Christian and was totally wigged out by the whole hot-lesbian-in-my past thing.”

  Mike laughed and I saw him sitting back into the blue chair I imagined he had. “A born-again Christian who goes to Ozzfest?”

  “I know, bizarre.” I laughed. “It’s just that every time I try to break up with him, I get this anxiety like he’s my last chance. Is that crazy?”

  Tell me it is crazy and that you are my last chance. Tell me that the only time you’ve ever really known love was with me.

  “Mona, I thought the whole thing was whacked from the start. He’s not your last chance and even if he was, you’d have to spend your whole life married to a freak.”

  “Just because he’s religious doesn’t mean he’s a freak,” I defended my dud beau.

  “Fuck that, I mean that he’s not into the whole girl-on-girl thing. That should’ve been a lock.”

  “Be serious with me, Mike. How do I tell if I’m in love with someone?” I asked.

  “You’re definitely not in love with this guy, Mona Lisa.”

  “Why not?”

  “You have too many questions. You’re either in love or you’re not and if you’re second-guessing it, you’re not.”

  “But you’re a guy. You’re less complicated than women.”

  “And thank God for that, really.” He laughed. “Mona, you’ve been trying to force his square peg into your round hole for nearly three months now.”

  “Don’t be a pig!”

  “You and Adam getting married and living the Hollywood ending just ain’t in the cards. I don’t think you even like the guy, much less love him. If he disappeared tomorrow, you’d never give him a second thought.”

  “Do you ever miss your ex-wife?” I asked, really wondering if he’d missed me over the past weeks.

  He sighed audibly. “Not really. Not much, I guess. I used to, but what’re you gonna do, she made her decision and moved on. You know, she called me about a year ago and told me she and Mr. Sensitive broke up and asked if we could give it another shot.”

  “Wow. What’d you say?”

  “We’re not together, are we?”

  “You might’ve given it a shot then split up again.”

  “Nah, we didn’t give it another shot. Once a woman cheats on you, that’s it. She made her choice, now she got what she deserves.”

  “Not everything’s so black and white, Mike.”

  “Sometimes it is, Mona Lisa.”

  I found Mike’s unforgiving attitude toward his ex-wife so thoroughly depressing, I didn’t even have the energy to lift Greta’s latest reading selection for me—Canned Chicken Soup for the Soul: Why Women Accept Prepackaged Notions of Femininity. Adam was definitely not the man for me, but Mike terrified me. An internal voice—that sounded an awful lot like Greta’s—asked why I was on such a frenzied hunt for a man anyway. Would it be such a tragedy if I ended up alone? Alone?! The word was like being stabbed with an icicle. Alone. The Ahhhh sound was like a ghost taunting; loooooow felt like the hollowed bottom of a dungeon; the nuh finish was like a door slamming shut, followed by silence. Alone. I was terrified of being alone, though it’s precisely how I’d felt for my entire adult life.

  Chapter 34

  The high school gymnasium was decorated with black, gray, and white balloons and colorless streamers hanging from the ceiling. A donkey piñata swung as the jocks struck it violently with their bats. A band wearing velveteen tuxedos awkwardly played Billy Idol and Adam Ant while a hyper-productive bubble machine filled the gym with thousands of soapy little balls. Todd came back from Yale to take me to the prom and told me he would lasso the biggest bubble for me. “Silly, boy,” I teased. “You’ll pop the bubbles that way. Besides, I prefer you without a cowboy lasso, my little Indian boy.”

  Vicki slapped my hand with a whip of fabric swatches. “No touching,” she snapped.

  “Hit her back,” urged Tio.

  “Come on, Mona, we’ll be late,” urged fifteen-year-old Jessica, tugging at the red silk dress I borrowed from Melanie, the actor who played my imaginary lesbian lover. “We’re going to change the world. We need to leave now. Come on, we’ll be late.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked Jessica.

  “To the rally. Come on, Mona, I know you’re not really sick. You never want to do anything with me anymore now that you’re going out with Todd. At least come to the rally. We can make a difference. You know what they say, one person can change the world. Are you listening to me? Are you awake? Are you asleep?” Then Vicki asked me the same thing. “Mona, do you want to sleep down here or go up to your room?”

  My eyes opened to the sight of Vicki’s black leather jacket bent over me, her arm gently nudging my body. “Are you okay?” Vicki asked when she saw the look of panic on my face. “Nightmare?”

  “Freaky dream, that’s all,” I assured her. I washed my face in the Psycho bathroom, which was a bit unsettling in the middle of the night, I must confess. I heard nothing but running water from the faucet and wondered if I did ditch Jessica for Todd. Should I have gone to the rally that day? Might Francesca or I have seen the oncoming truck a second before my father did, and shouted a warning that would have changed the outcome? Whatever happened to Francesca anyway?

  I drifted to sleep that night, knowing there was only one of those questions I could answer. Whatever happened to Francesca Greenwood? One day we were consoling each other in the kitchen. A few days later, I was living in Coronado. I don’t even remember saying good-bye to her.

  Francesca came back to me in my sleep and asked if she could
braid my hair again. I sat on my floor as she sat at the edge of my bed combing my hair with her fingers. “This was a long trip for me, Mona. You should have come to see me before making an old woman travel cross the Western states,” she scolded lovingly. “I miss you, dear. I miss hearing you and your mother singing together. I miss them all so much.”

  On that, I snapped awake. Though I knew it was absurd, I scanned the bedroom for Francesca and felt my loose hair. I drifted back to sleep and dreamt I was part of the human chain saving George Bailey’s little brother, Harry, when he fell into the ice pond.

  * * *

  My morning rooster was Greta knocking on the door for our run. I ran downstairs in my pajamas with my black sleep mask pushed up to my forehead. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been knocking?”

  “Sorry, sorry.” I was still fixed on Francesca. She was probably still alive and living in Montana. “Let’s get running. Do you want me to make some vegetable juice for you when we’re done?” My peace offering with Greta was always healthy food or drink. With Vicki, it was just the opposite.

  Most of the time I didn’t even notice the smell of Coronado because I was on the island every day, but on our run I was acutely aware of the clean ocean scent. It was such a well-scrubbed community, I can’t remember the last time I saw a piece of garbage on the ground or a crushed beer can tossed on the sand. When people close their eyes and imagine paradise, Coronado is what they see. I didn’t always think so, though. When Grammy’s car crossed the bridge for the first time, I found the place grotesquely surreal. First of all, the entire county of San Diego seemed insanely bright. There were no clouds or even groves of trees to filter the sun. Every home gleamed with care. Lawns looked like Astroturf. The few people walking on the streets looked so well-rested and friendly. It was like driving onto the set of a laundry detergent commercial. I expected to see women in lemon yellow sundresses humming as they hung cool, clean clothes on the line. Then I realized that their maids were inside ironing men’s shirts fresh from the dryer.