Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

  “Excuse me?” Charlie says. She looks at Alexander, probably hoping he’ll respond. But he just looks insulted and searches for words he apparently can’t find.

  “Oh no, I don’t mean anything by it. I was just thinking out loud, because that’s just a medical fact, you can’t be entirely sure, but of course I’m hoping it will all go really, really well for you. That goes without saying, obviously.” There’s a silence. Thoughts float around the room. “It’s your life at the end of the day. I mean—everyone makes choices, and as a mother, the only thing you can do is back them, ultimately.”

  Alexander goes and stands next to Marie’s armchair and lays a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Charlie looks baffled.

  “I’m sure it will be a beautiful baby,” Marie says, smiling as she puts her cigarette back in her mouth.

  Dad looks at me, his head at a slight angle. I know it means I have to think of something reassuring to say. “I think it’s going to be a little girl who loves to go shopping with her grandma.”

  “I’d rather drop dead than be called Grandma, it makes me sound about ninety-three and ready for adult diapers.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Alexander says.

  “I’m sure we will, kid.”

  I’ve been falling out of a window my whole life, that’s what it feels like. Do other people have that too?

  5

  It’s a day without mystery. The light is sharp edged, the sky translucent. I sit on the sofa, eating a roll with crab mayo. I never sit down at the table for a meal because the emptiness of the seat opposite mine would suddenly become so real. I think, Don’t spill on the sofa, you’ll never get the grease marks out. In the meantime, I take a big bite, and a lump of crab with grated carrot and mayonnaise falls onto my russet-colored skirt. Then the phone rings. I hastily scoop up the spill using both my hands, hurry to the kitchen, dump it in the sink, wipe my hands on my newly washed dish towel, and then run back to pick up my phone. It isn’t until I’m holding the receiver to my ear that I realize I’m going to have to say something. I try to push the half-chewed-up mouthful into my right cheek.

  “Mona here.”

  “Do you always answer the phone with your mouth full?”

  “Only when it’s you.” It’s Louis. Hadn’t been expecting him. I hold the part of the phone you’re supposed to talk into in the air so that my turbo chewing isn’t audible. I swallow much too much at once—that’s noisy too. It’s lucky that shame doesn’t make any sound, I think.

  “I want to have breakfast with you, the day after tomorrow, in that café on the square, just near the theater, you know the one. Nine thirty. See what you’re capable of on an empty stomach.”

  “Oh lovely, his lordship is planning a test.”

  “His lordship has a busy schedule and I don’t want to wait too long to see you, that’s the long and short of it.”

  “How can I resist such charm?” I feel myself smiling, but stop immediately, as though he can see.

  “So we’ll see each other there? And you’ll wear your sexiest outfit, OK?” I can hear the smirk in his tone.

  “At the very least,” I reply.

  Then he hangs up. I raise my arms in the air, like a child who has scored a goal. I throw the half-eaten crab roll in the trash. Food is a solution for people who have nothing to celebrate.

  I’ve put on a pair of black pants and a thin dark-blue roll-neck sweater. Louis won’t know that Yamamoto uses this color combination, but I suspect he’ll appreciate the joke of wearing clothes that provide coverage from head to toe, after the promise of sexiness.

  I don’t want to be first, so I arrive ten minutes late. No Louis to be seen. I pick a table by the window. I look outside, don’t see him. Three minutes pass, and then four, and then another three. He won’t come, I think. Why would a man like that be interested in me? Perhaps he thinks that, as a dramaturge, I determine which writers will be given commissions in the future, while of course those things are up to Marcus. Stop thinking like that, I tell myself. Don’t be nervous, otherwise you’ll start sweating, and when you sweat, you stink. I’m sure I stink, I think. Maybe I can pop to the bathroom to give myself a smell check. That woman with the beautiful full lips and glowing skin is giving me funny looks, maybe there’s some encrusted snot on my nose or something. I touch it, seems all right. I can smell myself even without the sniff test, I think. What a disaster. Why on earth didn’t I slip a bottle of perfume into my bag? Maybe there’s still some in there from last time. I lift my enormous handbag onto my lap and rummage around in it. Just when I’ve got a used tissue in one hand and a piece of paper wrapped around old gum and a topless lipstick in the other, I hear Louis say, “Sexier than I ever could have imagined.”

