Becoming Mona Lisa

by Holden Robinson

  Thurman made some noise that may have been words, or may have been old-man farts. Deputy Ed released him from the cuffs, and he toddled away.

  Ed Mulpepper walked us to our door. “You are gonna take that mess down, right?” Ed asked. He swept his flashlight across the field, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “That's somethin', all right. Your brother-in-law's got interesting taste in fashion,” he added, and I felt my husband tense beside me. “Try not to cause any more trouble for Mr. Pippin. Old folks are set in their ways.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “We'll try to behave.”

  Tom and I stood on the steps as Ed got into his cruiser and drove away. “Jeez, Mona,” Tom whispered. “I'm starting to wish you'd killed me last week.”

  It seemed inappropriate to mention the other times I'd thought about killing him, so I didn't.

  Robbie returned with three beers, and the tension between the Siggs brothers was so heavy, I don't think I could have cut through it with a machete.

  “Peace offering?” Robbie said, handing Tom a beer. My husband shrugged. “Look, Tommy, I'm sorry. I don't mean to cause you guys more trouble.”

  “Thurman's an asshole,” I muttered.

  “That's only part of it, Mona,” Tom grumbled. “Rob, I am glad you're here,” my husband said, turning toward his brother, “but, you cannot turn this property into some gay theme park. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” Robbie said, and although he sounded hurt, I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

  Robbie opened the beers, and we sat at the patio set where we'd begun this memorable night.

  “How did it go with Doris?” I asked.

  “Mom knew,” Tom said, and I looked at Robbie.

  “Yup. She knew long before Dad ever found out,” Robbie explained.

  “So, you talked about your dad?” I asked gently.

  “We did,” Robbie said. “Mom's pretty pissed about what Dad did to me, with the money and all, but she told me they'd talked about it before he got sick,” Robbie said, sounding wistful.

  “Dad was ashamed about what he'd done to Robbie, and he wanted to make amends. He died thinking the cancer was his punishment,” Tom said.

  I choked back a sob. “Life doesn't work like that,” I said.

  “Dad thought it did,” Robbie said, and I sighed.

  “So, Doris is okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She said she's pretty well educated on the gays. She's got some PFLAG brochures, and a Melissa Etheridge CD, and she watches Ellen almost religiously. She has a couple of friends who are lesbians, and admits she thinks it would be cool to have a wife,” Robbie said.

  I chuckled. “I could use a wife,” I said.

  “Yeah. She could do the cooking,” Tom said, and I punched him playfully.

  “I have a whole new respect for Doris,” I said.

  “She's super,” Robbie said. “She wants to meet Jason. I told her I was gonna get this place fixed up, and throw a shindig. I'll invite Jason, and we'll all get together here.”

  “That sounds great,” I said, wondering if any of us would live long enough to see the house completed.

  “Robbie, you need to take care of that field tomorrow. The dresses and accessories – they gotta go,” Tom reminded his brother. “Pippin is nuts. Who knows what he'll do next.”

  “I hear ya. I'll take it all down tomorrow. Dress 'em up right,” Robbie said.

  “Marilyn bought it, just so you know,” I announced.

  “What the hell happened to Marilyn?” Robbie asked, looking shaken.

  “Thurman shot her head off with a potato,” I told him.

  “She was my favorite. Son of a bitch,” Robbie whined.

  Sonovabitch.

  That about summed up the entire night.

  Twenty

  Thursday – One Week Later

  There are certain things that draw one person to another.

  Never forget what they are, and always remember to celebrate them.

  There is an agonizing slowness to days that pass without progress. A holding pattern such as this doesn't often bother a committed procrastinator, but this one drove me nuts. I was tired of living surrounded by crows. With Tom and I passing like “ships in the night,” for days, due to scheduling, and Robbie absent, the constant stillness was penetrated by a single sound.

  The screeching of hundreds of crows!

  Thankfully, Tom and I remedied our “ships passing” bullshit, one full week after Marilyn was decapitated by a potato.

