Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

  21

  He sounded exhausted and happy at the same time. “Seven pounds, eight ounces. His name is Marvin.” Just the name for a child of Alexander and Charlie, I thought.

  “After Marvin Gaye?” I asked.

  “After himself,” he replied, and I could hear his smile through the telephone.

  Louis has no interest in babies, but after more than seven months, I still haven’t introduced him to my family, so a quick visit to see the mother and newborn child seems like a good idea. You don’t have to stay very long and there’s a lot of distraction and little opportunity for interrogation.

  Marie and Dad haven’t yet made up their minds about what they think of Louis in theory. They like the prestige his name suggests, one of the country’s better-known writers is their daughter’s boyfriend—it’s nice to nonchalantly drop that into a conversation with friends. In that respect, they probably don’t get what he sees in me, which is how I feel myself sometimes. They do worry about the age difference, they say, which is hypocritical given that they’re nine years apart. And whether a man like that can guarantee a stable future, they wouldn’t count on it.

  Charlie looks stunning, even just one day after the birth. She sits bolt upright in the hospital bed in a stylish suit. Alexander is busy with glasses and a bottle of champagne, Anne-Sophie is wrapping up the last boxes of candied almonds, and Marie is standing over Marvin’s cot, chattering away to Dad, who isn’t listening.

  Louis greets her with three kisses on her cheeks. “If it was genetically possible, I’d say that Mona had inherited her looks from you.”

  Marie lets out a strange cry of blushing glee, so one–zero to him. Dad shakes his hand and immediately begins to tell him something. He’s trying to make an impression on Louis, I notice, which gives me a vague feeling of pleasure.

  “Would you like to hold him, Auntie?” Charlie asks me.

  I go over to the cot and look at this tiny human. He’s already so much and not yet anything at all. I pick him up, lay him across my right arm, and sit down on the stool in the corner. He’s beautiful and perfect, which can’t be said of all newborns. He keeps his eyes closed, moves his little lips in a regular rhythm, the way fish do. I look at him and am reminded of Anne-Sophie. How often did I hold her like this?

  Marie comes over. “See that, just like Alexander, the spitting image.” I look at him and don’t see anything of either parent. I don’t understand how people have an immediate opinion about such things; when everything’s so much smaller, it’s hard to make comparisons. “Look, Dad,” she continues. “Spitting image, right?”

  Dad hands out glasses of champagne and looks at everyone except his grandchild. Marie doesn’t insist, she’s used to him not answering her.

  “Oh, I was totally reminded of Charlie when I first saw him,” Anne-Sophie says. “That nose and those eyes, look.”

  “And do you already have a good high chair?” Marie emphasizes each word.

  “My mother saved my old one, a nice old chair. I’ve repainted it and it looks lovely.” Charlie smiles sympathetically.

  “Oh, but the ergonomic kind that grow with them, they’re really handy, you know. And safe. Those old chairs, well—”

  “He’s not going to be doing much more than lying down, pooping, and eating for the time being,” Charlie says. “We’re not going to worry in advance about things we don’t need yet.”

  There’s a silence. Alexander and I look at each other.

  “Pooping, pooping,” Marie mutters, clearly not understanding how people can talk about babies using words that don’t fit inside fluffy pink clouds.

  I see Louis standing awkwardly in the corner, his gaze on Charlie. He must find her much more interesting and braver and more beautiful than me, I think.

  “Here’s to Marvin,” Dad says, and everyone raises their glass.

  “Too early in the day for me,” Marie grumbles. “Gives me a headache.” She puts her glass back down.

  “It’s Veuve Clicquot, Mom, especially for you.”

  “That’s sweet.” She still leaves the glass where it is. If the word implacable didn’t exist, they’d invent it for her. “And how did the birth go, then? When I had Anne-Sophie, it was quite a trial. Thirty-four hours it took her to come out, didn’t it, Dad? Do you remember?” It’s as though she’s reliving the pain of the delivery as she says this. “The nurses and the gynecologist, they said it too: ‘Ma’am, how on earth you managed to persevere, we have no idea.’ That’s what they said, didn’t they, Dad?” When Marie quotes other people, especially people with status, like doctors, she articulates exaggeratedly, each word perfectly formed, like a news anchor. “But how was your experience?”