  The waitress comes to our table and Louis orders the champagne breakfast for two without even asking me. He smiles. There’s no pretending otherwise, he’s not a good-looking man. Skinny legs, bit of a paunch, pasty skin, receding hairline, mousy hair, old-fashioned glasses, and the third tooth on the left is noticeably crooked, a dissident in a cream-colored row. He’s got quite a few sun spots, not just on his arms but also on his face. But I’m not that interested in a man’s appearance. When girlfriends coo about an ass strutting past, I haven’t even noticed, and while they’re six-pack spotting on the beach, I’m looking at women with better legs and breasts than me. That’s how it’s always been. And then there’s the way Louis speaks, just as beautifully as he writes, and the way we talk as though we’ve never done anything else. We discuss Max Frisch, Richard Powers, and Peter Handke—his heroes—and his dislike of Harry Mulisch. When I tell him Mulisch came out with that irresistible retort, spoken to the critic who interviewed him after giving his book a bad review—“But I’m sure you’d have rather written my shitty book than your shitty article in the paper”—Louis admits that this was a rare, spirited moment that proved the writer’s intelligence. In general, he embraces critics as long as they are as clever as he is, he tells me, laughing. We talk about Chekhov and the Soviet Union, which is on the brink of collapse, about the girl over there’s earrings, whether we believe in God, the perfect cheese soufflé. We eat croissants and a crusty baguette with cheese and fig confit and I have to blush when he comments that I’m probably someone with a lot of love to give, that he suspected that already, back then, on that first night. I don’t think he’s accidentally pressing his knee against mine, it’s happened twice now, but then I doubt myself a moment later.

  He kisses me goodbye, just next to my lips. He smells of fabric softener and cheese. As he leaves, I tell myself: If he looks back, it’s a good sign. He doesn’t look back.

  6

  It’s the first day of onstage rehearsals. Until now, we’ve only sat around the table and read and discussed the script, but Marcus wants to see a few scenes. Joris and Quinten are first up—they’ve written a Chekhovian-style dialogue. A daring choice, if you ask me. I sit down next to Sasha on the floor, crack my fingers, and straighten my back. I’m curious.

  “All right folks, quiet down now.” Marcus raps on the table. “Let’s get started.”

  “Great,” Joris says, at which point both he and Quinten drop their pants. They stand there staring at us with a stupid expression. I try to keep looking at their faces but it’s not easy, because around three feet from me, at eye level, two dicks are dangling against two hairy scrota and that’s not something I get to see every day. As I try to think of something dramaturgically clever to say about what they might have meant by this, Sasha bursts out laughing. The actors’ faces remain impassive for a moment, but then they join in. There’s collective laughter as they pull their pants back up.

  “Right, now let’s be serious,” Quinten says, clearing his throat theatrically. Marcus only grins. I wonder what I’ll say if someone like the baker asks me how my day was, which makes me chuckle inside.

  The actors act, and it’s not really finished yet, their scene, but it
is funny and I see something in it. Marcus asks me to comment explicitly on what I’ve seen. My last director only wanted to hear my ideas once others weren’t around. Marcus’s request makes me nervous and happy at the same time. As passionately as I can, I praise what I liked and give warm feedback on what could be improved. Joris says my feedback is useful and Marcus mutters something that seems like approval, at least from afar. I relax again.

  After this, Sasha does a piece with Joris and Jolene does one with Dave. Marcus is his flamboyant self, he hurtles back and forth, shouts while they’re acting, preaches fire and brimstone and gives gentle guidance at other moments. I watch the scenes get better and better; I see players finding themselves. Careers don’t get better than this, I think. Look at me now. I can even pay my rent.

  When we stop rehearsing, Marcus says we should be proud of ourselves, and then he shouts out enthusiastically, “Pub?” Aside from Joris, everyone comes along. On the way, Marcus walks next to me to discuss a few things and I act as though this is the most normal thing in the world. Life is good today.