  “Hi,” he said, as we found ourselves in the kitchen at the same time on Thursday morning.

  “Hi.”

  “Tom Siggs,” he said, extending his hand.

  This silliness would have sparked my homicidal tendencies some weeks back, but on this particular day, I found it endearing.

  “Mona,” I said, taking the coffee he offered, and shaking his hand.

  “Nice ass,” he remarked, with a wink.

  “You need to get some new material,” I suggested.

  “What I got is paint. You ready?” he asked.

  “As I'll ever be,” I quipped, with less enthusiasm than someone facing a root canal.

  I followed my husband into the living room, which had been in a half-done holding pattern for ten days. Robbie had painted the walls, and Tom and I had scraped off the carpet pad, a task which – in an of itself – required a week-long rest. The only remaining jobs were painting the new trim Robbie had installed, and carpet installation. We didn't know jack about carpet, and my experience was limited to ruining the last one. What we could do was paint. At least I thought we could, and we were prepared to test our abilities.

  “This plywood floor looks like hell,” Tom said.

  “The cats are using it for a scratching pad,” I reminded him.

  “Good thing Lowe's is coming today. What time did they say?”

  '“Sometime between two o'clock and the apocalypse.”

  “I love you,” Tom said, and I smiled at him.

  “Me, too. But that does not mean you're getting out of helping me.”

  “I know,” he said. “Besides, you need me. I can call 911 if you pull a Mona.”

  “'Pull a Mona?' That's nice, Tom.”

  “I do what I can.”

  Tom began hauling the contents of the living room to the porch, as I ascended the stepladder.

  “Oh, crap!” I blurted.

  “Already, Mona?” Tom asked, pulling out his cell phone.

  “I don't need 911. I need my paint bowl.”

  “You're two feet from it.”

  “It was a miracle I got up the stepladder the first time,” I said.

  “Good point.” Tom handed me a disposable plastic bowl filled with paint, then began wrestling with the old Barcalounger. He'd only moved it a foot, when the damn thing practically disintegrated.

  “Holy shit,” Tom said, staring at the pile of chair.

  “What happened?”

  “It broke.”

  “God, I guess,” I said, descending the ladder. “Aunt Ida died in that chair.”

  Tom put him arm around me and I cried into his shoulder. “Can I tell you something?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “It totally freaks me out that we have this chair. Can I please throw it out?”

  “Okay,” I whimpered.

  We dragged the chair outside, and I said a little prayer while Tom hoisted it, piece by piece, into the dumpster.

  “You okay?” he asked, once we were back in the living room. I returned to my perch on the ladder, and he finished taping off the woodwork.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Brush in hand, I prepared to conquer the world, and two hours and three-hundred two-ply paper towels later, the painting was complete.

  “Ta da!” I raved from the center of the room.

  “Nice,” Tom said. “Did you get any paint on the trim?”

  I wasn't sure if there was more paint on me, or on the woodwork,
but it didn't matter. We'd completed the project together without killing each other, and that said a lot for two knuckleheads who'd barely spoken for five years.

  “I'm gonna head to Mom's,” Tom said, after we'd cleaned up the considerable mess.

  “When will you be back?”

  “That's hard to say. Shopping with an aging parent should be considered an Olympic event. Last time it took her ten minutes to pick out a box of Kleenex.”

  “In that case, I'll see ya next month,” I said, and Tom disappeared with a wave.

  Tom had threaded the cable through the window, and set up the TV on the porch, so I hunkered down to wait for Lowe's and catch up on a couple of hours of midday television. Soap Operas bored the hell out of me, so I settled for an old Lifetime movie. It left me feeling a lot better about living in The House of Hoarding. It sure beat life in a plastic bubble.

  John Travolta had just burst out of his bubble when a Lowe's truck flew by the house, kicking up dust and gravel as it passed.

  “Wait,” I whispered. Not surprisingly, this failed to get their attention. I stood up, leaned my butt cheek on the railing, and directed my gaze at the road. Ten minutes later, the truck came down the hill, and once again, passed the house. Had they delivered my beautiful Berber rug to another customer? I didn't think so, but I wasn't taking chances.