  Anne-Sophie joins in. “Did it hurt a lot? Did you tear?”

  “Anne-Sophie!”

  “A neat little cut.” Charlie smiles. “And a good eight hours before I was sufficiently dilated, but then it actually went quite fast.”

  “And she didn’t want an epidural, my tiger here.” Alexander sounds more concerned than proud.

  “Anything, absolutely anything, for that hunk there.”

  “Hulk?” Everything in Marie’s face moves toward a frown.

  “Hunk, handsome young fella,” Alexander translates.

  “Do you want to hold him?” I ask my little sister.

  She shakes her head and looks upset.

  “And you, sir?”

  “Just call him Louis, Mom.”

  “Do you want one yourself?”

  “Oh, I want everything.” Louis grins and I give him a stern look. He adds, “Mona’s still young.”

  Sidestepped that one perfectly, I think.

  “Yes, she is, yes.” Marie takes a breath as though she’s about to say more.

  “Would you like to take Marvin?” I ask. All’s fair in love and war.

  “Of course. Come to your nana, little Marv, pet. Yes, I’m your nana.”

  “We’re not going to shorten his name, that’s partly why we chose it, actually. It’s short enough already,” Charlie says.

  “Oh right,” Marie says.

  Alexander sits down on Charlie’s bed and squeezes her hand.

  A nurse comes in, she has a forced smile like they all do on this wing. There’s a purple rabbit pinned to her uniform, a furry broach, as though newborn babies might be able to see it. “I’ve come to take care of Mom. Will you all wait outside?”

  Anne-Sophie goes to buy a soda from the shop downstairs. We stand in a row, leaning against the wall. There’s nothing more depressing than depressing corridors they’ve tried to cheer up. Bilious green walls, yellowing ceilings with random cracks, smooth gray floors, and then cartoon pictures of storks and teddy bears, photos of babies dressed as sunflowers in planters, and a whole bunch of flags right at the back.

  “It’s a shame about the card,” Marie says. Next to each door hangs the birth announcement card on a special framed little corkboard. There’s one next to Charlie’s room too. “I mean all that black, for a birth?”

  “I think it’s nice.”

  “Yes, there you go, to each his own, eh? Young people, it’s modern, I gather.”

  Dad stares through the window. Louis looks at me. I suspect his eyes are asking me how much longer, but I pretend not to notice.

  “The name will take a bit of getting used to too.” Marie sighs theatrically, as though all the plagues of Egypt have been sent to try her.

  I smile somewhat vaguely in her direction, it seems like the best approach.

  “He’s a beautiful-looking baby, though.”

  “Yes, he really is.”

  “Let’s hope the two of them manage to bring it up decently. Raising children is never simple. And in their case . . . But I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “What do you mean?” Louis almost seems genuinely interested.

  “Alexander’s a lovely guy, but he’s so young, you know. And she’s, well . . .”

  “She’s?”

  “Well, I
don’t want to say anything unkind, of course, but she’s not a very maternal type. What do you think?”

  “What does that mean to you, a ‘maternal type’?”

  “Caring, warm, gentle character. Those things.”

  “Like you?” Louis keeps his tone utterly neutral.

  For a moment, Marie wavers. She’s not sure whether Louis means it or if he’s making fun of her. But then she recovers since, in her life, attack has always been the best form of defense. “Exactly. Like me and most women who become mothers. Our Mona, for example, she’s not a mother yet, but she’s got it in her. She pays attention to others, does her best to keep the mood cheerful all the time, is eager to help, sensitive. She’s an open book—to me, at least.”

  “An open book?”

  “Yes. I know everything about our Mona. She tells me everything, we’re very close, her and me.” Marie looks at me, and I smile back automatically, like a dog fetching a stick. “But Charlie, we don’t quite have her figured out yet.”