  7

  “What do you think of the business with Alexander?”

  We’re in the car. Marie is at the wheel, I’m next to her, and Anne-Sophie is in the back. Marie turns off the music and looks at me instead of at the road. The rain blows despondently against the windshield, the wipers squeak each time they swing back and forth. She turns on her headlights. It’s three in the afternoon but she’d rather not take any risks.

  “Well, he’s quite young, of course, but—”

  “Quite young? Twenty-one. Mona, dear, he’s just a pup. And he’s already in the stranglehold of an older woman.”

  I can’t help laughing at her choice of words. Anne-Sophie joins in.

  “Oh, you two find it funny, do you?”

  “No,” Anne-Sophie says immediately.

  “I realize you and Dad are concerned, but they seem happy together, don’t you think?”

  “I agree,” Anne-Sophie says, either because she really thinks this or because she thinks she has to back me up.

  “Being head over heels is different from starting a family, you know.”

  “Yes, maybe that’s true,” I say.

  “And how long’s it going to last between the two of them? We’re talking about Alexander, aren’t we? I can’t even count all the girlfriends he’s already had in his short life.”

  “Since Magalie, I think about—” Anne-Sophie counts on her fingers.

  “I don’t want to know, but he’s consistent about one thing: he gets tired of them all.”

  “He was sad for a long time when Nora dumped him, and they were together for several months.” My sister adds a touch of drama to her voice.

  “Dumped! What a word, Anne-Sophie,” Marie says, looking back as she drives.

  “Those ex-girlfriends weren’t that great, were they? Not even Nora. Did you like her?” I turn to my sister.

  “Hmm,” she says.

  “They had to be pretty enough to talk their way into his bed, that was all.”

  “Talk, talk,” Marie mutters.

  “Charlie’s finally someone with a real personality, a smart woman, one who—”

  “Already bosses him around and has made him give up his chance at a good future and a wonderful career. And why, do you think?” I know she’s not expecting an answer, so I only look at her. “She felt her biological clock ticking and thought, A handsome, clever young man from a good family, I’ll catch this one before my eggs run out.”

  “She’s thirty-two, not forty-two.”

  Anne-Sophie represses a giggle in the back seat.

  “You’re acting as though this is just a minor detail in Alexander’s life. His whole future’s going to be defined by it, you know.”

  The car behind us honks. Marie shouts into the rearview mirror, “Yes, ma’am, yes. It’s raining and we’re all stuck in this traffic. What can I do about it?” Anne-Sophie looks back with an angry expression to prove her solidarity. “People complaining, I really can’t cope with that.”

  I look out the side window. Alongside me a large man is talking to the dog sitting next to him in the passenger seat. What could he be saying? I look at my sister and point at the man; she smiles. Anne-Sophie doesn’t have the classical beauty Alexander has, but there’s something that makes you want to look at her. She has flaxen hair and dreamy eyes. She’s very serious-looking for her age, and introverted when it comes down to it. I never would have expected it, as a child she seemed much more outgoing.

  “Do you know whether they’re going to get married?” Marie asks.

  “I haven’t heard any talk about that.”

  “Great, so this cardiologist’s daughter is going to have a bastard for a grandchild. Who’d have thought it?” It’s 1991, but to Marie the world has remained the way her parents once decided it should be. “What do you think about it?”

  “You know what I think.”

  “Maybe I do, but I want to hear you say it.”

  “Love isn’t about having the right papers is what I think.”

  “That’s what I think too,” Anne-Sophie says.

  “You thinking Alexander’s too young to have a baby, I can understand that, but whether they’re married or not is irrelevant.”

  “Well, you agree with your mother on one thing, at least, Mona. Fortunately, you have more common sense than your brother in that area.” Marie looks at her youngest daughter in the rearview mirror. “And I hope you’ll learn your lesson from this.”