  I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and returned to the porch. I wasn't sure who to call. I couldn't call 911, since I was pretty sure “Lowe's can't find my house,” did not qualify as a life-threatening emergency, unless, of course, you were Mona Siggs, and didn't want to watch Thursday night prime time television on the porch.

  Before I could call anyone, the Lowe's truck returned, To my utter amazement, it flew by again and headed up the hill.

  “What in the name of hell?” I said out loud. I grabbed a red coat from the hooks inside the door, threw it on, and stomped toward the road. They were not passing by again.

  Not on my watch!

  About eight minutes later, I saw the truck again, and I stood my ground, wrapped in red, in the middle of the road. With nary a moment to spare, the truck stopped in front of me.

  “I'm Mona Siggs. I'm expecting a carpet delivery,” I said, once I'd walked to the driver's side window.

  “I almost killed you, ma'am,” the driver said.

  “Well, you didn't. Can I get my carpet please?”

  “Instructions say 2400 Pleasant Hill,” the driver said.

  “Instructions are wrong. It's 1400,” I explained. “I don't think there is a 2400.”

  “Explains why I couldn't find it,” the driver complained. “I'm going to have to verify.”

  “Terrific,” I retorted. “Anything I can do to help with this verification process?” I offered.

  “Gotta call it in,” he said, reaching for what I assumed was a phone.

  A Dodge Ram flew by us, and I ducked into my shoulders as road crap rained down on me. The driver peered into the side mirror and looked concerned.

  “Ma'am, do you think you could step out of the way?” the driver asked, and I stood my ground. He wasn't getting away, not if I had anything to say about it.

  “I'm fine right here,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Ma'am, please. I think I ought to get out of the road. I'd like to pull the truck into your driveway, and I'd prefer to do it without running over you.”

  “All right, but if you take off with my carpet, I'm gonna make you wish you were never born.”

  The driver laughed.

  About two minutes later, the truck was safely parked in the driveway, and the driver emerged. Evidently, I'd been cleared, and was getting my carpet after all!

  “I'm terribly sorry about that, Mrs. Siggs,” the driver said, as he strolled up the sidewalk. “Our ability to find our customers is only as good as the information typed into the computer at the point of sale.”

  The driver seemed pretty cool, so I smiled at him. He was bringing me a new rug, and he'd definitely undergone an attitude adjustment. “I'm Mike Nichols,” the driver said, extending his hand. I shook it, as a short guy emerged from the back of the truck.

  I found this odd. “Who's that?”

  “That's Phil,” Mike said.

  “He rides in the back?” I asked.

  “When he eats bean burritos for lunch, he does,” Mike explained.

  I spent the next hour observing through the porch window as the carpet layers completed the transformation of my new living room, and by four o'clock, they were gone.

  I was rolling around on the living room floor with two kittens when Tom got home. The Berber carpet was wonderful, and in all the years I'd lived in my house, this was the first time I'd voluntarily come in contact with the floor covering. Tom kicked off his shoes by the door, pulled off his socks, and began dancing.

  “What's in the bags?” I asked, noticing several large shopping bags in the hallway, which was also covered with new carpeting.

  “Mom always wanted a daughter. She bought a ton of stuff for Robbie,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. There's a bunch of hair care products, and some lingerie, and a gown she once wore to a Daughters of Charity fundraiser in the big bag.

  “Jeez, she's taking this well.”

  “She is.”

  “And you, Tom?” I asked, as my husband sat beside me on the floor. “How are you doing with it?”

  “It's a little screwed up for me still, Mona. I mean, come on, I just took my mother to Victoria's Secret to buy stuff for my little brother. You have to admit, that's a tad bit bizarre.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “We bought you something, too,” he whispered.

  “What did you get me?”

  “A teddy.”

  “I love teddy bears,” I said, feeling like a kid.