  “Inasmuch as I’ve understood from Mona, Alexander has chosen to follow his heart. In terms of his wife, his life, a job that makes him happy. If Charlie was able to inspire him to do that, that seems like a good sign, don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, so you think it’s good, do you, that Alexander’s no longer going to be a doctor? They do save lives, you know.”

  “I only write books, what do I know?” Louis is playing a game, he’s good at that.

  “I don’t mean—naturally, what you do is also—”

  Louis interrupts her with a broad grin. “I just mean that they seem genuinely happy to me. That’s important too.”

  “If everything was what it seemed, then life might be truly pleasant,” Marie says. She lets drop a contemplative pause, as though watching a procession of her own sufferings march past inside her head.

  Dad takes advantage of the silence to ask Louis about the book he’s working on at the moment, my father’s contribution to world peace in this hallway.

  “Well, that nurse is taking her time, isn’t she? I’ll just pop to—” Marie turns around and walks toward the bathroom without finishing her sentence.

  I look at Louis and move closer to him as he explains the premise of his novel to my father. Then I look at Dad, who is listening attentively. Maybe these two will get along, I think and smile. Sometimes things just happen naturally, for all the right reasons.

  PART THREE

  2002

  1

  The sun is high in the sky. The steering wheel is hot, almost too hot to hold. It’s still only March, but it feels like midsummer. I start the car, then turn on the AC and the radio. U2 sings that it’s a beautiful day. I turn the dial to another station, where Mozart is playing, music like sweetly impending doom. I keep turning the dial, I don’t like anything. The problem’s me, so I turn it off.

  The road is long and monotonous. The sky is an unreal blue, the fields are vast and empty; here and there, the odd cow slaps at flies with its tail. Only a couple of windmills interrupt the flat landscape. They remind me of the windmills of my childhood—at the seaside, in bright, bubble-gum colors, turning on top of my sandcastle. One time, my father attached two to the handlebars of my bike. The faster I rode, the faster they turned. He stuck one on his own bike for Alexander, whose seat was attached to the crossbar. He whooped with joy as we raced into the wind. I can still remember it.

  At last I spot the exit. The hospital is on the edge of the city. The large modern wing contrasts starkly with the old part, which is reminiscent of municipal buildings from the 1960s. I can’t find the parking lot, as though the world wants to help me delay the inevitable. After driving around three times, I pull up onto the grass, where you certainly aren’t allowed to park. “I’m in a hurry,” I say out loud, which is a total lie.

  I need to find room 316. I go up to the lady at the info desk and ask her where it is. She sighs like she has better things to do than give people information, there at her information desk. I’m supposed to follow the orange line on the floor and then take the elevator to the third floor.

  I press the button. Waiting always takes ages, even when it’s just for a moment. When the door opens with a ping, a whole herd of us enters together. Smells mingle: peppery aftershave and sweat and mint chewing gum and new sneakers. People stand there in awkward silence as they try not to look at each other. Two stare at the screen showing which floor you’re at. A man with gloomy eyes fiddles with a bouquet of flowers he’s holding. A lady with extravagant hair and dark-purple lips stares at the floor, or at her shoes, her belly, it’s hard to tell. Only a little boy looks at me, slightly angrily. I wonder whether it’s deliberate or not. When he gets out with his father on the second floor, he sticks his tongue out. His father wraps his arm around the little guy, to be kind perhaps, or to make sure he moves along obediently.

  I enter the third-floor hallway. Everything smells oppressive. There’s a woman in a wheelchair waiting for someone or something. Given the expression on her face, she’s been waiting for some time. I hope they haven’t forgotten her. She’s got red scabrous patches on her forehead along her hairline, and she smacks her elderly lips even though there’s nothing to chew on. Farther along, there’s a cart bearing a stock of gigantic diapers, latex gloves, and sharp needles in neat packages. Hanging from the end of it: a garbage bag that reeks of shit. Sometimes the crudest words are the right ones, I find myself thinking. I hurry past.