  Anne-Sophie says nothing. I think about Charlie, the way she stuck out her belly to look more pregnant and then had to laugh about it; about Alexander and his mushy look as he stood there watching; about Dad at a loss for words. I think about Louis, who I haven’t seen or heard from in nine days. I must have been a disappointment at that breakfast.

  “Tell me, how are you liking your new job?”

  “It’s great.”

  “I still don’t understand why you changed jobs. The new one doesn’t pay any better, does it?”

  “No, but he’s one of the greatest directors we have.”

  “So why doesn’t he work at one of the big theaters?”

  “Because there’s about as much life in the big theaters at the moment as in your average raisin. The interesting stuff’s happening where I’m working now.”

  “Plus, Marcus Meereman is really handsome,” Anne-Sophie says.

  “How do you know what he looks like?”

  “He was in the paper. There was a photo.”

  “And you already have an opinion about men’s looks? That spells trouble!”

  I look at Anne-Sophie and make a funny face. Sometimes I forget she’s thirteen and the things that used to make her laugh no longer work. She tries a small smile, solely to please me.

  “Yes, yes, it’s all quite something.” Marie sighs as she throws the plastic wrapper from her cigarettes out the window. “And I still find it a strange world, the theater. You can’t be learning anything of any use there, if you ask me.”

  I want to reply Yes, yes in turn, but I don’t.

  “Can I come to the play you’re making?”

  “Helping to make, Anne-Sophie, just helping.”

  “Can I?”

  “We’ll see,” Marie answers for me.

  That evening, Alexander calls me.

  “Say, sis, did you tell Mom you agree that I’m much too young to have a baby?”

  8

  I never do this, actually, visit graves, not my mother’s and not Granny’s. But today, I don’t know, there was something going on with the birds, seagulls I suspect, even though I don’t know anything about birds. The few I can identify are the ones my father once taught me. The birds from this morning, they cawed and crowed, there were lots of them all of a sudden, a flapping cloud behind my apartment building. It was as though they’d felt the end of the world approaching and thought: We should let the people know. It was that disturbing. I decided I
should go outside, do something. And then I discovered I’d biked all the way to the cemetery. Sometimes we sense what we need to do without really understanding it.

  Granny is buried between Grandpa and her sister, between a heart attack and a brain tumor. My granny was a ship that seemed like it would never go down, with her robust body, her strong arms, her parchment skin that looked pretty much the same for almost twenty years. She’d grown old early, or had remained well preserved, depending on how you looked at things. And yet suddenly, when she was seventy-two, she was found dead on her kitchen floor: a brain hemorrhage. She’d lain there for almost three days, on those black-and-white tiles, facedown. It wasn’t until Auntie Rose found it strange that Granny wasn’t picking up her phone that they went to take a look. I was glad she didn’t have a cat. And I felt guilty I hadn’t visited for a month or two.

  I can’t say that I missed her much. I felt bad about that because what does it say about me? Granny was the kind of woman who made it hard for people to love her. She baked cakes, sure, she bought birthday gifts and sent cards at Christmas; she told us about the trials and tribulations of family members who were still alive, about the past and her own mother and how she’d hit Granny when she was disobedient, a rap across the fingers with a ruler, which was normal in those days, but it hurt all the same. She told us this often, always that same story, in always the same words, to give the impression she’d found it normal herself. It’s in the emphasis that something isn’t bad, that it doesn’t frighten us, that it hasn’t made us sad, that we often betray the force of our true emotions, even though we believe the shadowy self-deception while we’re formulating it. Anyway, that’s what Charlie said recently when Alexander assured her that his mother’s death hadn’t affected him. I find myself still thinking about her words.

  My mother’s grave is a few rows back from Granny’s. There’s an ugly, weathered gravestone. HERE LIES, and then engraved underneath it in slightly larger letters: AGNES DE TENDER, and under that: 11/7/1941–8/20/1976. There’s no verse, no cross, no palm branch, no photo like on many of the other graves I see here. She’s lying almost directly under the beech tree and that’s nice, of course. Well, the bones that are left. Apparently, it takes about ten years for all the flesh and fat to break down, so they’ve been gone quite some time.