  “It's not that kind of teddy,” Tom whispered into my hair, and a jolt of electricity sizzled in my neck and grounded out in the vicinity of my fanny.

  “Can I see it?” I asked, feeling wanton.

  “Only if you model it for me later, and then let me take it off.” Tom stood up and crossed the room to where he'd left his purchases. The little pink bag looked dwarfed in his hands.

  “Okay,” I whispered, as he walked toward me. I had barely seen my husband in a week, and I felt the heat of his body as he stood before me, although we were not yet touching.

  “I've missed you,” he said, and I sighed.

  I'd missed him, too. I still couldn't believe how much he annoyed me at times, but the scale of marital justice was tipping. I was liking him a lot more often, and hating him a lot less, and – and this was the Holy Grail – I hardly ever thought about killing him.

  “I have to ask you something,” Tom said into my hair.

  “Okay.”

  “Will you marry me?” he asked, and I looked into his face.

  “We're already married,” I whispered.

  “I'd like to marry you again. Would you marry me again, Mona?” For a moment, it seemed silly, then amazingly appropriate. I wanted to marry this man again. I wanted to marry him more now than I'd wanted to the first time.

  “Yes, Tom. I'd like to marry you again.”

  I let him fold me into his arms, and pull me against him, and we stood kissing for a long time, feeling the contours of our bodies molded together, and the soft Berber beneath our bare feet.

  Tom pulled back and looked at me. “I'm going to put up the blinds and bring the stuff back in from the porch.”

  “How are you going to put up blinds?”

  My husband was a good man, but we both knew he couldn't fix or build anything, and I mean anything. If something broke, we called somebody. If something required assembly, we didn't buy it. We owned no tools, save a few rusted discards in the garage, and although I knew there was a screwdriver in the house somewhere, if CSI ever showed up and had to dust it for prints, I was pretty sure they wouldn't find Tom's on it.
>
  “'No tools required', the box said.”

  “You read the box?”

  “I did. Are you proud of me?” he asked, and I kissed his cheek. He was making an effort, and obviously, whoever made the blinds, was making an effort to cater to guys like my Tom, who didn't own tools, but could read.

  “Why don't you go take a bath, and put on something sexy. I made reservations at Danny's. I know you love it, and we haven't been there in years. We are having that romantic evening, and we're doing it tonight,” he said, and I kissed him again.

  I took a bath, and as I laid in the warm water, I kept wondering if Tom might join me. He didn't, and forty-five minutes later I emerged from the bathroom.

  “Look at you,” Tom said, as I stepped into the living room. I had blown the dust off a sexy black dress, and was wearing the teddy underneath. I held Tom's gaze for a long moment, then let my eyes drift to his surroundings. I inhaled sharply, and he smiled.

  “What happened?” I whispered. The furniture looked new, and there were matching throws, pillows, and candles lit on every surface. “God, Tom. This is beautiful.” I was in awe, and stood for a moment staring at what was once the second ugliest room in our house.

  “Robbie got slip covers and everything to match. I didn't want you to see it until it was done. I wanted it to be beautiful. For you.”

  Tom's voice was so soft, and there was so much love in his eyes, for a moment I couldn't move. We were doing more than rebuilding a home. We were rebuilding us, rekindling the most ideal love two people could ever hope to find.

  He handed me a glass of wine and had poured a Ginger Ale for himself. “One glass, and no throwing up on the carpet,” he ordered, as he touched his glass to mine. “I'm gonna take a shower, and I'll be out before you notice I'm gone.”

  He was out in ten minutes, as promised. He looked incredibly handsome, and was wearing some things I'd never seen. “Mom bought this for me,” he said. The last thing she'd bought my husband was the ridiculous Halloween tie. Evidently her taste was improving. “The jeans were a hundred bucks. Can you believe that?”

  “Turn around, please,” I said, and he did. “Worth every penny.”

  A few minutes later, we were on our way. Tom backed out through a veritable crow-filled snow globe, and suddenly stopped the Jeep.