  I’ve never understood why they leave the doors of hospital rooms wide open, as though the woman with the drooping succulent on the windowsill might want strangers to see her varicose-vein-riddled legs on top of the covers, as though that man there wants an audience as he lies open-mouthed, coughing and groaning and staring at nothing in particular.

  Room 316 is right at the end of the hallway. “Vacant,” a sign says, but the door is shut. Who knows what’s going on behind it? I press my ear to the door, hear nothing, knock three times, and then open it anyway. I see my dad lying there asleep. He doesn’t look peaceful, his face somewhere between white and gray, cheeks sunken, breathing restless, his skinny legs kicked free of the sheets, and his feet—soles covered in callouses, long, dark-yellow toenails—jerking occasionally, like someone is tickling them with a feather. I don’t want to sit next to him like that.

  I go back into the hallway and pick a chair to wait in. A nurse marches up. She looks well into her forties, but her hair is in two pigtails, like she’d rather be in a kiddie pop band than work here, which I don’t blame her for, really. She hurries into the room closest to my chair without knocking. As though being old and ill isn’t enough, she shouts at the patient, loudly enough to inform everyone in the hallway, “I’ve come about the toilet. Can you sit on the potty yourself? Yes? Then I’ll get you out of bed. But what’s that, my boy? You’re wearing a diaper? How did that—? Oh, you don’t know. I’ll just pop out and ask.”

  I try not to look at the man sitting on his bed waiting.

  “Hey, Josefien, the patient in 312, well, he says he can go to the toilet on his own, so why’s he wearing a diaper?” she screams at a colleague working nearby.

  “What?” the colleague roars back.

  “Why the diaper? Is 312 lying or can he really go to the toilet on his own?”

  “Yes, he can.”

  “Oh, so it’s a mistake? All right!” She thunders in again. “It was a little mistake, that diaper, I’ll just take it off, that’ll be better. And you go to the toilet, eh? Here, lean on my arm.”

  I try not to listen, but it’s difficult when humanity is so loud. I think about my own death, pray for something with more dignity: flattened by a TV that’s been thrown out of a window on a sunny Monday in May. Or choking on a shortbread cookie at home in an armchair after having read a mediocre page of a novel.

  I go see whether Dad’s still sleeping. He seems to be starting to snore a bit. He looks like he needs sleep. Waking him up isn’t an option, which I feel relieved about, b
efore immediately feeling annoyed with myself.

  They said we won’t know until next week. They steered us out of the room, a geriatrics specialist and a different kind of specialist who didn’t introduce himself. The geriatrics doctor is called Cleavage, that’s what he said, “Good afternoon, I’m Doctor Cleavage.” He didn’t find it funny himself. He didn’t tell us his first name, it must have seemed irrelevant.

  Doctor Cleavage is a colorless man, his remaining hair draped across his head, small eyes, tight mouth. His complexion is gray, as though he’s trying to match the general atmosphere of the hospital.

  It was the other doctor who told us, with a slight lisp, not to get ahead of ourselves. It was important to remain optimistic for the patient’s morale. I found that last bit ominous sounding. Cleavage thought it important to add, “But yes, the patient is clearly in a weakened state, we shouldn’t expect miracles.” Then he pulled his mouth into a smile, or what was meant to pass as one, as though he’d suddenly become aware of the fact that he was talking about my father.

  “He says he’s got back pain too. Can you do anything about that?”

  “People often don’t know exactly where pain is coming from. What could be perceived as back pain could have all kinds of causes. There, too, we’ll have to exercise patience until we have all the results.”

  “But can’t you give him more pain relief or something?”

  “Naturally, we’ll try to keep the patient as comfortable as possible.”

  And without saying goodbye, they were gone.

  Dad is lying there and I don’t feel like seeing the people coming to visit after me, not now, not Marie, so I take the stairs and escape through the side door. I bang my knee as I get into the car, I’m always clumsy. It really hurts. I sit down, rub my knee, and look at the mother who walks past carrying her small daughter while they have a serious conversation about the colors of the cars. I watch them go. Sometimes I’m the strongest chick in the whole world, sometimes I’m chicken liver.